Academics never nearby enough to moderate some of his less fortunate populist urges.… Read the rest
Vatican Considers Condom Rules
Apr 24th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonMight allow married people with HIV to use condoms.… Read the rest
Review of Sen’s Identity and Violence
Apr 24th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonTunku Varadarajan finds it pretty but unrealistic.… Read the rest
No Shortcut
Apr 23rd, 2006 5:25 pm | By Ophelia BensonThis is good bracing stuff.
At Wellington College, one of Britain’s top public schools, headmaster Anthony Seldon is piloting an initiative that may eventually see lessons in happiness added to the curriculum in both the state and independent sectors. What an unhappy prospect…The problem is that Wellington is opting to teach happiness through positive psychology which, in my view, can amount to little more than self-help with a veneer of academic respectability.
And one thing neither the world nor education needs more of is self-help with a veneer of academic respectability. It’s had lashings of that, via for instance the totem of ‘self-esteem’, and look how well that turned out – producing throngs of people with all too much self-esteem … Read the rest
The Disturbing World of Implicit Bias
Apr 23rd, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWe may not always think what we think we think.… Read the rest
Is a Happy Human the Same as a Good Human?
Apr 23rd, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWhat would Herbert Spencer think?… Read the rest
Richard Schoch Skeptical of Positive Psychology
Apr 23rd, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonLasting and profound happiness isn’t about feeling good, it’s about being good.… Read the rest
Women’s Autonomy Under Threat
Apr 23rd, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonReligious enclaves encouraging women to go back to when they were men’s property, not their own.… Read the rest
Self-awareness Switched Off During Concentration
Apr 23rd, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonBrain assumes a robotic functionality when it has to concentrate on a difficult, timed task.… Read the rest
The Myth of Productivity and the Function of Consumerism: An Institutional Perspective
Apr 23rd, 2006 | By Jim CornehlsProductivity is an economic term that, like others, has more than one meaning. First, there is overall productivity, meaning the collective ability of a society to produce goods and services. Second, productivity is used to explain the distribution of incomes within a society, where productivity is taken to mean the relative contribution of each of the so-called factors of production, land, labor and capital, to the production process. These two aspects of productivity are inextricably linked in the U.S. mixed economic system.
Efforts to measure productivity in the second sense are chimeras. Productivity is the result of mixing machinery, human effort, and community knowledge. Productivity does not exist independently of any or all of these. If a woman uses a … Read the rest
Creationism Conference in Derbyshire
Apr 22nd, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonTo hear academics defend the view that God made the Earth in six days about 6,000 years ago.… Read the rest
Byatt on Roth
Apr 22nd, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonPhilip Roth is the great recorder of Darwinian Man, ‘a poor, bare, forked animal’.… Read the rest
Evolution Should be Taught as Fact, not Theory
Apr 22nd, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWe should no longer talk of the theory of evolution as ‘just an idea’, says Richard Pike.… Read the rest
Boredom
Apr 22nd, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIs boredom emotional recuperation, or is it just boredom?… Read the rest
Wot’s an Intellectual?
Apr 22nd, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonA bag of wind? A small-breasted man? A woman who doesn’t wash much? … Read the rest
Pre-emption
Apr 21st, 2006 8:00 pm | By Ophelia BensonThe thing about the cultural anthropoligical view is that, unless you are a cultural anthropologist, it’s not the place to stop. Because tolerance, acceptance, neutrality, non-judgmentalism never is the place to stop. That’s one of the advantages of being human, isn’t it – we are able to second-guess things, and ask for something better, so we should never permananently and thoroughly give up that ability and right.
We can suspend it at times, obviously. You don’t go to a friend’s house and tell her how to do things. (On the other hand, if you somehow discover that serious abuse is going on, you may want to intervene, with all the attendant difficulties and worries that possible duty raises.) But that … Read the rest
Expert in Postmodern Theory Helps Out
Apr 21st, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSimply a theory that suggests there is more than one way of looking at the world. Ah.… Read the rest
Top Sydney School’s Boring Approach to Shxpr
Apr 21st, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonYou can read Othello in two of three ways: ‘Marxist, feminist, race’. Zzzzz.… Read the rest
Geoffrey Wheatcroft: Blair is Worse Than Bush
Apr 21st, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe harder Blair’s arguments are looked at, the more curious they seem.… Read the rest