Month: March 2006
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Just asking
I’m very interesting in the way questions are framed. Here’s an interesting set of questions from the Guardian’s Gary Younge, who seems similarly interested: Do you think of yourself as white or British or both? Does it worry you that you got your job just because of your race? Where are you from? No, but…
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Perpetual Peace
The Enlightenment project was, if not exactly founded upon, at least encouraged and made international, by the challenge of Saint-Pierre’s A Project for Settling an Everlasting Peace in Europe. All of the eighteenth century’s philosophers took it up, and while they disagreed on the exact means, all felt that reason could lead the way. Saint-Pierre…
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International Women’s Day
So today is International Women’s Day, smack dab in the middle of Women’s History Month. Yet most people probably kicked off their month thinking about Ash Wednesday (or recovering from their first Mardi Gras without New Orleans,) celebrating Spring Break, or focusing on their studies, and I guess a lot of my friends are looking…
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Duh… Terrorism is an ‘ism’
The entry for “terrorisme” in the 1989 Encyclopaedia Universalis begins: “To terrorize does not mean to ‘terrify,’ to ‘strike with fear,’ but following [the nineteenth centurty lexicographer] Littré ‘to establish terrorism, the rule of terror.” (my translation) This usage of the word originated in the revolutionary government of France, specifically a period between September 1793…