All entries by this author

Charles and Charles

Nov 20th, 2004 10:35 pm | By

On the other hand. One letter to the Independent on the ‘Charles tells lower orders to stay in their places’ matter makes an interesting point.

How ironic that on the same day that Charles Clarke says that Prince Charles is out of touch for commenting that children want to be pop stars and the like without having to do anything to earn it, he chooses to announce that “every school must take its fair share of unruly pupils”. As a supply teacher in this country for the past two years, I think that, at least in this instance, it is Mr Clarke who seems more out of touch than the Prince. When was the last time Mr Clarke was in

Read the rest


Fishy

Nov 20th, 2004 7:52 pm | By

Oh dear, oh dear. One shouldn’t. One really shouldn’t. It’s most unkind. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. One feels frightful about it, one feels almost tempted to leave it alone, to do the decent thing. And yet when one sees a barrel with a lot of lazy fish swimming around in it, one shoots at them. One can’t help it. And anyway, what’s the matter with fish today, why do they all seem to think they are qualified to do things far beyond their capabilities? Horrible jumped-up little bastards – where’s one’s gun?

No seriously the hell with all that. The hell with pacifism towards that particular easy fish. I mean – if Charles Windsor, of all the … Read the rest



Homa Arjomand to Speak Against Sharia Court *

Nov 20th, 2004 | Filed by

Vancouver Nov. 21, Victoria Nov. 22.… Read the rest



Schools Must ‘Share Burden’ of Unruly Students *

Nov 20th, 2004 | Filed by

Disruptive students should be dispersed to combat the creation of sink schools.… Read the rest



Creationism, Democracy, Science and Reason *

Nov 20th, 2004 | Filed by

There are some tensions there.… Read the rest



A Much Bigger Charles in Many Ways *

Nov 20th, 2004 | Filed by

Ministers put the boot in, cheer each other on, regarding Prince’s memo.… Read the rest



What Else Would a Hereditary Monarch Think? *

Nov 20th, 2004 | Filed by

Charles has no abilities and he works 1.5 days a week. So what’s his point?… Read the rest



Charles Has Good Old Hissy Fit *

Nov 20th, 2004 | Filed by

Naughty ‘learning culture’ tells people they can become more competent heads of state…… Read the rest



‘Socialist’ Blames van Gogh for his own Murder *

Nov 20th, 2004 | Filed by

‘…the perpetrators feel there is no viable alternative in this racist climate.’… Read the rest



What is wrong with everybody nowadays? *

Nov 20th, 2004 | Filed by

What makes people with no natural abilities think they should be kings?… Read the rest



Review of True to Life: Why Truth Matters *

Nov 20th, 2004 | Filed by

To care about truth is to be vigilant about belief.… Read the rest



Entrenching Tools

Nov 19th, 2004 7:18 pm | By

An example, of the kind of thing I was talking about yesterday and a few days before that – of this matter of the complexity and arbitrariness of political categories, and of the idea that sometimes it’s just not particularly helpful or interesting to attach labels of liberal or conservative, left or right, to any and every idea that comes along. The example is from an interview with Barack Obama in the October Progressive – unfortunately not online. The interviewer, Barbara Ransby, said, ‘You also said something to the effect that you are open to ideas from both the right and the left. Now, you know this kind of talk makes progressives a little nervous. Can you elaborate on what … Read the rest



Where Are Those Pesky Relativists, Anyway? *

Nov 19th, 2004 | Filed by

Are criticisms of postmodernism just anti-intellectualism on the rampage?… Read the rest



Denis Dutton Reviews Joseph Carroll *

Nov 19th, 2004 | Filed by

On literary Darwinism, the lust for stories, cognitive modules, pleasure.… Read the rest



85 Lashes for Breaking Ramadan Fast *

Nov 19th, 2004 | Filed by

14 year old boy whipped to death in Sanandadj, Iran.… Read the rest



Evangelicals Have Learned to Play Victim *

Nov 19th, 2004 | Filed by

When you make public arguments, you have to ground them in reason and evidence.… Read the rest



Cross-hatching

Nov 18th, 2004 10:52 pm | By

Now (she said, throat-clearingly), that comment of Amartya Sen’s is relevant (in my mind at least) to the discussion in Politics and Morality, below. Mark Bauerlein emailed me in a cordial way to point out that there was a survey reported in the Chronicle some months ago which asked professors in all fields about their political allegiance. “Those who considered themselves Left or Center Left outnumbered those Right or Center Right by almost 3 to 1.” So, as I said in an update to that post, that at least partly answers my question about Business schools and the like, and it’s interesting in itself.

But even with that question partly answered, the more I think about this whole subject – … Read the rest



Not the Only Category

Nov 18th, 2004 8:09 pm | By

Amartya Sen makes an excellent point, one I’ve seen him make often before (but it needs to be made over and over again, because it goes against a very strong stream of current opinion and it doesn’t make much headway), in this article in the New York Review of Books.

The richness and variety of early intellectual relations between China and India have long been obscured. This neglect is now reinforced by the contemporary tendency to classify the world’s population into distinct “civilizations” defined largely by religion (for example Samuel Huntington’s partitioning of the world into such categories as “Western civilization,” “Islamic civilization,” and “Hindu civilization”). There is, as a result, a widespread inclination to understand people mainly through

Read the rest


Intellectual Links Between India and China *

Nov 18th, 2004 | Filed by

Religion is not the only way to understand people, Amartya Sen notes.… Read the rest



Blame Canada – No, Wait, Blame Kant *

Nov 18th, 2004 | Filed by

David Blunkett blames Kant for scepticism about compulsory national identity card. … Read the rest