Boffins baffled

"Sir Benjamin Brodie stated that he could not subscribe to the hypothesis of Dr. Darwin. Man has a power of self-consciousness as a principle differing from anything found in the material world. This power of man was identical with the divine intelligence; and to suppose that this could originate with matter involved the absurdity of supposing the source of divine power dependent on the arrangement of matter."

- Scientific American reports on an august 1860 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Sir B. hits on a deep philosophical point which must have disturbed hell out of the thinkers of his time and which is still a profound scientific puzzle. (The Bishop of Oxford, OTOH, argued that Egyptian mummies, both human and animal, demonstrated "the irresistable tendency of organized beings to assume an unalterable character", suggesting he hadn't quite grasped the timespans involved.)

Aurora Mental Health Center

In the wake of the latest US mass shooting, the Aurora Mental Health Center in Colorado "has 24-hour crisis lines open at 303-617-2300. It is also staffing its office around the clock at 11059 E. Bethany Drive, #200 through the weekend for those who want to meet with a counselor." (That's from a Denver Post piece with advice on coping with the tragedy.) You can make a donation to the Center online. Feel free to pass these details on.

Having said which

Also from the Denver Post:

"Talk to your kids," Aurora Mayor Steve Hogan said at a press conference Friday following the movie theater shootings in which a dozen people were killed and many more were injured. "Let them know this is an isolated incident. It's tragic, it's horrible, but it's isolated."

Isolated, my foot.

Texas Rep Gohmert's remarks - "with all those people in the theatre, was there nobody that was carrying?" - paint a frightening picture: an armed battle through a crowd of panicking civilians. I can understand the argument that ordinary citizens need to be armed in case their government turns against them. In my view, keeping the tools of mass murder readily available and largely unregulated saves the trouble of keeping citizens in fear of their government. When your neighbour might have an assault rifle that nobody knows about, you'll be quite scared enough of each other.

tbh, though, I suspect the motive for keeping police and military weaponry easily available to civilians is not politics, but profit. Unless and until that changes, perhaps the only hope will be for Colorado's public places to use metal detectors and searches to exclude civilians carrying assault rifles, semi-automatic pistols, shotguns, and tactical grenades.

(You should know that it's no use arguing with me about guns. I'm biased. In May 1982, an ex-employee went on a spree with a machine gun at my father's workplace in Maryland. Had dad not been elsewhere on business that day, he could easily have been one of those wounded or killed.)

And having said that

The desperate courage displayed by ordinary citizens in that cinema boggles the mind. The guy who held a door shut so the shooter couldn't get through. The father who jumped from the balcony with his baby son in his arms. People who helped each other, or tried to help and couldn't. In the face of that, even the presence of mind of the young teenage girls who left their phones and their shoes and got themselves to safety is worth cheering.

And finally