Historian Jackson Lears suggests ‘providence’ might not be all that predictable.… Read the rest
All entries by this author
One in Four of Everyone Has Something 
Mar 11th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
So if one in four has something, and one in four has a different something, and the number of somethings is large and growing…… Read the rest
Rorty Reviews Dewey Biography
Mar 10th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
More about events of his life than resonance of his ideas, Rorty says.… Read the rest
More on ‘Honour’ Killing
Mar 10th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
An Iranian woman writes for the Institute for the Secularization of Islamic Society on the murder of insubordinate women.… Read the rest
‘Honour crimes’ and cultural relativism
Mar 10th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Is political correctness to blame for a lack of awareness about honour crimes?… Read the rest
Education and Inequality
Mar 9th, 2003 | By Ophelia BensonInequality is an old and vexed issue. Isaiah rebuked Israel for grinding the faces of the poor, Thersites got himself beaten up for complaining about Agamemnon, and so it has gone ever since. From Marx to Rawls to Michael Young, equality and meritocracy, justice and opportunity, class and race, money and taxes, jobs and immigration, education and tuition and top-up fees, have been debated and re-debated.
Education, especially higher education, is one area where tensions and disagreements about inequality play themselves out with extra passion. Many citizens, parents, students, employers, thinkers would like to see higher education available to more people and especially to a wider range of people: more women, more non-white people, more poor people. The difficulty is … Read the rest
Green Welly Image
Mar 9th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The Independent on Bristol’s admissions policy.… Read the rest
Tinpot Trotskyists Running Bristol Admissions?
Mar 9th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The Observer samples press coverage of the row over Bristol’s acceptance of lower marks for students from state schools.… Read the rest
Bristol University, social class and meritocracy
Mar 9th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Can a university have too many well-off students?… Read the rest
I Win I Win
Mar 8th, 2003 8:37 pm | By Ophelia BensonSometimes I find myself in an odd sort of competition with friends from other countries, specifically the UK: we argue over which of us lives in the more anti-intellectual culture. I say I do, they say they do, and so we improve the shining hour.
But I have a nice little piece of evidence here. Specifically this remark:
One reason people trained as philosophers press so hard for academic jobs is that the United States offers few other opportunities to use their training. Television here, unlike its counterparts in Europe and Asia, almost completely ignores university and intellectual life. So do radio and print journalism, devoting far more airtime and space to sports.
I rest my case. Who can … Read the rest
Happiness and Positional Goods
Mar 8th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
If inequality makes the rich a little happier and the poor a lot more miserable, what then?… Read the rest
Dialogue
Mar 8th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Two historians, one Tory one Labour, discuss Iraq and Tony Blair.… Read the rest
Nonsense, Mistakes, Barrel-Scraping Insults
Mar 8th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Todd Gitlin demolishes Alston Chase’s anti-intellectual version of what made the Unabomber.… Read the rest
A Doomed Enterprise
Mar 8th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
John Haldane restates traditional view that religion is perfection of reason; Edward Skidelsky is not sure it can be done.… Read the rest
Unoriginal, and False
Mar 7th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Colin McGinn disagrees with Damasio’s version of the James-Lange theory of emotion.… Read the rest
More a Meditation Than an Argument
Mar 7th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Richard Sennett’s Respect ‘draws on fields normally guarded by specialists: urbanism, psychology, literature, architecture, the history of ideas’.… Read the rest
Two Books on Islam Reviewed in Dissent
Mar 7th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
One makes lucid distinctions, the other leaves too much out.… Read the rest
Oh dear, some journalists should only write about the Spice Girls…
Mar 7th, 2003 10:50 am | By Ophelia BensonIt is well-known that most journalists write mostly nonsense most of the time. Happily, this is normally about things like Posh Spice, the g-spot or Iraq. But Zoe Williams clearly has greater ambitions, for she writes nonsense about sociobiology.
This article is so bad that it is hard to know where to start when discussing it. Take this claim:
“There are logical problems with it which it doesn’t take a degree in zoology (even from Oregon) to determine. First, it relies, as so many of these theories do, on the egregious notion that, while women’s fertility is all downhill from the moment they start enjoying The Archers, men suffer no deterioration of sperm quality till they’re one day older … Read the rest
Born or Made?
Mar 6th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Is gayness in the genes or in the will, and who thinks which, and why.… Read the rest
So Far So Good…Maybe
Mar 6th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
But what happens when the results are bad? When students mark teachers down for not being entertaining enough?… Read the rest
