All entries by this author

Take That, Hipster Doofus Professor! *

Mar 13th, 2005 | Filed by

Scott McLemee on edutainmant and its discontents.… Read the rest



Deference

Mar 12th, 2005 11:35 pm | By

So we see that the combination of rural isolation and fundamentalist religion is, shall we say, rough on women in more places than Pakistan and in religions other than Islam.

The license the Amish have been granted rests on the trust that the community will police itself, with Amish bishops and ministers acting in lieu of law enforcement. Yet keeping order comes hard to church leaders…Once a sinner has confessed, and his repentance has been deemed genuine, every member of the Amish community must forgive him. This approach is rooted in the Amish notion of Gelassenheit, or submission. Church members abide by their clergymen; children obey their parents; sisters mind their brothers; and wives defer to their husbands (divorce is

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The Amish Believe in Submission and Forgiveness *

Mar 12th, 2005 | Filed by

Which gives incest a lot of room to flourish.… Read the rest



Slavery? What Slavery? *

Mar 12th, 2005 | Filed by

Factually incorrect history.… Read the rest



Are Nazism and Communism Equivalent? *

Mar 12th, 2005 | Filed by

“there was no one in Nazi Germany who advocated “Nazism with a human face”.’… Read the rest



Gödel on the Internet *

Mar 12th, 2005 | Filed by

Gödel’s incompleteness theorem is invoked daily to whack people over the head.… Read the rest



Why Gödel Matters *

Mar 12th, 2005 | Filed by

He is deployed by people with antirationalist agendas to whack science.… Read the rest



Oh No – Imbalance in Story on Rutgers Athletics! *

Mar 11th, 2005 | Filed by

What to do? Tell the instructor what to teach, of course.… Read the rest



The Intense

Mar 10th, 2005 7:51 pm | By

We’ve been talking about passion, commitment, feeling, grievance, sincerity – about the whole idea that intensity of feeling is some sort of index of validity. Eve Garrard put it clearly: ‘do you think that one possible reason why Eagleton and (many) others are so impressed by the passion and commitment of suicide bombers, and think it must be in the service of justice and freedom, is some deep underlying moral subjectivism, ie the belief that moral claims just are validated by the sincerity and passion with which they’re held?’ I do think that, along with thinking that most people who hold that belief don’t hold it with full awareness. That it’s perhaps not so much a belief (properly so called) … Read the rest



Horowitz’s Undocumented Story Has Legs *

Mar 10th, 2005 | Filed by

Searchers have failed to find corroborating evidence, but story appears in newspapers.… Read the rest



Lars Svendsen’s A Philosophy of Boredom *

Mar 10th, 2005 | Filed by

Is boredom psychological or the result of boring shops and boring governments?… Read the rest



The End of History? *

Mar 10th, 2005 | Filed by

The notion is the last of the utopian projects.… Read the rest



A Daily Reading List – With Attitude *

Mar 10th, 2005 | Filed by

Arts and Letters Daily approaches its hundredth million.… Read the rest



Review of Bernard Williams on Truth *

Mar 9th, 2005 | Filed by

Williams effectively explains the virtues of truth telling to a non-specialist audience.… Read the rest



Oliver Sacks on Francis Crick *

Mar 9th, 2005 | Filed by

Crick’s mind was always moving forward.… Read the rest



How Not to Explain Suicide Bombing *

Mar 9th, 2005 | Filed by

Eve Garrard teases apart some familiar non-explanations.… Read the rest



An Interview with Rebecca Goldstein

Mar 9th, 2005 | By Ophelia Benson

Rebecca Goldstein has a new book out: Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel.

Readers at Science Daily call Incompleteness
’Outstanding’ and ‘Superb’.

Butterflies and Wheels: Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont call chapter 11 of their book Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science: ‘Gödel’s Theorem and Set Theory: Some Examples of Abuse.’ They give a quotation from Régis Debray as an epigraph: ‘Ever since Gödel showed that there does not exist a proof of the consistency of Peano’s arithmetic that is formalizable within this theory (1931), political scientists had the means for understanding why it was necessary to mummify Lenin…’ The chapter’s first sentence starts, ‘Gödel’s theorem is an inexhaustible source of intellectual abuses…’

Sokal … Read the rest



Unfinished Biz

Mar 9th, 2005 12:14 am | By

A little unfinished business. I meant to add something to that N&C about Terry Eagleton’s comment last month – and then I forgot. Now I’ve remembered again.

Like hunger strikers, suicide bombers are not necessarily in love with death. They kill themselves because they can see no other way of attaining justice; and the fact that they have to do so is part of the injustice…People like Rosa Luxemburg or Steve Biko give up what they see as precious (their lives) for an even more valuable cause. They die not because they see death as desirable in itself, but in the name of a more abundant life all round. Suicide bombers also die in the name of a better life

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Amnesty, Oxfam Report on Guns’ Impact on Women *

Mar 8th, 2005 | Filed by

Women are particularly at risk of certain crimes such as family violence and rape. … Read the rest



Women Challenge Traditional Status as Minors *

Mar 8th, 2005 | Filed by

Young woman in Swaziland gang-raped by bus conductors while spectators cheered. … Read the rest