‘Pinker and Wilson do a much more impressive job with the humanities than any humanist I know has been able to do with the sciences.’… Read the rest
When in Doubt, Beatify 
Oct 21st, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Christopher Hitchens is not a fan of ‘Mother’ Teresa.… Read the rest
‘Stress De-briefing’
Oct 21st, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Therapeutic practices should be founded on research.… Read the rest
Nature Will Have Her Little Joke
Oct 21st, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Organically grown milk found to have more toxins than GM milk has.… Read the rest
Denis Dutton on Bad Writing
Oct 20th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
From 1999, but relevant to ‘not bad, only difficult’ writing.… Read the rest
It’s Not Bad! It’s Difficult!
Oct 20th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘…a teeming mass of abysmal sentences, yearning to be coherent.’… Read the rest
Why is Rights Talk a Problem?
Oct 20th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘…people often use rights talk to avoid justifying their position. It reverses the burden of proof.’… Read the rest
Don’t Like It? Adapt!
Oct 20th, 2003 1:19 am | By Ophelia BensonThere is a new book out by Frank Furedi, Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability In An Uncertain Age, which sounds highly interesting in itself and which also resonates with a lot of cultural oddities we talk about here on B and W.
… Read the restIt is the society-wide belief that people cannot cope on their own that leads to the features of therapy culture that we are all too familiar with today: the burgeoning counselling industry, the relentless emphasis on boosting ‘self-esteem’, the expansion of categories such as ‘trauma’ to encompass more and more life events. What gave rise to this downbeat view of human agency, this ‘fatalistic epistemology’ that recasts people as victims?…The decisive reason, Furedi says, is a broader political
The Most Neglected Great English Poet?
Oct 19th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Andrew Motion reviews Jonathan Bate’s ample and judicious biography of John Clare. … Read the rest
‘Out of Touch’ With What?
Oct 19th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Iraqi exiles are out of touch with Ba’athist dictatorship and in touch with democracy – and this is a bad thing?… Read the rest
Good News for Indian Secularists
Oct 18th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The crowd in Ayodhya was much smaller than expected this time.… Read the rest
Human Activities or Natural Causes?
Oct 18th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Climate change has always happened, and the causes are not easy to figure out.… Read the rest
Matt Ridley on ‘Superweeds’
Oct 18th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
All farming techniques have environmental benefits and drawbacks.… Read the rest
One Person’s Bizarre Degree is Another’s…
Oct 17th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Listen, Tom and Nicole’s divorce is an important subject.… Read the rest
Martha Nussbaum Remembers Bernard Williams
Oct 17th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘his liberal-democratic sympathies made him eschew obscurity, seeking a style that could be grasped by anyone who was willing to face the issues along with him.’… Read the rest
Therapy Culture
Oct 17th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Are we all fragile, powerless victims in need of continual professional support?… Read the rest
Having it Both Ways
Oct 16th, 2003 10:54 pm | By Ophelia BensonThis is a familiar, er, story.
But in writing Sylvia, he was aiming to tell a story “that was not dependent on the audience being interested in Sylvia Plath.” So Sylvia is not actually about a writer. Mostly, it’s about a talented girl who dries up and goes mad as a housewife struggling in the shadow of a powerful and successful man.
Yes, such movies never are. They never are ‘actually about a writer.’ So what is the point of them? I never can understand it. To give people some kind of bogus feeling of cultural something-or-other? To give them the illusion that they’ve read the writer in question’s books, or at least might as well have now that they … Read the rest
Therapy and Moral Panic
Oct 16th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Is the emphasis on stress and counseling in universities teaching students to think learning is too much for them?… Read the rest
Neil Postman Remembered
Oct 16th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘He was expert in nothing. Therefore nothing was off limits.’… Read the rest
One Tributary of Darwinism
Oct 16th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The geologist James Hutton wrote of adaptation and survival late in the 18th century.… Read the rest
