Is human agency the product of nature, or of history and politics?… Read the rest
All entries by this author
What a Good Idea! 
Feb 12th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Simon Blackburn, Richard Dawkins and others call for Darwin Day. … Read the rest
Who Is Paying?
Feb 12th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Is conservative funding more focussed and coherent than the other kind? If so, why?… Read the rest
Never Met an Adaptive Tale He Didn’t Like?
Feb 11th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Sometimes economic explanations work better than evolutionary ones, says this review of The Blank Slate.… Read the rest
Revisionist History of Empire
Feb 10th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Has Niall Ferguson’s TV version of Empire got its facts wrong?… Read the rest
To Boldly Split an Infinitive
Feb 10th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Roy Hattersley cites Cobbett on grammar as a positional good, and calls a Tory MP half Polonius half rude mechanical.… Read the rest
Student Shoots Teacher, is Expelled, Then Unexpelled
Feb 10th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Welsh teachers’ union wants changes to law after independent panel orders school to take back pupil who shot teacher.… Read the rest
That Would Explain a Lot
Feb 9th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Psychologists study people’s tendency to over-estimate their abilities, especially the ability to think well.… Read the rest
The ‘Jukes’ Family and Eugenics
Feb 9th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Unnoticed methodological flaws, ideology deciding conclusions, fashion displacing careful analysis.… Read the rest
Darwin Knew About the Sweet Peas
Feb 8th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Richard Dawkins says Darwin was right to bring together sexual selection and the Descent of Man.… Read the rest
Things Fall Apart
Feb 7th, 2003 4:47 pm | By Ophelia BensonWell now…I must say, I’m a bit shocked. My comfortable certainties are all upset, what I thought I knew is sous rature, my binary oppositions are problematized, and things are just generally messed up. If the trendiest of trendy hippest of hippy French philosophers doesn’t like Seinfeld, well–well why bother, that’s all.
… Read the restEarlier on in the film, an interviewer from South African television chooses to open her questions with a reference to Seinfeld : does Professor Derrida see any affinities between his thought and this ironic, situation comedy? Derrida’s eyes narrow. “Deconstruction as I understand it doesn’t produce any sit-com,” he says in English, audibly putting the last words into pointed italics. “Stop watching sit-com. And do
The Red Queen Process
Feb 7th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Inclusive fitness, the utility of altruism, gene shuffling, the mumbling professor turns into Indiana Jones. The importance of William Hamilton.… Read the rest
Education for Profit
Feb 7th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The EU may decide to ‘liberalise’ higher education, putting an end to government subsidies. What price history or philosophy, one wonders.… Read the rest
Does All His Own Stunts
Feb 7th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Derrida does his own problematizing and struggles to find sufficiently gnomic replies.… Read the rest
Karl Marx Meets Leo Marx
Feb 7th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Policing the borders, becoming the Other, subaltern disciplines, historical privileging of the imperial metaphysic perspective as the agent of knowledge production. A feast of jargon awaits.… Read the rest
Vice-Chancellor and Minister Disagree
Feb 6th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Cambridge doesn’t attract enough working class students, says Hodge; it does, says Sir Alec.… Read the rest
Rebel From Newark
Feb 5th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Leslie Fiedler loved to smash his own idols, could leave nothing unsaid, disdained subtleties, and crowed at the grave of modernism.… Read the rest
Stop That This Instant!
Feb 4th, 2003 8:10 pm | By Ophelia BensonOh my. We are in Alice country. A principal tells a teacher off because her students were engaged in an activity other than…watching television.
Why, the little slackers! The naughty little skivers! What were they doing? Talking? Throwing spit balls? Composing new rap lyrics? Copulating? No. They were…it’s almost too painful to relate…they were reading.
Well. We don’t want that kind of thing in the American school system, thank you. That sort of behavior leads to literacy, and elitism, and intellectual curiosity, and wanting to know more about things like history and philosophy. We don’t want that, now do we, no, because we’re glad to be a Beta. So the principal took to spying on the teacher to … Read the rest
Surveys, Damned Surveys and Statistics
Feb 4th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Where is that evidence again?… Read the rest
Another ‘The Dog Ate My Data’ Case
Feb 4th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
This time it’s the pro-gun scholar who can’t find his figures.… Read the rest
