Well. Aren’t I stupid. How did I manage to miss this? The link is right there on Ibn Warraq’s site. I just didn’t do enough exploring. Well, I’ve done it now, so don’t you miss this one. It’s loaded with great stuff. Look at the articles page for instance. Read There’s no such thing as Voluntary Hijab!. If only I’d had that article to cite during all those arguments about the hijab last winter, with all those people who simply couldn’t see any reason at all why someone might support the ban. Seeing the reasons but still not agreeing I could have understood, but that’s not how it went. It was weird. But none of that crap on … Read the rest
New RSS feed
Jul 24th, 2004 8:25 pm | By Ophelia BensonSince people kept asking for a RSS feed, I’ve put one together. But it’s kind of at a beta-testing stage, since I programmed it – using Perl – without the faintest real idea about what I was doing. If (when) people find problems with it, if they could email me at j e r r y at b u t t e r f l i e s a n d w h e e l s dot com that’d be very useful.
Thanks. … Read the rest
What the Poll Shows
Jul 24th, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThat science (Dawkins apart) didn’t score well; nor did politics or law.… Read the rest
Hurrah! Known Atheist Tops Prospect Poll
Jul 24th, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonRichard Dawkins is favourite public intellectual by a wide margin.… Read the rest
Little Boxes, Little Boxes
Jul 23rd, 2004 11:31 pm | By Ophelia BensonWhat was that we were saying about identity, and groups, and being forced into those groups by other people? We were saying a lot of things – so let’s say a few more while we`re at it.
I’ve been re-reading Meera Nanda’s marvelous (albeit horrifying) book Prophets Facing Backward. If you haven’t read it – you’re missing something. I thought a couple of quotations would be apropos. Page 16:
… Read the restHolist views of nature and society in which the collective is held to be larger than the individual, the orgnaism more than the sum of its parts, are eminently suited for illiberal and totalitarian philosophies. Such philosophies can mobilize individuals to sacrifice their freedom for the sake of the
Not so Fast, There, Kennewick Man
Jul 23rd, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe Army Corps of Engineers is still resisting scientific study of KM.… Read the rest
Changing the Subject
Jul 23rd, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonA movie full of platitudes about cultural diversity and self-esteem – the counter-Fahrenheit 911?… Read the rest
Political Science in the Other Direction
Jul 23rd, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonKeeping the opinions of the science community at the heart of political debate, where they belong. … Read the rest
All Too Political Science
Jul 23rd, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonBush administration shapes scientific findings to fit political agenda.… Read the rest
Gentle Jesus
Jul 23rd, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWhy are novels about millions being tortured to death so popular?… Read the rest
Cool, They All Melted!
Jul 23rd, 2004 2:08 am | By Ophelia BensonI can’t resist adding another example – because it seems to me to be so grotesque. It’s from a column by Nicholas Kristof, whom Brian Leiter calls ‘one of the leading “no ideas and the ability to express them” columnists at the New York Times.’ (How convenient to happen on that description just after I read the Kristof column. Doncha just love it when things fall into your lap like that? Serendipity?) The column is a brief look at one of the Rapture books, a phenomenon I’ve talked about here more than once. It starts with a pretty passage:
… Read the restJesus merely raised one hand a few inches and a yawning chasm opened in the earth, stretching far and wide enough
Stand Still, Dobbin
Jul 22nd, 2004 8:12 pm | By Ophelia BensonYou don’t mind if I go on thrashing the equine do you? No, of course you don’t, because you’re used to it. I repeat myself a lot. But then arguments are like that – they go on and on, inconclusively, cumulatively, incrementally. Who knows if one is making any progress or not? But if one thinks there is a point worth making or defending, one goes on.
Marc Mulholland has a new post on all this today. A much politer post than I deserve, too. But I still disagree with much of what he says. For instance:
… Read the restSome of the criticisms raised deny the reality of group identities, asserting in classical liberal fashion that there is no such thing as
Chris Mooney on ‘Sound Science’
Jul 22nd, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonConservatives using conflict over fish to gut the science behind Endangered Species Act. … Read the rest
Letter to Scientific American
Jul 22nd, 2004 | By Peter J. SwalesPeter J. Swales, author of numerous pioneering essays exploring the early history of psychoanalysis, is unimpressed by Mark Solms’s article in the April 2004 issue of Scientific American, “Freud Returns”. Here we reproduce an unpublished letter to Scientific American which questions Mark Solms’s competence in the field of Freud scholarship, together with an addendum and postscript.
Letters to the Editors
Scientific American
May 10, 2004
In reproducing a diagram from an 1895 manuscript, Mark Solms endeavours to portray Sigmund Freud as both percipient and prescient by drawing special attention to the “contact barriers” between neurons whose action he there supposedly “predicted”. Solms elaborates: “Two years later English physiologist Charles Sherrington discovered such gaps and named them synapses”. In truth, … Read the rest
What Liberals Can and Can’t Say
Jul 21st, 2004 9:51 pm | By Ophelia BensonIs it unconscionable if we:
a) Talk about homophobia in the black community?
b) Think that honour killings may not be entirely a good thing?
c) Find mutilation rather distasteful?
d) Don’t much like the idea of Shari’a?
e) Think that Russians sometimes get things wrong?
f) Think that maybe there is an argument to be had about the headscarf ban?
g) Suspect that Islam and women’s rights are not perfect bedfellows?
Answers on a postcard.… Read the rest
More
Jul 21st, 2004 7:32 pm | By Ophelia BensonPeople have been pointing out in comments that there were a good many items in Marc Mulholland’s post that I neglected to mention. True enough. I was short on time, for one thing, and I think I have a sort of built-in idea of the maximum desirable length for a comment here. I don’t like article-length blog posts, on the whole. So I didn’t dispute everything I could have disputed.
And perhaps I didn’t stipulate as much as I could have either. I could have made the same stipulation that Norm does in his post on the subject –
… Read the restThere’s a central point in what Marc is saying which I would not contest, and this is that in the tense
Motion on Middlebrook on Hughes
Jul 21st, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonCompromised by lack of proper interest in the poems as such.… Read the rest
A Meeting to Discuss Shari’a Court in Ontario
Jul 21st, 2004 | By Homa ArjomandUpdate: New material on the campaign against Shari’a Court in Canada
Report of Meeting with Marion Boyd Regarding Shari’a Court in Canada
On Thursday July 15, 2004, Homa Arjomand, Co-ordinator of the International Campaign Against Shari’a Court in Canada was called to a meeting with Marion Boyd regarding concerns about Shari’a court in Canada. Marian Boyd has been appointed by Premier Dalton McGuinty to review the 1991 Arbitration Act
This meeting lasted over three hours and many issues and case studies were presented:
Homa Arjomand emphasized the fact that The Ontario Arbitration Act 1991 has made it possible for the Islamic movement to make another attempt to attack both secularism and the women’s movement for equality. She stated that … Read the rest
Which Community?
Jul 21st, 2004 1:54 am | By Ophelia BensonI’ve just been chatting with my colleague on the phone, and along with other things we discussed, we agreed that this post is a lot of nonsense – and nonsense of a kind that leaves us shaking our heads (yes, both of them) in baffled amazement.
… Read the restIslamaphobia is often defined as slanderous untruths. I think there is an excessively narrow definition of Islamophobia at play here. It is not right that simply stating ‘the truth’ is sufficient to clear one of Islamophobia…One must take the content in the whole. If the overall impact is intemperate and insinuating, the overall conclusion is that it is oppressively anti-pluralistic. One must also take into account the context. If ‘truth’ about a community is