David Aaronovitch says much of the Left considers America far worse than Saddam’s human rights record.… Read the rest
All entries by this author
Statistics? What Statistics? 
Apr 27th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Crime figures go down but three out of four people still think they’re going up.… Read the rest
Robotic Reactions
Apr 27th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Mush-headed sentimentality and reluctance to think about religious motivations prevent clear thinking after September 11.… Read the rest
Back and Forth
Apr 27th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Child-rearing has been a site of fashionable nonsense for at least a century.… Read the rest
Oh That’s Who Likes Goddesses!
Apr 26th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Saddam Hussein ‘wrote’ a ‘novel’ and, er, borrowed a painting of a ‘goddess’ for the cover. Very spiritual, she looks.… Read the rest
Interview With Steve Jones
Apr 26th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
A conversation about gender, sex, males as parasites, and dinner parties.… Read the rest
Diplomacy
Apr 25th, 2003 7:10 pm | By Ophelia BensonThere was an interview with John Brady Kiesling on Fresh Air last night. He is the former mid-level diplomat who wrote a letter of resignation shortly before the war in Iraq started. The interview was both interesting and depressing, though not very surprising. Kiesling thinks nation-building and democracy-establishing in Iraq will require far more money and attention than the US has any intention of bestowing on them, that the tensions between Kurds and Shiites are going to be even worse than Saddam was, that the US has thrown away the good relations with Europe that the State Department has spent years and the efforts of people like Kiesling building up, and that the US fails to realise how much it … Read the rest
Then Again
Apr 25th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Or maybe the WHO is not over-reacting to SARS after all.… Read the rest
Get a Grip, Ontario Doctor Says
Apr 24th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
SARS is nasty but it’s not the plague.… Read the rest
Nobody Go to Toronto!
Apr 24th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Could the WHO be over-reacting a tiny bit?… Read the rest
Compelled to Read This
Apr 24th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The New Scientist reviews What Philosophers Think and finds it necessary reading for scientists.… Read the rest
Anti-realism – what’s at stake? An interview with Jonathan Rée
Apr 24th, 2003 | By Jeremy StangroomThere is a certain caricature of philosophers which has it that they spend
their time arguing about whether things like tables and chairs exist. This is
just a caricature, but nevertheless there is an element of truth in it when
it comes to the debate about realism and anti-realism. Put crudely, realists
– or, more precisely, external realists – think both that the world exists
independently of our perceptions of it and thoughts about it, and that we can
reliably know about the world. Anti-realists, for a variety of reasons, doubt
both these propositions.
The philosophical debate about realism and anti-realism – which involves arguments
about, for example, sense experience, language, and the nature of knowledge
– is complex and … Read the rest
Students Just Sliding By
Apr 23rd, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Survey of New York high school students finds them feeling unchallenged.… Read the rest
Appeals Panels Versus Teachers
Apr 23rd, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Teahers’ union calls for an end to panels that can force schools to take back pupils expelled for violence or threats.… Read the rest
Simple Gifts
Apr 22nd, 2003 9:52 pm | By Ophelia BensonI linked to this essay about George Bush in the Atlantic Monthly a few days ago. I was and still am particularly interested in the depiction of Bush’s narrowness that Richard Brookhiser gives.
… Read the rest“Practically,” Brookhiser writes, “Bush’s faith means that he does not tolerate, or even recognize, ambiguity: there is an all-knowing God who decrees certain behaviors, and leaders must obey.” While this clear-cut belief structure enables him to make split-second decisions and take action with principled confidence, it also means that he is limited by “strictly defined mental horizons.”…”Bush may be a free-range animal, but he has a habitat, in which he stays. If he needs to know some facts that his advisers don’t know, he can discover them.
Could Do Better
Apr 22nd, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Matt Ridley is making good progress in agreeing with Steven Rose, Steven Rose says. … Read the rest
SARS in a Wilderness of Mirrors
Apr 22nd, 2003 | By David StanwayThere is an old Chinese folk tale in which a fool
deposits 300 pieces of silver in a hole. In order to conceal his largesse, he
puts up a sign nearby to announce that “300 pieces of silver do not lie here.”
The moral of the tale was that the more you try to cover something up, the more
obvious it is that something is being concealed.
The Chinese government, fiercely vigilant when
it comes to any manifestation of press freedom, are learning this lesson the
hard way with regard to the viral condition known as SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory
Syndrome. It used to be thought that in China, the only way of confirming if
a story was true … Read the rest
We Need Reductionism
Apr 21st, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Thomas DeGregori on the scientific advances ‘reductionism’ has made possible.… Read the rest
Fund Vocational Training Too
Apr 21st, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Engineering and technical apprenticeships should have as much money and esteem as academic subjects.… Read the rest
Theory
Apr 21st, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Don’t you wish you’d been there? No? No, nor do we.
External Resources
- Burke on Ruddick
‘if one is more knowledgeable, there really is no basis for rejecting any of their insights, as I was struggling to do.’ - Longer Version of Lisa Ruddick’s Essay
On professional deformation in the humanities. - Professionalism and its Discontents
Lisa Ruddick questions professional norms that rule out certain domains of thought.
