Don’t you wish you’d been there? No? No, nor do we.
The story of the looting of the Iraqi National Museum and other museums in Iraq is an interesting and deeply discouraging one. A giant hole has been blasted in the world’s stock of available knowledge that will never be completely repaired. Even if all the missing artworks do eventually turn up on the black market (a highly unlikely if), that still leaves all the books and manuscripts that went up in flames at the National Library, and all the artworks that are not missing but smashed. Whatever the neglect or indifference of the Pentagon in not protecting the sites, the damage is done now, and people who think history and knowledge are good things are in shock.
Slate has a … Read the rest
Ian Buruma says in this article in Prospect that the source of the bitterness between France and the US is that they are the two great missionary-revolutionary countries, the two great believers in universals, only they have different ‘universals’ (quite a paradoxical outcome). Both are idealist nations, both are the proud inheritors of institutions and values born in violent revolution, but the ideals and institutions and values are not the same ones. So we come to Liberty fries and Liberty toast and a deluge of Francophobe jokes on the Internet.
But it’s possible that Buruma overestimates US idealism at times.
… Read the restUnless one believes, like Noam Chomsky, that the war was fought for the sake of corporate interests, that too was
Shock-horror at tampering with the speed of light; coarse and flippant attacks on peer review.… Read the rest
Sometimes it can seem as if Americans have a special gift for naïveté – something to do with living in a huge country bordered by oceans, thus distant from the rest of the world, and also to do with our dreams of exceptionalism and being the City on a Hill, and maybe also to do with vague notions that people who live right in the place where Levis and Hollywood movies and Big Macs actually come from have no need to do a lot of heavy lifting-type thought, that that kind of thing is for those poor deprived people in other countries who have to import their Jurassic Park and Kentucky Fried Chicken from us. Whatever the reason, we’re not … Read the rest
Niall Ferguson reviews Fareed Zakaria’s book on the rivalry between democracy and freedom.… Read the rest
More ridiculous rules and strictures from the guy at the Vatican.… Read the rest
But attitudes of reverence and wonder need not be ‘mystical’.… Read the rest
Science as exciting as football, as fun as going to the cinema.… Read the rest
Nine archaeologists urge protection for Iraq’s antiquities. … Read the rest
The fire at the National Library in Baghdad destroyed manuscripts many centuries old.… Read the rest
Single women supporting art, eccentric women traversing Europe to buy shocking paintings: Michael Palin’s sort of thing.… Read the rest
Teachers’ union considers a boycott of English test that dumbs down Shakespeare.… Read the rest
Postmodernist anti-science thought was once primarily associated with European
and North American academics in the humanities. Now not only has its influence
become international, but it has become integrally intertwined with a number
of other issues such as anti-globalization, anti-transgenic technology in agriculture,
and conservation. Nobody can fault the prevailing internationalism of postmodernists
and their respect for different cultures and peoples (except for the culture
of those who are committed to modern science/technology and its benefits). Nor
can we fault their argument that all of us have biases, though they fail to
comprehend the vital role that scientific method plays in helping to overcome
the limitations which personal and cultural biases impose. Their belief in the
worth and dignity of … Read the rest
Conservatives want to stop improvement, Watson says, but enhancement means making better.… Read the rest
Archaeology Magazine worried about the looting of Iraq’s antiquities before the war began.… Read the rest
One day in 1995, biologist Armand Leroi walked into Manhattan’s Strand Bookshop
and made a remarkable discovery. He came across a rather plain-looking remaindered
volume bearing the title Cancer Selection . The postdoc student had not heard of the book or its author, James
Graham. But, Leroi recalls: “I’m a sucker for odd theories of evolution, so
I bought it.” It was an impulse decision that was to have profound implications.
For buried in the book was a bold new idea that has become a muse to the young
scientist.
The book was lying on a table in front of him when I visited his South London
flat. Leroi, a reader in evolutionary developmental biology at London’s Imperial
College, is … Read the rest
Louis Wolpert talks to the pair who have helped to make the blank slate model obsolete.… Read the rest
Three years ago a first draft, this time with 99.999% accuracy.… Read the rest
Let us help you loosen your ‘retentionist’ export policies! That’s a nice statue there, for instance…… Read the rest
