Occasional violence and routine swearing and rudeness – is it any wonder teachers don’t stay?… Read the rest
People Make Daft Mistakes
Sep 3rd, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonRational choice theory versus behaviouralists, prospect theory, the endowment effect; economics is not a placid field.… Read the rest
Gloating
Sep 2nd, 2003 11:22 pm | By Ophelia BensonI knew I was right to like ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’! [see N&C August 27 if you care] Drone about stereotypes all you like, but hey, if it pisses off Brent Bozell, it’s right up there with Euripides and Chekhov, as far as I’m concerned.
… Read the rest“I want to vomit,” L. Brent Bozell, president of the Parents Television Council, which monitors TV content, wrote of Bravo’s smash “Queer Eye” in his weekly column last month. “Ever seen a show more dedicated to a ‘straight-bashing’ proposition? … Try this idea for a show and tell me how many seconds it would last in a Hollywood pitch session: ‘A team of five fabulous straight guys teach a masculinity-deprived gay man how
High what? What brow?
Sep 2nd, 2003 10:55 pm | By Ophelia BensonPerhaps this is cruel, or petty, but I think it needs saying. Rather often, actually, because we have here one of those incomprehensibly inflated reputations that the world is better off for deflating.
If NPR is the Promised Land of high-brow book publicity, what do you call an author who snags not one shot at public radio’s upscale, book-loving audience, but a recurring gig to talk about a book that he hasn’t even written yet?
Listen, if NPR is the Promised Land of highbrow anything at all, what to call some author is the least of our problems. (Not to mention the slight oxymoron of ‘highbrow’ [what an obnoxious word] publicity, but never mind that.) NPR (the US’s National Public … Read the rest
Broad Brush
Sep 2nd, 2003 7:39 pm | By Ophelia BensonWell, clearly we at B and W take it as our self-appointed mission to say, with varying degrees of mockery and rudeness, when we think our fellow leftists are being silly, but there is a limit. Which is to say we try to do it with a certain amount of precision and accuracy – in fact accuracy broadly construed is the whole point of the enterprise: when ideology or political commitment is in conflict with the truth, it ought not to be the truth that gives way. That applies all around, not just to them there pesky leftist intellectuals. All of which is to say there is a very sloppy article in Prospect that doesn’t worry enough about precision and … Read the rest
Gossip, Gossip, Everywhere
Sep 2nd, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonRather dykey, probably a spy, greasy kitchen, filthy loo – Wilson does Murdoch.… Read the rest
Donald Davidson
Sep 2nd, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWhile awaiting real obituaries.… Read the rest
Where Malaria is Treated by Yelling
Sep 2nd, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonReligion is mental illness and in Afghanistan the symptoms are florid.… Read the rest
Rupert Murdoch, Post-Modernist
Sep 2nd, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonFox News loves to tease the left: ‘fair and balanced, hahahaha!’… Read the rest
Michael Ruse on Creationism
Sep 2nd, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘Scientifically Creationism is worthless, philosophically it is confused, and theologically it is blinkered beyond repair.’… Read the rest
Newton Rules
Sep 2nd, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonRelativity, quantum mechanics, chaos theory have not made Newton passé. … Read the rest
Influenza
Sep 1st, 2003 11:48 pm | By Ophelia BensonAs you may have noticed, I have a perennial or chronic or obsessive interest in the question of what one might call cultural influence. Or one might call it memes, or fashion, or groupthink, or conformity, or any number of things. And in being interested in that, I also become interested in the self-fulfilling prophecy. That is to say, I’m interested in the way people (especially influential people) say things like ‘Most Americans believe in God/family values/the market’ and the statement becomes a little bit more true for having been said. I say Americans partly because I am one so I hear more of the American version than the UK one, and partly because I think there is probably more … Read the rest
Death Threat for US College Professor
Sep 1st, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonMuqtedar Khan of Adrian College in Michigan criticises bin Laden, Christian fundamentalists and hawkish U.S. government officials.… Read the rest
Eagleton on Hobsbawm
Sep 1st, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘…the autobiography is a covertly anti-intellectual genre.’… Read the rest
Is Astrology Relevant to Consciousness and Psi?
Sep 1st, 2003 | By Geoffrey Dean and Ivan W. Kelly
The case for astrology
An expanded abstract of the article in Journal of Consciousness Studies Volume 10 (6-7), June-July 2003, pages 175-198 with four tables and 85 references. This particular issue of JCS is devoted to parapsychology and related matters, and is also available in book form. Details, abstracts, and the full article in pdf format are available at www.imprint.co.uk/books/psi.html. See also the user-friendly www.astrology-and-science.com/ for critical articles on astrology by the same authors and others.
Why astrology?
Astrology has one sure thing in common with parapsychology – a highly visible outpouring of market-driven nonsense that threatens to bury the work of serious researchers. Just as parapsychology to the ordinary person means ghost busting and psychic phonelines, so … Read the rest
Pedantry
Sep 1st, 2003 2:25 am | By Ophelia BensonWell it’s shooting fish in a barrel, but I just have to say something. I know it’s an easy target, people getting university degrees in video games. But so what? Did I ever sign the International Agreement on Not Shooting at Easy Targets? Not that I remember.
And there is actually a serious point to the whole matter – which is that people seem to have no idea that there is, or there can be, or it is possible to imagine that there is, any difference between education as vocational training and education as a good in itself. If vocational training is the only purpose of education, then fine, teach people to design video games, there’s good money in it. … Read the rest