A Brilliantly Organised Waste of Effort

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In his Quadrant column, the skeptical doctor expertly sums up the woeful Parisian Olympic farce in not one but two scintillating essays.

Still, there is little doubt that Paris has not been beautified by its vainglorious and completely unnecessary decision to host the Olympics. It is true that the security situation in the world has deteriorated unpredictably since the decision to apply was taken; but the horrible physical mess that has resulted, the City of Light becoming the City of Concrete, was all too predictable, and the harm done to a unique place is much more important than the pleasure, which could have been taken anywhere in the world.

Instilling Fragility

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In his latest Law & Liberty essay, Prof. Dalrymple warns of the ongoing dangers of the infantilization of the British populace, which has gone hand in hand with the unhealthy growth in the popularity of psychology at universities.

But the very idea that reading about something unpleasant, even knowingly and without compulsion, can lead to such severe psychological reaction that professional assistance is necessary to overcome it is peculiarly demeaning of human beings and comparatively recent, occurring pari passu with the growth of clinical psychology as study and profession.

Site updates

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Readers might have noticed that we’ve made various tweaks and updates to the Skeptical Doctor website recently. We’ve implemented site caching and made numerous styling fixes (including a larger font for mobile devices). We also examined our subscription solution and contact form configuration – and found that both needed some work!

In short, subscribers using our previous solution may not have been informed of new articles for quite some time, and people who contacted us might not have received replies. Both of these issues should now be resolved, but we would ask that previous subscribers now re-subscribe, using the form in our sidebar. You should then receive notifications of new posts and/or comments by email. And if you wish to contact us, please feel free to use our contact form. Despite anti-spam measures, your message should still reach us!

Finally, please feel free to comment below articles posted here. We hope to be able to announce the publication of further books and audiobooks by Dalrymple in due course, and will of course keep on publicising his essays and articles.

An alternative way that you can keep up to date with the site, by the way – and one that has never stopped working – is via our RSS feeds for articles and comments. A service like Feedly can consume these and alert you in its app or on the website.

Filosofa’s Republic re-published

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Dalrymple’s 1989 book Filosofa’s Republic, originally published under the pseudonym Thursday Msigwa, has just been re-published in a second edition under the Dalrymple name. The book has been out of print for many years, and even used copies have been hard to locate online.

Filosofa’s Republic is a humorous satire of Tanzania under the rule of Julius Nyerere and is based on Dalrymple’s personal experiences living and working in a remote village in Tanzania for two years. The book pokes fun at a variety of vivid characters: the fictional dictator and his local party apparatchik, whose somewhat flexible left-wing political principles are really just an excuse for power and riches; a Western missionary with an ostensibly different doctrine but who may be seen in much the same light; and the local villagers who mostly ignore these doctrines and struggle to get out of their own way in their daily lives. (We wrote a longer summary of the book here many years ago.)

Although much of the story is based on real-life events that Dalrymple has described in his essays (like Not As Black As It’s Painted), I think it is still fair to call this his first fictional work, and insofar as it satirizes socialist thought and exemplifies it in one small community, you might say this is his Animal Farm. It is not the tragedy that that work is though: it’s clear that Dalrymple is charmed by these people (except for the missionary, perhaps), and the overall tone of the book is light. I had forgotten how enjoyable this book is.

It is available on all Amazon sites worldwide: here in the UK and here in the US.

The Wonder App

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In last week’s Takimag, our ornithological doctor marvels at a friend’s phone app that can assign bird sounds to the correct species of bird.

They would surely soon learn respect for knowledge and lose some of their exhibitionist disillusionment before they ever had any illusions. Pseudosophistication is a great temptation for, and enemy of, the young.

Ethical Limits to the Pursuit of Knowledge

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Over at The Epoch Times, our distressed doctor covers the fallout from the Cass report, which is a recently published inquiry into medical services for ‘transgender’ patients in Britain.

In essence, the Cass report found that there was little good evidence to support the treatments that supposedly transgender children and adolescents were receiving. Even the natural history or evolution of the condition was not known.

The Dismal Science

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In an August Takimag piece, Dr. Dalrymple sounds off on the latest round of punishments meted out to disgraced scientists for committing fraud during the course of their research.

There seems to be a lot of this about, but presumably it is only a tiny proportion of all scientific activity. Or is it because, if punishment of scientific fraud were more severe, scientific activity itself would grind to a halt?

Audiobook giveaway!

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To mark the release of the new Saving the Planet and Other Stories audiobook, we’re giving away a limited number of promo codes for other Theodore Dalrymple audiobooks on Audible. The available titles are:

Using the promo codes, you can get a free copy of any of these audiobooks. We only ask that you consider buying Saving the Planet and Other Stories, and leave a review on Audible of any books for which you’re given a promo code.

If you’d like to take advantage of this offer, just contact us here at The Skeptical Doctor, letting us know the titles in which you’re interested and your preferred Audible “marketplace” (only US and UK codes are made available).

New audiobook: Saving the Planet and Other Stories

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We’re pleased to be able to announce that Dalrymple’s Saving the Planet and Other Stories has just been released as an audiobook at Amazon and Audible!

Somewhat in the tradition of Chekhov, these imaginative short stories are by turns bleak and comical, and all demonstrate the usual penetrating Dalrymplian insight into the human condition.

There are eight stories, narrated by long-time friend of this site, Gavin Orland, these being:

  • Saving the Planet
  • I, Being of Sound Mind
  • Panther
  • Hilda and Samuel
  • A Cupboard Under the Stairs
  • Reputation
  • Drowning
  • Ghost Story

Please feel free to review this title at Amazon or Audible, and let us know in the comments here of any other works which you would particularly like to be made available in this format.