Category: Blog

Slavoj Zizek has been giving some new lectures at Birkbeck, London – including telling some new jokes (or at least, new to me.) One features a man in a coffee shop who asks the waiter for a coffee without milk. We don’t have any milk today, the waiter replies, but we do have cream. Would… Continue reading The one about the coffee…

When Galileo first gazed onto the surface of the moon through a telescope, he achieved a shift in humankind’s sense of itself. Ours was not the only world in the cosmos. The moon was earthlike too, with mountains and valleys. In ‘The Sidereal Messenger’, he commended his readers to the ‘great and marvelous sights’. It’s… Continue reading Copernican shifts and First Orbit

Every time I hear someone say we elect governments to maximise our wellbeing – as I heard this morning with the Action for Happiness launch being discussed – I shudder. Er, no. The kind of culture where wellbeing is dispensed from Whitehall is the totalitarian one. (Ironic that this should come just as Martin Seligman… Continue reading I started the day unhappy

James Frey’s new book, The Final Testament of the Holy Bible, is designed to instigate a blasphemy row: it tells you so on the cover. But those who are inclined to boil about unconventional portrayals of Jesus should still their racing hearts. To be frank, the story is too ludicrous to be offensive. I’m on… Continue reading James Frey's Jesus

Well not quite. But I see the inventor of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, has a book coming out next month saying that it’s not about happiness after all, but flourishing. He’s apparently been stung by the accusations that he’s peddling ‘happyology’. The American blurb promises ‘his dynamic new concept of what well-being really is.’ Excuse… Continue reading The end of the science of happiness?

Oxford ancient historian, Peter Thonemann, pours cold water on the story about the ‘priceless’ Christian codices discovered in Jordon, which – according to reports – could change everything we know about the first century of Christianity. He saw one of the ‘books’ a year ago, and fairly quickly realised that the apparently encoded lines inscribed… Continue reading Christian codices more lead than gold

I made a belief claim, unsupported by evidence, in my piece on Martin Rees winning the Templeton Prize: ‘That such a highly regarded figure has received its premier prize will make it that little bit harder for Dawkins to sustain respect amongst his peers for his crusade against religion.’ An early piece of evidence is… Continue reading Prize war

This piece, more or less, has just gone up at the Guardian’s Cif belief. I predict a riot. Richard Dawkins – author of The God Delusion and theorist of the selfish gene – could claim to be the most famous scientist in Briton. Lord Martin Rees – Astronomer Royal, former President of the Royal Society,… Continue reading Martin Rees wins Templeton 2011

Cave of Forgotten Dreams – Werner Herzog’s fantastic film of the Chauvet cave – includes plenty of experts affirming that little is known about the purpose of the images of horses, cattle, reindeer, of lions, panthers, bears. And that the spectacular art’s early dating – c30,000 BCE – suggests that art arrived almost magically full… Continue reading Cave of Unforgotten Dreams

If you, like me, routinely scan the non-fiction book review pages, you may, like me, have noticed a genre particularly popular at the moment: futurology. We live with a fin de siècle feeling. What’s striking, though, is that the genre is divided down the middle. On one side are writers who see a bright future… Continue reading The beginning of infinity, or the return of history?