‘Said, as literary theorist, was prone to the sweeping generalization. Irwin, as historian, is the partisan of noisome little facts.’… Read the rest
Hilary Putnam Reviews Goldstein on Spinoza
Dec 14th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘Rebecca Goldstein’s Betraying Spinoza speaks directly to my puzzlement.’… Read the rest
Arab Women Unequal in Health and Education
Dec 14th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonTangled as it is with religion and culture, the issue of the status of women is a political minefield.… Read the rest
Harvard Drops ‘Reason and Faith’ Requirement
Dec 14th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonPhilosopher notes Moral Reasoning can cover ‘what we do and do not have reason to do and believe.’… Read the rest
Secular Nepal
Dec 14th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHindu activists are demanding that Nepal be declared a Hindu state again. … Read the rest
What to Say When You’re Wrong
Dec 14th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘He just had some kind of silly positivistic notions of science, he doesn’t know what science is.’… Read the rest
No chocolate, no compass, no matches
Dec 13th, 2006 7:42 pm | By Ophelia BensonI’ve been wondering what ‘postmodernism’ is exactly. I don’t mean what its claims are, I mean what it is itself. What kind of thing is it? What box does it go in? It’s not a discipline. It’s not a kind of philosophy, like pragmatism or utilitarianism. It’s not a kind of inquiry. What is it? I realize I don’t even know, and I’m not sure other people do either, including postmodernists themselves. Their descriptions of postmodernism tend to be notably vague around the edges. Evasive, a hostile witness might say. Like this one from the hilarious article on the reception of ‘Deconstructing the evidence-based discourse in health sciences: truth, power and fascism’ by Holmes et al. last summer, the one … Read the rest
Toppness of WTM News in Wales
Dec 13th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonQuiet place, Wales.… Read the rest
Shalom Lappin Replies to Jacqueline Rose
Dec 13th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonCriticising Zionism is entirely legitimate; attempting to pass these criticisms off as therapeutic advice is not.… Read the rest
On Debating Torture
Dec 13th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘To insist on one view at the expense of the other is necessarily to violate deeply held moral intuitions.’… Read the rest
Chen Ziming Free After 17 Years
Dec 13th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonDream was to create a civil society of lobby groups and NGOs with a voice able to challenge the party.… Read the rest
Opposition to Amendments to Hudood Ordinance
Dec 13th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonPakistan’s 1979 law against rape that punished rape victims and gave legal safeguards to rapists.… Read the rest
Why Truth Matters Most Underrated Book
Dec 13th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonProspect cites chord struck with ‘liberal neocons’. Wot?… Read the rest
Numero Uno
Dec 12th, 2006 6:53 pm | By Ophelia BensonSay what you will, but having the top underrated book of the year according to Prospect is pretty good fun. Also a little surprising. We’ve tended to think of it more from the other direction. Not that it was overrated! No no – don’t run away with that idea. But that we were (modest to a fault as we are) rather surprised that it got such good reviews. So good that it wasn’t like trying to find an eyelash on a football pitch to pick out extracts for quoting in advertisements. We had spares. We had more than enough. And that was a surprise. (Why? I don’t know, exactly. Maybe partly just because it’s hard to tell how a … Read the rest
Carnival of Citizens
Dec 12th, 2006 5:29 pm | By Ophelia BensonThe Carnival of Citizens is December 17th. Deadline for submissions is December 15th. It’s hosted at Siris. It’s the brainchild of Richard at Philosophy Etcetera.… Read the rest
Another Denver Megachurch Pastor Resigns
Dec 12th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonBecause of humping men. Colorado new hotbed of tragic conflicted queer evangelists.… Read the rest
Ethiopia Finds Mengistu Guilty of Genocide
Dec 12th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonJunta ‘set up a hit squad to decimate, torture and destroy groups opposing the Mengistu regime.’… Read the rest
Why James Clerk Maxwell Matters
Dec 12th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHe carried out the first profound unification of nature’s forces. … Read the rest
Take That, Pesky Microfascists
Dec 12th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAcademic article solemnly disputes blog commenters.… Read the rest
On closer reading
Dec 11th, 2006 6:10 pm | By Ophelia BensonAll righty. I was told to read Hitchens’s ‘Why Women Aren’t Funny’ more carefully, so I did, and was unsurprised to find more silly stuff, which I feel like poking a stick at. (You may say that he’s being ironic throughout. He’s not though. I recognize some of the thoughts from other work and from interviews; the stuff about childbirth and war for instance; he means it.)
While Jewish humor, boiling as it is with angst and self-deprecation, is almost masculine by definition.
Oh, is it? I must be a man then. (Mind you, I often think that, when I read journalism about what women are and what men are. When I read that women are caring and co-operative and … Read the rest