Protesters torched library because the books were in Bengali not Mayek script.… Read the rest
All entries by this author
No, No Way, You Mooks
Apr 15th, 2005 | By Nick SlaterA furore was set off here last year with the news that parts of New Jersey’s sizeable but non-homogenous Wise-guy community intended to use an obscure law to set up arbitration tribunals for disputes involving hoodlums’ ladies running numbers, shaking down and generally behaving like low-bred mooks when they should be attending to the kids.
Wise-guy and non-Wise-guy critics alike protested that the 140-year-old body of Cosa Nostra-inspired laws considers Non-Sicilian broads inferior to Goodfellas and would infringe their equality rights as guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
However, a six-month study by former Teamster’s Moll Maria Pantonello concluded in December that, with new safeguards in place, Wise-guy women would still be protected by the ‘Mob law’. Her … Read the rest
Canine Cognition 
Apr 14th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Dogs can predict social events, request information, obey rules, imitate human actions.… Read the rest
Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury
Apr 14th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Choudhury, journalist, columnist, magazine editor, is in prison.… Read the rest
Equality Bill Excludes Action on Homophobia
Apr 14th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Discrimination against lesbians and gays is okay, against religious believers it’s not. … Read the rest
Another Miscellany
Apr 13th, 2005 10:36 pm | By Ophelia BensonA few miscellaneous items worth a look.
At Crooked Timber, one on Christopher Hitchens. This includes Jimmy Doyle giving some quotations from the Guardian and the New Statesman from the autumn of 2001 to show sceptics that there really were people saying just the kind of thing that other people on the thread had said no one other than ol’ Ward Churchill actually said. Quite amusing, in a morbid way. And one
on literary theory and whether literary criticism that is interested in, say, formal or aesthetic aspects of literature, or uses the dread word ‘imagination,’ is automatically ‘conservative’ and if so in what sense and according to whom and why should we care and who asked you anyway. … Read the rest
Not Either Silly
Apr 13th, 2005 6:28 pm | By Ophelia BensonI’m going to have to disagree with my friend Norm on Polly Toynbee’s comment on the pope. I hate to do it – but he’s off on his travels, so that’s all right. David Hadley of Stuff and Nonsense alerted me to Norm’s post. (How busy I am these days. I don’t even have time to get around to checking Norm every day. Terrible.)
… Read the restI really don’t get it. Every time there’s an event that brings forth a manifestation of religious belief by large numbers of people, some militant secularist or other will give out an opinion that would be jejune coming from an intelligent sixth-former…But how she can speak in so trivializing a way of world-wide reaction to
Salon Visits David Horowitz
Apr 13th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
And finds that mild criticism is on a level with terrorism.… Read the rest
Lakoff’s Vocabulary Overhaul as Road to Victory
Apr 13th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Just get the frames right, and everyone will finally understand.… Read the rest
Morality Police Enforce ‘Islamic Values’ in Gaza
Apr 13th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Woman murdered for walking on beach with sister and fiance.… Read the rest
Margaret Drabble on Amber Reeves
Apr 13th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Fabian daughter of Fabian mother, adult education teacher, writer, activist, more.… Read the rest
What’s Up With Bloomsburyland?
Apr 13th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
How to analyse Woolf’s inner life when that is impossible.… Read the rest
What’s Up With Poetry?
Apr 13th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Eleven poets discuss recent swingeing attack on the current state of poetry.… Read the rest
Arab Feminists on Women’s Rights
Apr 13th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Laws permit beating and caging within four walls, allow them to be bought and sold.… Read the rest
Tories Propose More ‘Faith’ Schools
Apr 13th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Where the young can ask big questions and get damn fool answers.… Read the rest
Papa Boys Whoop it up at Rome Bash
Apr 12th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The new religion of celebrity worship at work.… Read the rest
More Scary Doesn’t Mean More Likely
Apr 12th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
When that supervolcano erupts we’ll be at the mercy of bullies with melanomas.… Read the rest
An Epistemologically Instructive Experience
Apr 12th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Suave and sinuous prose now preening and overelaborate; fearless cheekiness now truculent bravado.… Read the rest
Papal Obsequies
Apr 11th, 2005 8:34 pm | By Ophelia BensonI usually like David Aaronovitch’s columns (even though, or perhaps because, they sometimes make me squirm slightly – not enough to rattle the chair, but enough to rearrange a few dust particles), but I take issue with something in this one. It’s about the pope and the ructions last week, and what to make of it.
… Read the restThe cover of last week’s New Statesman, for example, proclaims of the dead Pope that ‘he did more to spread Aids in Africa than prostitution and the trucking industry combined’. By opposing the use of condoms, the argument went, the church had created intense and unnecessary suffering.
But this won’t do, either. The church has only succeeded in Africa by tolerating polygamy, and,
