Analysing humour, as the famous formulation goes, is like pulling the wings off a beautiful fly to see if it can still dance to anything by Phil Collins and/or Genesis (or any eighties era bands that flies liked then) – it’s a horrifying ordeal best left to the imagination. But with all the hoohaa surrounding 10:10’s video … Continue reading
Author Archives: Ian Woolley
Look what we’ve done? Look what you didn’t do!
The Remainers are not at all happy. Angry, table-thumping accusations of criminal irresponsibility on the part of those who voted Leave are flying thick and fast, Charlotte Church being just the tip of the iceberg: @jamesstopford the leave campaign was IMO criminally dishonest. — Charlotte Church (@charlottechurch) July 4, 2016 The general thrust of all … Continue reading
Hay, there
The riots started slowly with the homeless and the lowly Then they spread into the heartland towns that never get a wristband – Paul Simon, Wristband Wristbands were an innovation this year for the How The Light Gets In festival at Hay. I know this because I had to ask for them eighty times … Continue reading
We live in a finite head— ‘peak reason’ may already be here
Alec Baldwin, the American actor, is of course right to say that climate denialism is a mental illness: However, Psychology Today author Jean M Twenge Ph.D. points out that Alec Baldwin himself is mentally ill, suffering as he obviously does from intense narcissism. She writes: Not every narcissist who gets thrown off a plane makes the news, … Continue reading
Watch: Dr Benny Peiser on free speech
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to … Continue reading
Alarmism: for political activists who should know better
Over at The Conversation recently Geoff Chambers of these pages responded to academic and blogger And Then There’s Ken Rice, who asked, snarkily, ‘is [the fact that major publications ignore criticisms of bad practice in climate science] some kind of conspiracy?’ Continue reading
A Humpty-Dumpty fudge: Ben Pile on Paris
Writing for Spiked magazine, Ben Pile has given his assessment of the Paris pantomime: it was, he says, ‘a humpty-dumpty fudge’ so vague that one of its major outcomes will simply be to give ‘more licence to climate champions than a precisely worded document ever could’. More licence, that is, to keep the whole racket rumbling on in … Continue reading
