From the mills of theory to the virtue of facts and the danger of ideology.… Read the rest
All entries by this author
Charles and Charles
Nov 20th, 2004 10:35 pm | By Ophelia BensonOn the other hand. One letter to the Independent on the ‘Charles tells lower orders to stay in their places’ matter makes an interesting point.
… Read the restHow ironic that on the same day that Charles Clarke says that Prince Charles is out of touch for commenting that children want to be pop stars and the like without having to do anything to earn it, he chooses to announce that “every school must take its fair share of unruly pupils”. As a supply teacher in this country for the past two years, I think that, at least in this instance, it is Mr Clarke who seems more out of touch than the Prince. When was the last time Mr Clarke was in
Fishy
Nov 20th, 2004 7:52 pm | By Ophelia BensonOh dear, oh dear. One shouldn’t. One really shouldn’t. It’s most unkind. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. One feels frightful about it, one feels almost tempted to leave it alone, to do the decent thing. And yet when one sees a barrel with a lot of lazy fish swimming around in it, one shoots at them. One can’t help it. And anyway, what’s the matter with fish today, why do they all seem to think they are qualified to do things far beyond their capabilities? Horrible jumped-up little bastards – where’s one’s gun?
No seriously the hell with all that. The hell with pacifism towards that particular easy fish. I mean – if Charles Windsor, of all the … Read the rest
Homa Arjomand to Speak Against Sharia Court
Nov 20th, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Vancouver Nov. 21, Victoria Nov. 22.… Read the rest
Schools Must ‘Share Burden’ of Unruly Students
Nov 20th, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Disruptive students should be dispersed to combat the creation of sink schools.… Read the rest
Creationism, Democracy, Science and Reason
Nov 20th, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
There are some tensions there.… Read the rest
A Much Bigger Charles in Many Ways
Nov 20th, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Ministers put the boot in, cheer each other on, regarding Prince’s memo.… Read the rest
What Else Would a Hereditary Monarch Think?
Nov 20th, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Charles has no abilities and he works 1.5 days a week. So what’s his point?… Read the rest
Charles Has Good Old Hissy Fit
Nov 20th, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Naughty ‘learning culture’ tells people they can become more competent heads of state…… Read the rest
‘Socialist’ Blames van Gogh for his own Murder
Nov 20th, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘…the perpetrators feel there is no viable alternative in this racist climate.’… Read the rest
What is wrong with everybody nowadays?
Nov 20th, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
What makes people with no natural abilities think they should be kings?… Read the rest
Review of True to Life: Why Truth Matters
Nov 20th, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
To care about truth is to be vigilant about belief.… Read the rest
Entrenching Tools
Nov 19th, 2004 7:18 pm | By Ophelia BensonAn example, of the kind of thing I was talking about yesterday and a few days before that – of this matter of the complexity and arbitrariness of political categories, and of the idea that sometimes it’s just not particularly helpful or interesting to attach labels of liberal or conservative, left or right, to any and every idea that comes along. The example is from an interview with Barack Obama in the October Progressive – unfortunately not online. The interviewer, Barbara Ransby, said, ‘You also said something to the effect that you are open to ideas from both the right and the left. Now, you know this kind of talk makes progressives a little nervous. Can you elaborate on what … Read the rest
Where Are Those Pesky Relativists, Anyway?
Nov 19th, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Are criticisms of postmodernism just anti-intellectualism on the rampage?… Read the rest
Denis Dutton Reviews Joseph Carroll
Nov 19th, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
On literary Darwinism, the lust for stories, cognitive modules, pleasure.… Read the rest
85 Lashes for Breaking Ramadan Fast
Nov 19th, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
14 year old boy whipped to death in Sanandadj, Iran.… Read the rest
Evangelicals Have Learned to Play Victim
Nov 19th, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
When you make public arguments, you have to ground them in reason and evidence.… Read the rest
Cross-hatching
Nov 18th, 2004 10:52 pm | By Ophelia BensonNow (she said, throat-clearingly), that comment of Amartya Sen’s is relevant (in my mind at least) to the discussion in Politics and Morality, below. Mark Bauerlein emailed me in a cordial way to point out that there was a survey reported in the Chronicle some months ago which asked professors in all fields about their political allegiance. “Those who considered themselves Left or Center Left outnumbered those Right or Center Right by almost 3 to 1.” So, as I said in an update to that post, that at least partly answers my question about Business schools and the like, and it’s interesting in itself.
But even with that question partly answered, the more I think about this whole subject – … Read the rest
Not the Only Category
Nov 18th, 2004 8:09 pm | By Ophelia BensonAmartya Sen makes an excellent point, one I’ve seen him make often before (but it needs to be made over and over again, because it goes against a very strong stream of current opinion and it doesn’t make much headway), in this article in the New York Review of Books.
… Read the restThe richness and variety of early intellectual relations between China and India have long been obscured. This neglect is now reinforced by the contemporary tendency to classify the world’s population into distinct “civilizations” defined largely by religion (for example Samuel Huntington’s partitioning of the world into such categories as “Western civilization,” “Islamic civilization,” and “Hindu civilization”). There is, as a result, a widespread inclination to understand people mainly through
Intellectual Links Between India and China
Nov 18th, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Religion is not the only way to understand people, Amartya Sen notes.… Read the rest