George Monbiot wrote a thing about Julien Benda in 2013.

In 1927 the French philosopher Julien Benda published a piercing attack on the intellectuals of his day. They should, he argued in La Trahison des Clercs (the treason of the scholars), act as a check on popular passions(1). Civilisation, he claimed, is possible only if intellectuals stand in opposition to the demands of political “realism” by upholding universal principles. “Thanks to the scholars,” Benda maintained, “humanity did evil for two thousand years, but honoured good.” Europe might have been lying in the gutter, but it was looking at the stars.

But those ideals, he argued, had been lost. Europe was now lying in the gutter, looking in the gutter. The

Honestly. Just look at that.

… Read the rest

Ah yes, of course. Naturally if a woman is cast to play the Doctor in Doctor Who, it is necessary to report that she has at some point been naked in front of a camera. That’s the important thing. GETCHER TITS OUT.

The Sun and Mail Online have been accused of being “reductive and irresponsible” after publishing nude photographs of Jodie Whittaker in articles covering the announcement that she is the new star of Doctor Who.

Reporting the BBC’s announcement on Sunday that Whittaker would be the first female Doctor, both publications ran articles about Whittaker appearing naked or topless in previous acting work, illustrating the stories with stills.

Stills of TITS. Because TITS. Because look, if you’re going to … Read the rest

Jim Wright on the Doctor Who scandal.

So, the new Doctor is … <horrified gasp!> … a WOMAN

A woman.

Can you believe it?

The New Doctor can’t be … <horrified gasp> … a WOMAN!

No no no! The Doctor, a time traveling non human alien from a distance planet in a fictional universe who has regenerated, what? ten? eleven? times now from the dead into a different body in order to fight an ongoing cast of ridiculous kitchen appliances using really, really shitty special effects over, I dunno, 30 years or more, yeah THAT guy, has to be a white dude.

Has. To. Be. A. White. Dude.

Because that’s why you watch this dopey British science fiction show,

I saw this everywhere yesterday but didn’t blog it because I don’t know why because it was too sad I guess. Maryam Mirzakhani died at age 40.

Maryam Mirzakhani, an Iranian mathematician who was the only woman ever to win a Fields Medal, the most prestigious honor in mathematics, died on Saturday. She was 40.

The cause was breast cancer, said Stanford University, where she was a professor. The university did not say where she died.

Her death is “a big loss and shock to the mathematical community worldwide,” said Peter C. Sarnak, a mathematician at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study.

The Fields Medal, established in 1936, is often described as the Nobel Prize of

Being outspoken, honest, independent-minded is one thing; being a bitch, a nag, a fanatic is another. The Atlantic on a study of teenage girls:

A number of girls from different middle and high schools reported similar experiences. One girl, Rory, 13, told them, “I was trying out for basketball and I got up to sign the sheet and everyone was like, ‘Oh get back in the kitchen!’” Rory’s initial response was anger—but then it turned to acceptance. “Guys are like that, and you get over it. It doesn’t bother me, it’s stereotypical. We read these books all the time where women are in the kitchen,” she said. (Pomerantz and Raby used pseudonyms to protect the girls’ identities.)

Pomerantz and

The Times reports that Americans who know where North Korea is on a map are more likely to favor diplomacy over military responses. Makes sense. If you don’t know where North Korea is on a map you probably don’t know much of anything, and if you don’t know much of anything, violence can seem like a good solution to problems and also an awesome afternoon out.

An experiment led by Kyle Dropp of Morning Consult from April 27-29, conducted at the request of The New York Times, shows that respondents who could correctly identify North Korea tended to view diplomatic and nonmilitary strategies more favorably than those who could not. These strategies included imposing further economic sanctions, increasing pressure on