A Teeny-Weeny Baby Puzzle
I have been thinking about babies recently, for various reasons (let’s call them Saul). It had always struck me that procreation was a classic example of a prisoner’s dilemma. It was good for each...
View ArticleA Girls’ Night Out
A couple of weeks ago my wife went out on what she described as ‘a girls’ night out’. Naturally, I was excluded (though I have a male friend who claims – bafflingly – that he’s been invited to several...
View ArticleIn Praise of Tribalism
Murray v. Federer. Why would anyone support the grumpy Murray against the gentleman Federer? Why would one back ordinariness against genius? Why would one root for efficiency over grace? Because...
View ArticleThe Paralympics and Short Basketball
It has always been a puzzle to me that there is no league in basketball for small people. Height is a vague concept, like baldness, but just as some people are unquestionably bald, others are...
View ArticleTwo Unhappy Lives
The Greek statesman and poet Solon, who lived in the sixth century BC, said “count no man happy until he be dead”. His thought seems to have been that a person’s luck can change at any time....
View ArticleDirty Money
I have a relative who faces the following dilemma, though he doesn’t see it as a dilemma. But I do. My relative is involved in the charitable sector. He has been approached by some representatives...
View ArticleWell, he did make the trains run on time
Well, they say of Mussolini, at least he made the trains run on time. Actually, that’s disputed, but that’s by-the-by. While watching the telly, I was struck by a remark of Scotland’s First...
View ArticleWhat’s Wrong With Believing In Nothing?
I was having a friendly discussion/argument the other day: it had something to do with my militant, Dawkins-esque atheism, and my disparagement of some sorts of religious ritual. “At least I believe...
View ArticleLady Thatcher is Dead – and some people celebrate
Margaret Thatcher has died. A few people have declared that this is grounds for celebration. ‘A great day’, they have announced. Pop open the champagne. Well, we know that Lady Thatcher was the most...
View ArticleA WHITE MAN’S COURT
Is it a White Man’s Court? I went to a talk recently in which the International Criminal Court, the ICC, was accused of racial bias. The evidence seems pretty damning. Virtually no non-African has...
View ArticleAre You A Fox or A Hedgehog?
by David Edmonds Follow David on twitter @DavidEdmonds100 Are you a Fox or a Hedgehog? In practical ethics, far better to be a hedgehog. Isaiah Berlin drew a famous distinction when discussing great...
View ArticleI’m Too Unsexy For My Shirt
Follow David on Twitter @David Edmonds100 Thinking only of your career prospects now, is it better to be sexy or unsexy? This person was said to be too sexy and lost her job. But at Abercrombie...
View ArticleCan Facts Be Racist?
Here is the sequence of events. 1. Richard Dawkins tweets that all the world’s Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College Cambridge. 2. Cue a twitter onslaught – accusing Professor Dawkins...
View ArticleBurma, Myanmar and the Myth of Objectivity
by David Edmonds – twitter @DavidEdmonds100 Since my last blog post, there has been a decision within the BBC “to start to move” to calling ‘Burma, ‘Myanmar’. Burma has always been an interest of mine...
View ArticleShopping on Drugs
Follow David on Twitter https://twitter.com/DavidEdmonds100. I noticed recently that I have an entirely irrational shopping habit. I wanted to buy a packet of crisps, but when I went to pick up my...
View ArticleUses and Abuses of the Holocaust
Follow Dave on twitter https://twitter.com/DavidEdmonds100 At my advanced age, I can perhaps be forgiven for getting irritated by many things in life. But few exasperate me more than an argument or...
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