This is absolutely fascinating.

When the University of Colorado moved last month to fire Ward Churchill, there was not much of an organized defense among professors – even among those in the academic left. That may be changing, although some believe it shouldn’t change and risks devaluing what the academic left stands for.

Sound belief. Because if the academic left turns out to stand for left more than for academic, then it does indeed risk devaluing what the academic left stands for. If you’re an academic (as opposed to an advertiser, or a public relations expert, or a movie-maker, or a novelist) you’ve undertaken a commitment not to let your leftism or rightism trump your academic responsibility, which is … Read the rest

Never mind. I thought B&W was about to be closed down due to circumstances beyond my control.

Life is precarious you know. You never know when that piano is going to fall on your head.… Read the rest

And then this review of books on science and religion. This ploy again:

Nowadays, when legislation supporting promising scientific research falls to religious opposition…scientists have to be brave to talk about religion. Not to denounce it, but to embrace it. That is what Francis S. Collins, Owen Gingerich and Joan Roughgarden have done in new books, taking up one side of the stormy argument over whether faith in God can coexist with faith in the scientific method.

Stop right there. That’s the same equivocation Mary Gordon used at that ‘Faith and Reason’ conference.

Without faith we would be paralyzed. We believe that all men are created equal. That our mothers, or at least our dogs, love us. That

Creeping theocracy, chapter 472. There’s the court-stripping, and that park in San Diego for instance.

Perhaps you noticed an interesting confluence of events on Wednesday, July 19. On that day, President Bush vetoed legislation that would have authorized the expanded use of federal funds for stem-cell research, the House of Representatives voted to enact legislation depriving the federal courts of jurisdiction to hear any case challenging the constitutionality of the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, and the House voted to purchase a municipal park in San Diego on which a 29-foot-high cross stands.

Impressive stuff, isn’t it. Very grown-up, very rational, very sane.

In vetoing the bill that would have funded stem-cell research, President Bush invoked

There’s an oddity in that piece in the Indy yesterday about Stephen Hawking’s rebuke of the reactionaries on the stem cell question.

President Bush and some religious authorities, notably the Catholic Church, argue that the microscopic, four-day-old embryos from which stem cells are derived are potential human lives.

Is that right? I don’t think it is. Because surely everyone argues or rather simply takes it for granted that any embryos, four day old or four second old, are potential human lives. We know that – that’s not disputed. What’s disputed is what follows from that; what’s disputed is whether potential human lives should be as protected as actual human lives. So – why did the reporters put that ‘potential’ in … Read the rest

I’m not in a position to dispute the substance of this snide review of Hirsi Ali’s book due to the small inconvenience that I haven’t read the book that the snide review is a review of. But what I can do (and will) is point out the snideness, and the markers of same. (Now, you’ll be thinking, ‘But OB, you go in for a certain amount of mockery yourself on occasion, so do you not pause to murmur to yourself about stones and glass dwelling places?’ Fair point. Yes, I do pause, but not for long, for the simple reason that I have invincible Feelings of Superiority – I’ve been told that on very mediocre authority. No actually that’s not … Read the rest

I don’t see any misogyny. Do you see any misogyny?

Afghanistan’s notorious Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which was set up by the Taliban to enforce bans on women doing anything from working to wearing nail varnish or laughing out loud, is to be re-created by the government in Kabul. The decision has provoked an outcry among women and human rights activists who fear a return to the days when religious police patrolled the streets, beating or arresting any woman who was not properly covered by a burqa or accompanied by a male relative.

Whores. Putains. They just want to go outside and walk around and work and do stuff. They even want to … Read the rest

Misogyny? What misogyny?

The lives of young women might be ruined by the Government’s failure to make forced marriages illegal, a senior police officer has warned. Commander Steve Allen of the Metropolitan Police said that a decision by ministers last month to drop proposed legislation had been greeted by some ethnic minorities as a signal that forced marriage was acceptable. His concern about the about-turn, which was partly prompted by fears that the new law would stigmatise Muslims, is shared by a Crown Prosecution Service director and the head of Scotland Yard’s Homicide Prevention Unit. The head of a South Asian women’s charity said yesterday that girls were already suffering the consequences of the decision.

A couple of questions. … Read the rest