Because once the inspectors are barred, speculation and exaggeration move in.… Read the rest
Elif Shafak Acquitted of ‘Insulting Turkishness’ 
Sep 21st, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Government may amend Article 301 which makes ‘denigrating Turkish national identity’ a crime.… Read the rest
Michael Walsh on the Pope
Sep 21st, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Pope’s desire to re-Christianise Europe underlies his Regensburg address.… Read the rest
No Good Blaming the Internet for Sockpuppetry
Sep 21st, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Deception is deception, whatever the medium.… Read the rest
Andrew Brown on Dawkins on God
Sep 21st, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Why does religion persist in the face of arguments and evidence?… Read the rest
Scott McLemee on Walter Benn Michaels
Sep 21st, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘Michaels will have none of this repackaging of racist pseudoscience as “anti-racist” cultural relativism.’… Read the rest
The public arena has grown hostile to reason
Sep 20th, 2006 10:13 pm | By Ophelia BensonI went to hear Chris Mooney on his book tour on Sunday, at dear Ravenna Third Place, which I have known since before it was born. He mentioned that he’d heard Al Gore was going to do a book about the war on reason, and sure enough. I’ve always found Gore too conservative in many ways, but on the other hand I’ve always liked his, shall we say, anti-anti-intellectualism, or ‘wonkishness’ as it’s usually called. Wonkishness is a good thing.
… Read the restAs described by editor Scott Moyers, the book is a meditation on how “the public arena has grown more hostile to reason,” and how solving problems such as global warming is impeded by a political culture with a pervasive
Shabnam Ramaswamy’s Women’s Court
Sep 20th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Tells men she is like Durga with her ten hands. In one hand a stick, in another a law book, in another a flower.… Read the rest
Interview with Walter Benn Michaels
Sep 20th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Race gives a certain fantasy of what equality is: a world that is equal if there are no racists.… Read the rest
Walter Benn Michaels on the Trouble with Diversity
Sep 20th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘We like to talk about the differences we can appreciate, and we don’t like to talk about the ones we can’t.’… Read the rest
Gore Writing Book on ‘the Assault on Reason’
Sep 20th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
On public hostility to reason: problem-solving impeded by unwillingness to let facts drive decisions.… Read the rest
Indolink on Nussbaum on Hindutva
Sep 20th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
New book traces background of Gujarat riots in ideology of the Hindu right. … Read the rest
Explain
Sep 19th, 2006 6:50 pm | By Ophelia BensonGeorge Johnson in SciAm offers some welcome clarity.
… Read the rest…there has been a resurgence in recent years of “natural theology”–the attempt to justify religious teachings not through faith and scripture but through rational argument, astronomical observations and even experiments on the healing effects of prayer….Owen Gingerich, a Harvard University astronomer and science historian, tells how in the 1980s he was part of an effort to produce a kind of anti-Cosmos, a television series called Space, Time, and God that was to counter Sagan’s “conspicuously materialist approach to the universe.” The program never got off the ground, but its premise survives: that there are two ways to think about science. You can be a theist, believing that behind the veil
Fresh Air on Christian Zionism
Sep 19th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Christian Zionists don’t want peace in the Middle East. The Messiah is on his way!… Read the rest
Michael Sandel and Thomas Nagel Discuss
Sep 19th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Rawlsian liberalism, abortion, the status of the fetus, political liberalism, why they matter.… Read the rest
Timothy Garton Ash on Islam in Europe
Sep 19th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Frets about something called ‘Enlightenment fundamentalism.’… Read the rest
Theism and Science Not All That Compatible
Sep 19th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘What sounds like a harmless metaphor can restrict the intellectual bravado that is essential to science.’… Read the rest
Pregnancy Centers Give Disinformation on Abortion
Sep 19th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Report says 20 of 23 federally funded centers gave false or misleading information about abortion risks.… Read the rest
Brenda Maddox’s Biography of Ernest Jones
Sep 18th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Psychoanalysis turned out to be more like a religious cult or a fractious, fissile political party than a science. … Read the rest
Matt Ridley’s Biography of Francis Crick
Sep 18th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘This was a man who gave far more to the world than just the double helix.’… Read the rest
