New-Cleckit Dominie

Philippa Foot: I invented the Trolley Problem to expose the flaws of consequentialism.

Our entire society: Finally we have created the Trolley Problem from classic philosophical work Do Not Create The Trolley Prob—

*out-of-control trolley ploughs through the group, mercifully ending the debate*

Status: drying out slowly while waiting for the access control system to let me into my office to prep for three hours of teaching followed by a three and a half hour committee meeting in an industrial unit outside Cumbernauld.

Life choices: questionable.

You're probably both ahead of me here, but I'd guess "D.R.Co" is "Dunlop Rubber Company". The name seems to appear in that form on early C20th tyres, and a quick search suggests Dunlop were in the inflatables business in WW2.

No comment.

A fair distinction, though I think the underlying attitude of "it is Their job to clean up after Me" persists.

I was looking at that too! I wonder how the Goad surveyors would have reacted if they'd know their map would be in use a century later, and in these circumstances...

Mind: nine times out of ten when people complain about "red tape" throttling "small businesses", what they mean is that they don't think there should be consequences for transferring risk to other people if you can make money by doing so.

Revealed: company behind vape shop fire had not paid business rates...or registered to sell vapes A Ferret investigation has found there was no registration to sell vapes at the Union Street premises in Glasgow where a major fire started - and we can reveal the name of the company behind the shop.

Michty me.

www.theferret.scot/revealed-com...

Scarfolk tribute from Strathbungo: "No."

It's easy to forget how mainstream eugenics was in late-C19th/early-C20th UK and US. It tends to be remembered as something only the far right did, rather than an idea that was horribly seductive to all shades of political "improvers" who were sure they wouldn't fall into the eugenicised categories.

Ouch. No excuses to be made for that.

I did not know that; thank you. I guess his telephone experiments would have been about the same time as the big attack on sign language (Milan 1880 is usually held up as a crucial point IIRC) so it's all sadly consistent.

(If you think this is bad, you didn't hear me singing "Schwebebahn! Schwebebahn!" to the approximate tune of the Spiderman song. Sometimes I am merciful to you all.)

In Wuppertal there is a train that has been held up for 125 years.

Deutsche Bahn say it's a tough record to beat, but they're working on it.

Iwan Rhys Morus is, as you'd expect, informative and highly readable on the subject of Bell's demo and the wider story of invention:

bsky.app/profile/irmo...

Happy 150th anniversary to the first ever meeting that could have been a phone call.

(How long did Bell make Watson hang around, I wonder, before he let him get back to whatever he was doing next door?)

Saving "many crabs scrambling to get out of a bucket" for the next time I have to summarise a meeting.

I suppose it counts as speaking out, after a fashion. If that genuinely is the owner then fair play to him for not vanishing or turning out to be a bizarre holding company based in Sark or any of the usual shenanigans.

Flann O’Brien’s Book Handling Enterprise Flann O’Brien was a pen name of Brian O’Nolan, an Irish author who is most famous for three novels, At Swim Two Birds, The Third Policeman and the Dalkey Archive. He also wrote a column for the Iri…

For those who have less idea even than usual what he's on about this time:

sidewaysstation.com/2018/04/10/f...

ALERT. Cruiskeen Lawn has broken containment again and is once more leaking into our reality.

If I'd thought of changing the big math to small math in time, I might still be a researcher.

SciRep are really not doing much to counter the perception that they're a completely cynical money-gouging exercise using a venerable brand name as cover, are they?

By the standards of the genre, this abstract is actually pretty good.

I am familiar with this area of research-shaped activity, and frankly the only thing that's unusual about it is that the abstract is so clearly written.

Update: we got the news today, a mere three days later than the Glasgow Times. Hoping there's time to build enough support to give our negotiators the leverage they need.

... but I overheard this guy saying his cousin knows someone who used to work in the cooncil who was down the pub and recognised someone who looked like he might have been on the planning committee talking to this guy who look you know you can tell when someone's dodgy right and anyway he said...

Glasgow Central Station: Warning of further disruption as fire brought under control Dozens of services have been cancelled and the station will be closed until further notice.

While we're acknowledging heroes, hats off to Mr Kongira here.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cd...

What a mensh that bloke is. Saw an emergency and ran towards it: we need more folk like him.

I reckon I can bring the vibe round to Danse Macabre single-handedly.

Apparently we are on strike next week.

I know it's a complicated situation and one can't think of everything, but I do hope union members are going to be told about this at some point.

archive.is/R4Hzy