My Blog

Guardian Unlimited | Guardian daily comment | In memory of solipsismThis article by the combative Muriel Gray caused something of a backlash in the letters pages this week, but, aside from her somewhat gratuitously offensive conclusion, I’m with her. I live a fair distance from my place of work, about 30 miles, but, depending on…

Bee Docs’ Timeline – Featured Users I came across this interview via a link on John Naughton‘s blog. MB is one of the few reasons why a paid up liberal softie like moi would desert the Grauniad for the Indy, and this is a fascinating account of someone who straddles academia and journalism successfully. Not…

A sort of supplement to the previous post. I spent much of today doing introductory sessions to new undergraduates. I was in the middle of telling a group the details of the English Literature course they had signed up for. One student said – ” So, do we like read these books ?” Collapse of…

Guardian Unlimited | Columnists | It isn’t philistinism to give students value for moneyThere’s a lot I would agree with here. Certainly Polly Toynbee is right to say that many students are treating their degree studies as a part time occupation. Where I would take issue with her is where she suggests that this means…

Guardian Unlimited | Life | Don’t dumb me down I love Ben Goldacre’s pieces in the Grauniad. Here he summarises what he’s been doing in his Bad Science column for the last couple of years. Always entertaining and, curiously, reassuring – as one of the Humanities graduates he mentions in the article, I would otherwise…

Guardian Unlimited | Cartoons | 07.09.05: The Bush family and Hurricane KatrinaAs usual, Steve Bell gets to the point. This is after Barbara Bush’s brilliant insight that the people evacuated to Texas have actually been lucky: “What I’m hearing, which is sort of scary, is that they all want to stay in Texas. Everybody is…

I’ve been tagged, from the film of the same name, to answer these questions. Here goes:1. Number of books I have owned: I really don’t know. In the room where I sit now, I estimate there are about 500 books. In the rest of the house posibly another 2000 or so. In my office, maybe…

On Saturday, I browsed around a Liverpool bookshop. It’s a co-op, with a radical ethos, and “alternative” atmosphere. It has a table with a pile of petitions on it, and a very extensive Mind Body and Spirit section. You know the kind of thing. I was looking for a particular book in the fiction section,…

Guardian Unlimited | Life | One side can be wrong …and further to the musings on religious belief below, let’s not forget that the Reverend Dubya, currently failing to organise a piss-up in a brewery, is also keen on the teaching of creationism as an alternative to evolution in America’s allegedly religion-free schools. Richard Dawkins…

It’s difficult to believe the scenes we are witnessing on TV originate in the richest and most powerful country in the world. I noticed that at the time of declaring a state of emergency, the Louisiana governor advised the people to pray. Since that didn’t work, apparently, the anarchy is to be controlled by –…