I hadn’t come across this one before, but thanks to Scott over at Adventures – the Next Chapter, I give you a Dutch advert for learning English. Though to be honest, I don’t think there are too many grandparents who are as innocent as this left in the Netherlands these days…
Year: 2006
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What Is Your Dangerous Idea?
That’s the question posed by the Edge for 2006. And there’s plenty of food for thought provided by 117 thinkers who give their responses in a series of short essays. Lovely stuff.
I find it somewhat depressing, though, at how often the "dangerous" idea is of the form: there is no god/soul/afterlife. That to me is merely the logical conclusion of what scientific evidence points to and I don’t find it dangerous in the slightest. Though to be fair, the sense of danger that is explored by the writers is the sense of how people at large could react at having the crutch of faith kicked away from under them.
I found Sherry Turkle’s piece poignant, and Kai Krause’s piece particularly scary – Stand on Zanzibar, here we are. And Geoffrey Miller posits a terrifying dystopia akin to Atwood’s Handmaid’s tale or the underground society in Ellison’s A Boy and His Dog.
But there’s lots of plums in this feast of ideas – go and pick out a few for yourself!
(hat tip to Norm Geras for the link)
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Two Data Points
Data point one: the story in yesterday’s Observer that followed the story of how "pink Wednesday" validated the love of three gay couples.Data point two: the story in today’s Telegraph of Cardinal Keith O’Brien attacking "gay weddings" (sic) as "undermining values which for generations have been treasured".Erm, which values would those be, Cardinal? Mean-spiritedness, or homophobic bigotry, perhaps? Well, good riddance, I say. -
What Sort of Leader Are You?
Another pointless but mildly amusing test… -
Happy New Year!
A happy new year and all the best for 2006! Here’s hoping there’ll be some laughter amongst the tears on the way…The Dutch celebrate the New Year by letting off millions of euros worth of fireworks – supposedly (according to the Citizenship test) to scare away the ghosts – but most Dutch believe it’s just an excuse for a party.
More from last night’s festivities here.
Geoff Coupe's Blog 