Ayer, Berlin, Russell, Miller, Sontag, Magee, Bronowski – not much of that on the box now.… Read the rest

Breathless celebration of the fact that these people are human should give way to finer-grained questions.… Read the rest

An intellectual collaboration in letters.… Read the rest

‘It is a real pity that argued dissent is regularly caricatured as “hatchet job”, “savage attack” and other such bulking agents.’… Read the rest

And what is a ‘Muslim intellectual’? Is there a double standard in France?… Read the rest

Not so you’d notice, Richard Dawkins says.… Read the rest

And other strange frontiers funded by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.… Read the rest

Because if it’s a best-seller there can’t possibly be any good reason not to read it, right?… Read the rest

You discover your new friend owns 50 self-help books. What to do? Escape.… Read the rest

Bomb attacks on bank and consulate leave at least 25 dead including the British Consul-General, and devastate Turkey.… Read the rest

Showing up the unreality of conventional world views tends to infuriate.… Read the rest

In fact no more dangerous than most ships. Crying wolf is not clever.… Read the rest

Engineers and computer scientists more admired than lawyers and academics.… Read the rest

‘The Sangh Parivar’s idea of a Hindu nation goes against this basic tenet of our Constitution.’ … Read the rest

It’s more than public balloting, it’s the ‘exercise of public reason.’… Read the rest

Hitchens on the Istanbul synagogue bombing.… Read the rest

It’s not a plot to destroy capitalism, it’s a different way to make research available.… Read the rest

If the research irritates developers, well, get new researchers!… Read the rest

Money has contempt for the life of the mind, George Steiner says.… Read the rest

Can minority communities be studied only by their own members?… Read the rest