‘Among his many weapons are a forensic curiosity, a vast learning, a savage wit, a commanding intellect, an international perspective and a moral authority that is built on something sturdier than cheap moralising.’… Read the rest
A Moral Argument for Atheism
Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSlaughter of innocents, human sacrifice, eternal torture – it’s all there.… Read the rest
Durkheim on Religion
Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe 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.’… Read the rest
Memory and trauma
Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSally Satel looks at the way we construct narratives about our symptoms.… Read the rest
Curtis White on The Middle Mind
Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonBook reviews in glossy magazines, worshipful interviewers on public radio and tv, ‘annoying’ as the ultimate condemnation…… Read the rest
The Baghdad blogger.
Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWhat life was really like in Saddam’s Iraq and what it’s like now.… 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
‘Without a theory, you can’t meet the people.’
Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonMiller wonders why ‘unavailing Latinate neologisms’ convince so many people that something profound is being said.… Read the rest
Or Academic Pooh and Postmodern Instincts
Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonLiterary criticism, cultural studies; love letter and satire.… Read the rest
The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes
Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonConsider Will Crooks, Labour MP. ‘Growing up in extreme poverty…Crooks spent 2d. on a secondhand Iliad, and was dazzled…’… Read the rest
Carol Tavris Wonders Where the Evidence Is
Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘But the gender-genre books that are based largely on clinical intuition and popular psychology typically lack a basic skepticism toward received wisdom and the willingness to wrestle with an idea to see who wins.’… Read the rest
Research psychology or psychotherapy.
Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘…many of the widely accepted claims promulgated by therapists are based on subjective clinical opinions and have been resoundingly disproved by empirical research conducted by psychological scientists.’… Read the rest
Dwight Macdonald
Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘…all but a fraction of his own writing molders unattended in America’s used bookstores. Like the New York Intellectuals with whom he was associated…he is referenced more often than read, a sad fate for a critic who wrote so much, so well and with such wit and insight.’… Read the rest
The Great Convergence
Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonBeware of neo-Deistic pseudoreligion.… Read the rest
The margins are getting so crowded!
Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonCentrality is so uncool that the margins are as full of people as Bangkok or the Aran Islands.… Read the rest
Ethnomathematics
Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘Mathematics is absolutely integrated with Western civilization, which conquered and dominated the entire world.’… Read the rest
Anthropologists sharpen their knives
Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘Anthropologists are trained to appreciate cultural differences, but they can’t stand it within their own profession.’… Read the rest
Steven Weinberg on the Sokal Hoax
Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonNo, linear doesn’t mean what pomos think it means.… Read the rest
Thomas Kuhn Examined
Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe shift from logic to history, and the perennial appeal of irrationalist programs.… Read the rest
Samantha Power on genocide and failures to prevent it.
Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWhy did it take the US Senate forty years to ratify the UN Genocide Convention?… Read the rest