Calvin: all human action is futile

Continuing the theme of the previous post of intelligent people saying stupid things, a presenter on Radio 4 this week introduced Calvin as teaching the futility of all human action. Of course, Calvin taught no such thing. He very clearly upheld the significance and responsibility of human action. He was a very active man himself and his actions achieved much, under God.

More KJV 400

Radio 4 is telling the story of the King James Bible (3 X 45 mins programmes which will be available on i-player for a while) and will be broadcasting a number of readings, it seems.

Wise Men

You have until the end of the year, I believe, to listen to Rev'd Dr Steve Jeffrey and 2 other pannelists discussing the Magi on Radio 4's Beyond Belief (using i-player).

Pagan Eucharist

I heard a report on Radio 4 this morning of a pagan wedding service where, amongst other things, the couple ate bread and drank mead to represent the body and blood of the earth. The reporter mentioned that the rituals seemed largely to have beeen borrowed.

Science & Faith

I'm thinking I might tune in to Rev Prof Alistair McGrath's Radio 4 lent talk on the relationship between natural science, faith and religion tonight at 20:45. Although I'm sure it wont be a patch on this!

Boris on Sam

I very much enjoyed Radio 4's Great Lives on with Boris Johnson on Samuel Johnson on BBC i player.

This post is one long spoiler!

The programme begins with Matthew Paris re-telling an anecdote about Sam’s yabber-dabber-do sense of fun, rolling down a hill as a colossal middle-aged man.

Boris describes Sam as Paul Merton mixed with Jeremy Paxman, the Regis Professor of Greek and a first-rate poet.

If the programme can be believed, the Doctor was complicated man, a deeply humane realistic minimalist Conservative who took the part of the poor, the mad and those on the margins of society. Sensitive and compassionate, he abominated slavery with violence. He was angry, impatient, insightful, generous, intense, courageous and sincere. A tormented genius he hated cant, flim-flam, hypocrisy and idle nonsense. He combined Anglo-Saxon gruffness with massive erudition and specialised in rudeness. He was always resentful of those who were successful with less mental equipment than he had! He was afflicted with constitutional melancholia, very severe clinical depression and mental crises. He is often thought to have suffered from Turret’s Syndrome. He disliked talking about himself yet he was fantastically competitive. He feasted on guilt that consumed him. Longing for recognition, he always performed. He was hyperbolic, earnest and serious with a great sometimes bizarre sense of humour. He had an auto-flaggalent streak, obsessive compulsive, driven, he feared his own behaviour, feeling lazy, thinking he was indolent, not honouring God. His application and concentration were fantastic though wasted lots of time, eventually he worked very fast, driven by deadlines. He died in terror of hell and in very great pain.

David Mitchell on Desert Island Discs

I very much enjoyed what I caught of comedian David Mitchell on Desert Island Discs this morning. Charming, amusing, interesting, honest, insightful. Excellent. Highly reccomended. I imagine you can get it on i player?

I have sometimes been likened to David Mitchell (and indeed to the chap who used to host Countdown) and I do not think it was intended as a compliment, but now I shall take it as such. Mitchell was intelligent and good on the lesson of being yourself. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be 50 and wear tweed (at least on the inside) and watch Star Trek. It is possible to have fun without discotech dancing.

Do you think Desert Island Discs should be Desert Island Media? I could live without some of the songs but it would be good to have more books, poems, plays and films and so on. People could talk about the media that most matters to them that they'd most like to take. I can imagine that there could me many people who would make most interesting castaways for whom music is simply not that important, or at least less significant than the other media in their life.

The Red Tory

This morning Radio 4 profiled The Red Tory, Philip Blond. He believes in a small state and is socially conservative. He is for the local and the little man participating in the economy. He is worried about the decline of the family and critical of the fading liberal consensus. He rejects both socialism and hardline economic Thatcherism. His post-grad work was under John Milbank at Cambridge and he is an expert on Thomas Aquinas! All very interesting.

Interesting, disputed or wrong?

Whatever is the world coming to and I never thought I'd hear the like and how times change, and so on.

I was interested - not to say shocked and distressed - just now to hear "disinterest" used on a BBC Radio 4 trailer as if it meant "uninterest", which to my mind it clearly does not.

The choice was no doubt influenced by the sequence of "disgust" and "dis- I forget what" in the phrase and I can understand that a tired presenter might make such a slip, but to me it seems unforgivable in a pre-planned trailer. One would think that someone in the BBC would have noticed it before broadcast and that the phones would have been red-hot since.

The "dis"/ "un" interested distinction is just the kind that we need to preserve as it allows the convenient and economical distinguishing of two related ideas.

However, I was surprised to see that the Concise OED on my desk allows:

Disinterest, noun, 1. disputed, lack of interest, unconcern; 2. impartiality

The usage note says:

The use of disinterested in sense 1 to mean 'lack of interest' is sometimes objected to, but it is in this sense that it is most commonly found and the alternative uninterest is rare. The phrase lack of interest avaoids both ambiguity and accusations of incorrect usage.

Even a lack of interest need not be unambiguos, as in the phrase, "he lacked (an / any) interest in Sky Television": does he not wish to watch it or does he not own shares in it?

Clearly usage determines meaning but this is a usage up with which we should not put.