Sunday, October 14, 2007

Pinker and Space

In The Sunday Times - I interview Steven Pinker and write about the second space race.
Posted by Bryan Appleyard at 4:32 am

7 comments:

  1. Gordon McCabeOctober 14, 2007 10:07 am

    An excellent article, Bryan, on the difficulties (note for younger readers: that means 'challenges') and prospects of the new space race. One wonders why it wasn't in last week's special Sunday Times Magazine, commemorating the 50th anniversary of Sputnik.

    I notice the Moon still has a dark side rather than a far side in the Appleyard cosmos...

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  2. AnonymousOctober 14, 2007 10:52 am

    Pinker is an extremely persuasive talker and author, and I think he is correct. However, the big mystery is: how do our genes actually encode all these rules and structures in our brains in the first place? I can't see how there are enough genes to do this?

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  3. AnonymousOctober 14, 2007 2:46 pm

    Everything "form" road rage to adultery? Which copy editor missed that?

    I think Pinker is a genius. My husband was one of his classmates at Harvard and says he's just the same as he was 30 years ago: An iconoclast, a genius, and a very nice guy. With very long hair.

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  4. Gordon McCabeOctober 14, 2007 9:50 pm

    To answer my own question, this week's Sunday Times Magazine nominally contains Part II of last week's commemoration, the subject this week being 'The Future'. In fact, this merely consists of Bryan's article, a short piece of pith from AA Gill, and some nice photos. The two-page spread of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field is, however, breathtaking.

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  5. AnonymousOctober 15, 2007 12:34 am

    Genius he may be, but just recently Pinker was asked before a friendly university audience about his childlessnes. His answer, consistent with the modern Darwinists' propensity to insist dogmatically on the both the inexorable truth of Evolution and our new-found absolute freedom to ignore it, said something like": "My genes may want me to propagate, but as far as I am concerned, my genes can take a hike!" Wild applause, I'm told. Too bad nobody asked him whether the same principle applied to his altruistic genes.

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  6. AnonymousOctober 27, 2007 7:21 pm

    Hello all!

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  7. AnonymousOctober 31, 2007 6:40 pm

    IDCEiM Hello all!

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