Chris, you’re a bright bloke, well-read, great company and all that, but this is plain daft.

The Silly Bunt’s article was a steaming pile of cack and responding to her adolescent nonsense about “the Enlightenment” (and her many justified critics in blogland) by wibbling on about “Paolo Mattia Doria’s contemporary five-fold distinction” is a bit like me responding to “Dr” Gillian McKeith‘s pronouncements about human turds and their owners’ nutritional shortcomings on You Are What You Eat by inviting an in-depth discussion of models of digestive enzyme kinetics.

I mean, what the fuck is this about?


“Thank you for your application to St Swithin’s College, Oxbridge, Madeleine, but I’m afraid we felt that there were some weaknesses in one of the answers you submitted in your General Paper. We do wish you the very best of luck in your future endeavours.”

No, Chris, it’s not “terribly exciting”. Well, only in the same way it would be “terribly exciting” if a student put his hand up in a lecture and asked “Isn’t it possible that the Starship Enterprise’s dilithium crystals hold the answer to protein folding problem?” and everyone else in the room looked at him like he was a wassock—which, funnily enough, is exactly what he would be.

The woman’s a clown and her drivellings undeserving of even a moment’s serious consideration by someone in your position. If I weren’t completely bald (and, er, no longer employed as a scientist) I’d have you up before this lot for bringing the academy into disrepute.