Peter Hitchens's Blog, page 20

What's wrong with Peer Review? Please read this from the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1420798/

 

Peer review is at the heart of the processes of not just medical journals but of all of science. It is the method by which grants are allocated, papers published, academics promoted, and Nobel prizes won. Yet it is hard to define. It has until recently been unstudied. And its defects are easier to identify than its attributes. Yet it shows no sign of going away. Famously, it is compared with democracy: a system full of problems but...

August is a Dangerous Month - the Forgotten History of Ukraine's Sudden Independence

What a dangerous time of year this is. So many of the worst crises of human history happen in the very dead of summer, when the fields are ready to harvest and there is still time to launch invasions before the autumn rains make the ground too soft.

But there is more to it than that. July and August are often a sort of slack tide in human affairs when one series of events has ended and a new one is about to begin. In modern times, world leaders are usually on holiday, while their deputies sit i...

Many, many subjects discussed during my weekly conversation with Mike Graham on Talk TV, incuding cheese and stairs

It may be watched or listened to here

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqfpE304vGg

PETER HITCHENS: When even the stairs are bossing us about, it's time we rebelled

This is Peter Hitchens���s Mail on Sunday column

At the very height of the Blair regime, the story was told of the New Labour MP who went to get his hair cut. He was wearing headphones, which the barber gently removed before proceeding. As the barber snipped, the MP slumped in the chair, as if asleep.
Quite used to his clients nodding off, the hairdresser continued till he was done, and then gently tried to wake his client. But he could not do so. An ambulance was called and the paramedics sho...

Even the stairs are bossing us about - a preview of my Mail on Sunday column tomorrow (21st August 2022)

can be read here via Mailplus

https://www.mailplus.co.uk/edition/features/214148/when-even-the-stairs-are-bossing-us-about-its-time-we-rebelled

My latest appearance (with Frank Furedi) on 'Dewbs and Co' GBnews, Wednesday 17th August 2022

...can be watched here 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRr-WhmPdAY

 

Begins at 9 minutes 

Time to bring University Challenge to an end

 

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-11121391/PETER-HITCHENS-old-foe-Paxman-leaving-time-scrap-University-Challenge.html

My latest conversation with Mike Graham on Talk TV (15th August 2022)

Can be watched and listened to here.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcKnW3YGXzo

From Guy Fawkes's Lantern to Lenin's Rolls Royce, some thoughts on Museums

My monthly column for The Lamp Magazine

 

https://thelampmagazine.com/2022/08/15/guy-fawkess-lantern/

PETER HITCHENS: Why didn���t Doctor Who warn us? Comprehensives are far scarier than Daleks

This is Peter Hitchens��� Mail on Sunday column

We have to face it. Doctor Who was a dismal failure at warning us of the perils to come. 

In my schooldays, William Hartnell went off into the future and found the Daleks, who could not even climb stairs and had no sense of humour.

But he did not discover comprehensive schools, in my view much, much more frightening than any Dalek. Had he done so, we would not have made that mistake.

Nor did he manage to warn us that criminal justice was going...