George Walford: Editorial Notes (27)

LOTS OF LOVELY PEOPLE
In this issue of IC we reprint another paper by Harold Walsby. It draws attention to the rate at which the population has been increasing and asks whether the purist ‘socialists’ – who tell us they need a majority have even been maintaining their relative numbers. It was written in 1951 and since then the rate of increase has accelerated. A note in the section devoted to the “Socialist” Party of Great Britain, under the heading “From Minority to Majority (or Not)” gives the current figures.

MORE MATHEMATICS
IC26 included emote putting pressure on Ellis Hillman to send in again, ready for camera, a mathematical article we had had to return because neither we nor our equipment could cope with it. He has responded, and A Mathematical Science-Fiction Story, “Through the Looking-Glass” now appears. This shows that when IC puts the pressure on, things happen. (It also shows that at least one reader got through the whole of IC26, right to the foot of the last page).

CORRECTION
In IC24, on p. 19, appeared a piece entitled The Anarchist Rulers. Reading a private comment on this from Austin Meredith we realised it said, in effect, that the goal of the anarchist is to be ruled from within. What we were trying to say, and mistakenly thought we had said, was something more like this: Anarchists see their goal simply as freedom, but they also envisage anarchy as a highly orderly society. It is not at once obvious how these two can go together and the concept of rule from within (so that each person renders their own behaviour orderly) provides an explanation. It is IC, not the anarchists (or not many of the anarchists) who see their goal as the substitution of inner rule for external authority.

JUST one nuclear bomb can spoil your whole day.

THE weather is here and I wish you were lovely.

ERIC KORN has dreamt of a new fatal disease. It is transmitted by money. (TLS 20 March 87)

FROM Hofstadter, “Metamagical Themas”:
Quantum particles: the dreams that stuff is made of.

Answer yes or no to the following: Will your answer to this question be “No?”

from Ideological Commentary 27, May 1987.