Tag: Conservative Party
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Richard Sharp: a model man of power
There’s been a lot of talk lately about advances in AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning), based on the storing and analysis of vast reservoirs of online words (the so-called ‘large language model’). The publication of ChatGPT, which can respond in a conversational and explanatory way to natural language queries, has set teeth on…
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Conscience wakes?
Of the many analogies used to make sense of Boris Johnson’s inglorious reign, the circus is probably the commonest. No ordinary circus, of course, but one where witless acrobats fall headlong from their tightropes, lions run amok and maul defenceless children, the ringmaster sulks in his tent, surrounded by cans of lager and lines of…
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Beyond shame and guilt
When I was a young student and easily impressed by big theory, I was struck by a book by E.R. Dodds called The Greeks and the irrational. Its origin was a series of lectures Dodd gave in California in 1949. Or, going further back, a conversation he’d had, while studying the Parthenon sculptures in the…
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Dido Harding: a failed state in microcosm
I thought I recognised the name Dido Harding, when her name popped up on the news recently. After all, Dido isn’t the commonest of names. There’s Dido, the excellent singer, and Dido Twite, the heroine of Black hearts in Battersea and other stories by Joan Aiken. And, of course, the original, wonderful and tragic Dido,…