Monday 11 April 2011

The Customs of My Tribe

Especially after yesterday's Observer column by Nick Cohen, Martin Rees would be perfect as the next Chancellor of the University of Durham.
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16 comments:

  1. Anonymous12 April 2011 at 13:13

    Not really perfect. He may be a scientist and tolerant but he doesn't have the same knowledge as you've got about how science depends on religious scholarship.

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  2. David Lindsay12 April 2011 at 16:05

    Oh, he'd do. And it turns out that I am not the only person thinking this. So we shall see.

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  3. Anonymous12 April 2011 at 18:04

    On the contrary, I am not the only person thinking that he can't compete with your expertise.

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  4. David Lindsay12 April 2011 at 18:08

    Oh, I suspect that you are.

    Seriously, it seems that his name has occurred to an awful lot of rather well-placed people. I think he'd be excellent.

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  5. Anonymous12 April 2011 at 18:11

    Oh, Rees knows about science but he is an atheist. He doesn't begin to have your knowledge of how science reinforces religion rather than contradicting them. He hasn't got your breadth of learning and wouldn't be right for a university like Durham.

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  6. David Lindsay12 April 2011 at 18:12

    Well, you seem to be on your own there.

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  7. Anonymous12 April 2011 at 18:14

    Which part?

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  8. David Lindsay12 April 2011 at 18:16

    An atheist who nevertheless likes his Choral Evensong is pretty much perfect for Durham. For one thing, he'd leave the several more seriously religious sides of the place to get on with things.

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  9. Anonymous12 April 2011 at 18:24

    Maybe, but he wouldn't be commited to their scholarship. What Duarham needs is the same as what British politics needs, a religious scholar who speaks for the great mass of the people and comes from them.

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  10. David Lindsay12 April 2011 at 18:47

    There's time yet. Lots and lots of it.

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  11. Anonymous12 April 2011 at 18:58

    Hilarious. I knew you'd be so vain and pompous that you'd fall for comments spoofing your faked ones.

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  12. David Lindsay12 April 2011 at 19:02

    You don't get the term "double bluff", do you? Nor did you get the five emails that I did today suggesting a total of 14 people who met the criteria set out by your "spoof" comments.

    But they are all too young. Give it 20 or 30 years and someone like that will indeed be exactly the sort of person who becomes Chancellor of a major university, perhaps especially Durham.

    Meanwhile, the Rees campaign, not that we really go in for that sort of thing, is gathering pace. Your lot apparently believed in all seriousness that you could swing it for Stephen Fry, of all people. Not for the first time, you just don't understand Durham, where, among so many other things that you simply fail to grasp, even the atheists are good Church of England atheists.

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  13. Written in the stars12 April 2011 at 19:10

    You should not have strung the poor simpleton along, Mr L. You are wicked. He probably writes for that silly little rag at Durham, the one that thinks it runs the university when it is not being visited by the forces of law and order on two different serious charges in the same morning.

    Or is that Facebook, where the announcement of a Stephen Fry for Chancellor campaign was treated as the announcement that he had been appointed? As you say, we do not go in for campaigning for these things at Durham, daaahhhling. But you make an unanswerable case for Martin Rees in terms of the ethos of the place. That, and his victory would clearly put the teenage riff raff in their place. So good luck to him.

    Needless to say, the teenage riff raff are wrong that Rees does not understand that only Christianity made possible the emergence of science. I know that you know that he knows that, and I love the fact that you could not be bothered to correct some silly little boy who did not. Are you not paid in the holidays?

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  14. David Lindsay12 April 2011 at 19:12

    I am rather hoping that the silly little rag, if it still exists (does it?), will campaign for an unsuccessful celebrity candidate of Facebook's choosing, and then throw a tantrum when the grown-ups turn out to be in charge after all. Wouldn't be the first time...

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  15. Anonymous12 April 2011 at 19:13

    You could retire into the job in 30 or 35 years' time. I wouldn't put it past you to be plotting that already.

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  16. David Lindsay12 April 2011 at 19:14

    Plotting? Moi? Perish the thought.

    Retiring? Moi? Perish the thought.

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