A star system for a few while the drones barely make a living. Is this education or show biz?… Read the rest

Flaubert’s letters tell more of him than a biography can. Julian Barnes on the late Flaubert scholar Jean Bruneau.… Read the rest

Dr. Faustus meets Horatio Alger, and Rowling piles on the horror.… Read the rest

And not a summer cottage read. George Graham reviews Daniel Dennett’s Freedom Evolves.… Read the rest

6 jam versus 24 jam, and libertarian paternalism.… Read the rest

Watching ‘Big Brother’ can be lazy or maybe postmodern, but ironic, no.… Read the rest

Opinion on him was divided, as it would be on any animal with the rib-cage of a hippo and the snout of a badger.… Read the rest

Another call for ‘demotic science’ from the Economic and Social Research Council.… Read the rest

‘…no audience is easier to beguile than one that is smugly confident of its own sophistication.’… Read the rest

The Guardian offers a page of Orwell links.… Read the rest

The blank slate became Official Theory, enforced by “accusation, intimidation, name-calling and moralising intellectual questions that are questions of fact”. … Read the rest

What is a lost tribe anyway? From Marie Antoinette to Imelda Marcos, what are the uses of ‘simple people’? Where does the World’s Fair come in?… Read the rest

Surprise, surprise, it’s not always good to talk.… Read the rest

Philip Foner helped himself to students’ work, and many of them fumed but kept quiet about it.… Read the rest

And interesting issues are raised – is objectivity possible? If not, why write history at all? Why not just pledge allegiance to something?… Read the rest

Does enlightenment summon its own enemies into being?… Read the rest

The US Supreme Court narrowly upholds University of Michigan’s use of race in admissions, rejects point system.… Read the rest

Michigan’s law school can continue to consider race; undergraduate programme is unconstitutional.… Read the rest

It’s become hip to regress into childhood.… Read the rest

‘…the outlandish claims that were frequently made for Potter made you wonder whether some of these people had ever read anything else.’… Read the rest