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Monthly Archives: October 2004
Tory Scissor Sisters
At the recent Tory party conference in Brighton, Chariman Dr Liam Fox announced that he was a fan of the Scissor Sisters. Do you think he knows the origin of the band’s name (reported by MTV as ‘cheeky’, although none of the band are lesbians) ?
And why get fatty Soames to talk in public about his first kiss? It’s a sure cue for people to repeat his ex-girlfriend’s description of having sex with him: ‘Imagine lying in bed when suddenly the wardrobe topples over and falls on top of you with the key still in the lock’
The Veil of Ignorance and experimental psychology
In his theory of social justice John Rawls proposed a model of fairness in a thought experiment, the Veil of Ignorance .
People were imagined removed from their acquired and natural endowments and ignorant of their positions in life. Rawls suggested that that given this situation - in which people did not know what their lot would be (or was) - they would choose equal distributions of advantages and resources - and that is what we should call fair or just.
Derrida dead
Derrida’s dead, apparently. But then, as this is a text, perhaps he isn’t.
I spent some time trying to read his impenetrable tosh before I gave up and I once met someone who’d photographed him. The photo was a monochrome, backlit, sage head resting on hand pile of crap, the visual equivalent of a Hallmark card’s verse, that even Derrida wouldn’t have had any difficulty deconstructing.
Degrees of Freedom
I’m only two degrees of separation from Sadam Hussein (via Tony Benn, whom I met in Oxford) and Helen’s only two degrees from George W Bush (via Blair, also met in Oxford). We rub shoulders with world leaders and despots alike.
Most unsuprising news story
This must be the least remarkable story to make the news this year. There’s a marathon in Cardiff (capital of Wales). It’s October. It’s raining. Oh, and the spectacular number of hundreds
have bothered to turn out.