Triumphantly compare Pamuk to Irving as if the two were parallel instead of opposite.… Read the rest
All entries by this author
Andrew Brown Reviews Daniel Dennett
Feb 25th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonNot very coherently.… Read the rest
Florida County Selects Diluted Biology Textbook
Feb 25th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonPublisher Holt, Rinehart and Winston edited several sections at the request of the Discovery Institute.… Read the rest
Letter to the New York Times
Feb 25th, 2006 | By Daniel DennettThe New York Times has opted not to publish this letter from Daniel Dennett, so B&W is pleased to make it available. Judith Shulevitz’s review is here.
Thanks to Judith Shulevitz [“When Cosmologies Collide,” NYTBR January 22] for unwittingly exposing the serious flaw in Michael Ruse’s attempt to distinguish the science of evolution (of which he approves) from the more far-reaching implications of “evolutionism,” which he characterizes as “a metaphysical world picture.” Since she grants that those who expound “evolutionism” “may well be right” in the cosmological implications they see flowing from contemporary biology, she recommends teaching “evolutionism in religion class, along with creationism, deism and all the other cosmologies that float unexamined through our lives.” By the same … Read the rest
Inverted Colonialism
Feb 24th, 2006 7:43 pm | By Ophelia BensonConsider Azam Kamguian in Ibn Warraq’s Leaving Islam, for instance. Page 216.
The very fact that people are forced to abide by laws based on something some god or prophet is reported to have said somewhere is a form of mental violence.
Page 219.
… Read the restWhen I came to the West in the early 1990s, I was faced with the fact that the majority of intellectuals, mainstream media, academics, and feminists, in the name of respecting ‘other cultures,’ were trying to justify Islam by dividing it into fundamentalist and moderate, progressive and reactionary…For people like me, the victims of Islam in power, it was suffocating to listen to and have to refute endless tales to justify the terror and bloodshed
The Community Community
Feb 24th, 2006 7:13 pm | By Ophelia BensonSometimes my head swims. The room goes dark, spots dance before my eyes, there is a howling sound in my ear, bats seem to dart back and forth overhead, my hair tangles, the milk curdles in the fridge, frogs and ravens knock on the door. In short, I can’t make sense of it all. It doesn’t add up, or compute, as the sophisticates say.
Look, I’ll show you.
Here, for instance, is the BBC on Livingstone.
… Read the restIn a statement, the Board of Deputies of British Jews said it regretted the guilty result, but said Mr Livingstone had been “the architect of his own misfortune” by failing to recognise the upset caused. It added it had never sought anything more
Smooth, Summers Was Not
Feb 24th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIt was the spicy chicken wing that did him in.… Read the rest
Livingstone Suspended for Being Insensitive
Feb 24th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHis words were inappropriate for the ‘elected representative of Londoners of all faiths and beliefs.’… Read the rest
Nine Life Sentences in Gujarat Case
Feb 24th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonTwelve Muslims, two others burned to death when Best Bakery was attacked by a Hindu mob in 2002. … Read the rest
Press Freedom at Risk
Feb 24th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonShould we be sensitive to religious feelings or to readers’ need to get uncensored news?… Read the rest
Cartoon Controversies at Student Newspapers
Feb 24th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonPapers at Harvard and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign publish; UI editors suspended.… Read the rest
Scott McLemee Questions David Horowitz
Feb 24th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonReading Horowitz’s latest bit of pulp fiction with all the seriousness he can muster.… Read the rest
Scott Jaschik on the Aftermath of Summers
Feb 24th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSummers spoke out for many causes that are central to quality in higher education.… Read the rest
Thomas Nagel Reviews Kwame Anthony Appiah
Feb 24th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe right of exit is not enough to cancel the constraining power of strong communal identities.… Read the rest
In the State of Denmark
Feb 23rd, 2006 8:49 pm | By Ophelia BensonHitchens murmurs a gentle reproach or two.
The incredible thing about the ongoing Kristallnacht against Denmark…is that it has resulted in, not opprobrium for the religion that perpetrates and excuses it, but increased respectability!…And nobody in authority can be found to state the obvious and the necessary – that we stand with the Danes against this defamation and blackmail and sabotage. Instead, all compassion and concern is apparently to be expended upon those who lit the powder trail, and who yell and scream for joy as the embassies of democracies are put to the torch in the capital cities of miserable, fly-blown dictatorships. Let’s be sure we haven’t hurt the vandals’ feelings.
Let’s be sure we surrender … Read the rest
Hitchens Urges: Stand Up for Denmark
Feb 23rd, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAll compassion and concern is apparently to be expended upon those who lit the powder trail.… Read the rest
More on Summers
Feb 23rd, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonChronicle oversimplifies his women and science comments.… Read the rest
South Dakota Moves to Ban Abortion
Feb 23rd, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWhich is already nearly unavailable there.… Read the rest
Churches Have no Divine Right to be Heard
Feb 23rd, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonA motormouth with a mitre brings neither gaiety nor wisdom to the nations. … Read the rest
Irving Says Austria is Trying to Silence Him
Feb 23rd, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAs he tried to silence a certain historian via a libel trial, perhaps?… Read the rest