Tom DeGregori’s ‘Shiva the Destroyer’ in the German magazine Novo.… Read the rest
Terry Eagleton the Insider-Outsider
Nov 30th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonStudents have gone from uncritical, reverential essays on Flaubert to uncritical, reverential essays on ‘Friends.’… Read the rest
Colin McGinn on Bookworminess
Nov 30th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonDorian Gray and horror novels as a child, illiteracy as an adolescent, then philosophy.… Read the rest
Hey! Where’s my Nobel Prize?!
Nov 29th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIf the Nobel committee somehow overlooks you, make a stink, demand your prize! Or perhaps not.… Read the rest
Tyranny is Tyranny
Nov 29th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonEven when the tyrants are not US puppets, so the left should not be silent.… Read the rest
Asymmetry
Nov 28th, 2003 9:00 pm | By Ophelia BensonWell good, we’ve got that cleared up: all the potential Democratic presidential candidates are religious, there’s not an atheist in the bunch. That’s a relief, isn’t it? And a surprise? Atheists being so thick on the ground in US politics, especially at the national level.
The assumptions behind the news article reporting on this shocker are rather strange, however. Or at least, if not strange in the context of US politics, still, strange in other contexts one can think of. There is this remark, for instance:
Each of the Democrats vying for the right to challenge Bush next year has reaffirmed his or her faith, refusing to cede spirituality to the Republicans.
So, they refuse to cede spirituality, but they’re … Read the rest
Root Causes
Nov 28th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThere are always a lot of them – which do we choose to focus on and why?… Read the rest
Atheism not in the Running
Nov 28th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonDemocrats refuse to ‘cede spirituality to the Republicans,’ so secularism is not an option.… Read the rest
US Voters Want Even More Religion
Nov 28th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonOnly 21% want less, so secularists are just out of luck.… Read the rest
Stanley Fish Makes an Excellent Point
Nov 27th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘The only respectable intellectual goal is the pursuit of truth’… Read the rest
Rising Anti-Semitism in Europe
Nov 27th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIs criticism of Israel merely a screen? Or is criticism of criticism of Israel the screen?… Read the rest
Can Aesthetic Standards be Grounded?
Nov 26th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonOr are they imposed by the powerful for political purposes.… Read the rest
More
Nov 26th, 2003 12:35 am | By Ophelia BensonMore update on Stephen King at the National Book Awards and the whole ‘You should feel guilty for not reading John Grisham’ line. Excellent comments from Terry Teachout here and here. And the story in the Independent.… Read the rest
Dr Fox
Nov 25th, 2003 9:12 pm | By Ophelia BensonA kind and helpful reader alerted me to this article in an email yesterday. It’s very interesting (and also rather amusing, especially at the beginning), but it turns out it doesn’t corroborate what I’m saying in quite the way I thought it might. But that’s okay, because it does raise another issue, which I think it’s worth talking about.
The claim of the article is that difficulty carries prestige, quite independent of content or substance. That educated people will rate a lecture or article more highly if it is ‘difficult’ than if it’s not (with the substance remaining the same). But the trouble is, the measure of difficulty is not a very good one, as the author, Scott Armstrong, acknowledges … Read the rest
GM Propaganda War Not Helpful
Nov 25th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIf each side leaves out important facts, conclusions are obscured and the public is confused.… Read the rest
Half truths
Nov 25th, 2003 | By Julian Baggini"I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."
Bill Clinton, January 26, 2003.
If you think Bill Clinton’s statement at a White House conference about his
relationship with Monica Lewinsky was just a bare-faced lie, consider this.
In some circumstances, it is desirable for young people to maintain that they
are still virgins. In others, it would be a complete embarrassment.
Take a seventeen-year-old boy from a conservative family who has experience
of oral sex, mutual masturbation and so on, but not penetrative sex. "Are
you a virgin?" asks his parents. "Yes," the boy replies. "Are
you a virgin?" ask his friends, "Dur, no!" comes the reply. Wouldn’t
you say that in both cases the boy is … Read the rest
Stephen King Revisited
Nov 24th, 2003 11:46 pm | By Ophelia BensonUpdate – I commented a few days ago on Stephen King’s strange remarks at the National Book Awards. They’re having a very lively discussion of the same subject at Crooked Timber today.… Read the rest
Amazing Mess
Nov 24th, 2003 11:34 pm | By Ophelia BensonSerendipity is always fun. I tend to experience a lot of it, because my bookshelves are so peculiarly organized, and also double-shelved, so that it’s easy to forget what’s behind the front row – I’m always rummaging around looking for one book and ending up with five or six others that I’d been thinking of looking for, wondering where I’d put, wishing I had in my hand. And everything is like that. I’m not very tidy. There are forgotten magazines, forgotten notes, forgotten drafts of essays and articles, forgotten all sorts of things. Nothing that will decay – I’m careful about that – no oozy apples or slimy pears turning up after months of wondering what that smell is. But … Read the rest