How the recent Supreme Court decision will damage peace-making.

Presumably the proposed Thirty Meter Telescope will actually be 30m in length rather than aperture.

[Wakefield’s work] was published. People critiqued it. They looked carefully at the findings in the paper to see if they stood up. Other researchers tried to look for the relationship he suggested between autism and MMR vaccination in other kinds of studies.... And the answer? None of Wakefield’s work stood up. None of it.

Thrilling stuff. Julian, having made a good go of the West from Paris, is proclaimed emperor, possibly reluctantly, by his own troops; he marches east to confront Constantius, himself taking a devious detour through southern Germany to descend on Sirmium by the Danube (while most of his troops head through Austria and Italy); and the final confron…

No big surprise.

Morocco's government may be invested in using the threat of terrorism for political and economic gain... The challenge for us in the West is to be able to live with the threat of organized terrorism without assuming its involvement in any given act of anti-state violence - and without blindly accepting, when we look to other governments' responses…

Description of my day at the BBC in last two paragraphs

the Belgium I know is a laid-back, relaxed place with a well-developed sense of humour about itself. Unfortunately, it is hobbled by strangely irresponsible politicians, some of whom do not care if a quite different impression is sent to the outside world.

Charlemagne fisks a UKIP press release: Eurocontrol is not an EU agency, it was not Eurocontrol that ordered the closure of Europe's skies, the closure did not follow a single computer simulation and EU regulations will not oblige airlines to pay the costs of passengers stranded by the ash cloud. Or, to put it more briefly, out of four factual ass…

in which Charlemagne says No Comment at some length

via Bookslut, George Bernard Shaw's take on Joyce: "I am an elderly Irish gentleman, and if you imagine that any Irishman, much less an elderly one, would pay 150 francs for such a book, you little know my countrymen."

Thoughtful economic analysis of it all

Back to the original First Season

The best Who blog assesses the latest incarnation

Serves 2 to 12.

Interesting piece which goes some way to explaining the fantasy coverage of the EU in the British press

We start briefly with the Donatist schism, which was basically political; and then we have a prolonged and detailed discourse on Platonism and the doctrine of the Trinity, which I must say explained both in more lucid and provocative terms than I recall reading anywhere else. Constine's inconstancy opens up further room for debate between Arius an…

Derrick Sherwin reminisces about his time on Doctor Who, handling the Troughton / Pertwee transition

Another one to read...

The first half of the chapter is an investigation into Constantine's conversion, one of Gibbon's few attempts to get under the skin of a complex psychological individual who made a crucial political decision, and on whom the historical sources are in sometimes vigorous conflict. The second half of the chapter is a description of the political set-…

Another excellent narrative chapter. Constantius II, having become sole emperor, is faced with the problem of how to handle his cousins Gallus and Julian, who have been brought up essentially in prison to prevent them being a threat. Eventually Gallus is old enough to be made Caesar of the East; he screws up massively and is executed. Julian, six …

Lawyers urged the EU on Tuesday to review its 2007 fishing accord with Morocco, saying it may be illegal to allow European fishermen to work off disputed Western Sahara.

This is a very good narrative chapter. Most of the first half is about the reign of Constantine and the rather bloodthirsty way he dealt with his own family; the second half then tracks the rise to absolute power of his son Constantius, overcoming his own relatives and the usurpers Magnentius and Vetranio. There are parentheses about the Sarmatian…

provocative thoughts on constitutional reform

The first quarter of the chapter is about the layout of the city of Constantinople; a good description, but hampered by Gibbon's not having his own personal experience of being there, and also could have done with a map. There is then a lengthy section on how the empire was governed: the setup of the civilian administration, of the military, and l…

Peter Facey, who is criticised here, is an old friend of mine but Barnett's objections seem pretty sound to me.

A Cork woman gets to grips with the Irish language