Vincent James Hooper, at The Blogs

Vincent James Hooper

Oct 5, 2026, 4:12 AM

The latest row about machine minds began with a joke. A programmer published a small project on GitHub and called it the AI Torture Chamber. It takes a small language model running on the user's own machine and, using...

Oct 4, 2026, 3:49 AM

The Name That Travelled

On Sunday morning, at ten o'clock Israel time, the Bahrain Grand Prix will start in Malaysia. Sport 5+ Live has it in the schedule from a quarter to ten, under the name Bahrain, and nobody at the channel needs...

Oct 2, 2026, 7:27 PM

The Catalogue

Wile E. Coyote has been ordering from the same company since 1949. Rocket skates, earthquake pills, dehydrated boulders: all delivered to the desert, all failing at the worst moment. In Coyote vs. Acme, which finally reached cinemas in August,...

Oct 1, 2026, 10:08 AM

The Letter Addressed to Thou

In 1923 Martin Buber published a short book arguing that we meet the world through two basic words. One pairs I with It: the stance we take towards things we use, measure and file away. The other pairs I...

Sep 30, 2026, 4:05 AM

The Map Projection

The room was small. Duisburg in 1569 was a small city on the banks of the Rhine, and Gerardus Mercator's workshop was not much larger than the maps it produced. It was there, working as cosmographer to the Duke...

Sep 28, 2026, 8:59 PM

The Decision Window

Earlier this month Terminator 2: Judgment Day returned to British cinemas for its 35th anniversary, remastered in 4K and timed, with Cameron's characteristic showmanship, to land on the franchise's fictional Judgment Day of 29 August. James Cameron offered a...

Sep 27, 2026, 2:02 PM

The Ledger and the List

Moshe Bejski knew what it meant to be kept off a record. Born in Działoszyce, Poland, in 1921, he survived the Plaszów labour camp under Amon Göth and was saved only because his name appeared on a list compiled...

Sep 26, 2026, 12:31 PM

The Number on the Door

In December 1958 Wolfgang Pauli was admitted to the Red Cross hospital in Zurich with a sudden, violent pain. He was given room 137. Pauli, who had spent much of his working life circling that number, asked a visitor...

Sep 25, 2026, 10:04 AM

The Oxford Oath

On 9 February 1933, the Oxford Union debating society passed the motion "That this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country" by 275 votes to 153. Churchill called it "abject, squalid, shameless." Mussolini, it is...

Sep 24, 2026, 11:15 AM

The Frog on the Screen

Four days before a cowboy doll and a plastic astronaut returned to cinemas for the fifth time, the British Prime Minister stood at a Downing Street lectern and announced that children under sixteen would be banned from social media....

About Me

Religion: Church of England/Interfaith. [This is not an organized religion but rather quite disorganized]. Views and Opinions expressed here are STRICTLY his own PERSONAL!