News websites also subject to repression.… Read the rest
Words, Words, Words
Dec 1st, 2004 10:35 pm | By Ophelia BensonI knew there was a reason. I knew it, I knew it. Right – the next time someone tells me I’m an elitist and pompous and pretentious and a show-off and generally horrible and intolerable, merely because I accidentally use a word that one might not find in a five-year-old’s vocabulary – the very next time, I say, I will have an answer ready. It’s because I don’t yet have Alzheimer’s. Surely that’s a good enough reason! Surely even the most dedicated warrior for populism will recognize that not (yet) having Alzheimer’s is quite a sensible reason to use words one was foolish and malevolent enough to pick up by accident at some point. Surely. I didn’t mean to do … Read the rest
New Humanist Contest
Dec 1st, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonPrize: a copy of The Dictionary of Fashionable Nonsense. Deadline 13 December.… Read the rest
Tess the Über Whiner; To the Damn Lighthouse
Dec 1st, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonJazz and actionless novels are okay if you like them, but if not…… Read the rest
Joan Bakewell in South Africa
Dec 1st, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonPieter-Dirk Uys and others accuse Mbeki of letting people die.… Read the rest
Mbeki Changes the Subject
Dec 1st, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonFrom role of sexual violence in AIDS to supposed racism of mentioning the idea.… Read the rest
AIDS and Sexual Violence in South Africa
Dec 1st, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHIV activists say machismo is fuelling the epidemic, and women pay the price.… Read the rest
Taboo on Discussion of AIDS in Pakistan
Dec 1st, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonMakes education, prevention and treatment difficult.… Read the rest
Gender Inequality and AIDS
Dec 1st, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWomen in Africa infected at much higher rates; sexual exploitation a significant factor.… Read the rest
Introduction to Creationism’s Trojan Horse
Dec 1st, 2004 | By Barbara Forrest and Paul R. GrossIntroduction
… Read the restIt used to be obvious that the world
was designed by some sort of intelligence.
What else could account for fire
and rain and lightning and earthquakes?
Above all, the wonderful abilities
of living things seemed to point to a
creator who had a special interest in
life. Today we understand most of these
things in terms of physical forces acting
under impersonal laws.We don’t yet
know the most fundamental laws, and
we can’t work out the consequences of
all the laws we know. The human
mind remains extraordinarily difficult
to understand, but so is the weather.
We can’t predict whether it will rain
one month from today, but we do know
the rules that govern the rain, even
Famous for Being Famous for Being Famous
Dec 1st, 2004 1:18 am | By Ophelia BensonAnd now back to the cult. Because the cult is interesting, cultishness is interesting, and above all, this kind of hyperbolic giddy gushing cultishness in people who (to all appearances) pride themselves above all on critical thinking, on looking closely at rhetoric, on peering behind the screen, on criticising ‘philosophical presumptions,’ on knowing ‘how to read’ – is so interesting as to be almost hypnotic.
So, here we are at the London Review of Books and here is Judith Butler Superstar again, writing about Derrida again.
First there are two paragraphs of resounding banalities. Then we start the third:
… Read the restIt is surely uncontroversial to say that Jacques Derrida was one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century; his international
Redefining Atheism
Dec 1st, 2004 1:17 am | By Ophelia BensonOkay, by way of a vacation from Butler and Derrida and the frenzy of renown – I’ll mutter a word or two about John Gray’s peculiar idea of what atheism is. I thought of doing it yesterday, but the review is so very full of strange assertions and idiosnycratic definitions that I felt slightly overwhelmed, so I put it off. It would take pages and pages to do it justice; I’ll just mention one or two points.
Generations of secular thinkers believed that as science advanced, religion would fade away. In fact, the opposite has happened. Religious faith is thriving, and the secular faiths of the Enlightenment everywhere are in retreat.
Everywhere? Everywhere? No they’re not. (And besides, what’s … Read the rest