This book sounds fascinating, even if I suspect one might also sometimes wish to have at the subjects (or at least Murdoch) with a codfish: Boo to the Boo-Hurrahs: how four Oxford women transformed philosophy. Iris Murdoch, Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot and Mary Midgley took on the male consensus-and revolutionised modern ethics: The four ( Read more... )

We may note, dr rdrz, that there are no actual statues to either John Snow or Joseph Bazalgette - their (visible) monuments are modest.
I remarked, earlier this year, that Our Leaders were pretty much putting the handle back on the Broad Street Pump, and at this present moment, I would not be surprised if they were entering into a remunerative deal ( Read more... )

The full title is Samanth Subramanian, A Dominant Character: The Radical Science and Restless Politics of J.B.S. Haldane (2020), which I don't think would fit in the subject line box.
This was really quite readable, as far as style went, except that it was oddly organised and the sequence of events was not exactly what one would expect from chapter ( Read more... )

I mean, really, those people who say this kind of thing: A former naval surgeon whose Wiltshire constituency includes Stourhead - named in the colonialism and slavery report because its 18th-century owner inherited money made partly from trading shares in the South Sea company, which supplied slave labour to central and southern America - Murrison ( Read more... )

Am a bit miffed to discover that I became a member of the National Trust just a bit too late to qualify for a vote in the forthcoming Council election. Sigh.
Though looking through the candidates' manifestos, there were some I was slightly side-eying for the possible dog-whistles about tradition, but most of them did at least indicate long ( Read more... )

I am still boggling over this article (it is not a new article, but somebody linked it somewhere and I clicked, and have been going WOT ever since);
The north-south divide is as old as England itself.
I have a codfish who says It's All More Complicated (surprised?).
The idea of the entirety of England south of the Trent being a weird pastoral- ( Read more... )

It seems, let us say, a little quaint and anachronistic to rule that an MP may not accuse another MP directly of lying: Dawn Butler ejected from Commons for saying Johnson has lied repeatedly. Labour MP accused the prime minister of misleading the Commons and the country over coronavirus.
This dates from the epoch, surely, when 'honourable member' ( Read more... )

Well, this is exasperating/depressing: this article demonstrates that biographies about women who meet Wikipedia’s criteria for inclusion are more frequently considered non-notable and nominated for deletion compared to men’s biographies: On March 7, 2014, a biography for Donna Strickland, the physicist who invented a technology used by all the ( Read more... )

Jacinta Ardern is not best pleased, and I'm not surprised:
Jacinda Ardern criticises new biography, saying author misled her: New Zealand prime minister says she agreed to interviews on basis that it was about a group of female leaders and ‘not specific to me’
Wow, that's pretty crappy behaviour - there's 'I'm going to write an unauthorised bio' ( Read more... )

Dept of: sex in the archives: ‘Corrupting public morals?’ Fitzroy Square and queer desire: We know little about these individuals after this snapshot in time; after all, they were not famous, just working class men who dared to love and live their sexual lives fully.

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Dept of birds and beasts:
I though you weren't supposed to feed bread to the ( Read more... )