…I have learned that different disciplines use particular words to describe good work done in that discipline. For example, in physics the best work is described as ‘‘elegant’’ which seems to mean the implications of the work may not be … Continue reading
Stanley Hauerwas, at his side-stepping, dummy-serving, best: You have been called ‘contemporary theology’s foremost intellectual provocateur’. What do you thinkabout the controversy that your work generates? Do you consider that it’s a sign that you’re doing theology properly? I don’t … Continue reading
In this month’s Atlantic there is a fascinating article on the Turing Test and what it says about being human. In it, the writer, Brian Christian, gives an interesting piece of background to the perennial popular anthropology question: Philosophers, psychologists, … Continue reading
Journalism (n) : I know nothing about a subject, and I have 1200 words in which to express it. [Choose your own links]
Anglo-Catholicism (n) : The Trotskyist wing of the Church of England.1 It is significant that [several young gifted writers of the twenties and thirties] went almost invariably to the Roman Church, and not, for instance, to the C. of E., … Continue reading
Tradition (n) : 2. Something the English do really well. See binge drinking and rural rioting.
Spring (n) : It’s raining— and don’t the clocks go forward soon, so we miss an hour’s kip?
Autumn (n) : It’s raining— and that makes the leaves slippy underfoot.
Winter (n) : It’s raining— and dark.
Summer (n) : it’s raining.