Especially a female black nerd. One boyfriend tried to get her pregnant to solve the problem…… Read the rest
All entries by this author
Whose Bones?
Apr 12th, 2003 | By Ophelia BensonArchaeology, Anthropology and other scientific, research-based, evidence-dependent fields of study sometimes come into conflict with indigenous peoples in the areas they examine. A particularly long-standing and deeply felt grievance has been the wholesale and non-consensual removal of indigenous artifacts and human remains, by mostly non-indigenous scientists, to museums and universities. Indignation at this state of affairs on the part of the people whose artifacts and relatives’ skeletons these are is entirely understandable, but it is possible that the situation has now been over-corrected.
Many scientists, historians, and researchers, while agreeing that some collections should never have existed in the first place, consider that others should not be returned now, because they are so old that direct tribal affiliation is impossible … Read the rest
Don’t Panic 
Apr 12th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
SARS is not another 1918 flu, and breathing through a piece of cloth is a drag.… Read the rest
Yank Troops Baffle British Colleagues
Apr 12th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
How US soldiers behave, Daddy’s popsicle stand, and other views from world newspapers.… Read the rest
Gloomy Reality
Apr 12th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Azar Nafisi and her students escaped the ‘relentless fictions’ of the mullahs by reading Lolita.… Read the rest
Tom Paulin on Hazlitt
Apr 11th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Paulin considers the mystery of Hazlitt’s neglect.… Read the rest
Recognition for Hazlitt
Apr 11th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The brilliant, radical, nonsense-teasing essayist gets a little overdue grave-tidying.… Read the rest
Abstract, Imaginative Thinking
Apr 10th, 2003 7:24 pm | By Ophelia BensonIt is not very astonishing, but it is nonetheless highly unfortunate, that science is under attack, given an incurious, narrow, semi-educated, fundamentalist god-botherer in the White House. Some of the battlegrounds in that attack are discussed in this article in The Guardian, which points out the rhetorical skill with which the anti-science moves are dressed up in ‘scientific’ clothes.
… Read the rest…these aren’t the old wars of science versus religion. The new assaults on the conventional wisdom frame themselves, without exception, as scientific theories, no less deserving of a hearing than any other. Proponents of ID – using a strategy previously unheard of among anti-Darwinists – grant almost all the premises of evolution (the idea that species develop; that the world wasn’t
MEPs Vote Against Stem Cell Research
Apr 10th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Christian Conservatives set agenda in European stem cell research debate.… Read the rest
Internet Porn, Unfettered Access, Harassment
Apr 10th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Librarians file suit over threatening behavior by porn viewers and library policy of non-interference.… Read the rest
No to Misuse of Genetic Tests
Apr 10th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
UK government advisors recommend strict control of genetic testing.… Read the rest
American Science Under Threat
Apr 10th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
How US science is in trouble on a number of fronts, because of religious pressures from the Bush administration.… Read the rest
Nonsense About ‘Partisan Bickering’
Apr 9th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The US Right is proud to be partisan, the Left (what there is of it) is keen to roll over and die.… Read the rest
Culture Clash
Apr 9th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
A commitment to gender equality is an indicator of commitment to egalitarianism and tolerance overall.… Read the rest
Napoleon is Almost at the Gates
Apr 8th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Franco-phobia and the long-standing joke about the leftist bias of the US media.… Read the rest
Feelings, Nothing More Than Feelings
Apr 7th, 2003 6:25 pm | By Ophelia BensonThis is an interesting but irritating essay in the Guardian. It takes a look at the question of what books ‘everyone’ should have read by age eighteen or twenty, and also at the teaching and study of English literature at the secondary school level. It contains some peculiar albeit doubtless popular ideas about what literature is, what kind of people like it and why, what it tells us and does for us.
… Read the restEnglish is perceived as a “girly subject” and it struck me that the essence of the subject lies in being honest about your feelings – your personal response to texts. As Kate in the upper sixth says, it is about “empathy”…For me, this explained a great deal about
Is Literature a Girly Subject?
Apr 7th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Is it about ‘being honest about your feelings’? What should secondary school students read?… Read the rest
Which is Pollyanna, Which is Jeremiah?
Apr 7th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Complacency about the status quo can be at least as dangerous as optimism about new technology, Matt Ridley argues.… Read the rest
Geeks Can Be Altruistic Too
Apr 7th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
They’re not all Ayn Randian Cyberselfish stock option millionaires, some are underpaid, overworked human rights researchers.… Read the rest
Greenhouse gases in the middle ages?
Apr 7th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Perhaps global warming isn’t only a modern phenomenon…… Read the rest
