Vigils were held to mark the first anniversary of Iran’s hanging of two teenagers accused of homosexuality. … Read the rest
Is There a ‘Pogrom’ Against Gays in Iran?
Jul 22nd, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHRW says no, Doug Ireland says yes.… Read the rest
Pearse’s “Perfect Little Pigs” or Translating Celsus
Jul 22nd, 2006 | By R. Joseph HoffmannSince it first appeared on his blogspace in 2002, the most frequently Googled article about me—depressingly—is a piece called “Celsus, Origen and Hoffmann” by a certain freelance Tadler named Roger Pearse. The irritable Mr. Pearse has become in the intervening years a watchful enemy of my work and a sort of unconsecrated bishop in the church of Anglo-Patristic Orthodoxy. So dutiful is his vigilance in this office (by day Mr. Pearse disguises himself as an unassuming computer programmer) that I have occasionally felt remorse at not giving him enough work to watch. This may seem petulance, I know. But I prefer to think of it as anger; and as Aristotle reminds us, “To be angry with the right man, to … Read the rest
Iowan Arrested for Flying Upside-down Flag
Jul 21st, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonCharged with disorderly conduct, getting death threats from a forum on a Marine vets’ website.… Read the rest
The Fad for Yob Lit
Jul 21st, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonGilbert recasts insignificant bits of everyday life as being the source of social decay today. … Read the rest
Barney Frank’s Speech to Congress
Jul 21st, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘This is an administration which considers checks and balances to be a hindrance to effective governance.’… Read the rest
Barney Frank on the Plebiscitary Presidency
Jul 21st, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe president is not the single decider. He is the most important in a system of multiple sources of power.… Read the rest
Maclean’s Provides Articles on/by Jahanbegloo
Jul 20th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonOttawa is powerless to do anything about the imprisonment of one of its citizens.… Read the rest
Danny Postel Interview with Ramin Jahanbegloo
Jul 20th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonInterview was conducted via e-mail in January and February 2006 – just before Jahanbegloo’s arrest.… Read the rest
Japanese PM Continutes to Visit War Shrine
Jul 20th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonDespite the presence of war criminals there and anger of Korea and China.… Read the rest
Bush Brandishes Baby, Vetoes Stem Cell Bill
Jul 20th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonLeading researchers call Bush ‘hypocritical’, ‘out of touch’ and ‘selfish’ over his decision.… Read the rest
Older Students to be Allowed not to Worship
Jul 20th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonYounger students still forced to attend daily ‘collective worship’ in UK.… Read the rest
Guatemala: Killings of Women Increase in 2006
Jul 20th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonOver 2,200 women and girls have been brutally murdered in Guatemala since 2001.… Read the rest
Dogma
Jul 19th, 2006 11:43 pm | By Ophelia BensonA more troubling reading, however, is that Nazi speech is worth protecting even if a consequence of that protection is that someone gets hurt or killed. ‘I will defend your right to say it, even if your saying it makes violence more likely against the people attacked in your pamphlets.’ Is that what is meant? Defenders of free speech squirm on this point…they assure us dogmatically that there is no clear evidence of any causal connection between, say, racist posters and incidents of racial violence…
Yeah. The assurance often seems very dogmatic to me – it just somehow has to be true that there is no causal connection between racist speech and racial violence, … Read the rest
Putcher Glasses on, People
Jul 19th, 2006 11:42 pm | By Ophelia BensonAnd there’s this interesting article by Scott McLemee which is a good read in itself and also the cause that – there is much silliness among the commenters. Why does a piece by an omnivorous reader like Scott attract so many people who can’t read at all? People who read the label on a can of pineapple juice and think it contains Crisco? Dunno, but the result is pretty funny. Somebody started off by reading Scott’s “There are plenty of conservative publicists in America now. There are not many conservative thinkers, proper, worthy of the name” and, first, paraphrasing that as “America has lots of conservative pundits. But thinkers? Not so much,” which is a pretty bad job of paraphrasing … Read the rest
Didja Drop Your Compass?
Jul 19th, 2006 8:49 pm | By Ophelia BensonOne remark in this CHE piece on learning to hate literature in order to get a PhD in it particularly caught my attention. It’s so expectable and yet so odd.
… Read the restIn a course I taught last spring, after three months of tracing the development of literary theory from humanism to structuralism to poststructuralism to the dilemmas of the present, I finally asked my students the question: “So, why do you want to study literature, knowing what you now know?” I wondered if studying a century of cynicism had altered their motives in the slightest. They were all considering graduate school, but their answers had little to do with what I knew they would need to write in their application essays…It
Stride me no Strident
Jul 19th, 2006 8:44 pm | By Ophelia BensonSo Katha Pollitt talks a little more about that imbecilic review of her book. Perhaps I’m not the only one who thought it was jaw-droppingly stupid.
Emily Amick: There’s a discussion raging on the blogosphere right now about Wonkette’s ‘post-feminist’ review of your book in the New York Times.
Ah. I rushed over to Google blogsearch to find out about that, and the comments seemed to be running heavily in the ‘jaw-droppingly stupid’ direction. Good. But – what did the Times ever run a review like that for? What is its point? What next? Assigning a stand-up comic to review Amartya Sen’s next book? Assigning Tom Cruise to review a book by John Searle? What is their point? … Read the rest
Trevor-Roper Wrote a Good Letter
Jul 19th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe Observer is skewered as ‘that declining organ of Germanic Wykehamist apocalyptic socialism.’… Read the rest
More Scott McLemee on Philip Rieff
Jul 19th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonRieff’s ideas are still very much in the vein of what Sontag denounced as ‘piety without content.’… Read the rest
Richard Ashcroft Discusses Medical Ethics
Jul 19th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIn all of Ashcroft’s work, there is a trade off between the scientific and the philosophical.… Read the rest