‘To insist on one view at the expense of the other is necessarily to violate deeply held moral intuitions.’… Read the rest
All entries by this author
Chen Ziming Free After 17 Years
Dec 13th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonDream was to create a civil society of lobby groups and NGOs with a voice able to challenge the party.… Read the rest
Opposition to Amendments to Hudood Ordinance
Dec 13th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonPakistan’s 1979 law against rape that punished rape victims and gave legal safeguards to rapists.… Read the rest
Why Truth Matters Most Underrated Book
Dec 13th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonProspect cites chord struck with ‘liberal neocons’. Wot?… Read the rest
Numero Uno
Dec 12th, 2006 6:53 pm | By Ophelia BensonSay what you will, but having the top underrated book of the year according to Prospect is pretty good fun. Also a little surprising. We’ve tended to think of it more from the other direction. Not that it was overrated! No no – don’t run away with that idea. But that we were (modest to a fault as we are) rather surprised that it got such good reviews. So good that it wasn’t like trying to find an eyelash on a football pitch to pick out extracts for quoting in advertisements. We had spares. We had more than enough. And that was a surprise. (Why? I don’t know, exactly. Maybe partly just because it’s hard to tell how a … Read the rest
Carnival of Citizens
Dec 12th, 2006 5:29 pm | By Ophelia BensonThe Carnival of Citizens is December 17th. Deadline for submissions is December 15th. It’s hosted at Siris. It’s the brainchild of Richard at Philosophy Etcetera.… Read the rest
Another Denver Megachurch Pastor Resigns
Dec 12th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonBecause of humping men. Colorado new hotbed of tragic conflicted queer evangelists.… Read the rest
Ethiopia Finds Mengistu Guilty of Genocide
Dec 12th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonJunta ‘set up a hit squad to decimate, torture and destroy groups opposing the Mengistu regime.’… Read the rest
Why James Clerk Maxwell Matters
Dec 12th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHe carried out the first profound unification of nature’s forces. … Read the rest
Take That, Pesky Microfascists
Dec 12th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAcademic article solemnly disputes blog commenters.… Read the rest
On closer reading
Dec 11th, 2006 6:10 pm | By Ophelia BensonAll righty. I was told to read Hitchens’s ‘Why Women Aren’t Funny’ more carefully, so I did, and was unsurprised to find more silly stuff, which I feel like poking a stick at. (You may say that he’s being ironic throughout. He’s not though. I recognize some of the thoughts from other work and from interviews; the stuff about childbirth and war for instance; he means it.)
While Jewish humor, boiling as it is with angst and self-deprecation, is almost masculine by definition.
Oh, is it? I must be a man then. (Mind you, I often think that, when I read journalism about what women are and what men are. When I read that women are caring and co-operative and … Read the rest
Hitchens on Pinochet
Dec 11th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHis death is an occasion to remember the many victims of his state and international terrorism.… Read the rest
Thatcher ‘Greatly Saddened’ at Pinochet’s Death
Dec 11th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonDiddums.… Read the rest
Pinochet Escapes Prosecution
Dec 11th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonMore than 3,000 people were killed or ‘disappeared’ in his 17-year rule. … Read the rest
Theory and Practice of Literary (Mis)reading
Dec 11th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonOn Ziauddin Sardar on ‘Blitcon’.… Read the rest
Religious Convictions Have a Hard Edge
Dec 11th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonRoy Hattersley on worship of a stern and vengeful god.… Read the rest
Depends who’s asking
Dec 10th, 2006 9:56 pm | By Ophelia BensonHitchens makes a very silly opening argument in this conspicuously silly piece, winsomely titled ‘Why Women Aren’t Funny’. (Is this part of his Kingsley Amis shtick? KA was brilliant, but the routine misogyny was hardly his funniest or most interesting bit.)
… Read the restHowever, there is something that you absolutely never hear from a male friend who is hymning his latest (female) love interest: “She’s a real honey, has a life of her own … [interlude for attributes that are none of your business] … and, man, does she ever make ’em laugh.” Now, why is this? Why is it the case?, I mean. Why are women, who have the whole male world at their mercy, not funny? Please do not
Aggressive mean naughty bad atheists
Dec 10th, 2006 9:40 pm | By Ophelia BensonAtheists are mean, says Nicholas Kristof. No they’re not, say Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett; you just think so because you’re used to religion’s special immunity. As Dawkins puts it:
Mr. Kristof has simply become acclimatized to the convention that you can criticize anything else but you mustn’t criticize religion. Ears calibrated to this norm will hear gentle criticism of religion as intemperate, and robust criticism as obnoxious.
Which is really not an ideal situation: it really does make it difficult for people to discuss the subject honestly. It’s a little worrying how many people are eager to join the chorus urging atheists to shut up – or to be less ‘obnoxious’ and ‘militant’ and ‘in … Read the rest
Duties to the public
Dec 10th, 2006 7:14 pm | By Ophelia BensonSome more on the conceptual issues involved in ideas such as equality, equal treatment, civil rights, public accommodation, and so on. Some comments by a dissenting justice in the Civil Rights Cases decision of 1883, in which the court killed the Civil Rights Act of 1875, an act by which Congress attempted to elaborate on and enforce the Fourteenth Amendment – Section 1 of which turned the US world upside down:
… Read the restAll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States;
Roger Scruton Talks to the CBC
Dec 10th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘The most controversial but best-read philosopher in Britain’ – perhaps jet lagged.… Read the rest