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Monthly Archives: May 2010

Noted elsewhere: Which fly rod ferrule is best?

Sunday, 30 May 2010

In the old days (20 or 30 years ago), before advances in materials and design technologies, the main problem with sleeve-over ferrules was that they didn’t allow a continuous diameter or taper in the blank.

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The Fly-fishers’ Club.

Saturday, 29 May 2010

Basil Field: In the happy days of old, when fish were foolish, and fishermen were few, one, two, three, or more flies were fastened at intervals on a line; a cast was made across the stream, the rod-point was depressed, and the flies allowed to sink as they drifted down the current. When the line became fully extended, the flies began to rise to the surface, and to sweep round in a curve towards the bank on which the angler stood, the fly nearest him, called the “bob-fly,” tripping and dancing as it skimmed the water.

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Noted elsewhere: The Mathemagician.

Friday, 28 May 2010

The first time I encountered a column in Scientific American entitled “Mathematical Games,” I thought it was a contradiction in terms. Along with most English majors, I equated math with drudgery, not diversion. Then I read the piece. Its author, Martin Gardner, showed me how wrong I was.

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Straws in the religious wind?

Friday, 28 May 2010

Anthony O’Hear: It is interesting to see in these three very different books some thoughtful intellectuals demurring from the secularism which had until recently reigned virtually unchallenged among the self-professed thinking classes.

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Noted elsewhere: History's Isle.

Thursday, 27 May 2010

Richard Evans’s new study of the historical profession in Britain serves as a timely reminder both of what Britain’s historians have achieved over the past half-century, and what may be lost if their legacy is squandered.

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Dostoyevski and the religion of suffering 2.

Thursday, 27 May 2010

Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé: During his last year of freedom (before going to prison) the obsession of imaginary maladies, trouble with his nerves, and a “mystic fright,” were driving him straight into a state of mental derangement, and we can believe him. He assures us that he was only saved by the sudden change in his manner of life, for it compelled him to brace himself against the misfortunes which had hitherto mastered him. I accept this statement, for the secrets of the soul are unassailable; and it is certain that there is nothing better to cure an imaginary illness than real misfortune.

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Noted elsewhere: Jorge Luis Borges: an interview.

Wednesday, 26 May 2010

Borges: Schopenhauer is very different from Hume. Of course, Schopenhauer had his idea of the Will. That is not to be found in Hume. But of course in the case of Berkeley it is different. I suppose he thought of God as being aware of all things all the time, I mean if I don’t get him wrong. If we go away, does this room disappear? No, it doesn’t, of course, because God is thinking about it.

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Noted elsewhere: Swerve with verve.

Tuesday, 25 May 2010

The boda-boda has many advantages: it takes you exactly where you want to go; it is a refreshing ride under the tropical sun; it is not bound by the same rules as heavier vehicles, except at traffic lights; it can carry as many as can fit safely; it is fast and efficient, and not expensive. It can also be hair-raising.

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Noted elsewhere: Atheism’s Just So Scenarios.

Monday, 24 May 2010

Although by 1965 Hoyle found himself in the distinct minority among cosmologists, he never abandoned his criticism of the Big Bang theory or his advocacy of his steady-state” theory of a universe that was without beginning and will never end.

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Occ. Notes: An addition to Alan Macfarlane's 'Fragment'

Sunday, 23 May 2010

The addition brings the paradigms up to the present.

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The mystery of life.

Saturday, 22 May 2010

W. E. Garrett Fisher: Dr Bastian’s discovery can hardly be overrated in its bearing on one of the most difficult and interesting questions which biology has yet to resolve.

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Noted elsewhere: Sizing up the 'synthetic cell'.

Friday, 21 May 2010

Prof. Jim Collins: “Relax — media reports hyping this as a significant, alarming step forward in the creation of artificial forms of life can be discounted. The work reported by Venter and his colleagues is an important advance in our ability to re-engineer organisms; it does not represent the making of new life from scratch.”

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The uses for populism.

Thursday, 20 May 2010

Denis Boyles: Populism finds a way, even in Europe. Your grandmother may die of neglect in Paris while you go to the beach and the government dithers, but if you want real populist outrage in Europe, try freezing the salaries of bureaucrats. The state is Europe’s largest employer. When the reality of that unaffordable fact of political life sinks in, as it has in Greece and as it no doubt will elsewhere, you get a kind of populism even Timothy Egan may wish to avoid: riots, death, anarchy and an impending collapse of the currency.

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Noted elsewhere: Jeffrey Goldberg and Peter Beinart

Thursday, 20 May 2010

Jeffrey Goldberg: Settlements are wrong, and various Israeli policies are discriminatory, but aren’t liberal-minded American Jews being naive when they think that the Palestinians are blameless in this morass?

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Notes & comment: The uses for populism.

Thursday, 20 May 2010

Denis Boyles: In the Euro-zone, populism is kept in place by encouraging dependence on the state. That dependence is so deeply entrenched now that not even the French health-care disaster of 2003 could disturb it. When 15,000 mostly elderly citizens perished in a three-week heat wave after government services collapsed, it left utterly unaffected both the political establishment and the journalists who cover and largely support it.

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