In WW2 BF Skinner – behaviourism’s big cheese – created a pigeon guided bomb. Skinner built his theories about free will (it didn’t exist) and education (reinforce “good” behaviour through repetition and reward) through experiments that usually involved animals in cages pressing levers for reward. To build his bomb-guiding mechanism he trained pigeons to peck […]
I share a skull with a madman, who is also an arsehole. And he’s wrong. Yesterday I was watching a TV quiz show while eating dinner (The Wheel – to much show, not enough quiz) and one of the questions was about which New York borough was furthest north. The options were Staten Island, Manhattan, […]
French philosopher Bruno Latour has died. I was introduced to his work as an undergraduate at Brunel University by his collaborator Steve Woolgar in the late 1980s, and his writings have continued to play an important part in the way I think about the world. Here’s a piece I wrote last year, having read his […]
They had taken away the memory that Alejandro cherished most. He wanted it back. The Muninn in his shoulder whirred warmly and recalled everything. The old man relaxed, allowing the device to take him back, he did not hope – did not allow himself to hope – that this time would be different. He accepted […]
Gull idled. This was what she lived for, these moments high above Freedom, released from the city’s grasp. Pedalling just fast enough to keep her paracycle in the air, she circled and ignored the stall light fluttering orange on its console. The city span slowly around her, but Gull was not part of it. Even […]
Our journey to Paris and the Exposition Universelle de 1889 did not begin auspiciously. The trip required us to catch a train from Victoria Station, which is a terrible place. From Victoria Street the station appears to be nothing more than a shabby wooden shed, held together only by the many layers of paint that […]
Lir was a great lord who ruled the lands of the white hill. His fields were bountiful, his rule prosperous and his people content. Lir and his wife Aodb were happy and they had two beautiful children, a boy and a girl, when Aodb fell pregnant again. This time she bore twins, two fine boys, […]
We buried Thomas’s da today. We put him in the same patch of ground that we had pretended we were putting Thomas. Eighteen months. I never thought the old man would last so long. The day was bright, clear and warm but there wasn’t much of a crowd. A couple of the fellas that he’d […]
Solomon and I had tried to push too far the previous night and so we spent the daylight hours lying in a ditch at the side of the road. It had seemed a comfortable enough spot to start with, a slightly deeper hollow hidden by the branches of a willow and an ancient, overgrown hedge. […]
Chen was outside, blowing the dust from the mirrors of the solar collector. The sun was low and distant and gave no warmth. The ground was hard and barren. The job he was doing was tedious and pointless. The damned solar collector barely worked, a failed experiment that was already half-forgotten by the engineers at […]