| A rather strange article. In some ways quite perceptive and reflective, but in other ways the opposite. One of the first examples is a little odd. errors of scientific understanding resulted in a 1927 article that promoted the virtues of asbestos It's a bit unclear what "errors of scientific understanding" means here, but in context this makes it sound like the Guardian writers mis-understood scientists who were warning about the dangers of asbestos. The report presented to Parliament about the dangers of asbestos didn't arrive until 1930 and before that there was only a single known case of asbestosis in the UK, so that seems to deflect attention from the fact that the errors - if you want to call a lack of knowledge an error - were by scientists, not the Guardian writers. Towards the end we have this: "Since then, referendums have become, much to the paper’s displeasure, an established part of our constitution, used as a way to stamp democratic legitimacy on to controversial ideas and as a tool of party management" Perhaps one day they'll be writing a similar backwards-looking piece apologizing for having held this view too. At the start they rail against the paper's former imperialism and feelings of superiority, then claim that referendums are a problem because they legitimize "controversial ideas". This from a paper which delights in publishing controversial and extreme ideas: https://twitter.com/somuchguardian?lang=en A few select headlines: "The tears of joy emoji is the worst of all - it's used to gloat about human suffering" "Brexit will spell the end of British art as we know it" "Can male writers avoid misogyny?" "What if we're living in a computer simulation?" "Robots are racist and sexist" etc. Perhaps some of these will make future lists. |