And another thing. (I’m behind. I’ve had all these items burning a hole in my pocket, and I keep having to do other things, so the list keeps getting longer. You know how that goes.) And another thing: the horrible outcome of that trial of the editor of a women’s rights magazine in Afghanistan. Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists, International Freedom of Expression exchange, are all on the case. Good luck to them.

Nasab was prosecuted for reprinting articles by an Iranian scholar criticising the stoning of Muslims who convert to another religion and the use of corporal punishment for persons accused of such offences as adultery. An Afghan journalist present at the 22 October hearing

I trust you enjoyed that Christopher Hart piece in the Times. I liked it so much I thought I would revisit a few of the highlights, just for the pleasure of it.

The difficulty is rather that all the religions on offer are so patently preposterous, if not downright unpleasant. Judaism tells us in its most sacred text, the Torah, that a donkey once turned round and started an argument with its master (Numbers, chapter 22); and that the supreme creator took time out to instruct his chosen people not to carry dead badgers, pelicans, hoopoes or bats (Leviticus, chapter 11). Christianity, while accepting these texts as sacred, further believes that God manifested himself on earth in the form

Steve Fuller is a social constructionist, a Stong Progamme-ist. He says things like this:

So, what exactly do science studies scholars do – and why does it seem to bother scientists so much? We apply the theories and methods of the humanities and social sciences to the work of natural scientists and technologists. We study them as people, not minor deities. We observe them in their workplaces, interpret their documents, and propose explanations for their activities that make sense of them, given other things we know about human beings. This may sound like pretty harmless stuff, but it actually took a while even for sociologists to come round to it. Until the 1970s, the ‘sociology of science’ was based