The Baghdad blogger Salam Pax.… Read the rest
All entries by this author
Treated Like Dirt Even by Small Boys 
Sep 21st, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Even middle-class men treat women appallingly in Afghanistan.… Read the rest
The Bookseller of Kabul
Sep 21st, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
And his campaign against the Norwegian reporter who revealed how women are treated in Afghanistan.… Read the rest
Power-hunger in the Guise of Liberation
Sep 21st, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Alexandra Stein on the appeal and danger of cults.… Read the rest
Rights
Sep 20th, 2003 10:53 pm | By Ophelia BensonThere’s a lot of nonsense upon stilts around. Maybe our subtitle should be Fighting Fashionable Nonsense Upon Stilts. I heard something on the BBC World Service this morning that surprised me a good deal. It came at the end of a rather dreary discussion of sport that I wasn’t really listening to – about people who change their nationality in order to compete for a different country, and some of the drawbacks to this arrangement. And then we heard from someone from the European Commission on Human Rights, saying that if governments took a too ‘punitive’ approach (odd word) then they might be violating the human rights of the athletes. ‘People have a right to compete for their country,’ she … Read the rest
Unilateralism Meets Complacency
Sep 20th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Le Monde editor suggests middle ground.… Read the rest
Eagleton After Theory
Sep 20th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘Postmodernists oppose universality, and well they might: nothing is more parochial than the kind of human being they admire.’… Read the rest
You Can’t Read This
Sep 20th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Publishers of specialist scientific journals are shutting out the public.… Read the rest
Horowitz Answers, Walker Answers Him
Sep 20th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
What would the consequences of the Academic Bill of Rights really be?… Read the rest
Bit of a Mistake, Really
Sep 20th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
If the US and UK hadn’t removed Mossadegh in 1953, things might have gone better…… Read the rest
Interview with Donald Davidson
Sep 20th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Long, searching discussion of both his life and his work.… Read the rest
Academic Bill of Rights
Sep 19th, 2003 | By Ophelia BensonThe move by the Republican governor and legislature of Colorado to make something called the Academic Bill of Rights a part of state law raises a lot of interesting questions. At first glance it would seem to harmonize well with the mission of Butterflies and Wheels. Compare our stated goals in ‘About B and W’ with item one of the Academic Bill of Rights.
Ours:
… Read the restThere are two motivations for setting up the web site. The first is the common one having to do with the thought that truth is important, and that to tell the truth about the world it is necessary to put aside whatever preconceptions (ideological, political, moral, etc.) one brings to the endeavour. The second has
Is Some Black Music Homophobic?
Sep 19th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Do the MOBOs celebrate artists with an anti-gay agenda?… Read the rest
Reason v. Academic Bill of Rights
Sep 19th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘Suddenly, “academic freedom” starts to sound like an encroachment on the freedoms of the faculty.’… Read the rest
Another Susan Greenfield Interview
Sep 19th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Tolerance is good, but so is self-improvement.… Read the rest
Video-Game Archaeology
Sep 19th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Stuffing artefacts in sacks, bayonetting, and other tricks of the trade.… Read the rest
Roger Scruton on Donald Davidson
Sep 19th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
And ‘the sound made by a research programme when it hits’ – Cambridge.… Read the rest
In Defense of the Essay
Sep 19th, 2003 | By Christopher OrletIt is an article of the most unshakable faith that the personal, familiar, Montaignian–call it what you will–essay is minor stuff, a second-rate employment undertaken by bankrupt novelists and other failures. In literary rankings its place lay well below the novella and scarcely above the book review. “Essays, reviews, imitations, caricatures are all minor stuff,” wrote the New York Times critic in a recent review of a Max Beerbohm biography. In this conviction he has more support than a sports bra. Indeed, the personal essay’s most esteemed and acclaimed practitioners have to a man voiced misgivings about their trade. E.B. White called the essay a second-rate form. Cynthia Ozick, certainly one of the best contemporary essayists, may not specifically refer … Read the rest
Outmoded Authoritative Structures?
Sep 18th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Did the makers of ‘The Matrix’ get Baudrillard wrong? Or were they making a subtle point about – oh never mind.… Read the rest
Richard Sennett on Patriotism
Sep 18th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Dissonance cannot be resolved by a cathartic destructive act.… Read the rest
