Jonathan Chait: “The Muslim radical argues that the ban on blasphemy is morally right and should be followed; the Western liberal insists it is morally wrong but should be followed. Theoretical distinctions aside, both positions yield an identical outcome. The right to blaspheme religion is one of the most elemental exercises of political liberalism. One cannot defend the right without defending the practice.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
The Charlie Hebdo Shooters Aren’t Defending Islam, They’re Degrading It
William Saletan: “The fantasy of these terrorists, like those who previously bombed Charlie Hebdo and attacked a Danish cartoonist, is that they’re honoring Islam. But they aren’t. They’re disgracing it. When you murder people in the name of Allah, you fulfill the most pernicious of all Muslim stereotypes. You do so not in ink, but in blood. Your crime sows fear of all Muslims. You don’t avenge the caricature. You are the caricature.”
Charlie Hebdo’s Most Controversial Religious Covers, Translated And Explained
“While they’ve mocked everything from Sept. 11 to Michael Jackson, Charlie Hebdo has riled up the most controversy when covering religion, particularly the Prophet Mohammed – whom many Muslims believe it is forbidden to depict.”
AP Takes Down “Piss Christ” Image After Complaints About Censorship Double Standard
In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings, the Associated Press released a statement: “None of the images distributed by AP showed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. It’s been our policy for years that we refrain from moving deliberately provocative images.” Then a conservative magazine observed that Andrés Serrano’s notoriously controversial photograph was available via AP …
London Actor Dies During Rehearsal For “Dante’s Inferno”
“Khan Bonfils, who played key villains in two recent James Bond films and Jedi master Saesee Tiin in Star Wars: Episode 1 The Phantom Menace as well as the King of Siam in the 2000 revival of The King and I at the London Palladium, collapsed during rehearsals for the Craft Theatre Company’s upcoming production at The Rag Factory.
Barnes Foundation Names New CEO
“The Barnes Foundation has selected Thomas Collins, head of the resurgent Pérez Art Museum in Miami, to be its new chief executive and president.”
Meet The Philosopher Who’s Helping Keep Google Out Of Court
Oxford professor Luciano Floridi is helping Google comply with the EU’s right-to-be-forgotten ruling by helping the search engine’s programmers and attorneys change the way they understand and think about the issues involved – including the nature of identity in the Internet age.
Helgi Tomasson (And The Rest Of Us) Celebrate His 30 Years With San Francisco Ballet
“What Tomasson has done here over these three decades is to transform a respected regional American ballet company into an international-caliber organization that commands worldwide respect for the depth of its repertoire and its superb technical standards. In fact, the S.F. Ballet’s history of the past 30 years has rendered the term ‘American regional company’ rather outdated.”
You Know It’s Oscar Season When The Historical-Accuracy Hit Squads Show Up
“Over the past several weeks, it seems that almost every major awards contender has had some kind of high-profile accusation flung at it over its misappropriation of the truth. It happens every year, of course …, but this time, it’s reached comically epidemic levels … These movies are not documentaries, nor are they acts of journalism. (And even documentaries don’t always need to be totally accurate – just ask Werner Herzog.)”
So Why *Do* Women Cry More Than Men?
“We can intuit that men cry less often than women owing to social conditioning; crying doesn’t really fit in with our image of stereotypical manhood, after all, and that’s no doubt a partial explanation of why men are more likely to hold in their tears. But men may also be biologically built to shed fewer tears.”