The library produced Nussbaum’s Liberty of Conscience for me yesterday so I’ve read some of it and I must say, I was surprised – it’s way worse than I expected. I think it’s terrible – and it’s also extremely irritating. Tooth-grindingly irritating.

We talked about an interview in which she discussed the book with Bill Moyers last April and then we discussed it some more a couple of days later. I was critical of what she’d said then but I also gave her the benefit of the doubt on a lot of things. My mistake. She does mean what I said I thought she didn’t mean. (I see that H E Baber commented on the second post, which is … Read the rest

Not again.

The systematic demonisation of Muslims has become an important part of the central narrative of the British political and media class; it is so entrenched, so much part of normal discussion, that almost nobody notices. Protests go unheard and unnoticed.

No it hasn’t; no it isn’t; no they don’t.

As a community, British Muslims are relatively powerless. There are few Muslim MPs, there has never been a Muslim cabinet minister, no mainstream newspaper is owned by a Muslim and, as far as we are aware, only one national newspaper has a regular Muslim columnist on its comment pages, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown of The Independent.

What does it mean to be powerless as a community? What is a community? … Read the rest

There was a call for papers on the Women’s Studies List yesterday, for a Women’s and Gender Studies conference in March 2009 in conjunction with an Association I hadn’t heard of before, called the Association of Feminist Epistemologies, Methodologies, Metaphysics, and Science Studies. That’s a lot of things to be in one Association, especially when they’re all plural. Out in the conventional world of course there’s just epistemology, but this Association gets to have lots of them (of the Feminist variety). One wonders how that works. One also wonders what this Association is like.

FEMMSS (Feminist Epistemologies, Metaphysics, Methodology and Science Studies) continues to be concerned about the importance and difficulty of
translating knowledge into action and practice. Ours is

You did enjoy the ‘American Family Association’ story I hope. I know I did.

AFA apparently has implemented a policy of substituting “homosexual” whenever the word “gay” appears in wire stories that appear on its website. That resulted in a fantastic write-up of this weekend’s Olympic track and field trials, which were dominated by sprinter Tyson Gay.

Like so:

Tyson Homosexual was a blur in blue, sprinting 100 meters faster than anyone ever has…Homosexual qualified for his first Summer Games team and served notice he’s certainly someone to watch in Beijing. “It means a lot to me,” the 25-year-old Homosexual said. “I’m glad my body could do it, because now I know I have it in me.”…Wearing a royal blue

I’m a sucker for sudden releases from captivity. Well who isn’t. I feel sheepish, because it’s so obvious, but what the hell. I’m a sucker for reunions, too. You get your release from captivity and your reunion together – well there you go. I’m glad Bettancourt is free, I’m glad she looks so much healthier than she did last November.

Funny, it was almost exactly a year ago – a year ago tomorrow – that Alan Johnston was suddenly released, and I was a sucker then too.

There are other captives though.… Read the rest