Oh look. What fun. We’d noticed that the Amazon page for the Dictionary didn’t have a picture. But now it does. I clicked on the page in an idle moment (okay a lazy moment) to see, and idleness and laziness were rewarded, because there it was. So have a look. And no, that is not a portrait. Everyone I’ve shown the book to says in a surprised manner ‘But you don’t look like that.’ No, that’s true, I don’t. I don’t wear my hair in two bunches on the back upper corners of my head, for one thing. And everything else is different too. There is no resemblance. None. I don’t think the guy looks much like my … Read the rest

Remember the lists of life-altering books? Way back last month – out of sight out of mind? I thought I would link to another, because it has The Uses of Literacy, by Richard Hoggart. As good a reason as any.

So once I started a book-related subject I thought I might as well continue with this article by Mark Edmundson. It says one or two things that I often say to myself (sometimes with oaths, sometimes in a kind of whining sniveling croon).

Yet for many people, the process of socialization doesn’t quite work. The values they acquire from all the well-meaning authorities don’t fit them. And it is these people who often become obsessed readers. They don’t

I am constantly amazed at the stupidity of just about everybody who writes for the Guardian. Here’s one Madeline Bunting:

Over the course of the 20th century, as our technological ingenuity made war ever more brutal

What the hell is she talking about? Has she never heard of the Somme – more than 1 million dead in five months – or Paschendaele?

That was the bit which I found particularly irritating. But the whole thing is full of nonsense.

Among Saturday’s demonstrators were New Labour’s natural allies – fair-minded, decent people, the kind who don’t walk on the other side of the street.

Ridiculous. New Labour people are fair-minded, decent fellows. Not like those dastardly Lib-Dems. Okay, I … Read the rest

It’s not only the Vatican, of course. Perhaps I was too hard on the Vatican? No. I wasn’t. (I mean, apart from anything else – was their Jesus a huge fan of marriage and having children and family values? No. Was ‘Saint’ Paul? No. So what are they basing all that on? I mean, they’re not even consistent!) But that doesn’t mean I can’t be hard on other god-botherers and spirit-annoyers, does it. No.

PZ Myers has an excellent rant at Pharyngula about the latter group.

The editorial page of yesterday’s Star-Tribune was full of articles on a ‘controversy’, the sequencing of the wild rice genome. I read them all through twice, and I still don’t see what the problem