“It ain’t over till it’s over,” Yogi Berra famously used to say. If you’re an English rugby fan, there can be no truer words to reflect your recent experience. I normally don’t follow rugby very closely, for various family reasons, but have a habit of walking in to watch the last 5 minutes of major [...]

When James Bond arrives at his Istanbul hotel in From Russia With Love, he finds that the room is bugged (naturally), is moved to the bridal suite, and orders breakfast: green figs, yoghurt and coffee — very black — for nine o’clock delivery. As this has been the week of social proof, I’d like to [...]

There’s been a bit of a to-do recently following a comment by Richard Dawkins here.* Chris Dillow, who blogs here, said this:- Here’s a curious statement from Richard Dawkins (via Norm): “When you think about how fantastically successful the Jewish lobby has been, though, in fact, they are less numerous I am told – religious [...]

Gerd Gigerenzer‘s new book, Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious (Allen Lane, £14.99) has been troubling me for some time. It’s the kind of book whose title, like The Wisdom of Crowds, is going to mislead a few people. There are already a few too many out there who worship their own gut feelings, [...]

I specifically asked for a cherry-red Gibson ES335 semi-acoustic guitar with a Vox AC-30 Amplifier for my 40th birthday. I can’t really play electric guitar, and had no real intention of taking it up. But the same genes that pushed me into marathon-running were finding expression; it was a pure materialism/mid-life crisis mashup. March 2005 [...]