I was helping Jazz with her piano practice when I made a mistake. She had these comforting words for me.

Don’t worry, dad. Old people can’t do much. They just go to work.

No regrets! Well, of course I dream of what I might have done differently and better, but seriously, who am I to second-guess, say, 1984 vintage Bjarne? He may have been less experienced than I, but he was no less smart, probably smarter, and he had a better understanding of the word of 1984 than I have.

Bjarne Stroustrup

Fundamentalists: believe 2+2 =5 because It Is Written. Somewhere. They have a lot of trouble on their tax returns.

“Moderate” believers: live their lives on the basis that 2+2=4. but go regularly to church to be told that 2+2 once made 5, or will one day make 5, or in a very real and spiritual sense should make 5.

“Moderate” atheists: know that 2+2 =4 but think it impolite to say so too loudly as people who think 2+2=5 might be offended.

“Militant” atheists: “Oh for pity’s sake. HERE. Two pebbles. Two more pebbles. FOUR pebbles. What is WRONG with you people?”

from The Primate Diaries.

“Now, the invention of the scientific method and science is, I’m sure we’ll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and that it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked and if it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn’t withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn’t seem to work like that; it has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. That’s an idea we’re so familiar with, whether we subscribe to it or not, that it’s kind of odd to think what it actually means, because really what it means is ‘Here is an idea or a notion that you’re not allowed to say anything bad about; you’re just not. Why not? - because you’re not!’ If somebody votes for a party that you don’t agree with, you’re free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it, but on the other hand if somebody says ‘I mustn’t move a light switch on a Saturday’, you say, ‘Fine, I respect that’. The odd thing is, even as I am saying that I am thinking ‘Is there an Orthodox Jew here who is going to be offended by the fact that I just said that?’ but I wouldn’t have thought ‘Maybe there’s somebody from the left wing or somebody from the right wing or somebody who subscribes to this view or the other in economics’ when I was making the other points. I just think ‘Fine, we have different opinions’. But, the moment I say something that has something to do with somebody’s (I’m going to stick my neck out here and say irrational) beliefs, then we all become terribly protective and terribly defensive and say ‘No, we don’t attack that; that’s an irrational belief but no, we respect it’.”

Douglas Adams

Dear Soccer Silicon Valley member:

The San Jose Earthquakes will return in 2008!

MLS commissioner Don Garber will announce at Wednesday’s All-Star Game press luncheon that the league has accepted Lew Wolff’s proposal to have the Earthquakes play next season.

Pinch yourself–you’re not dreaming. Nine months from now, we will be watching the Earthquakes take the field.

Simply marvellous. Make sure you wear headphones. It’s not so impressive without headphones.

Last week, in my professional capacity, as the keeper of this web site, I came across a cool little browser extension called StumbleUpon.

After you register, you check a bunch of boxes saying that you enjoy knitting, the Mayan Civilization and Albanian cooking. Then they put a little toolbar in your browser.

Everytime you fancy a bit of a surf of the web and you have already read The Times and all your RSS feeds and don’t know where to surf next, you click the little button and takes you to something that it thinks will interest you like:

• The God FAQ
• Mr Picasso Head
• Dirty Cars
• Running the Numbers
  
• Escher in LEGO

If there’s a site you like, you can click and it’ll send you more sites like that one. If you really like it, you can send it to a friend. If you join, you can be my friend.

Sometimes they send you to videos too like:

• Sand Art

But those are only mildly excellent. Before you decide it’s just a big time waster, be sure to try one of these - but only one. Choose carefully.

• For music lovers
• For math lovers
• For art lovers

Whatever you do though, don’t click on these:

• Don’t Click this
• Don’t Click this either
  

It’s a limerick.

I’ll provide a Full Pint of Beer to the first person who can restate the limerick in English in the comments without cheating and googling for it.

(note to English people. The zed is pronounced in the American manner)

AC Grayling has taken up my thread about certainties and proofs in the Guardian.

Is there anyone alive today above the age of nine, and halfway sane, who would assign a prior probability of 50% to the existence of fairies on the ground that “we do not know whether or not there are fairies”? Is there anyone who satisfies these conditions who seriously thinks that we do not know that there are no fairies?

It’s not very good though, despite the high density of fantastic phrases like Archgoblin of Chanctonbury and kindness needs no ideology.

As an aside, I love the knack that philosophers have for making lists of things

by which we daily make our toast, catch our buses, use our laptops, cure our coughs, fly to Ibiza, etc etc

Stephen Pinker and Daniel Dennett are particularly good at this (wait here while I track down an example for each).

Did you know that comes from the Greek philo meaning lists of things and sopher which means maker? They are literally, makers of lists of things.

Some people complain that governments don’t do anything useful. Au contraire!

The EU has an agency that is promoting European film making by asking European film lovers to come together!

(not work safe)