All entries by this author

Truth and lies *

Nov 1st, 2002 | Filed by

Bernard Williams defends the truth, while also exploring when we need to tell lies.… Read the rest



Anyone’s neighbour *

Nov 1st, 2002 | Filed by

‘It could be you’. Perhaps a more useful suggestion about the Nobel prize than about the lottery.… Read the rest



Tragic view *

Nov 1st, 2002 | Filed by

Are John Gray and Steven Pinker saying the same dismal thing about human hopes, and are they right to be saying it?… Read the rest



Cargo cult science *

Nov 1st, 2002 | Filed by

‘Statistics show’ is a mere rhetorical device in education research, used to support whatever policy one favors. Research in cognitive psychology shows promise.… Read the rest



Mormon correctness *

Oct 31st, 2002 | Filed by

Even practicing Mormons can have a hard time conforming to the rules at Brigham Young University.… Read the rest



One way to introduce the two cultures *

Oct 31st, 2002 | Filed by

A computer scientist teaches liberal arts students an intelligent skepticism about computer technology…and what binary numbers are.… Read the rest



Where groupthink can lead *

Oct 30th, 2002 | Filed by

The Salem witch trials are interesting not because of the occult aspect but as an example of ‘senseless self-destruction’.… Read the rest



Oh, brilliant, pay the fun teachers more *

Oct 30th, 2002 | Filed by

Link lecturers’ pay to how popular they are with students? Might there be some drawbacks to that idea? … Read the rest



Rorty on Williams on truth *

Oct 30th, 2002 | Filed by

Are analytic philosophers ‘hard-working public relations agents for contemporary institutions and practices’? Or are neo-pragmatists hard-working Artful Dodgers…… Read the rest



Higher Superstition Revisited: an interview with Norman Levitt

Oct 30th, 2002 | By Ophelia Benson

Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt’s book Higher Superstition appeared
in 1994, rattled a good many cages, and prompted the Sokal Hoax. The book describes
a bizarre situation in American universities in which academics in various (mostly
new-minted) fields such as Cultural Studies, Literary Theory, and Science Studies,
plus a few more familiar ones such as Sociology, Comparative Literature and
the like, make a career of writing about science without taking the trouble
to know anything about it. Gross and Levitt have a good deal of fun exposing
the absurd mistakes perpetrated by people who rhapsodise about quantum mechanics
and chaos theory without having the faintest idea what they’re talking about.


But hilarity aside, there are serious issues involved. The … Read the rest



Oh, rapture

Oct 29th, 2002 3:40 pm | By

Tim LaHaye was on the US public radio show Fresh Air last night. He is a minister, a fundamentalist, a pillar of far-right politics, a former honcho in the Moral Majority, and…a best-selling novelist. To put it mildly. He is the co-author of a series which has sold (I cringe to relate) 50 million copies. The ‘left behind’ series. For those who have the good fortune not to know what on earth that is, the subject matter is ‘the Rapture’. You know. When Jesus shouts in the sky and all the believers are instantly taken up into heaven, to leave the rest of us down here to be tortured for all eternity (after a great deal of to-ing and fro-ing … Read the rest



Scientists were unpopular then too *

Oct 29th, 2002 | Filed by

Even in that supposed heyday of reason, attacks on freethinkers were a favourite sport.… Read the rest



Shocking news: teenagers are easily bored *

Oct 29th, 2002 | Filed by

More teenagers report being bored at school in the UK than in other industrialised nations. Let us hope the response is not to replace teachers with videos.… Read the rest



Fiction and consciousness studies *

Oct 29th, 2002 | Filed by

David Lodge, while evading ‘the false intimacies of celebrity,’ discusses his new book of essays on that intersection.… Read the rest



Anger is energizing

Oct 28th, 2002 5:50 pm | By

Now that’s what I call good news. A piece in yesterday’s New York Times says that, popular wisdom to the contrary notwithstanding, pessimism and anger are not necessarily always unhealthy and their opposites not necessarily always therapeutic. Just exactly what I’ve always thought! I’m a basically cheerful sort, I think, but it’s an irritated sort of cheerfulness–the two go together. I get a lot of energy and motivation from my generalised anger. It means there are things to do, mistakes that need pointing out, stupidities that need correcting. One likes to feel useful. Julie K. Norem, a psychologist and author of the book The Power of Negative Thinking, says that anger is an energizing emotion. I feel vindicated, and … Read the rest



Sexist or witty? *

Oct 28th, 2002 | Filed by

Is a poster of a shirtless woman at a Motor Show a stupid throwback to the ’50s or an amusingly knowing and harmless bit of fun? What does it mean that a woman designed the poster? And that a government minister (also a woman) is not amused?… Read the rest



Misanthropes can stay that way *

Oct 28th, 2002 | Filed by

Good news: people who urge grouches to ‘cheer up, you’ll live longer’ are wrong.… Read the rest



The oracular mode

Oct 27th, 2002 11:22 pm | By

Judith Shulevitz wrote of Harold Bloom’s new book Genius, in the New York Times Book Review:

“He repeats himself so often that his favorite words acquire the ring of revolutionary slogans (Originality! Vitality!) or ritual denunciations (Resenters! Historicizers!). He makes grandiose and indefensible claims without explaining or arguing for them. He cloaks himself Wizard-of-Oz-like in the polysyllabic hermeticism of cabala and Gnosticism, with little seeming regard for the violence his borrowings may do to those systems or to the comprehensibility of his prose.”

Just so. I had the same problem with The Western Canon; Shakespeare; How to Read and Why. Bloom used to be (and still is when he wants to, it’s just that he mostly seems not … Read the rest



First rule: get the evidence right *

Oct 27th, 2002 | Filed by

If you want to make an argument, it’s no good saying the flood ate your homework.… Read the rest



Galileo and the gang *

Oct 27th, 2002 | Filed by

Is the conflict between science and religion inevitable, or a result of tactical decisions?… Read the rest