Davos Newbies

Naturalist

It was worth waiting an extra day for the British obituaries of Stephen Jay Gould.

In The Guardian, Steve Jones hits a wonderful tone of fond respect and acute scientific criticism: “Scientifically, he was — in the eyes of us ‘creeps’ at least — a failure, but a heroic one, in the sense that Columbus failed to find India. In science, failures can be heroes, too – think of Newton after relativity.”

And in The Independent Gabriel Dover argues the pro-punctuated equilibrium case and notes, “He was considered arrogant by some but that is as nothing compared to the tolerance of human differences that formed his personal take on humanness. As has been said of the composer Varèse, it was not so much that he was ahead of his time, but that most people are behind theirs.”

Naturalist

It was worth waiting an extra day for the British obituaries of Stephen Jay Gould.

In The Guardian, Steve Jones hits a wonderful tone of fond respect and acute scientific criticism: “Scientifically, he was — in the eyes of us ‘creeps’ at least — a failure, but a heroic one, in the sense that Columbus failed to find India. In science, failures can be heroes, too – think of Newton after relativity.”

And in The Independent Gabriel Dover argues the pro-punctuated equilibrium case and notes, “He was considered arrogant by some but that is as nothing compared to the tolerance of human differences that formed his personal take on humanness. As has been said of the composer Varèse, it was not so much that he was ahead of his time, but that most people are behind theirs.”

“Decisive battle”

Just when I thought things were looking up on a whole range of global issues, Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee tells his troops to prepare for a “decisive battle”.

From what I’ve seen of US media, there’s not much attention being paid to the worsening situation in the India-Pakistan dispute in Kashmir. Both countries have nuclear weapons, and there are now reckoned to be 1 million troops marshalled on both sides in the contested territory. Last night, UK foreign minister Jack Straw accurately called Kashmir the most dangerous conflict in the world today, posing dangers even greater than the Middle East.

Remember MAD — mutually assured destruction? In an echo of Cold War brinksmanship, both sides seem to reckon the other will back down just short of using nuclear weapons. I wish I could be so sure.