The Libertarian Alliance: BLOG

REVENGE

Ship’s Log

30th Nov 2006, 53.23′ N, 02.02′ W

Ornithology Deck

First, the big news, judging from hits on other people’s blogs, has got to be about a former minor pop singer forgetting to pu winter warmers o before exiting from a vehicle. This must therefore be very important.

Now to minor matters. This evening I re-read the general parts of Principia Mathematica, for the first time in many years. I have long ago lost my (modern) copy, and thought I would google it. This was to cheer me up. The contrast between the authority and clarity of Newton’s prose and the massive importance of the ideas, even in translation from original Latin, and the triviality of subject matter in a GCSE science revision guide and the shallow way it is expressed, makes it look like the presenters each come from different planets or are separated by millennia - Newton being the one who must be far in the future.

And people wonder why science is taking such a tumble in schools, particularly those run by the gumment. It has to be “inclusive”, which means no hard bits, and it now - worse - has to be all cleared for “political correctness”, and approval by Al Gore, the greatest scientist in the world. On this especial matter of “PC”, I invite comments as to what we ought really to call this machinery for degrading and eliminating language, word by word. It is certainly not correct, and I can’t justify calling it political; Compulsory? Marxist? Nazi? Marxist incorrectness is a bit unsubtle although right, and there is a prize of a *.gif of a virtual bottle of State-wine-substitute for the best suggestion. The Ship’s Pusser’s decision is final as ever.