Awhile back, the atheist blogosphere briefly noticed a Guardian article by John Gray, former “Professor of European Thought,” trashing Dawkins et al. Since now I’m reviewing Dawkins’ fleas, I decided that I’d take a look at his book, Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia, and review it here. I’m focusing in on [...]
Monthly Archives: November 2008
Language spotting
Posted by Chris Hallquist on November 17, 2008
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*Lester Hunt notes about how politicians talk about “asking” people to do things when they really mean “legally compelling.” *Will Wilkinson discusses the talking point involving how “people who were ideologically opposed to the government’s doing X would just shut up and go away.”
Forensics and taking criticism well
Posted by Chris Hallquist on November 17, 2008
3 comments
Forensics meet last weekend. Yeah, I decided to join forensics for my last week of college. There was a brief period of time when I wondered if any of the events I was watching would make good fodder for doing philosophy of language on, but then I said to myself, “no, these are clearly deviant [...]
Where is Evangelicalism going?
Posted by Chris Hallquist on November 13, 2008
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Andrew Sullivan presents some new electoral maps that make the Red States look so much less intimidating. I’m tempted to say that we no longer have much reason to fear the religious right, after this election. On the other hand, Andrew also has a post suggesting Evangelicals were more important to McCain than they were [...]
“Investing in education”
Posted by Chris Hallquist on November 12, 2008
1 comment
A bit from Andrew Sullivan: I’d just prefer to tackle inequality by investing in education rather than skewing tax rates. This is a rather interesting use of language: designed to hide the fact that free public education, as it exists in America, is a highly redistributionist system. Oh, maybe it’s an especially worthy one since [...]