Daily Archives: July 24, 2005

Quote of the day

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In Gentle Regrets, he [Roger Scruton] records the occasion Harold Macmillan addressed the Conservative Philosophy Group that Scruton set up in the 1980s with the late Sir Hugh Fraser and Jonathan Aitken, both at the time Tory MPs. Macmillan reached a climax in his speech, holding the attention of the room as he repeated: “It is important to remember… to remember… I have forgotten what I wanted to say.”

From a nice piece by Sholto Byrnes in The Independent. In an hilarious passage, Scruton talks about how

left-wing people find it very hard to get on with right-wing people, because they believe that they are evil. Whereas I have no problem getting on with left-wing people, because I simply believe that they are mistaken.

John Roberts as an advocate

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From a Washington Post profile of Dubya’s nominee for the Supreme Court…

An oft-cited instance of Roberts’s verbal adroitness occurred in a 1993 case. He was trying to convince the court that it was not cruel and unusual punishment for a prison to subject an inmate to exposure to secondhand cigarette smoke. A justice asked if it would be permissible for the prison to subject inmates to asbestos exposure.

It would not, Roberts replied, because “we as a society do not treat exposure to asbestos as a matter of personal preference. When you go to a restaurant, they don’t ask if you want the asbestos section or the non-asbestos section.”

The courtroom erupted in laughter — but Roberts may have been too clever by half. His side lost.

Microsoft goes after Tolkien

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Er, Microsoft has announced that the next version of Windows, hitherto known as Longhorn, willl now be called ‘Vista’, if you please. I’m sure the awfully clever folks who came up with this daft name are aware that they tread in the footsteps of J. R. R. Tolkien, who first revealed that Vista is a part of the atmosphere that surrounds the world of Arda before the cataclysm at the end of the Second Age. It’s the cataclysm bit I like.

Richard Doll dies

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From BBC NEWS…

Sir Richard Doll, the scientist who first confirmed the link between smoking and lung cancer, has died.
Oxford University said the epidemiologist died at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, after a short illness. He was 92.

Rain: a new concept

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Just to make sure we understood that we were no longer in Charentes-Maritime, Cambridge laid on a splendid display of vertically-delivered water today.

Quagmire News

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A special Memex service. From today’s New York Times…

“We are capturing or killing a lot of insurgents,” said a senior Army intelligence officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to make his assessments public. “But they’re being replaced quicker than we can interdict their operations. There is always another insurgent ready to step up and take charge.”

At the same time, the Americans acknowledge that they are no closer to understanding the inner workings of the insurgency or stemming the flow of foreign fighters, who are believed to be conducting a vast majority of suicide attacks. The insurgency, believed to be an unlikely mix of Baath Party die-hards and Islamic militants, has largely eluded the understanding of American intelligence officers since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government 27 months ago.

The danger is that the violence could overwhelm the intensive American-backed efforts now under way to draw Iraq’s Sunni Arabs into the political mainstream, leaving the community more embittered than ever and setting the stage for even more violence and possibly civil war.