Latest Blog Posts for Screeds and Quibbles

• Uganda's laws against homosexuality - America's fault?
  on Aug 1, 2014 in Jeff Sharlet John Oliver LGBT rights The Family The Fellowship Uganda
  John Oliver, and numerous others, attribute Uganda's new anti-gay laws to the influence of shadowy or fringe American evangelical organisations.Yes, on the one hand, members of those organisations seem to have had close contact with Ugandan parliamen...
• Art for the people
  on Jun 10, 2014 in aesthetics art civic life public art
  If the value of visual art lies in the subject's aesthetic engagement with it then the originality and uniqueness of the object is irrelevant. Art should be copied. Great art should be copied more.If great art belongs to us all, to humanity in genera...
• Is SCOTUS racist?
  on Apr 29, 2014
  Recent US supreme court rulings against significant parts of the voting rights act and affirmative action by public universities have been interpreted by the Democratic left as supporting the segregationism these laws/policies were designed to overco...
• Market prices require the unpaid labour of consumers
  on Apr 28, 2014
  When governments talk about liberalising sectors of the economy, such as the household energy or health insurance sectors, they always talk about the efficiency gains of having more competition between companies. Because consumers will be free to mov...
• How can America have too much politics and too little?
  on Apr 27, 2014 in democracy USA
  I'm not American, but I find American politics weirdly fascinating. One of the stranger things about it is that there is an apparent contradiction between the extent and fervour of political contestation and the general apathy with which the majority...
• Business ethics can't escape the black hole of prudence
  on Apr 11, 2014 in bottom line business capitalism consequentialism ethics Hannah Arendt moral philosophy
  Business ethics should be a fascinating and important field of applied ethics. But as an interdisciplinary field it has no natural home in either philosophy and business faculties. Since business schools have the money, that is where nearly all resea...
• The destruction of indigenous peoples: sin of history or historical inevitability?
  on Feb 2, 2014 in colonisation Jared Diamond
  The destruction of indigenous peoples by Europeans, perhaps most dramatically in the colonisation of the Americas, is or should be a point of shame in many countries today. In many cases frankly genocidal policies were embraced whose evil was on a pa...
• Does Washington need to bring back pork barrel politics?
  on Jan 17, 2014 in American elections earmarks ideology partisanship
  The trend to extreme partisanship in American politics may have diverse origins and causes going back several decades, but at least one recent change may have made it worse: the 2010 moratoriums on earmarks by the Senate and Congress.Earmarks are spe...
• Another reason to study philosophy: better professors
  on Dec 6, 2013 in academia competition Filthy Lucre Joseph Heath university
  There are many reasons to study philosophy that are to do with its intrinsically more interesting content. For example, whatever the academic discipline, philosophy can go one or more levels up and ask deeper questions. But suppose you are considerin...
• The principal-agent problem in modern science
  on Nov 20, 2013 in ethics research social impact publish or perish science
  A recent article in The Economist repeats what many have known for some time. The scientific academic establishment is at risk of intellectual collapse. The central reason for this is not that science is difficult to do well (though it is) but that m...

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