Athletic, interpersonal, conversational, fainting in coils…… Read the rest
Recipe for Realism
Sep 11th, 2004 1:54 am | By Ophelia BensonMultiple intelligences. Why has the idea always made me want to laugh? Because I’m a mean rotten swine, that’s why. Obviously. Yes but also because it is quite funny. It’s so easy to think of more of those alternative intelligences. Watching tv intelligence, eating intelligence, using the potty intelligence.
Now, one aspect of the general idea seems perfectly unexceptionable.
Gardner’s ideas appealed to many traditional teachers who extolled hard work but also had some students who did better on tests if multiplication tables were set to music or works of literature were acted out in class.
Well, obviously – if it works, do it. (That is, do it if you can, which seems unlikely when most teachers have classes of … Read the rest
Drug Trials ‘Distorted’
Sep 10th, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonEleven medical journals have told researchers to register trials at the start so unflattering results cannot be covered up.… Read the rest
‘Healers’ Licensed in South Africa
Sep 10th, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThey’ll be barred from treating fatal diseases. … Read the rest
MMR Vaccine Safe
Sep 10th, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonFinds UK study of more than 5000 children. … Read the rest
Happy Birthday to Us Again
Sep 10th, 2004 1:36 am | By Ophelia BensonWell it’s that time again. Yup, it is – I know that’s hard to believe, but it is. September 10. It’s our birthday. We’re two. Two!! Would you believe it! Well of course you would, why not – but still it does seem very respectable and elderly and established. They haven’t driven us away yet! They haven’t shut us down, they haven’t silenced us, they haven’t sent a plague of locusts. We’re still here! (Who’s they? Oh you know, just the paranoid’s fantasy army. All those faceless Darth Vader types in black plastic outfits who were going to better I mean butter I mean batter down the doors and throw our computers out the window and trample on us until … Read the rest
Epistolary
Sep 9th, 2004 7:34 pm | By Ophelia BensonI don’t know if you ever have a look at our Letters page, but if you don’t, you might want to. There are some very interesting letters in there – some of them are brief articles in themselves. I’ve just seen one of that kind, the one at the top of the page (at the moment), a short essay on the Whig interpretation of history and moral relativism (taking issue with an article of ours on the subject), by one Michael Davis. If I had the faintest idea who he was or how to email him, I would ask him if he would like to write an article for us. I wonder if he is the same MD as … Read the rest
Serbia Thinks Better of It
Sep 9th, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonGovernment reverses ban on teaching evolution in schools.… Read the rest
Utopia, Freedom, the State, part 2
Sep 9th, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonNorman Geras discusses three models.… Read the rest
Powell Goes One Step Farther
Sep 9th, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘This was a coordinated effort, not just random violence.’… Read the rest
Powell Calls it Genocide
Sep 9th, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonUS Secretary of State says killings in Darfur constitute genocide.… Read the rest
Because Serbia Doesn’t Have Enough Problems?
Sep 9th, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonEducation minister orders schools to stop teaching evolution.… Read the rest
Ought without can
Sep 9th, 2004 | By Julian BagginiThe Liberal Democrats’ deputy leader, Menzies Campbell, said the government should use its influence with the US president, George Bush, to secure [the] freedom [of nine Britons detained for more than a year at Camp X-Ray and at Bagram air base after being taken prisoner during military action in Afghanistan].
The Guardian, 25 April 2003
The principle that “ought” implies “can” is usually attributed to Immanuel Kant, although he never actually said anything quite so pithy. (See chapter eight of the Critique of Practical Reason for his more convoluted expression on the idea.) Whether we credit Kant with the discovery or not, the principle itself is pretty self-evident. It makes no sense to say we ought to do something … Read the rest
Does Truth Matter?
Sep 8th, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonUnswerving allegiance to what you believe is dogmatism, not truth.… Read the rest
‘Homophobic’ artists dropped
Sep 8th, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonMOBO (music of black origin) nominations withdrawn after apologies were not forthcoming.… Read the rest
Utopia, Freedom, the State
Sep 8th, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonNorman Geras on the Marxian idea of a future stateless utopia.… Read the rest
Predictable, Parochial, and Philistine
Sep 8th, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWhy no Xenophon, Suetonius, Kyd, Tasso, Huysmans, Cozzens?… Read the rest
Twenty Tiny Little Books
Sep 8th, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAnd every single one is by some dead European guy.… Read the rest
Shan’t
Sep 7th, 2004 10:44 pm | By Ophelia BensonOkay, I give up, you win.
For months (months? weeks? years? I forget) I’ve been kind of defending CT to my colleague. Kind of – which means admitting they have a tendency to groupthink, to call people trolls just because they disagree with them, but still thinking they (CT, that is) have their good points. But I give it up.
Everyone knows that comments can get out of hand. A lot of blogs don’t have them; a lot have them only for some threads; a lot have them intermittently, disabling them when things get tiresome. It is also sometimes possible to keep things civil by asking people to be civil, and/or by deleting comments when they’re not. I’ve only deleted … Read the rest
Davies’ Really Dangerous Idea
Sep 7th, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonNatural freedom is good enough, we don’t need the supernatural kind.… Read the rest