All entries by this author

‘Cultural Difference’ and its Discontents *

Jan 10th, 2003 | Filed by

Brian Barry’s Culture and Equality: An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism was short-listed for the British Academy prize, which rewards academic excellence combined with accessibility to the general reader.… Read the rest



Study on Affirmative Action in US Higher Education *

Jan 10th, 2003 | Filed by

Study blames admissions policies that favor children of alumni, and the movement to tighten admissions standards, for failure to narrow racial gap.… Read the rest



Is ‘science for citizens’ real science? *

Jan 10th, 2003 | Filed by

The jury is out on radical plans to restructure high school science curricula in the UK. … Read the rest



Who Needs Evidence When You Have Publicity?

Jan 9th, 2003 6:41 pm | By

Oh good, another piece of Imaginative History, or The Case of the Peekaboo Evidence. Not unlike the Clonaid festivities last week, when the ‘Raelians’ announced the birth of the first cloned baby, but when invited to provide DNA evidence to support such a surprising claim, came over all bashful. There is a good deal of sly wit in Natalie Danford’s Salon piece about retired Admiral Gavin Menzies’ claim that the Chinese sailed to America seventy years before Columbus. It was a shrewd move, for example, to rent the lecture hall of the Royal Geographical Society as the place to announce his ‘discovery’. And publicity does do the trick: there has been so much attention that Menzies’ American publishers have advanced … Read the rest



The Attention of People Who Care *

Jan 9th, 2003 | Filed by

David Bromwich disagrees with Louis Menand that dispassion is the proper state for a critic.… Read the rest



Did the Chinese Discover America? *

Jan 9th, 2003 | Filed by

Renting the Royal Geographical Society lecture hall and inviting an audience is one way to get attention.… Read the rest



Richard Sennett on the Cello and Respect *

Jan 8th, 2003 | Filed by

The sociologist is more ambivalent than he was in his ‘ferocious Marxist phase’.… Read the rest



Language Has to be Taught *

Jan 8th, 2003 | Filed by

And the television doesn’t do the job.… Read the rest



Less Optimistic But More Impatient *

Jan 8th, 2003 | Filed by

Edmund Gordon studies the achievment gap between black and white students.… Read the rest



Exam Still Bowdlerizes Texts *

Jan 8th, 2003 | Filed by

New York Regents’ exam continues to re-write and abridge literary excerpts, despite promises not to. Quis custodiet?… Read the rest



It’s a Gun Rap

Jan 7th, 2003 10:58 pm | By

Is it a possibility that music can impact on culture in such a way so as to affect people’s behaviour? Apparently not, at least not if the music is rap, the behaviour violent, and you agree with Viv Craske, editor of Mixmag and would be sociologist. To suggest such a thing is “racist, out of touch and bigoted”. But Mr Craske is a little confused. On the one hand, he claims that “if gun crime is up 55%, it can’t be down to music in any part” (he didn’t elaborate on whether it might be down to music in some part if gun crime is up say 54%). But, on the other hand, he doesn’t accept that guns are … Read the rest



More on the Edge Question *

Jan 7th, 2003 | Filed by

The New York Times editorial on Edge’s science question, with extracts from several answers.… Read the rest



Edge Science Questionaire *

Jan 7th, 2003 | Filed by

Edge asks scientists what they would tell the President, if he asked them, are the most pressing science issues he should be attending to. Alas, he hasn’t asked.… Read the rest



Fresh Meat? Old Meat? Scraps? *

Jan 7th, 2003 | Filed by

Did hunting shape human evolution, or was it foraging and scavenging? Or both?… Read the rest



Is Pointing Out the Obvious ‘Racist’? *

Jan 6th, 2003 | Filed by

Culture minister worries aloud about glamorization of guns by rappers, finds self ‘at the centre of a race row’.… Read the rest



You Know You Want It

Jan 5th, 2003 8:35 pm | By

Well, those silly Victorians, you know, of course they thought about sex every instant of their lives just as we do, but they wouldn’t admit it, the nasty hypocritical creatures, but we’ll fix them, we’ll just make a lot of movies and tv shows based on 19th century novels and if the sex isn’t there we’ll just damn well insert it! So to speak. There is an excellent article on this subject in the Boston Globe today. In it Abby Wolf reports, among other things, that child sexual abuse was featured in a tv drama based on Trollope’s The Way We Live Now, a feature that is entirely absent from the novel. This is one reason not to see … Read the rest



Is Language a Spandrel? *

Jan 5th, 2003 | Filed by

Chomsky, Hauser, and Fitch think it may be, Pinker thinks the idea is eccentric.… Read the rest



Hidden Ecological Explanations *

Jan 4th, 2003 | Filed by

Is culture a human category, or can animals have it? Do orangs and chimps learn culture, or adapt their behavior to their environment?… Read the rest



Is It Distraction, or Multi-Tasking? *

Jan 4th, 2003 | Filed by

Can students learn critical thinking while playing solitaire or surfing the Web?… Read the rest



When Good Scientists Go Bad *

Jan 3rd, 2003 | Filed by

They become journalists and friends of the Raelians and are selected to ‘check’ the ‘evidence’ of cloned baby.… Read the rest