Miller wonders why ‘unavailing Latinate neologisms’ convince so many people that something profound is being said.… Read the rest
Fashionable nonsense has been with us since the time that prehistoric man first transcribed Of Grammatology on to the walls of the Lascaux caves. Here we cast an eye back at some historical highlights.
Deep, unconscious anti-science bias.
Apr 10th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Scientists are humorless nerds, and crop circles and crystals are more fun.… Read the rest
Frank Lentricchia takes it all back.
Apr 10th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘When I grew up and became a literary critic, I learned to keep silent about the reading experiences of liberation that I’d enjoyed since childhood.’… Read the rest
A look at Kent Hovind’s dissertation.
Apr 10th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
In fact Patriot University seems to have no standards.… Read the rest
Barbara Forrest on The Wedge at Work
Apr 10th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
How Intelligent Design Creationism Is Wedging Its Way into the Cultural and Academic Mainstream… Read the rest
Derek Freeman Replies
Apr 10th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Ad hominem denigration doesn’t make the case.… Read the rest
Martin Gardner looks at a Center for nonsense studies.
Apr 10th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Dowsing, homeopathy, Tarot cards and their relevance to mental health professions, and, of course, alien abductions.… Read the rest
Livid Quietism on the Right
Apr 10th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘The anti-intellectuals are finally on the side of power at its most unforgiving and voracious.’… Read the rest
What we need is a robust universalism.
Apr 10th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘There is nothing sacrosanct about any culture or religion’s rituals. Cultures are neither monolithic, unchanging, nor without internal critique and resistance…’… Read the rest
Scott McLemee on Orwell
Apr 10th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Prose as a window-pane opens onto a reality that is solidly and visibly ‘out there.’… Read the rest
Frederick Crews on Freud
Apr 10th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘the claims of psychoanalytic theory are not interpretations but determinate propositions about how the mind regularly works’… Read the rest
The Impact of Religion on Children’s Education
Apr 10th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Azam Kamguian on what the anti-secularist backlash has done to education.… Read the rest
Gangsta Rap Culture Not Such a Good Thing?
Apr 10th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Education has been portrayed as ‘white’ – what use is it when strutting the streets?… Read the rest
Yale as a Place Where Language Goes to Die
Apr 10th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Helena Echlin on the misery of being a PhD candidate in English and American literature at Yale. She has to stifle her urge to write ‘eh?’ in the margins, discovers that obfuscation is de rigeur, and that people who talk nonsense are now looked upon not as sloppy thinkers, but as sages.… Read the rest
Massimo Pigliucci on Science and Religion
Apr 10th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Do scientists ‘keep the faith’ and if so is that a good thing? Is religion a good source of morality?… Read the rest
The Baghdad blogger.
Apr 10th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
What life was really like in Saddam’s Iraq and what it’s like now.… Read the rest
Grade Inflation
Apr 10th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
When students are consumers, they want what they pay for.… Read the rest
Byatt Reviews Browne’s Darwin Biography
Apr 10th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘There has been a tendency among Marxist, or marxisant, critics of Darwin, and social Darwinism, to criticise, or ridicule, the theory as a simple product of the society in which it was developed.’… Read the rest
Kevin McDonald on Crews on Freud
Apr 10th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘psychoanalysis, unlike a scientific theory but very much like certain religious or political movements, has essentially been immune from attacks leveled at it either from inside or outside the movement.’… Read the rest
Francis Crick on Atheism
Apr 10th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘What could be more foolish than to base one’s entire view of life on ideas that, however plausible at that time, now appear to be quite erroneous?’… Read the rest