Richard Dawkins says Darwin was right to bring together sexual selection and the Descent of Man.… Read the rest
Things Fall Apart
Feb 7th, 2003 4:47 pm | By Ophelia BensonWell now…I must say, I’m a bit shocked. My comfortable certainties are all upset, what I thought I knew is sous rature, my binary oppositions are problematized, and things are just generally messed up. If the trendiest of trendy hippest of hippy French philosophers doesn’t like Seinfeld, well–well why bother, that’s all.
… Read the restEarlier on in the film, an interviewer from South African television chooses to open her questions with a reference to Seinfeld : does Professor Derrida see any affinities between his thought and this ironic, situation comedy? Derrida’s eyes narrow. “Deconstruction as I understand it doesn’t produce any sit-com,” he says in English, audibly putting the last words into pointed italics. “Stop watching sit-com. And do
The Red Queen Process 
Feb 7th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Inclusive fitness, the utility of altruism, gene shuffling, the mumbling professor turns into Indiana Jones. The importance of William Hamilton.… Read the rest
Education for Profit
Feb 7th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The EU may decide to ‘liberalise’ higher education, putting an end to government subsidies. What price history or philosophy, one wonders.… Read the rest
Does All His Own Stunts
Feb 7th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Derrida does his own problematizing and struggles to find sufficiently gnomic replies.… Read the rest
Karl Marx Meets Leo Marx
Feb 7th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Policing the borders, becoming the Other, subaltern disciplines, historical privileging of the imperial metaphysic perspective as the agent of knowledge production. A feast of jargon awaits.… Read the rest
Vice-Chancellor and Minister Disagree
Feb 6th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Cambridge doesn’t attract enough working class students, says Hodge; it does, says Sir Alec.… Read the rest
Rebel From Newark
Feb 5th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Leslie Fiedler loved to smash his own idols, could leave nothing unsaid, disdained subtleties, and crowed at the grave of modernism.… Read the rest
Stop That This Instant!
Feb 4th, 2003 8:10 pm | By Ophelia BensonOh my. We are in Alice country. A principal tells a teacher off because her students were engaged in an activity other than…watching television.
Why, the little slackers! The naughty little skivers! What were they doing? Talking? Throwing spit balls? Composing new rap lyrics? Copulating? No. They were…it’s almost too painful to relate…they were reading.
Well. We don’t want that kind of thing in the American school system, thank you. That sort of behavior leads to literacy, and elitism, and intellectual curiosity, and wanting to know more about things like history and philosophy. We don’t want that, now do we, no, because we’re glad to be a Beta. So the principal took to spying on the teacher to … Read the rest
Surveys, Damned Surveys and Statistics
Feb 4th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Where is that evidence again?… Read the rest
Another ‘The Dog Ate My Data’ Case
Feb 4th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
This time it’s the pro-gun scholar who can’t find his figures.… Read the rest
Caught Reading in School!
Feb 4th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Principal to teacher: your students were reading instead of watching television. Don’t let it happen again!… Read the rest
Free Speech For Me But Not For You
Feb 3rd, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Radicals when on the bottom, censors when on top. Napoleon, anyone?… Read the rest
Celebrate or Be Dull, Ben Okri Says
Feb 2nd, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Okri says Britain must respect its living writers.… Read the rest
Absence and evidence
Feb 2nd, 2003 | By Julian Baggini"It depends on Saddam. If he co-operates with the inspectors in allowing
them not just access but telling them what material he has and allowing them
to shut it down and make Iraq safe and free of weapons of mass destruction
then the issue is over, but he is not doing that at the moment."
Tony Blair, 26 January 2003 (Source: the Guardian, 27 January 2003)
The British and American governments have consistently claimed that Iraq has
weapons of mass destruction. But they have not helped their case by rigging
the rules by which their claim is tested. Here’s the problem.
UN weapons inspectors are currently searching Iraq for these weapons. If they
find them, this is obviously evidence that … Read the rest
Public Distrust of Science
Feb 1st, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The Royal Society is concerned about media coverage of new research before it has been peer reviewed (which does not mean checked by the House of Lords).… Read the rest
Caricature or Anti-Semitism?
Feb 1st, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Goya’s ‘Saturn Devouring his Children’ is a powerful piece of visual rhetoric. Is it anti-Semitic if Saturn is Sharon?… Read the rest
