Well I feel vindicated. I read an article in The American Prospect a couple of weeks ago that I thought made some staggeringly stupid remarks based on some even more staggeringly stupid assumptions. I almost wrote a Note and Comment about it, but then got too busy with other subjects and so let it slide. But now there is a review in The Washington Post of a book by the same author, pointing out some of the flaws I noticed and some others besides – in particular, the fact (which the Prospect did not make clear enough) that Danny Goldberg is an entertainment industry executive, so his enthusiasm for popular culture has considerable financial interest behind it. There I was … Read the rest

Tam Dalyell, UK MP and father of the House of Commons, may not be fashionable, but I’m pretty sure he has “nonsense” inscribed on his forehead. At the end of March, he had this to say about Tony Blair:

I…believe that since Mr Blair is going ahead with his support for a US attack without unambiguous UN authorisation, he should be branded as a war criminal and sent to The Hague.
The Guardian, March 27th 2003

Okay, so maybe there will be one or two Baathists reading this who will think that this is not such a bad idea. But I wonder what they will think about Mr Dalyell’s latest offering in today’s Observer/Guardian:

My view is that, depending on

Well here’s a turn-up for the books. Plagiarism now. Someone has helped himself to the article I wrote for In Focus recently, ‘What Is Elitism?’ and posted it on a philosophy forum without so much as a by your leave. Not a word about B and W, not even a shy mention of the fact that he hadn’t written it himself. Well except the dopy last sentence, he may have written that; I certainly didn’t. But I bloody well did write the rest of it.

I’ve been emailing him on the subject, but answer came there none. He did append a vague (and highly overdue) remark to the effect that ‘a version’ of this article appeared somewhere or other, naming … Read the rest

A UN representative says the UK government is breaching the United Nations convention on children’s rights by imposing a targets and testing regime in English schools that ignores their needs. This is an interesting notion, and one is tempted to mock it noisily. There is a right not to be tested? Who knew! If only that right had been discovered when I was twelve! How much more fun I would have had. But perhaps one ought to resist the temptation. But perhaps one still ought to point out some problems with that idea, without actually mocking.

Of course, the whole question of tests and testing is a controversial, endlessly-debated one. There is much to be said for both sides, … Read the rest

Right. Here’s an Op-Ed piece by Daniel Dennett that gives one answer to Susan Greenfield’s notion that ‘science-religion ding-dongs’ are a complete waste of time. The anecdote he tells about taking part in a conference at which leading authors, artists and scientists talked to clever high school students, and he at the end of his talk mentioned that he is an atheist.

Many students came up to me afterwards to thank me, with considerable passion, for “liberating” them. I hadn’t realized how lonely and insecure these thoughtful teenagers felt. They’d never heard a respected adult say, in an entirely matter of fact way, that he didn’t believe in God. I had calmly broken a taboo and shown how easy it