Archive for the ‘Society’ Category
New York City’s “Department of Moral Guidance”
New Yorker covers are usually very good, but this week’s is especially so. The drawing, by Bruce McCall, is called “Moral Guidance”. It depicts three New Yorkers in stocks – for offences of smoking, salt and carbs. Across the bottom, it says “NYC Department of Moral Guidance – No Feeding Backsliders”. By coincidence, Brendan O’Neill writes on a […]
My review of The Social Animal is published in Sweden
Voltaire, a Sweden-based political/cultural online magazine, has re-published my review of David Brooks’ The Social Animal. If you can read Swedish, you can read it here.
Distracted driving: another attempt to use kids to police adults
Jane Brody in the New York Times writes about “distracted driving” – that is, undertaking activities in the car such as re-programming your GPS, searching for a particular CD, putting on make-up or shaving, and so on. The article mentioned a new campaign set up by the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and the Orthopaedic Trauma Association called […]
Reason versus emotion? It’s a false dichotomy
With its elevation of intuition over reason and the unconscious mind over rational thought, David Brooks’ new book is an explicit attack on Enlightenment values. It’s time we defended rationalism and passion. Read my review of The Social Animal, in the spiked review of books, here.
NPR: talk of “uneducated” Americans is the real outrage
An embarrassing video has led the Chief Executive of NPR (National Public Radio) to resign. Vivian Schiller offered her resignation a day after a conservative film-maker released a video that captured an NPR fund-raiser talking to people pretending to be donors from a Muslim Brotherhood front organization. NPR – the publicly-funded and listener-supporter radio network that many people […]
Debate how to hire, not fire, teachers
With thousands of teachers’ jobs on the chopping block across the country, there is a vigorous debate over how to implement layoffs in a “fair” way. At issue in New York and other states is the policy of LIFO, “last in, first out”. Seniority is the determining factor. There are calls from across the political spectrum […]
Nanny strikes again: NYC bans smoking in parks and beaches
With backing from Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the New York City Council yesterday banned smoking in city parks and beaches. Bloomberg is known for introducing nannying measures to control personal behavior. This latest ban is an extension of his ban on smoking in restaurants and bars imposed in 2002. The main reason given for the ban is to prevent second-hand smoking; the Council’s […]
Ann Furedi responds to William Saletan on late-term abortion
In Slate, William Saletan last week used the recent case of the Philadelphia abortion-clinic doctor, Kermit Gosnell, to re-state his argument against late-term abortion. In that article, one of the “absolutists” who Saletan criticizes is Ann Furedi, chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service. Furedi herself recently wrote “a moral defence of late abortion” in spiked,which […]
Leave the Tiger Mother behind
For a level-headed take on the Amy “Tiger Mother” Chua business that puts the discussion into perspective, I recommend you read Nancy McDermott’s post. She argues that this is another case of “seeing social and cultural issues through the prism of parenting”: It seems to me that we have displaced classical philosophical questions about the nature of […]
Naomi Klein, reactionary
This Naomi Klein talk is so crass, wrong and bad, it’s hard to know where to start. In about 19 minutes, Klein manages to: make a glib a analogy between the BP oil spill and financial crisis criticize risk-taking as “reckless” advocate the precautionary principle elevate Mother Nature over humanity (and present Mother Nature as truly feminine) blame men, and […]