Category: Flashback

‘A Russian, an Italian, could not justify beating his wife to death by referring to the customs of dear old Moscow or Calabria’

The Bush administration wants scientists it can trust.

Why do people believe or disbelieve?

Bernard Ortiz De Montellano on gibberish dressed up as education.

Dawkins on fun and games.

The shift from logic to history, and the perennial appeal of irrationalist programs.

The way to ‘reject the insipid relativism of the tabula rasa without denying or ignoring the freedom and variability of individual human beings and their cultures.’

Paul Krugman draws an interesting parallel with Stephen Jay Gould.

Conference brought Armenian
and Turkish scholars together for the first time to discuss the 1915 genocide.

TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

(1) Check out that tree. Isn’t it pretty?
(2) Therefore, God exists.

‘Whenever you’re told that you shouldn’t look into something, for some people, that is a very clear directive that you ought to keep looking.’

Meera Nanda had good reasons to fight against patriarchal, upper-caste Hindu traditions that would have suppressed all she valued. Science was not ‘elitist’ or Western but a way of life and a philosophy for social action.

No, linear doesn’t mean what pomos think it means.

Slaughter of innocents, human sacrifice, eternal torture – it’s all there.

Betrousered, two-eyed philosopher Ventre considers a world in which Things are Against Us.

When cultures are organized around controlling and using women, is blanket respect for Other cultures such a good idea?

Alternative to what? Testing and evidence?

NAGPRA is a well-intentioned piece of legislation that has grown into a monster of anti-scientific bias.

James Wood on the grim outlook for social realism and ‘hysterical realism’, which may allow a space for the aesthetic and the contemplative again.

‘Anthropologists are trained to appreciate cultural differences, but they can’t stand it within their own profession.’