Covfefe-16 crisis solved?
For three long years now America has been ravaged by the highly infectious and potentially lethal disease Covfefe-16. You may recall that...
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Richard Farr
- Mar 17, 2020
A storey on or about dinasuors in Teh Grauniad
I love The Guardian: it's one of the best news sources in the world. I feel guilty about The Guardian: I use it every day and ought to...
Richard Farr
- Mar 17, 2020
Testing, testing ... coronavirus and a dangerous drug called Fiction
A lot of people are being tested for the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. (Not enough in my neck of the planet, thanks to our...
Richard Farr
- Feb 27, 2020
Nasty viruses and a question about precision
Listening to NPR yesterday, I was informed (is that the right word?): "There are only 60 confirmed cases of infection by the Covid-19...
Richard Farr
- Feb 18, 2020
Kafka's progress
Today's quote of the day from The Browser - which I recommend to everyone - struck a cord for me. It's a commonplace in our culture to...
Richard Farr
- Nov 20, 2019
Al-chemie
Reading all the depressing news about plastic, which has now found its way to the bottom of the Marianas Trench – I’m reminded again of a...
Richard Farr
- Aug 13, 2019
No Reasonable American
The latest mass shootings by home-grown American terrorists come during a massive corruption scandal at the organization popularly known...
Richard Farr
- May 16, 2019
The time traveler’s dilemma and techno-cultural prejudice
What if you had to move – not to another city or country but to either the future or the past? I ran across this Rawlesian thought...
Richard Farr
- Oct 26, 2018
This wonderful life
I’ve just read a review by David Quammen of Dutch biologist Menno Schilthuizen’s Darwin Comes To Town. Apparently, rapid speciation is...
Richard Farr
- Oct 18, 2018
R.I.P Mary Midgley, 1919-2018
The excellent and hugely underrated philosopher Mary Midgley has died at the age of 99, shortly after completing yet another book. (She...
Richard Farr
- Oct 8, 2018
Authoritarianism and its antidote
After so many headlines about the men who want to turn the world into kindling and warm their hands over the flames (in just this...
Richard Farr
- Aug 22, 2018
A Dad named Denis(ova)
Not an actual picture of the individual in question Fascinating – working in the Russian cave where bones of Denisovans were first found,...
Richard Farr
- May 29, 2018
Progress about ‘progress in philosophy’
Philosophers are still reading Aristotle, and still arguing about whether there is free will: ergo, philosophy is useless. It has always...
Richard Farr
- Jan 29, 2018
Early Homo sapiens – we were wrong, again!
In the timeline at the end of Infinity’s Illusion, which isn’t even officially published until next week, I apologize slightly for...
Richard Farr
- Oct 11, 2017
ICAN: a small nuclear win
Sumiteru Taniguchi, Nagasaki victim and lifelong anti-nuclear activist, died just over a month ago. It’s a shame he didn’t live to hear...
Richard Farr
- Aug 21, 2017
Road trip to the dark side of the Sun
After a drive from Seattle to L.A., straight down I-5, I took a more easterly, more scenic route home through a swath of America I’d...
Richard Farr
- Sep 7, 2016
Big numbers, immortality, and Jimbo Joyce’s hell
Graham’s Number, folksily abbreviated to “g64,” was long famous as the largest number ever used in a serious mathematical proof. I quote...
Richard Farr
- Jul 19, 2016
Trident: yet another depressing vote in the UK
Thirty six years ago, as a student, I wrote to the then Minister of Defense, Francis Pym, to argue that both the enormously expensive...
Richard Farr
- Jul 12, 2016
Vesto Slipher and the expanding universe
One minor character in my Ghosts n the Machine is the Slipher Space Telescope. This is me giving a big fat fictional hint to NASA, in...
Richard Farr
- Jul 9, 2016
“Does the Bretz Erratic exist?”
The Bretz Erratic, a giant rock, plays a minor role in the plot of Ghosts in the Machine, but it doesn’t exist, no—it just seemed like a...