Day 8

This new display can recognize speech. This nudist play can wreck a nice beach.

Problems in computer recognition of speech. Radio 4 October 1984

Day 7

Empedocles (c. 482—422 B.C)

It was Empedocles who said that light, being a body, is an effluent substance emitted from the lumi­nous body ... but that this movement of light is such that we fail to notice it because of its speed.

Cited by H. Diels in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker 6th edition Berlin 1951, 31 A 57 and cited by S. Sambursky in Physical Thought from the Presocratics to the Quantum Physicists (Hutchinson, London, 1974) p. 52.

Day 6

One plus one equals three, for large values of one.

Day 5

Huxley, A. (1894-1963)

… the English Fabians, Beatrice and Sydney Webb … made an historical study of the average time it took for an idea which at its first enunciation seemed revolutionary and revolting to be taken for granted and to be acted upon by the whole population. They concluded that the average time is twenty-eight years--roughly the length of a generation. It is very difficult to persuade adults to change their points of view; they have to die off before a new generation can accept new ideas.

‘The Population Explosion’ in The Human Situation: Lectures at Santa Barbara, 1959 (Cox and Wyman, Reading, 1977) p. 58.

Day 4

Hume, D. (1711—1776)

Those who have an interest in the fidelity of women, naturally disapprove of their infidelity, and all approaches to it. Those who have no interest are carried along with the stream. Education takes pos­session of the ductile minds of the fair sex in their infancy. And when a general rule of this kind is once established, men are apt to extend it beyond those principles from which it first arose. Thus bachelors, however debauched, cannot choose but be shocked with any instance of lewdness or impu­dence in woman. And though all these maxims have a plain reference to generation, yet women past child-bearing age have no more privilege in this respect than those who are in the flower of their youth and beauty. Men have undoubtedly an implicit notion, that all those ideas of modesty and decency have a regard to generation; since they impose not the same laws, with the same force, on the male sex, where that reason does not take place. The exception is there obvious and extensive, and founded on a remarkable difference, which produces a clear separation and disjunction of ideas. But as the case is not the same with regard to the different ages of women, for this reason, though men know that these notions are founded on the public interest, yet the general rule carries us beyond the original principle, and makes us extend the notions of modesty over the whole sex, from their earliest infancy to their extremest old age and infirmity. ...

As to the obligations which the male sex lie under with regard to chastity, we may observe that, according to the general notions of the world, they bear nearly the same proportion to the obligations of women as the obligations of the law of nations do to those of the law of nature. It is contrary to the interest of civil society, that men should have an entire liberty of indulging their appetites in venereal enjoyment; but as this interest is weaker than in the case of the female sex, the moral obligation aris­ing from it must be proportionably weaker. And to prove this we need only appeal to the practice and sentiments of all nations and ages.

A Treatise on Human Nature, 1739, 2. Everyman’s Library (J.M. Dent and Sons, London, 1940) p. 270.

Day 3

Darwin , C.

It can hardly be supposed that a false theory would explain, in so satisfactory a manner as does the theory of natural selection, the several large classes of facts above specified. It has recently been objected that this is an unsafe method of arguing; but it is a method used in judging of the common events of life, and has often been used by the greatest natural philosophers. The undulatory theory of light has thus been arrived at; and the belief in the revolution of the earth on its own axis was until lately supported by hardly any direct evidence. It is no valid objection that science as yet throws no light on the far higher problem of the essence or origin of life. Who can explain what is the essence of the attraction of gravity? No one now objects to following out the results consequent on this unknown element of attraction; not withstanding that Leibniz formerly accused Newton of introducing ‘occult qualities and miracles into philosophy’.

Origin of Species (6th Edition, John Murray, London, 1906) p. 657.

Day 2

Einstein, A.

To punish me for my contempt for authority, Fate made me an authority myself.

In Albert Einstein: Creator and Rebel by B. Hoffmann p.24 (Viking, New York, 1972; Hart-Davis, McGibbon, London, 1973; Paladin, London, 1977).

Day 1

Research on transmission of HIV should have been a top priority for the past decade. Instead it has become a sideline. The truth is that too many scientists are spending their energies on esoteric aspects of AIDS research, such as snipping up the genome of the virus into tiny bits to see what happens when you substitute one bit with another. This sort of laboratory “tinkertoying”, as one researcher put it, is a lot more elegant than the messy business of looking at genital secretions. It’s also a lot easier to do than complex studies of transmission which include prying into people’s sexual habits and maintaining their co-operation over months and years. But that does not make molecular biology more important.

‘Comment’ New Scientist 5 June 1993 p. 3.