Chief school administrator in the New York City Department of Education, Chancellor Dennis Walcott, has published a list of fifty “banned words”—that is, banned in standardized tests used in New York City schools. CBS New York (March 26, 2012) tells us it includes “Dinosaur,” “Birthday,” “Halloween,” “Poverty,” and “Divorce.” Most of the banned words are [...]
It’s never much fun to be beaten to the punch. But when the person who beats you into print with a more elegant and incisive version of your own argument is Roger Scruton (left)—well, one really has no right to complain. Yesterday, I wrote a column called “Human Nature Watch 10: What Is Love?,” which [...]
In the latest of a string of New York Times reports on recent neural-imaging studies, noted author Diane Ackerman treats us to a more-thoughtful-than-average discussion of “The Brain on Love” (Mar. 25).(1) Nevertheless, at several points Ms. Ackerman betrays the rampant confusion on the part of both scientists and journalists regarding the significance of such studies. [...]
The air was thick with flying chaff yesterday at the Reason Rally in Washington, DC, as one speaker after another thrashed and stomped every straw man in sight. The star turn was provided by Richard Dawkins. After an initial paean to the evolutionary process—understood, needless to say, along strictly orthodox neo-Darwinian lines—Dawkins went on the attack. [...]
The Greeks already looked back with bitter regret on a lost Golden Age. It’s always good to remember that, whenever we’re tempted to lament the decline of the present age and the general lowering of standards. And there’s no doubt that by many measurements, the present age is one of the best for humanity. Proportionally [...]
Some columns write themselves. If I’m writing in praise of something truly wonderful, all I have to do is quote extensively from the work in question. The author’s own words shine forth, and additional remarks by me become superfluous. And if I’m writing to expose something truly awful—all I have to do is quote extensively [...]
Marilynne Robinson is one of our favorite living thinkers here at TBS, and she has just published a new collection of essays. That alone is cause for a celebratory column. A new book from Robinson is a rare occurrence. She has only published three novels and three previous books of nonfiction in the past three [...]
Just when I was afraid The New York Times was going all soft in the scientism department, and I might have to retire the Human Nature Watch, this front-page news flash arrived to give the column a reprieve: ”Learning from the Spurned and Tipsy Fruit Fly” (Mar. 16).* In this piece, we are informed that fruit flies [...]
For some while, I have been looking at sociologist Charles Murray’s Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, and focusing on Fishtown, his iconic neighborhood where working class people—far from clinging bitterly to guns and religion—are sinking helplessly into unemployment and family breakdown. Now let us look at Belmont, the upper middle class enclave [...]
Seldom do the parties to political disputes raise the issue of first principles. Those on the left don’t do it, because their atheistic and materialistic ideology logically implies there are no first principles, at least not in the realm of morality. Everybody has his own preferences, and that’s that. No one’s preferences should be “privileged” [...]