HAPPY NEW YEAR WITH TEN OF MY BEST FROM THE OLD YEAR

…According to you, that is. Here are the ten most popular posts on Pandaemonium from 2012. One, ‘Rethinking the idea of “Christian Europe”‘, is actually from 2011 but was sufficiently read this year to make it on to this list:

1 The myths of Muslim rage

2 To name the unnameable

3 What is wrong with multiculturalism?

4 Who needs God?

5 Nietzsche, nihilism and the death of God

6 Beyond the sacred

7 Abortion, infanticide, humanity, free speech

8 Rethinking the idea of ‘Christian Europe’

9 The wrong solution to the wrong problem

10 Why both sides are wrong in the race debate

My thanks to everyone who has supported Pandaemonium over the past year. It has been enjoyable not just writing but debating too. I hope you will continue reading – and arguing and debating – in 2013 as much as in 2012.

And Happy New Year to all.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

I am away for a couple of weeks, so blogging will be sparse (well, non-existent). And, as usual when I am away, comments will be moderated. So my apologies if your comments take longer to appear. But appear they will (I hope). As will Pandaemonium again in a couple of weeks.

OFF TO A WORLD BEFORE TIME (WELL, ALMOST, AND PERHAPS)

I am off to Vancouver to give the Milton K Wong lecture on Sunday. After that I’m off for a drive from Banff to Jasper along the Icefields Parkway, one of the ’50 great drives of the world’, (the weather, unfortunately is currently set to be less great than the landscape).

What I really want to do, however, is to visit the Burgess Shale, possibly the most important fossil field in the world, and among the oldest – it is from the Middle Cambrian period, around 500 million years ago. The weird and wonderful creatures, including the trilobites pictured here, were buried in an underwater avalanche of fine mud that preserved exceptionally fine details of the structure of their soft parts. It is a protected site, to which the public have access only through guided hikes. Unfortunately, these begin only in July. The Burgess Shale Geoscience Foundation has been very helpful and suggested it might be possible to attach ourselves to a special out-of-season hike if one is available. Fingers crossed.

VOTE, VOTE, VOTE FOR ANTIGONE (AND FOR ME)

A pleasant surprise: My essay on ‘Antigone Across the Ages’ has been nominated for the 2012 3QD Arts and Literature Blog Prize. The full list of nominations is here. The field of 62 entries will be winnowed down to 20 by a public vote. The 20 then get narrowed to six by 3QD editors. And from the six the judge Gish Jen chooses the top three. So do vote for me (the nominations are in alphabetical order of blog name, so my essay on Antigone languishes half way  down the list under ‘Pandaemonium’). Voting is only open till 6 March. Last year my essay on ‘Rethinking the Idea of “Christian Europe”‘ won the 3QD Politics and Social Science prize. So, who knows?

THERE MAY BE NO HIGGS BOSON YET. BUT PANDAEMONIUM HAS BECOME TOP QUARK.

Or rather my post on ‘Rethinking the Idea of ‘Christian Europe’” has. It has won the 3QD 2011 Politics and Social Sciences Blog Prize. My thanks to Three Quarks Daily, to the judge Stephen M Walt and to all those who voted for the essay in the first round.  In a week in which David Cameron again insisted on the rootedness of British culture and values in the Christian tradition, it is heartening to have won with an essay such as this. Congratulations, too, to David Graeber and Corey Robin, whose essays On the Origin of Money and Revolutionaries of the Right: The Deep Roots of Conservative Radicalism, respectively, were also 3QD winners.  Finally a word about Three Quarks Daily:  it is an indispensible site, the first one I look for every morning, a wonderful guide to some of the best and most original writing on the web. If it does not already nestle among your bookmarks, it should.

SOMETHING ELSE TO NUDGE

My essay on ‘Rethinking the Idea of “Christian Europe”‘ - the original post, not the subsequent New Humanist article - is in the running for the 3 Quarks Daily Politics and Social Science Prize (the full list of nominations is here). Over the next week 3QD readers can vote for their favourite post, reducing the field to 20. 3QD editors will then pick out their favourite six, from which this year’s judge, Stephen M Walt, will choose the top three. So go on, vote for my essay.  The nominated posts are in alphabetical order and ‘Rethinking the Idea of “Christian Europe”‘ is #30 on the list. My thanks in advance.

GIVE IT A NUDGE

My essay on ‘The Myths of Christian Europe’ has made it on to the leaderboard for The Browser’s best articles of October. But, there, it is currently languishing in mid-table, the West Brom of blog posts.

So, go on, vote for it, give it a nudge, propel it up the table. You might even perform an authentic miracle, turning West Brom into Man City.