Month: April 2010

It’s so uncool to think there is a real world.

Some antievolutionists admit that they intend for intelligent-design theory to serve as a “wedge” for reopening science classrooms to discussions of God.

When cultures are organized around controlling and using women, is blanket respect for Other cultures such a good idea?

Conference brought Armenian
and Turkish scholars together for the first time to discuss the 1915 genocide.

The Bush administration wants scientists it can trust.

‘Sexual selection really is a good candidate for explaining a great deal about the unique evolution of our species.’

‘There has been a tendency among Marxist, or marxisant, critics of Darwin, and social Darwinism, to criticise, or ridicule, the theory as a simple product of the society in which it was developed.’

Prose as a window-pane opens onto a reality that is solidly and visibly ‘out there.’

‘When I grew up and became a literary critic, I learned to keep silent about the reading experiences of liberation that I’d enjoyed since childhood.’

‘In the clamorous and bloodstained souk of the world…people still go unrepentantly on looking out for good lives’

Washington freed his slaves in his will, Jefferson did not. The reasons of each tell us much about American history.

Investors need to know the truth, but voters don’t. Or not.

‘Developments take place in a world linked by ideas rather than by race.’

‘Indian history from the perspective of the Hindutva ideology reintroduces ideas that have long been discarded and are of little relevance to an understanding of the past.’

If you number your paragraphs, will people mistake you for Adorno?

Richard Dawkins on the cowardly flabbiness of the intellect that afflicts otherwise rational people confronted with long-established religions.

Most government-funded Islamic clubs ‘are run by deeply conservative men and perpetuate the segregation of women.’

Dissent is part of all cultures, Asian decidedly included.

Betrousered, two-eyed philosopher Ventre considers a world in which Things are Against Us.

Paul Krugman draws an interesting parallel with Stephen Jay Gould.