Climate science and tipping point, bird flu, ID, chimpanzee genome, more.… Read the rest
Turkey Admits Pamuk Trial Not an Image-booster
Jan 2nd, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonLaws that limit freedom of expression may be changed.… Read the rest
The Edge Question for 2006
Jan 2nd, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWhat is your dangerous idea? Dawkins, Dennett, Pinker and many more.… Read the rest
Gordon Brown Quotes Gertrude Himmelfarb
Jan 2nd, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWhy choose a ferociously neocon revisionist history of the Enlightenment?… Read the rest
Reactions to the Dover Decision on Intelligent Design (with special attention to the unfortunate intervention by Professor Alschuler)
Jan 2nd, 2006 | By Brian LeiterThis blog has a rather lengthy compendium of links pertaining to yesterday’s court decision. The New York Times, meanwhile, has run a pleasingly direct editorial:
… Read the restJudge Jones’s decision was a striking repudiation of intelligent design, given that Dover’s policy was minimally intrusive on classroom teaching. Administrators merely read a brief disclaimer at the beginning of a class asserting that evolution was a theory, not a fact; that there were gaps in the evidence for evolution; and that intelligent design provided an alternative explanation and could be further explored by consulting a book in the school library. Yet even that minimal statement amounted to an endorsement of religion, the judge concluded, because it caused students to doubt the theory of
Black Swans and Ivory Bills
Jan 1st, 2006 11:11 pm | By Ophelia BensonDid you listen to Gene Sparling telling the story of seeing the Ivory Bill? Do, if you haven’t – it’s a real treat. Apart from anything else he’s funny as hell, in a marvelously relaxed leisurely drawling way. I first heard it by accident, I turned the radio on at random and in the middle, so didn’t know what it was at first, some guy talking about being out in the woods and what a remarkable place it was, I wasn’t paying much attention until he started talking about a bird – and then when he said ‘I thought “that’s the biggest pileated woodpecker I’ve ever seen”‘ I was galvanized and began paying very close attention indeed.
And it’s … Read the rest
One Shrug Too Many
Jan 1st, 2006 10:00 pm | By Ophelia BensonYes, truth does matter, but it can be a hard slog sometimes convincing people of that. An American studies teacher offers some illustrations.
… Read the restO’Brien violates old novelistic standards; his book is both fictional and autobiographical, with the lines between the two left deliberately blurred. My students adored the book and looked at me as if they had just seen a Model-T Ford when I mentioned that a few critics felt that the book was dishonest because it did not distinguish fact from imagination. “It says right on the cover ‘a work of fiction’” noted one student. When I countered that we ourselves we using it to discuss the actual Vietnam War, several students immediately defended the superiority of metaphorical
US Failure to Invest in Scientific Research
Jan 1st, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonA creeping crisis caused by a pattern of short-term thinking and a lack of long-term investment.… Read the rest
Paradoxes of Postmodernism
Jan 1st, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonTruth-skeptics have to be taught to see that disguised fiction can be dangerous.… Read the rest
When Facts Change, Change Your Mind
Jan 1st, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonMarketplace of ideas does not work because large parts of the audience want comfort rather than truth. … Read the rest
Readers Retort to Cardinal O’Connor
Jan 1st, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonObjecting to fundamentalists who hijack virtue and morality for their own pious, self-righteous reasons.… Read the rest
Cardinal Pitches Fit About ‘Family Life’
Jan 1st, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWhich really ought to be made mandatory for ‘the good of society’.… Read the rest
Bomb in Indonesia Kills Eight People
Jan 1st, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe bomb exploded at a stall selling pork in a largely Christian part of the town.… Read the rest
Squaring the Circle
Jan 1st, 2006 12:05 am | By Ophelia BensonLa lutte continue, as the saying goes – the struggle continues. Education can be a slow process, and as we’ve seen in the US lately, it can turn around and march smartly backwards. People can make resolute, determined efforts to become more ignorant than their parents, and to make their children more ignorant than they are themselves. People can also make resolute efforts to have it both ways – to live on technology and the safety and comfort it brings, while at the same time scorning the rational ways of thinking that technology depends on. There’s something a little contemptible about that – but so it goes.
… Read the restJames Colbert has been on the frontline of America’s culture wars