David Papineau, Knowing the Score, How Sport teaches us about Philosophy (and Philosophy about Sport), Constable, 2017, pp. 328 The sub-title to David Papineau’s book suggests a pair of objectives. They are, of course, open to interpretation. For example, it is eminently clear that the author is not concerning himself with the question of […]
Author: chris@arcimedia.co.uk
What I’m Reading #2
Lincoln Allison, emeritus reader in politics, University of Warwick, is reading Robert Macfarlane’s Mountains of the Mind (Granta, 2003) Mountains were: forbidden and forbidding, an odious nuisance, God-forsaken and ugly, an “other” to be avoided. Mountains are: sublime and beautiful, a challenge and a sustenance for the human spirit, God’s finest creation and an […]
What I’m Reading
Lincoln Allison, emeritus reader in politics, University of Warwick, is reading James Hawes’ The Shortest History of Germany (Old Street Publishing, 2017) I was given this book in a pub by a friend who had just finished it: brushing up on German history with a quick summary seemed an excellent idea. Except that it […]
The Grand Tour and the European Union
We just did the Grand Tour. Again! All the way from Royal Leamington Spa to the Ionian Sea and back, a little under four thousand miles. Whereas our ancestors (well, probably not literally our ancestors) took three years over the job we did it in a little over three weeks. And whereas they did […]
Real Heroes Have Sharp Swords
Rayvon Fouché, Game Changer: the techno-scientific revolution in sports, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2017, pp. 262 A starting claim of Game Changer is that the impact of technology on sport in the last thirty years is on a different scale from anything previously. A great deal of the book covers the familiar issues […]
Chalet Memories
– the best thing about the chalet for me was as a 19-year old undergraduate (the first time) I met Old Members who were priests, barristers, civil servants, etc in very informal circumstances and learned a lot about the world that I wouldn’t otherwise have learned. I note that most of the photos you have […]
Assessing the Worth of Assessment
In a lifetime as a self-appointed “essayist” I have published over a thousand articles. There are all kinds of ambiguities about that figure including revisions and syndications, but it a rough indication. Mostly they were part of continuing series and the vast majority fell “still-born from the press” to use David Hume’s rather chilling […]
What is University Sport for?
When I was an undergraduate I shared some philosophy tutorials with a man called Ray Weedon. I knew that he played tennis and that he represented South Africa in the Davis Cup, but that was the only tennis fact about him I knew. Last week, fifty years later, I looked up his record and […]
The Curious Fate of the Campus Sexual Revolution
One day in 1981 I noticed that a woman I had passed in the street and tried to greet, the friend of a friend, had studiously ignored me. A couple of weeks later she appeared to cross the road to avoid me, chin jutting determinedly away from my direction. So far as I knew […]
Brexit: the Wonderful Options
My first reaction on hearing about the Brexit vote was apprehension about the short- and medium-term consequences. My second was sympathy for the losers (but where was all that pro-European emotion during the campaign?). My third was the complete rescinding of the second and an onset of schadenfreude. They were such bad losers. During […]