Simon Jenkins collects his tithe

This post is part of a response to an article by Simon Jenkins in the Guardian on Thursday. This follows a string of comment columns from Jenkins attacking science. Technically speaking, this should be a spoof article attacking science in the style of Jenkins, but while it parallels some aspects of Jenkins' column, it didn't turn out that way. You can see more details of the response here.

All over London there are "mammoths of tripe." Costing hundreds of millions of pounds, these are "newspaper offices" whose editors pay large sums of money to "interesting" and "cutting edge" columnists. Ask not the value of the tripe these individuals pour out. The columnists jeers at the idea of value. These are outpourings of bile that are justified by the writer's faith rather than any appeal to reason.

No one does it better than self-professed mathematics expert ("I studied advanced maths to 16") Simon Jenkins. Week after week he turns to the fundamentalist columnist's lastest craze of attacking science. Newspapers are crammed with columnists like him - newspapers seem obliged to have commentators who totally lack expertise in the subjects they trumpet with such sound and fury. Only irrational scepticism is admitted in this new orthodoxy, arguably the latest attempt to rebut C. P. Snow's 1950s description of the "two cultures" by denying the significance of science.

Jenkins is shameless. After a brief canter through his distaste for everything scientific we are subjected yet again to ad hominem attacks, total ignorance of the significance of science to society and business, and an agenda that is purely driven by a blinkered, classically "educated" view.

In the end, when we look at these overpaid columnists we have to ask, given what we are shaping up for under the Osborne cuts, do newspapers really need to spend hard-earned money on expensive columnists like Jenkins? There are so many better informed bloggers and other commentators whose opinion is available without charge. I am sure they would be prepared to do a deal to be republished for a fraction of a Jenkins. (Now the official unit of over-payment for a column. There are ten Jenkins to a Clarkson.)

Unfortunately, subject to threat, columnists try to turn themselves into a religion. They believe that somehow they have become supreme beings essential in their own right, not just worth spending money on, but deserving of our adoration - and they believe that they are entitled to take a tithe of the price of our newspapers.

I share Jenkins' glory in the wonder of human opinion, beautifully expressed in words. But it's time we realized that paying extortionately for comment columns, many of them (though I'm sure not Jenkins') run off in half an hour when there is nothing better to do, is a thing of the past. It's time for literary dinosaurs to take their exit with due grace.

Brian Clegg is an author and blogger and definitely not Simon Jenkins.

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5. However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense

Search This Blog