-
My Book
10 November 2011
Today is the official publication date of my book. You are obliged to buy it in large numbers.
-
Drugged Morals
10 November 2011
Last night in Newsnight I was in the studio with Jeremy Paxman and Professor Barbara Sahakian waiting to debate a film report about the use of drugs for cognitive enhancement. See the whole thing here, it starts at about 24 minutes. Many scientists and students, it seems, are already routinely taking Modafinil to make themselves more alert. It is not widely approved but it does seem to be available on the internet. More
-
Berlusconi’s Dolce Vita
09 November 2011
The great Roger Ebert nominated La Dolce Vita as his desert island film. It is an honourable choice and his reasons are interesting.
….because it has been a touchstone since 1962 of my own developing maturity. When I first saw it, Marcello Mastroianni was living a life I could only dream about. Later, it was the life I was living, then the life I had escaped, and now he seems to me a touching and troubled young man.
This says something … More
-
Self-Rewarding Oligarchs
08 November 2011
Last week’s arguments about executive pay and the continuing arguments about bankers’ bonuses are all couched in the wrong terms. Sir Martin Sorrell, for example, defended his own pay and that of other directors on the usual basis that there is an international market in their services and we have to pay the going rate. In order to justify this argument he would have to prove that in 2010 this market tightened to the point where it … More
-
Scanning My Self
07 November 2011
In response to the adapted chapter of my book about my brain scan, Andrew picks up the paragraph in which I discover the scanner picked up activity suggesting movement. This seemed to correlate with a feeling of jumping ouf of my body when I was told my father was dead. In response, Frank questions whether there is any kind of ‘me/you’ in the brain, rather the brain is like … More
-
The Celebrity Bot
06 November 2011
I argue in The Brain is Wider than the Sky that celebrities are, in fact, our first successful robots. Robert Pattinson seems on the verge of the same insight:
Yeah. I’m now this ‘thing’ that’s supposed to be something. And if you then don’t fulfil that expectation, what the fuck are you?
Cheryl Cole glimpsed the same possibility when confronted with the press coverage of her ex-husband’s infidelities.
Of course. I’m a human. I’m still a person, you know. … More
-
Pinker’s Peace
06 November 2011
Steven Pinker’s new book The Better Angels of Our Nature argues that humanity is becoming more peaceful. John Gray is massively unconvinced. I am inclined to agree with Gray – not just because he is my pal but because I suspect that Pinker may be arguing on the basis of a special case, a very big case but a special one nonetheless. I corresponded with him some months ago and this is how he responded … More
-
Greece, Banks and the Self-Checkout
04 November 2011
A City man, who always tends - implicitly or explicitly – to preface his remarks with, ‘You don’t understand, Bryan’, suggested that the euro-crisis was not financial but political and the moral of the story was that the welfare state doesn’t work. Actually, no kind of state will work if it hires banks to conceal its debts in order to qualify for euro-membership. The key words in that sentence are, of course, ‘hires banks’. The welfare state is expensive but … More
-
The Colonels, Salazar, Franco….?
04 November 2011
What I find most disturbing about the financial storm sweeping through southern Europe is that a military junta – known as The Colonels – ruled Greece and Salazar ruled Portugal as recently as 1974. Franco, meanwhile, died in 1975, ending Spain’s fascist regime. Perhaps more is at stake here than the survival of the EU or the Euro, perhaps liberal democracy is threatened. Like any political system, it is far more fragile than its adherents and beneficiaries can ever acknowledge. … More
-
My New Site
03 November 2011
Welcome to my new web site and thanks to Tourist, the designers. The idea is to explain and develop the ideas in my new book, The Brain is Wider than the Sky. The title is from an Emily Dickinson poem. All comments, thoughts, abuse and endorsements are welcome – after all, they will at least raise the possibility that you have bought or downloaded the book. You can get some idea of its content from … More
- Postmodern PR
- Americans and the Death Penalty
- Strange Names on Mercury
- The Curious Case of Alan Greenspan
- Bob Crow and Lenin
- Neuroscience Nonsense
- For Eman al-Obeidi
- Without Television
- Thoughts Whose Very Sweetness…
- The Clue
- Jacobean Blood
- The Soul of Ron Mueck
- Extremophiles: Life on the Edge
- The Opposite of Faith is not Doubt, it is Certainty
- David Hare’s Rattigan
- Planet Hunting
- The Once and Future Tee-Mo
- The Truth of Islam
- Soul Searching
- Overthrowing Chomsky
