Category Archives: Culture

How to defeat Cancel Culture.

The key is to defend the independence of editors from all of their enemies. And those enemies are not all in The Woke Mob.

Maureen Lipman is the latest in a long line of artists and writers to complain about the chilling effect Cancel Culture can have on the arts. I have some sympathy with her view. Don’t risk sophisticated witticisms. Appease that lowest common denominator that has a bad-faith agenda, or an inability to process irony.

Does this sound familiar?

“Calling for an end of Cancel Culture without challenging Ownership Bias is like calling for an end to trades unions’ restrictive practices without demanding an end to monopolistic practices and blacklisting by employers.”?https://t.co/wANLubhSMO

— Paul Evans ? (@Paul0Evans1) December 22, 2021

The three phases of acceptance of a new theory

Reading Martin Nowak & Roger Highfield’s verygood ‘Super Cooperators’, there’s this observation:

“There’s a telling joke among scientists that every new theory has to pass though three phases of “acceptance”: first, it is completely ignored; second, it is obviously wrong; and third, it is obviously right, but everyone knew that anyway.” (p63 of the 2011 Canongate edition).

A love letter to the perfect pub

I went on Boogaloo Radio with my old friend Ann Scanlon. No droning on about democracy for a change. Just music, and pubs, and reminiscences.