A couple of passages from the president of the Royal Society’s valedictory speech because they are so B&W.

In short, I guess that the same ill-understood circumstances that allow complex human societies to arise and persist also – and perhaps necessarily – have elements that are strongly antithetic to the values of the Enlightenment. What are these values? They are tolerance of diversity, respect for individual liberty of conscience, and above all recognition that an ugly fact trumps a beautiful theory or a cherished belief. All ideas should be open to questioning, and the merit of ideas should be assessed on the strength of the evidence that supports them and not on the credentials or affiliations of the individuals proposing

Another brief item. Something I noticed yesterday when coding Meera’s wonderful article – on the Amazon page for Prophets Facing Backward there is, of all things in the world, a recommendation by (wait for it) Steve Fuller. What does he say?

This first detailed examination of postmodernism’s politically reactionary consequences should serve as a wake-up call for all conscientious leftists.

Uh…hello? This is the same Steve Fuller – the very same Steve Fuller, my darlings – who testified for the defense – for the ID side – at Dover a few weeks ago. So – uh – uh – what can one possibly wonder other than ‘why didn’t he heed his own advice?’ Why didn’t he hear his own wake-up … Read the rest

A small point, one I wanted to make the other day but I was out of time and had to run off. The Bobby J Collitch of Knollitch textbooks again. The one called Elements of Literature for Christian Schools, to be specific.

Twain’s skepticism was clearly not the honest questioning of a seeker of truth but the deliberate defiance of a confessed rebel…Throughout her [Emily Dickinson’s] life she viewed salvation as a gamble, not a certainty. Although she did view the Bible as a source of poetic inspiration, she never accepted it as an inerrant guide to life.

Okay – so what do these bozos – Ronald Horton, Donalynn Hess and Steven Skeggs – mean by ‘the honest questioning … Read the rest

Normblog’s Writer’s Choice was by Pamela Bone the other day. I’ve linked to several of her columns in the Age here. She’s another one of these eccentrics who think women’s rights shouldn’t be just for the lucky people of the developed world.

On that drive across town Perowne sees three black figures, women in the body and face-covering burqas, huddled together on a pavement.
“He can’t help his distaste, it’s visceral. How dismal, that anyone should be obliged to walk around so entirely obliterated… And what would the relativists say, the cheerful pessimists from Daisy’s college? That it’s sacred, traditional, a stand against the fripperies of Western consumerism? But the men, the husbands… wear suits, or trainers and tracksuits, or