Anne Applebaum considers new books that claim the Germans were also victims in WW II.… Read the rest
Always Look on the Bright Side of Life
Oct 15th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘…even ruthlessly secularized activities can have a religious feel to them.’… Read the rest
How Natural Are These Disasters?
Oct 15th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonDavid Stanway looks at environmental degradation in China.… Read the rest
And Pets
Oct 14th, 2003 8:44 pm | By Ophelia BensonThis is a mildly amusing item. Or maybe it’s not all that amusing really, it just happens to amuse me, because a friend and I were chatting this morning about the relative merits of dogs and cats as pets and the relative merits of animals and humans for misanthropes like us.
The article considers it a scandal that people misdirect their affection onto animals instead of relatives and friends. Well but – be fair. Animals don’t argue. They don’t contradict. They don’t willfully misconstrue what we are saying and then shout at us for saying what we’re not saying. They don’t borrow our clothes. They don’t eat the last piece of cake we carefully stashed in the fridge (because … Read the rest
Pets I Mean Companion Animals
Oct 14th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonDo we spend too much money on them? Should we like them less and people more?… Read the rest
Woolly Jumpers and Even Woollier Language
Oct 14th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe aim was to ‘reduce a text to a kind of fine powder of politico-sexual assumptions.’… Read the rest
Lie Back and Enjoy It
Oct 13th, 2003 9:47 pm | By Ophelia BensonThis is a hilarious piece. Katha Pollitt is pretty good at being hilarious. But of course she has good material here. Why are conservatives always bleating and moaning? Have they not noticed? Yo! Those heavy steel things in your hands? Those are the levers of power!
… Read the restWhy can’t they just admit it, throw a big party and dance on the table with lampshades on their heads? Why are they always claiming to be excluded and silenced because most English professors are Democrats? Why must they re-prosecute Alger Hiss whenever Susan Sarandon gives a speech or Al Franken goes after Bill O’Reilly? If I were a conservative, I would think of those liberal professors spending their lives grading papers on
Damp Squibs
Oct 13th, 2003 4:30 pm | By Ophelia BensonIt’s a very handy thing, having a Fashionable Dictionary and a Rhetoric Guide. Because whenever people who have little or nothing of substance to say, resort to mere abuse instead, it’s useful instead of merely boring and time-wasting. You can just slide it into one or the other and hey presto, your correspondent has done a little work for you.
For instance, there’s ‘Meaningless Sarcasm’. Addressing your opponent (or rather the person you’re attempting to engage, who wandered off in boredom long ago) as ‘little Ms X’ or ‘little Mr Y’. Has the disadvantage of making one sound about seven years old, but if one is delusional enough, it passes for wit.
Or there’s that old favourite, ‘I’m embarrassed for … Read the rest
Why No Lampshades on Their Heads?
Oct 13th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWhy do US conservatives keep pretending they’re a persecuted minority?… Read the rest
Oh Dear, the National Review?
Oct 13th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonYes, but the piece on the diversity essay is hilarious.… Read the rest
Science Within Reason
Oct 13th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonReview of Susan Haack’s new book.… Read the rest
The Politics of Sensitivity Training
Oct 13th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonDefining political protest as hate crime, if the protest is against the Vatican.… Read the rest
An Unfortunate Meme
Oct 13th, 2003 2:17 am | By Ophelia BensonThere was a very interesting review in The Nation last month, that talks about a subject that’s been coming up a lot lately: the tendency of apologists for the Catholic church to equate criticism of the church or the Pope or Vatican policy or the religion itself, with intolerance or hate crime or a kind of racism. It seems to be a bit of a meme, in fact. No doubt the archbishop of Birmingham had just been reading Philip Jenkins’ new book and picked up some ideas. The ideas he picked up are very bad ones, as I argued in a N&C last month. The Catholic church is an institution like any other. It’s not a good idea to make … Read the rest
What Happened to Secularism?
Oct 12th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonPaul Kurtz considers the reasons for the retreat from science and reason in the US.… Read the rest
Catholic Church Lies About Condoms
Oct 12th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAnger at claim that condoms don’t offer protection against HIV.… Read the rest
Whither Canonicity?
Oct 12th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonNobody ever said canon formation was easy. Robert McCrum on The List.… Read the rest
Lists Are Always Fun
Oct 12th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe Observer offers its list of the best 100 novels.… Read the rest
The Fame Game
Oct 11th, 2003 7:44 pm | By Ophelia BensonThis column by David Aaronovitch seems apposite to something we were talking about the other day – the cult of celebrity, or in Leo Braudy’s memorable phrase, the frenzy of renown. It’s not just a matter of electing conspicuously unqualified people to powerful jobs on the basis of nothing at all apart from pure Fame, though that’s more than bad enough. It’s also what fame, or perhaps a certain kind of fame, can do to the people who have it.
… Read the restan American sports sociologist, Jeff Benedict,…had been asked by sports authorities to collect data to contradict the perception that many athletes were committing crimes against women. Benedict interviewed 300 athletes, victims, lawyers, cops and groupies and discovered that, unfortunately, the
BHL the Anti-anti-American
Oct 11th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonBernard-Henri Levy looks at the concurrent rise of anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism.… Read the rest
Paradigms U Like
Oct 11th, 2003 | By Ophelia BensonThe hostility to science goes back for millennia. We don’t like brute facts, we don’t like having to check our wishes and hopes against the reality of how the world is. We’ll submit to the necessity for survival purposes, we’ll learn what we need to know of leopards and rabbits, fire and ice, but beyond that we want the right to believe our fantasies. ‘May God us keep/From single vision, and Newton’s sleep!’ said Blake, and Wordsworth agreed: ‘Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;/Our meddling intellect/Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:–We murder to dissect.’
But there is a new kind of animus that has become conventional wisdom in many universities over the past three decades. It goes by the … Read the rest