Did Paul Dirac turn down a Knighthood?

With the media showing a considerable degree of interest in the Cabinet Office’s list of people who declined to accept honours between 1951 and 1999, it is a matter of some considerably irony that something as simple as typographical error may have led the press to miss one […]

Holocaust Memorial Day – Bronowski at Auschwitz

Every year I give some thought to the question of how best to mark Holocaust Memorial Day… …and every year I come back to same thing, this video of Jacob Bronowski at Auschwitz, from the landmark BBC series ‘The Ascent of Man’. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0PDGZKGAWs[/youtube] No more need be said. […]

The Great Five GCSE Myth

One of the more interesting and widely cited, empirically verified, facts to emerge from the field of psychology in the last few decades is the fact that people have a marked propensity to overestimate their own abilities relative to other people. To put another way, if you ask […]

Pwned again – LSESU wrong on own rules (updated)

I wouldn’t normally pull a comment out into an individual post but on this occasion the issue, though simple, is important enough to warrant giving it a high degree of prominence. In reponse to my observations on the LSE Student Union’s failure to operate within the terms of […]

Who died and made you Allah?

Quite how or why LSE’s came to be called ‘The Beaver’ is not a matter on which I care to speculate. It has, however, published an article by a Tasif Zaman which nicely illustrates when the real cause from which the recent outbreak of the religious asshole virus […]

More Scumbaggery at the LSE Student Union.

If further evidence that LSE’s Student Union is currently a hive of scumbaggery were needed, their latest wizard wheeze is a doozy… In light of recent events there will be two anti-discrimination motions being discussed and debated at an EGM this week, these are: No to racism – […]

Policy vs Reality and the Limits of Law

One of more fascinating articles I’ve read of late is a commentary by SkepticLawyer on a developing defamation case in Australia in which a prominent anti-porn campaigner, Melinda Tankard-Reist, is threatening to sue a skeptical blogger, Jennifer Wilson, for having the temerity to pose awkward questions about Tankard-Reist’s […]

Student Union deems Jesus & Mo “Racist”

The recent outbreak of asshattery at a London-based University has proved to be contagious with a second university atheist society at the London School of Economics being ‘instructed’ to remove a Jesus and Mo cartoon from its Facebook page or face disciplinary sanctions from its main Student Union. […]

Abortion Counselling consultation resurfaces

As one idiotic idea fades temporarily (?) into the background with the withdrawal of Nadine Dorries’ misconceived abstinence education bill from last Friday’s House of Commons order paper, another resurfaces in the form of proposals to alter the current framework for pre-abortion counselling which are, in part, a […]

No One Expects The Islamic Inquisition

I’ve been occupied with other matters which have, to date, meant that I’ve not got around to passing comment on the absurd row over UCL’s Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society posting a Jesus and Mo cartoon on its Facebook page… …until now. If you’ve not caught up with  […]