Niall Ferguson: Civilization- Is the West History? Channel 4 Consumerism

The subject of the fifth episode in Niall Ferguson’s series was consumerism, which predictably enough he quite likes.  I think most of us have a soft spot for consumerism whether or not we admit to others or even to ourselves.  But it is a rather magical feeling going to the shops and finding that everything you can imagine wanting and quite a bit of stuff you never even knew you wanted is piled up ready for you to take away.  As long you have deep enough pockets.

Is Climate Change the new Eugenics?

Writing in the Telegraph James Delingpole picks up on a throw away point made by Niall Ferguson in the episode about medicine in his series Civilization: Is the West History?   Ferguson pointed out that eugenics was widely believed at the turn of the twentieth century, but is now known to be nonsense and dangerous nonsense at that.  Ferguson points out that man made climate change is widely believed today.

There are a number of possible interpretations of this.  One is that Ferguson is simply drawing a comparison to show that eugenics was a mainstream belief accepted by a great many well respected people.  Or you could take it that Ferguson was pointing out that man made climate change is another widely held but wrong idea, possibly an equally dangerous one.

But I hold to a third way of looking at it.  Ferguson is a mischief maker who deliberately dropped in a controversial point.  He artfully made it ambiguous enough to wind people up across the spectrum.  When someone is trying to wind you up, don’t be wound up strikes me as the best response. 

Rise of Christianity: Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Chapter 15

I first read the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire at about the age of 14 in a copy borrowed from my local public library.  It was a huge battered old volume with thick slightly yellowed paper.  It looked old enough to have been around since not long after the fall of the Roman empire itself.

I had picked it up purely for its subject matter.  I had no idea who Gibbon was or that it was a classic.  I just read it.  Thinking about it, it was probably a nineteen thirties reprint of a Victorian edition.  One of the things about it was that it had a lot of footnotes.  The editor was fond of finding fault with Gibbon.  And when it got to chapter 15 which covers the rise of Christianity they got to be almost every page.   It was a bit like reading an argument.

Dead Aid by Dambisa Moyo

Dambisa Moyo (thanks to Wikipedia for image) If you are going to write a book proposing that giving aid to Africa is a bad idea, you are going to find…

A Socialist reads the Hobbit Part 2

C.S.Lewis and J.R.R.Tolkien had an argument once, about myths.  Initially C.S.Lewis dismissed myths because they were made up and so were untrue.  Not so, said Tolkien.  Yes they were made…