What do Shakespeare, Austen, Churchill and Martin Luther King have in common? According to Neil James, they all have a good handle on the merits of plain language, which is something that our workplaces and public institutions would benefit from.
The future of English
Neil James: the ethics of everyday language
American philosophy or philosophy in America?
Philosophy in a test tube
Philosophy for Lunch
Richard Rorty (1931 - 2007)
Risky Business
Nation states and corporations used to bear the brunt of financial risk in an uncertain world. But the process of market liberalisation over the past two decades has changed all that. One of the hallmarks of the globalised economy is the process by which risk has been the transferred on to the shoulders of ordinary people who now routinely take part of the hit if things come unstuck. According to the International Monetary Fund, the household sector has become the shock absorber of last resort in the financial system. Welcome to the world of individually managed risk. But are we equipped for this role and is it desirable?
Will Hutton on The Chinese Bubble
The Dalai Lama and the Problem of Tibet
Anthony Uhlmann
It is possible to point to a particular moment when the idea that literature might produce a viable or meaningful knowledge of the real world was openly challenged: this challenge was made by C.P. Snow in 1959 in his then influential book The Two Cultures. Snow, who was both a physicist and a novelist, suggested that the significance of literature was undermined by the fact that literary people were so ignorant of science. F. R. Leavis entered into polemic with Snow, but all this is nowadays of little interest. More interesting questions emerge when one considers the cultural context of the controversy.
One aspect of this involves the attack on those philosophers and artists who believed in the reality of the incorporeal (the mind or the spirit), by a group known as 'logical positivists' in the 1920s and 30s. This group believed that only the material and demonstrable attributes of existence have any reality, and that attempts to think beyond these limits involve the necessary production of nonsense: the nonsense of metaphysics in philosophy, the nonsense of the spiritual, the nonsense of any claim (such as that long attributed to the arts) to the expression of a higher meaning.
A key target for the logical positivists was the French philosopher Henri Bergson, who emphasized intuition as the highest kind of knowledge. Bergson, who strongly influenced many great early 20th century artists, was at one time so immensely famous throughout Europe and America (where he lectured to enormous crowds, reputedly causing the first traffic jam on Broadway in New York, and generated great media interest) that he was sent by the French Government during World War One to personally convince President Woodrow Wilson that America should enter the War.
Animal rights
Ishmael Beah - memoirs of a child soldier
Ramachandra Guha
on why India is the most interesting country in the world
Leamer on Outsourcing and Globalization
Taleb, Says Capital Markets Not Good at Predicting Wars
From Blair to Brown
Faith, Love and Sex
Arabesque: The Art of Islam
Nasser David Khalili is the custodian of the world's largest private collection of Islamic art, a selection of which is on display at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 'The Arts of Islam' exhibition
Gordon Brown: the dark prince
Powerpoint
It's been suggested the brain is inefficient in retaining information when information is presented in written form whilst spoken simultaneously as in Powerpoint presentations. It's due to the limitations of the working memory
Creationism, geology and global warming
Gay and lesbian refugees
Bio-tech industry and the law
The Buddhist Scrolls, Pt 1 and Pt 2
Forty Years After the Six Day War: Where Are We with Middle East Peace?
Robert E. Hunter of the RAND Corporation, Robert A. Malley of the International Crisis Group, and Dennis B. Ross of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, reflect on the past forty years of the Middle East peace process and debate strategies for the future
The Arab Economies in a Changing World
China and the Developing World
Confronting Climate Change
Princeton University climatologist and former chief scientist of Environmental Defense Michael Oppenheimer explains the history and future of climate change and why we have reason for hope given the new public awareness and political focus on the issue
What Do Muslims Believe?
Only Joking - how humour makes us human
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