Category: Uncategorized

Another one to add to the list of brain lesions / malfunctions as clues to the workings of mind. Faced with an otherwise fully functioning brain and the total inability to communicate Belgian Rom Houben, simply had to dream to fill his time – for 23 years !

[Today – Sat 28th – apparently scientific scepticism about his actual state & recovery. And I have to say listening to the interview with another PVS / Locked-in patient (Martin ?) – via the communication system – I’m sceptical if the description is representative of the Houben case.]

A mere blogging tool no longer.

Excellent piece by Clive James on Belle de Jour. (Nov 15, 2009 is the relevant post.)

[A man of the world like CJ claims never to have even met a sex worker? He should get out more. BTW re-read Clive’s piece a couple of times … it really is excellent material.]

Hey, if Blackburn’s Givet transferred to Liverpool, the latter would have the partnership of Givet Ngog.

(HT to Sylvia)

Latest Edge has an interesting piece on “36 Arguments for the Existence of God” .. interesting because it is clearly about debunking those arguments, but seems to recognize the ills of the extreme scientific fundamentalist front of “the new atheists”. Naturally, I like the idea that Harris and Dennett are acknowledged ahead of the current baying crowd … also named.

Published in January. Seems like the kind of writing I would do (if I could) not least for the “Joining Dots” motif – already in my header links. More to the point, it’s a fiction – and the extract published at the Edge link above reads OK – but the 36 key arguments are listed and systematically structured in a separate appendix, so that the fictional text, can simply refer to them – by number (!). An alternative trick to putting the chautauqua’s of convoluted arguments into the characters’ or narrator’s mouths directly.

I wonder if the readability can be sustained ? And, I wonder if the net message is indeed more subtle than the fundamentalists ? One to order.

I wasn’t going to comment on this – but Thierry Henry ? – Robbo’s right.

Weird game for Henry all round – the Irish really were the better side all night – but unfairly booked for diving (it wasn’t a penalty either) and he’d handled twice earlier in the game too.

All UK Nurses to be graduate entry only ! WTF ?

Public project structures are important, like cathedrals used to be – and I like this idea – the funding architecture as well as the physical architecture.