Debate Short Quotes

Why do you have to correct everything I say?” Julie glanced at his FTW! shirt. “Out of the two of us, I don’t think I’m the one that deviates from the norm.” The train slammed to a stop. “You’re the one who seems to get off arguing.” “You sound exactly like Finn. We’re exchanging ideas. Debating.” Matt looked down at his shorts. “And so far I haven’t gotten off.

The gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product...if we should judge the United States of America by that - counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

Let's say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100,000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I'll take 100,000. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth. Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, all of that for 98,000 years. Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2000 years ago, thinks 'That's enough of that. It's time to intervene,' and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Don't lets appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let's go to the desert and have another revelation there. This is nonsense. It can't be believed by a thinking person. Why am I glad this is the case? To get to the point of the wrongness of Christianity, because I think the teachings of Christianity are immoral. The central one is the most immoral of all, and that is the one of vicarious redemption. You can throw your sins onto somebody else, vulgarly known as scapegoating. In fact, originating as scapegoating in the same area, the same desert. I can pay your debt if I love you. I can serve your term in prison if I love you very much. I can volunteer to do that. I can't take your sins away, because I can't abolish your responsibility, and I shouldn't offer to do so. Your responsibility has to stay with you. There's no vicarious redemption. There very probably, in fact, is no redemption at all. It's just a part of wish-thinking, and I don't think wish-thinking is good for people either. It even manages to pollute the central question, the word I just employed, the most important word of all: the word love, by making love compulsory, by saying you MUST love. You must love your neighbour as yourself, something you can't actually do. You'll always fall short, so you can always be found guilty. By saying you must love someone who you also must fear. That's to say a supreme being, an eternal father, someone of whom you must be afraid, but you must love him, too. If you fail in this duty, you're again a wretched sinner. This is not mentally or morally or intellectually healthy. And that brings me to the final objection - I'll condense it, Dr. Orlafsky - which is, this is a totalitarian system. If there was a God who could do these things and demand these things of us, and he was eternal and unchanging, we'd be living under a dictatorship from which there is no appeal, and one that can never change and one that knows our thoughts and can convict us of thought crime, and condemn us to eternal punishment for actions that we are condemned in advance to be taking. All this in the round, and I could say more, it's an excellent thing that we have absolutely no reason to believe any of it to be true.

The genuine object of debate raised by the [2008 financial] crisis ought to be how to overcome the short-termism to which we have been led by a consumerism intrinsically destructive of all genuine investment in the future, a short-termism which has systematically, and not accidentally, been translated into decomposition of investment into speculation.

Crisis is routinely identified as a core mechanism of fascism because it short-circuits debate and democratic deliberation. Hence all fascistic movements commit considerable energy to prolonging a heightened state of emergency. Across the West, this was the most glorious boon of World War I.

When the Ancient Persians had a big political decision to make they would debate the matter twice: once drunk, and once sober. If they came to the same conclusion both times, they acted.

The only thing you can justifiably claim that life owes you is an equal measure of what you have given out. And even that is debatable.

Ethics that focus on human interactions, morals that focus on humanity's relationship to a Creator, fall short of these things we've learned. They fail to encompass the big take-home message, so far, of a century and a half of biology and ecology: life is- more than anything else- a process; it creates, and depends on, relationships among energy, land, water, air, time and various living things. It's not just about human-to-human interaction; it's not just about spiritual interaction. It's about all interaction. We're bound with the rest of life in a network, a network including not just all living things but the energy and nonliving matter that flows through the living, making and keeping all of us alive as we make it alive. We can keep debating ideologies and sending entreaties toward heaven. But unless we embrace the fuller reality we're in- and reality's implications- we'll face big problems.

This falling-out was to be more than personal, for the rift between Hamilton and Madison precipitated the start of the two-party system in America. The funding debate shattered the short-lived political consensus that had ushered in the new government. For the next five years, the political spectrum in America was defined by whether people endorsed or opposed Alexander Hamilton’s programs.

Crisis is routinely identified as a core mechanism of fascism because it short-circuits debate and democratic deliberation. Hence all fascistic movements commit considerable energy to prolonging a heightened state of emergency.

A philosophical thought is not supposed to be impervious to all criticism; this is the error Whitehead describes of turning philosophy into geometry, and it is useful primarily as a way of gaining short-term triumphs in personal arguments that no one else cares (or even knows) about anyway. A good philosophical thought will always be subject to criticisms (as Heidegger’s or Whitehead’s best insights all are) but they are of such elegance and depth that they change the terms of debate, and function as a sort of “obligatory passage point” (Latour’s term) in the discussions that follow. Or in other words, the reason Being and Time is still such a classic, with hundreds of thousands or millions of readers almost a century later, is not because Heidegger made “fewer mistakes” than others of his generation. Mistakes need to be cleaned up, but that is not the primary engine of personal or collective intellectual progress.

Again, do you call those men leisured who spend many hours at the barber’s simply to cut whatever grew overnight, to have a serious debate about every separate hair, to tidy up disarranged locks or to train thinning ones from the sides to lie over the forehead?

Deeper in their hearts, they were debating what kind of man they wanted their son to be.

Shortly after the elections, Putin went so far as to inform us that Parliament was a place not for debate, but for legislative tidying up. He was pleased that the new Duma would not be given to debating.

Arguments continue over what constitutes true “identity politics” as a philosophical construct, a public policy imperative, or a flawed means of picking candidates based solely on external characteristics rather than the candidate’s own merit. Rather than engaging in a false choice, I opt to short-circuit the debate with a more simplistic view: identity is real and necessary and intertwined in our politics in such a way that there is no going back.

During the Senate debate on the intervention in Iraq, Sen. Clinton made considerable use of her background and 'experience' to argue that, yes, Saddam Hussein was indeed a threat. She did not argue so much from the position adopted by the Bush administration as she emphasized the stand taken, by both her husband and Al Gore, when they were in office, to the effect that another and final confrontation with the Baathist regime was more or less inevitable. Now, it does not especially matter whether you agree or agreed with her about this (as I, for once, do and did). What does matter is that she has since altered her position and attempted, with her husband’s help, to make people forget that she ever held it. And this, on a grave matter of national honor and security, merely to influence her short-term standing in the Iowa caucuses. Surely that on its own should be sufficient to disqualify her from consideration?

Ancient astrology was rather different from the modern horoscope. Its more learned practitioners enjoyed intellectual respectability, and there was a substantial overlap between astrology and philosophy. People would consult astrologers on anything, from the time and manner in which they were going to die to who was likely to win in the chariot-races that afternoon. The chronology of the origins and development of astrology are impossible to establish, and were debated even in the ancient world. Suffice it to say here that the Western tradition was one of many traditions: Indian, Chinese, Middle Eastern. It was Ptolemy, the Hellenistic geographer and astrologer, who first laid the technical foundations of Western astrology in his Tetrabiblos (‘Four Books’). But the rise in the prominence of astrology was closely tied to the Roman imperial regime. It greatly benefited emperors to have their sovereignty ‘written in the stars’.

Hoping to settle the matter once and for all, in 1969 food scientists from all over the world convened at ‘An Origin of Corn Conference’ at the University of Illinois, but the debates grew so vituperative and bitter, and at times personal, that the conference broke up in confusion, and no papers from it were ever published.

The Gross National Product does not include the beauty of our poetry or the intelligence of our public debate. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.” —Robert F. Kennedy

At moments of important decision-making, the mind could be considered as a parliament, a debating chamber. Different factions contended, short- and long-term interests were entrenched in mutual loathing. Not only were motions tabled and opposed, certain proposals were aired in order to mask others. Sessions could be devious as well as stormy.

Again, do you call those men leisured who spend many hours at the barber’s simply to cut whatever grew overnight, to have a serious debate about every separate hair, to tidy up disarranged locks or to train thinning ones from the sides to lie over the forehead? How angry they get if the barber has been a bit careless – as if he were trimming a real man!

The gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials...it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

Climate change denialists are therefore engaged in intergenerational economic warfare on their own societies. They won’t witness the worst aspects of climate change—luckily for them they’ll die before they occur. But their children and grandchildren will be affected by them. The refusal of older people, and particularly old white males, to accept the need for climate action shifts costs that they themselves are causing onto their descendants, all of whom will pay higher prices, higher taxes and higher insurance premiums and enjoy poorer health, lower economic growth and fewer jobs because of climate change. Denialists are a form of economic parasite preying on their own offspring, running up a bill they’ll die before having to pay. And every year of delay increases the costs that future generations will have to bear.

David was the son of a famous Venetian rabbi. From his youth he had been accustomed to debate good principles and right conduct with all sorts of grave Jewish persons. These conversations had formed his own character and he naturally supposed that a small measure of the same could not help but improve other people's. In short he had come to believe that if only one talks long enough and expresses oneself properly, it is perfectly possible to argue people into being good and happy. With this aim in mind he generally took it upon himself to quarrel with Tom Brightwind several times a week -- all without noticeable effect.

Even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task, it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction - purpose and dignity - that afflicts us all. Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans. If this is true here at home, so it is true elsewhere in world.

Campaign season is the only time of public debate about what we want for the future. It can change consciousness even more than who gets elected. In short, campaigns may be the closest thing we have to democracy itself.

In ancient Babylon King Hammurabi (the same bloke who decided barmaids could be drowned for serving short measures) decreed that the introduction of political debate into beer shops was an offence punishable by – you guessed it – death.

And we tend to adopt the attitudes and prejudices of the groups we’re in. In short, at some point in life, perhaps as early as grade school, we find ourselves “taking a side” in the racial debate. We become aware that the differences matter.

With the best of intentions, the generation before mine worked diligently to prepare their children to make an intelligent case for Christianity. We were constantly reminded of the superiority of our own worldview and the shortcomings of all others. We learned that as Christians, we alone had access to absolute truth and could win any argument. The appropriate Bible verses were picked out for us, the opposing positions summarized for us, and the best responses articulated for us, so that we wouldn’t have to struggle through two thousand years of theological deliberations and debates but could get right to the bottom line on the important stuff: the deity of Christ, the nature of the Trinity, the role and interpretation of Scripture, and the fundamentals of Christianity. As a result, many of us entered the world with both an unparalleled level of conviction and a crippling lack of curiosity. So ready with the answers, we didn’t know what the questions were anymore. So prepared to defend the faith, we missed the thrill of discovering it for ourselves. So convinced we had God right, it never occurred to us that we might be wrong. In short, we never learned to doubt. Doubt is a difficult animal to master because it requires that we learn the difference between doubting God and doubting what we believe about God. The former has the potential to destroy faith; the latter has the power to enrich and refine it. The former is a vice; the latter a virtue. Where would we be if the apostle Peter had not doubted the necessity of food laws, or if Martin Luther had not doubted the notion that salvation can be purchased? What if Galileo had simply accepted church-instituted cosmology paradigms, or William Wilberforce the condition of slavery? We do an injustice to the intricacies and shadings of Christian history when we gloss over the struggles, when we read Paul’s epistles or Saint Augustine’s Confessions without acknowledging the difficult questions that these believers asked and the agony with which they often asked them. If I’ve learned anything over the past five years, it’s that doubt is the mechanism by which faith evolves. It helps us cast off false fundamentals so that we can recover what has been lost or embrace what is new. It is a refining fire, a hot flame that keeps our faith alive and moving and bubbling about, where certainty would only freeze it on the spot. I would argue that healthy doubt (questioning one’s beliefs) is perhaps the best defense against unhealthy doubt (questioning God). When we know how to make a distinction between our ideas about God and God himself, our faith remains safe when one of those ideas is seriously challenged. When we recognize that our theology is not the moon but rather a finger pointing at the moon, we enjoy the freedom of questioning it from time to time. We can say, as Tennyson said, Our little systems have their day; They have their day and cease to be; They are but broken lights of thee, And thou, O Lord, art more than they.15 I sometimes wonder if I might have spent fewer nights in angry, resentful prayer if only I’d known that my little systems — my theology, my presuppositions, my beliefs, even my fundamentals — were but broken lights of a holy, transcendent God. I wish I had known to question them, not him. What my generation is learning the hard way is that faith is not about defending conquered ground but about discovering new territory. Faith isn’t about being right, or settling down, or refusing to change. Faith is a journey, and every generation contributes its own sketches to the map. I’ve got miles and miles to go on this journey, but I think I can see Jesus up ahead.

air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts . . . the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud to be Americans.40

The Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.… It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl.… Yet the GNP does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or… the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.… It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

Humboldt was the first to relate colonialism to the devastation of the environment. Again and again, his thoughts returned to nature as a complex web of life but also to man’s place within it. At the Rio Apure, he had seen the devastation caused by the Spanish who had tried to control the annual flooding by building a dam. To make matters worse, they had also felled the trees that had held the riverbanks together like ‘a very tight wall’ with the result that the raging river carried more land away each year. On the high plateau of Mexico City, Humboldt had observed how a lake that fed the local irrigation system had shrunk into a shallow puddle, leaving the valleys beneath barren. Everywhere in the world, Humboldt said, water engineers were guilty of such short-sighted follies. He debated nature, ecological issues, imperial power and politics in relation to each other. He criticized unjust land distribution, monocultures, violence against tribal groups and indigenous work conditions – all powerfully relevant issues today. As a former mining inspector, Humboldt had a unique insight into the environmental and economic consequences of the exploitation of nature’s riches. He questioned Mexico’s dependence on cash crops and mining, for example, because it bound the country to fluctuating international market prices. ‘The only capital,’ he said, that ‘increases with time, consists in the produce of agriculture’. All problems in the colonies, he was certain, were the result of the ‘imprudent activities of the Europeans’.

In all conflicts between groups, there are three elements. One: the certitude that our group is morally superior, possibly even chosen by God. All others should follow our example or be at our service. In order to bring peace to the world, we have to impose our set of beliefs upon others, through manipulation, force, and fear, if necessary. Two: a refusal or incapacity to see or admit to any possible errors or faults in our group. The undeniable nature of our own goodness makes us think we are infallible; there can be no wrong in us. Three: a refusal to believe that any other group possesses truth or can contribute anything of value. At best, others may be regarded as ignorant, unenlightened, and possessing only half—truths; at worst, they are seen as destructive, dangerous, and possessed by evil spirits: they need to be overpowered for the good of humanity. Society and cultures are, then, divided into the “good” and the “bad”; the good attributing to themselves the mission to save, to heal, to bring peace to a wicked world, according to their own terms and under their controlling power. Such is the story of all civilizations through the ages as they spread over the earth by invading and colonizing. Differences must be suppressed; “savages” must be civilized. We must prove by all possible means that our culture, our power, our knowledge, and our technology are the best, that our gods are the only gods! This is not just the story of civilizations but also of all wars of religion, inquisitions, censorships, dictatorships; all things, in short, that are ideologies. An ideology is a set of ideas translated into a set of values. Because they are held to be absolutely true, these ideas and values need to be imposed on others if they are not readily accepted. A political system, a school of psychology, and a philosophy of economics can all be ideologies. Even a place of work can be an ideology. Religious sub—groups, sects, are based upon ideological principles. Religions themselves can become ideologies. And ideologues, by their nature, are not open to new ideas or even to debate; they refuse to accept or listen to anyone else’s reality. They refuse to admit any possibility of error or even criticism of their system; they are closed up in their set of ideas, theories, and values. We human beings have a great facility for living illusions, for protecting our self—image with power, for justifying it all by thinking we are the favoured ones of God.

Classics is a subject that exists in that gap between us and the word of the Greeks and Romans. The questions raised by Classics are the questions raised by our distance from 'their' world, and at the same time by our closeness to it, and its familiarity to us. In our museums, in our literature, languages, culture, and ways of thinking. The aim of Classics is not only to discover or uncover the ancient world (though that is part of it, as the rediscovery of Bassae, or the excavation of the furthest outposts of the Roman empire on the Scottish borders, shows). Its aim is to also define and debate our relationship to that world.

The convention debated at length over how the members of the Supreme Court should be selected, eventually settling on nomination by the president and confirmation by the Senate. By providing that federal judges “shall hold their offices during good Behaviour,” the delegates intended to protect judicial independence.

The year that Hitler came into power the prestigious Oxford Union, a student debating society, overwhelmingly approved a motion stating that “this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country,” and within a short period similar resolutions were adopted by most of England’s other colleges and universities. When

the Bogdanov theory excited debate among physicists as to whether it was twaddle, a work of genius, or a hoax. 'Scientifically, it's clearly more or less complete nonsense, Columbia University physicist Peter Woit told the New York Times, 'but these days that doesn't much distinguish it from a lot of the rest of the literature.

these six corporations, and more precisely, the key decision makers within them, set the boundaries on acceptable debate on what’s socially, politically, economically possible. They make their decisions on those things based on profit maximization, both short and long term. If you think they’re making their decisions on anything else, you are mistaken.

Duroy, who felt light hearted that evening, said with a smile: "You are gloomy to-day, dear master." The poet replied: "I am always so, young man, so will you be in a few years. Life is a hill. As long as one is climbing up one looks towards the summit and is happy, but when one reaches the top one suddenly perceives the descent before one, and its bottom, which is death. One climbs up slowly, but one goes down quickly. At your age a man is happy. He hopes for many things, which, by the way, never come to pass. At mine, one no longer expects anything - but death." Duroy began to laugh: "You make me shudder all over." Norbert de Varenne went on: "No, you do not understand me now, but later on you will remember what I am saying to you at this moment. A day comes, and it comes early for many, when there is an end to mirth, for behind everything one looks at one sees death. You do not even understand the word. At your age it means nothing; at mine it is terrible. Yes, one understands it all at once, one does not know how or why, and then everything in life changes its aspect. For fifteen years I have felt death assail me as if I bore within me some gnawing beast. I have felt myself decaying little by little, month by month, hour by hour, like a house crumbling to ruin. Death has disfigured me so completely that I do not recognize myself. I have no longer anything about me of myself - of the fresh, strong man I was at thirty. I have seen death whiten my black hairs, and with what skillful and spiteful slowness. Death has taken my firm skin, my muscles, my teeth, my whole body of old, only leaving me a despairing soul, soon to be taken too. Every step brings me nearer to death, every movemebt, every breath hastens his odious work. To breathe, sleep, drink, eat, work, dream, everything we do is to die. To live, in short, is to die. Oh, you will realize this. If you stop and think for a moment you will understand. What do you expect? Love? A few more kisses and you will be impotent. Then money? For what? Women? Much fun that will be! In order to eat a lot and grow fat and lie awake at night suffering from gout? And after that? Glory? What use is that when it does not take the form of love? And after that? Death is always the end. I now see death so near that I often want to stretch my arms to push it back. It covers the earth and fills the universe. I see it everywhere. The insects crushed on the path, the falling leaves, the white hair in a friend's head, rend my heart and cry to me, 'Behold it!' It spoils for me all I do, all I see, all that I eat and drink, all that I love; the bright moonlight, the sunrise, the broad ocean, the noble rivers, and the soft summer evening air so sweet to breath." He walked on slowly, dreaming aloud, almost forgetting that he had a listener: "And no one ever returns - never. The model of a statue may be preserved, but my body, my face, my thoughts, my desires will never reappear again. And yet millions of beings will be born with a nose, eyes, forehead, cheeks, and mouth like me, and also a soul like me, without my ever returning, without even anything recognizable of me appearing in these countless different beings. What can we cling to? What can we believe in? All religions are stupid, with their puerile morality and their egotistical promises, monstrously absurd. Death alone is certain." "Think of that, young man. Think of it for days, and months and years, and life will seem different to you. Try to get away from all the things that shut you in. Make a superhuman effort to emerge alive from your own body, from your own interests, from your thoughts, from humanity in general, so that your eyes may be turned in the opposite direction. Then you understand how unimportant is the quarrel between Romanticism and Realism, or the Budget debates.

What will it be in the end? One flies to the east, the other to the west; they lose the principle, dispersing it in the crowd of incidents: after an hour of tempest, they know not what they seek: one is low, the other high, and a third wide. One catches at a word and a simile; another is no longer sensible of what is said in opposition to him, and thinks only of going on at his own rate, not of answering you: another, finding himself too weak to make good his rest, fears all, refuses all, at the very beginning, confounds the subject; or, in the very height of the dispute, stops short and is silent, by a peevish ignorance affecting a proud contempt or a foolishly modest avoidance of further debate: provided this man strikes, he cares not how much he lays himself open; the other counts his words and weighs them for reasons; another only brawls and uses the advantage of his lungs. Here’s one who learnedly concludes against himself, and another, who deafens you with prefaces and senseless digressions: another falls into downright railing, and seeks a quarrel after the German fashion, to disengage himself from a wit that presses too hard upon him: and a last man sees nothing into the reason of the thing, but draws a line of circumvallation about you of dialectic clauses, and the formulas of his art.

In short: you, dear reader, are correct. You are always correct. Not only in what you imagine, but in what you feel. You are allowed to not-love the novel the rest of the world is raving about; you are allowed to cordially loathe your sister’s favourite author. Reading is not a test. Whether or not you love a book is not a matter for debate; and not something you can be persuaded into. Books are the magical everyday that is all your own. Read on, and enjoy.

It is beyond us to divine how any people could have bred cobs of corn from such a thin and unpropitious plant—or even thought to try. Hoping to settle the matter once and for all, food scientists from around the world convened in 1969 at a conference on the origin of corn at the University of Illinois, but the debates grew so vituperative and bitter, and at times so personal, that the conference broke up in confusion and no papers from it were ever published.

I've overheard the way men gossip at dances or parties. They point out all a girl's physical flaws and debate whether she's too tall or short, or if her complexion is smooth enough, or whether her bosom is adequate." Pandora scowled. "Why don't they have to be perfect?" "Because they're men." Pandora looked disgusted. "That's the London Season for you: Casting girls before swine." Turning to her husband, she asked, "Do men really talk about women that way?" "Men, no," Gabriel said. "Arsewits, yes.

And if I was seen as temperamentally cool and collected, measured in how I used my words, Joe was all warmth, a man without inhibitions, happy to share whatever popped into his head. It was an endearing trait, for he genuinely enjoyed people. You could see it as he worked a room, his handsome face always cast in a dazzling smile (and just inches from whomever he was talking to), asking a person where they were from, telling them a story about how much he loved their hometown (“Best calzone I ever tasted”) or how they must know so-and-so (“An absolutely great guy, salt of the earth”), flattering their children (“Anyone ever tell you you’re gorgeous?”) or their mother (“You can’t be a day over forty!”), and then on to the next person, and the next, until he’d touched every soul in the room with a flurry of handshakes, hugs, kisses, backslaps, compliments, and one-liners. Joe’s enthusiasm had its downside. In a town filled with people who liked to hear themselves talk, he had no peer. If a speech was scheduled for fifteen minutes, Joe went for at least a half hour. If it was scheduled for a half hour, there was no telling how long he might talk. His soliloquies during committee hearings were legendary. His lack of a filter periodically got him in trouble, as when during the primaries, he had pronounced me “articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” a phrase surely meant as a compliment, but interpreted by some as suggesting that such characteristics in a Black man were noteworthy. As I came to know Joe, though, I found his occasional gaffes to be trivial compared to his strengths. On domestic issues, he was smart, practical, and did his homework. His experience in foreign policy was broad and deep. During his relatively short-lived run in the primaries, he had impressed me with his skill and discipline as a debater and his comfort on a national stage. Most of all, Joe had heart. He’d overcome a bad stutter as a child (which probably explained his vigorous attachment to words) and two brain aneurysms in middle age.

If you are a long-time reader, then you know the story thus far. You were there when the Alma Alerons first arrived at Hogwarts in their peculiar flying cars. You know how the new Hogwarts headmaster came to be, and what his story is. You know all about the Gremlins—including Ted Lupin's dark secret, and Petra Morganstern's tragic past. You witnessed the raising of the Wocket, the return of the Gatekeeper, and the Hogwarts all-school debate. In short, you are prepared (as much as you can be) for what is to come.

And I’ve stayed hooked on campaigns to this day. Despite all their faults, campaigns are based on the fact that every vote counts, and therefore every person counts. As freestanding societies, they are more open than academia, more idealistic than corporations, more unifying than religions, and more accessible than government itself. Campaign season is the only time of public debate about what we want for the future. It can change consciousness even more than who gets elected. In short, campaigns may be the closest thing we have to democracy itself.

Again, do you call those men leisured who spend many hours at the barber’s simply to cut whatever grew overnight, to have a serious debate about every separate hair, to tidy up disarranged locks or to train thinning ones from the sides to lie over the forehead? How angry they get if the barber has been a bit careless – as if he were trimming a real man! How they flare up if any of their mane is wrongly cut off, if any of it is badly arranged, or if it doesn't fall into the right ringlets! Which of them would not rather have his country ruffled than his hair?

During her lifetime, people across the globe furiously debated whether [Blavatsky] was a genius, a consummate fraud, or simply a lunatic. By that time, an excellent case could have been made for any of the three. Born in Russia in 1831, Blavatsky was short and fat with bulging eyes and folds of skin falling from her multiple chins. Her face was so broad that some people suspected she was a man. She professed to be a virgin; in fact, she had two husbands and an illegitimate son, and an apostle of asceticism. She smoked up to 200 cigarettes a day and swore like a solider.

Miss Lucinda Throckmorton-Jones, former paid companion to several of the ton’s most successful debutantes of prior seasons, came to Havenhurst to fill the position of Elizabeth’s duenna. A woman of fifty with wiry gray hair she scraped back into a bun and the posture of a ramrod, she had a permanently pinched face, as if she smelled something disagreeable but was too well-bred to remark upon it. In addition to the duenna’s daunting physical appearance, Elizabeth observed shortly after their first meeting that Miss Throckmorton-Jones possessed an astonishing ability to sit serenely for hours without twitching so much as a finger. Elizabeth refused to be put off by her stony demeanor and set about finding a way to thaw her. Teasingly, she called her “Lucy,” and when the casually affectionate nickname won a thunderous frown from the lady, Elizabeth tried to find a different means. She discovered it very soon: A few days after Lucinda came to live at Havenhurst the duenna discovered her curled up in a chair in Havenhurt’s huge library, engrossed in a book. “You enjoy reading?” Lucinda had said gruffly-and with surprise-as she noted the gold embossed title on the volume. “Yes,” Elizabeth had assured her, smiling. “Do you?” “Have you read Christopher Marlowe?” “Yes, but I prefer Shakespeare.” Thereafter it became their policy each night after supper to debate the merits of the individual books they’d read. Before long Elizabeth realized that she’d won the duenna’s reluctant respect. It was impossible to be certain she’d won Lucinda’s affection, for the only emotion the lady ever displayed was anger, and that only once, at a miscreant tradesman in the village. Even so, it was a display Elizabeth never forgot. Wielding her ever-present umbrella, Lucinda had advanced on the hapless man, backing him clear around his own shop, while from her lips in a icy voice poured the most amazing torrent of eloquent, biting fury Elizabeth had ever heard. “My temper,” Lucinda had primly informed her-by way of apology, Elizabeth supposed-“is my only shortcoming.” Privately, Elizabeth thought Lucy must bottle up all her emotions inside herself as she sat perfectly still on sofas and chairs, for years at a time, until it finally exploded like one of those mountains she’d read about that poured forth molten rock when the pressure finally reached a peak.

the planned destruction of Iraq’s agriculture is not widely known. Modern Iraq is part of the ‘fertile crescent’ of Mesopotamia where man first domesticated wheat between 8,000 and 13,000 years ago, and home to several thousand varieties of local wheat. As soon as the US took over Iraq, it became clear its interests were not limited to oil. In 2004, Paul Bremer, the then military head of the Provisional Authority imposed as many as a hundred laws which made short work of Iraq’s sovereignty. The most crippling for the people and the economy of Iraq was Order 81 which deals, among other things, with plant varieties and patents. The goal was brutally clear-cut and sweeping — to wipe out Iraq’s traditional, sustainable agriculture and replace it with oil-chemical-genetically-modified-seed-based industrial agriculture. There was no public or parliamentary debate for the conquered people who never sought war. The conquerors made unilateral changes in Iraq’s 1970 patent law: henceforth, plant forms could be patented — which was never allowed before — while genetically-modified organisms were to be introduced. Farmers were strictly banned from saving their own seeds: this, in a country where, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation, 97 per cent of Iraqi farmers planted only their own saved seeds. With a single stroke of the pen, Iraq’s agriculture was axed, while Order 81 facilitated the introduction and domination of imported, high-priced corporate seeds, mainly from the US — which neither reproduce, nor give yields without their prescribed chemical fertiliser and pesticide inputs. It meant that the majority of farmers who had never spent money on seed and inputs that came free from nature, would henceforth have to heavily invest in corporate inputs and equipment — or go into debt to obtain them, or accept lowered profits, or give up farming altogether.

...the campaign was also among the most heated in recent memory, or short -term anticipation. The soon-to-be Opposition Leader never tired of listing the promises the new Prime Minister would break; she in turn countered with statistics of the mess he’d create as Treasurer, in the mid-eighties. (The causes of that impending recession were still being debated by economists; most claimed it was an “essential precursor” of the prosperity of the nineties , and that The Market, in its infinite, time -spanning wisdom, would choose / had chosen the best of all possible futures. Personally, I suspect it simply proved that even foresight was no cure for incompetence.

Yet if the gross national product measures all of this, there is much that it does not include. It measures neither the health of our children, the quality of their education, nor the joy of their play. It measures neither the beauty of our poetry, nor the strength of our marriages. It pays no heed to the intelligence of our public debate, nor the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our wit nor our courage, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worth living, and it can tell us everything about our country except those things that make us proud to be a part of it. ROBERT F. KENNEDY, KANSAS CITY, 1968

this reaction. This was on college campuses, exactly the kind of environment where I had expected curiosity, lively debate, and, yes, the thrill and energy of like-minded activists. Instead almost every campus audience I encountered bristled with anger and protest. I was accustomed to radical Muslim students from my experience as an activist and a politician in Holland. Any time I made a public speech, they would swarm to it in order to shout at me and rant in broken Dutch, in sentences so fractured you wondered how they qualified as students at all. On college campuses in the United States and Canada, by contrast, young and highly articulate people from the Muslim student associations would simply take over the debate. They would send e-mails of protest to the organizers beforehand, such as one (sent by a divinity student at Harvard) that protested that I did not “address anything of substance that actually affects Muslim women’s lives” and that I merely wanted to “trash” Islam. They would stick up posters and hand out pamphlets at the auditorium. Before I’d even stopped speaking they’d be lining up for the microphone, elbowing away all non-Muslims. They spoke in perfect English; they were mostly very well-mannered; and they appeared far better assimilated than their European immigrant counterparts. There were far fewer bearded young men in robes short enough to show their ankles, aping the tradition that says the Prophet’s companions dressed this way out of humility, and fewer girls in hideous black veils. In the United States a radical Muslim student might have a little goatee; a girl may wear a light, attractive headscarf. Their whole demeanor was far less threatening, but they were omnipresent. Some of them would begin by saying how sorry they were for all my terrible suffering, but they would then add that these so-called traumas of mine were aberrant, a “cultural thing,” nothing to do with Islam. In blaming Islam for the oppression of women, they said, I was vilifying them personally, as Muslims. I had failed to understand that Islam is a religion of peace, that the Prophet treated women very well. Several times I was informed that attacking Islam only serves the purpose of something called “colonial feminism,” which in itself was allegedly a pretext for the war on terror and the evil designs of the U.S. government. I was invited to one college to speak as part of a series of

The great flaw of all these administrative techniques is that, in the name of equality and democracy, they function as a vast "antipolitics machine", sweeping vast realms of legitimate public debate out of the public sphere and into the arms of technical, administrative committees. They stand in the way of potentially bracing and instructive debates about social policy, the meaning of intelligence, the selection of elites, the value of equity and diversity, and the purpose of economic growth and development. They are, in short, the means by which technical and administrative elites attempt to convince a skeptical public--while excluding the public from debate--that they play no favorites, take no obscure discretionary action, and have no biases but are merely taking transparent technical calculations.

Umar's solution, imposing the hijab/curtain that hides women instead of changing attitudes and forcing "those in whose heart is a disease" to act differently, was going to overshadow Islam's dimension as a civilization, as a body of thought on the individual and his/her role in society. This body of thought made dar al-Islam (the land of Islam) at the outset a pioneering experiment in terms of individual freedom and democracy. But the hijab fell over Medina and cut short that brief burst of freedom. Paradoxically, 15 centuries later it was colonial power that would force the Muslim states to reopen the question of the rights of the individual and of women. All debates on democracy get tied up in the woman question and that piece of cloth that opponents of human rights today claim to be the very essence of Muslim identity.

If Lee discussed his proposals with Washington during a visit to Mount Vernon on November 11 and 12, he no doubt received a cold reception. Washington certainly did not take kindly to the constitutional objections that George Mason sent him on October 7, with no sense, it seems, of how much hostility they would provoke. Washington wrote Madison (who was attending Congress in New York) that Mason had carefully distributed his objections among the seceding members of the Pennsylvania assembly, who repeated them in their published “address.” Washington thought Mason was also behind Lee’s arguments. Mason, in short, had caused the opposition to the Constitution in both Congress and the Pennsylvania assembly, and for no good reason: Madison insisted that there was little if anything worthy of serious consideration in Mason’s objections, which he dismissed, one by one.

Janitorial" All morning he drifts the spacious lawns like a gleaner, picking up this and that, the summer clouds immense and building toward afternoon, when the heat drives him under the shade of the oak trees in the quad and then along cool corridors inside to pull down last term's flyers For the chamber recital, the poetry reading, the lecture on the ethics of cloning, the dinner with some ambassador, the debate between Kant and Heidegger, the frat party, the sorority party, the kegger, the weekend Bergman festival, the Wednesday screening of Dumb and Dumber. He says hello to fine young ladies, and tries not to dwell on their halter tops, their tanned thighs, shorts up to here. At five he climbs into an old, dumpster-colored olds, lights up and heads home across the barge-ridden river in its servitude to East St. Louis, where you know this poem—glib, well-meaning, trivial-- grows tongue-tied, and cannot follow.

Yale political scientist Alexander Coppock conducted a series of experiments designed to measure incremental changes in political opinion when people are presented with new information about a topic. ... [H]e was able to draw four consistent conclusions about the way that our brains react to new political information: 1. Effects are nearly uniformly positive: individuals are persuaded in the direction of evidence. 2. Effects are small: changes in opinion are incremental. 3. Effects are relatively homogenous: regardless of background, individuals respond to information by similar degrees. 4. Effects are durable: at a minimum, effects endure for weeks, albeit somewhat diminished. ... This means that people do not change their opinions dramatically in a short amount of time. But it also means that partisans don't reject good arguments and good evidence when they encounter it just because it does not conform to their worldview.

The question is also debated, whether a man should love himself most, or some one else. People criticize those who love themselves most, and call them self-lovers, using this as an epithet of disgrace, and a bad man seems to do everything for his own sake, and the more so the more wicked he is — and so men reproach him, for instance, with doing nothing of his own accord — while the good man acts for honour's sake, and the more so the better he is, and acts for his friend's sake, and sacrifices his own interest. Perhaps we ought to mark off such arguments from each other and determine how far and in what respects each view is right. Now if we grasp the sense in which each school uses the phrase 'lover of self', the truth may become evident. Those who use the term as one of reproach ascribe self-love to people who assign to themselves the greater share of wealth, honours, and bodily pleasures; for these are what most people desire, and busy themselves about as though they were the best of all things, which is the reason, too, why they become objects of competition. So those who are grasping with regard to these things gratify their appetites and in general their feelings and the irrational element of the soul; and most men are of this nature (which is the reason why the epithet has come to be used as it is — it takes its meaning from the prevailing type of self-love, which is a bad one); it is just, therefore, that men who are lovers of self in this way are reproached for being so. That it is those who give themselves the preference in regard to objects of this sort that most people usually call lovers of self is plain; for if a man were always anxious that he himself, above all things, should act justly, temperately, or in accordance with any other of the virtues, and in general were always to try to secure for himself the honourable course, no one will call such a man a lover of self or blame him. Therefore the good man should be a lover of self (for he will both himself profit by doing noble acts, and will benefit his fellows), but the wicked man should not; for he will hurt both himself and his neighbours, following as he does evil passions. For the wicked man, what he does clashes with what he ought to do, but what the good man ought to do he does; for reason in each of its possessors chooses what is best for itself, and the good man obeys his reason. It is true of the good man too that he does many acts for the sake of his friends and his country, and if necessary dies for them; for he will throw away both wealth and honours and in general the goods that are objects of competition, gaining for himself nobility; since he would prefer a short period of intense pleasure to a long one of mild enjoyment, a twelvemonth of noble life to many years of humdrum existence, and one great and noble action to many trivial ones. Now those who die for others doubtless attain this result; it is therefore a great prize that they choose for themselves. They will throw away wealth too on condition that their friends will gain more; for while a man's friend gains wealth he himself achieves nobility; he is therefore assigning the greater good to himself. The same too is true of honour and office; all these things he will sacrifice to his friend; for this is noble and laudable for himself. Rightly then is he thought to be good, since he chooses nobility before all else. But he may even give up actions to his friend; it may be nobler to become the cause of his friend's acting than to act himself. In all the actions, therefore, that men are praised for, the good man is seen to assign to himself the greater share in what is noble. In this sense, then, as has been said, a man should be a lover of self; but in the sense in which most men are so, he ought not.

The Constitutional Convention quickly agreed to the proposal of Governor Edmund Randolph of Virginia for a national government of three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial. Randolph’s resolution “that a national Judiciary be established” passed unanimously. Debating and defining the powers of Congress in Article I and of the president in Article II consumed much of the delegates’ attention and energy. Central provisions of Article III were the product of compromise and, in its fewer than five hundred words, the article left important questions unresolved. Lacking agreement on a role for lower courts, for example, the delegates simply left it to Congress to decide how to structure them. The number of justices remained unspecified. Article III itself makes no reference to the office of chief justice, to whom the Constitution (in Article I) assigns only one specific duty, that of presiding over a Senate trial in a presidential impeachment.

Noting that material poverty in the US was matched by an even greater “poverty of satisfaction, purpose, and dignity,” Kennedy decried GDP as a poor measure of the state of the nation. “Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things,” he said. The GDP was buoyed, he noted, by cigarette advertising, ambulances, home security, jails, the destruction of redwood forests, urban sprawl, napalm, nuclear warheads and the armoured vehicles used by police against riots in American cities. “It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile,” Kennedy said.

Elizabeth snapped awake in a terrified instant as the door to her bed chamber was flung open near dawn, and Ian stalked into the darkened room. “Do you want to go first, or shall I?” he said tightly, coming to stand at the side of her bed. “What do you mean?” she asked in a trembling voice. “I mean,” he said, “that either you go first and tell me why in hell you suddenly find my company repugnant, or I’ll go first and tell you how I feel when I don’t know where you are or why you want to be there!” “I’ve sent word to you both nights.” “You sent a damned note that arrived long after nightfall both times, informing me that you intended to sleep somewhere else. I want to know why!” He has men beaten like animals, she reminded herself. “Stop shouting at me,” Elizabeth said shakily, getting out of bed and dragging the covers with her to hide herself from him. His brows snapped together in an ominous frown. “Elizabeth?” he asked, reaching for her. “Don’t touch me!” she cried. Bentner’s voice came from the doorway. “Is aught amiss, my lady?” he asked, glaring bravely at Ian. “Get out of here and close that damned door behind you!” Ian snapped furiously. “Leave it open,” Elizabeth said nervously, and the brave butler did exactly as she said. In six long strides Ian was at the door, shoving it closed with a force that sent it crashing into its frame, and Elizabeth began to vibrate with terror. When he turned around and started toward her Elizabeth tried to back away, but she tripped on the coverlet and had to stay where she was. Ian saw the fear in her eyes and stopped short only inches in front of her. His hand lifted, and she winced, but it came to rest on her cheek. “Darling, what is it?” he asked. It was his voice that made her want to weep at his feet, that beautiful baritone voice; and his face-that harsh, handsome face she’d adored. She wanted to beg him to tell her what Robert and Wordsworth had said were lies-all lies. “My life depends on this, Elizabeth. So does yours. Don’t fail us,” Robert had pleaded. Yet, in that moment of weakness she actually considered telling Ian everything she knew and letting him kill her if he wanted to; she would have preferred death to the torment of living with the memory of the lie that had been their lives-to the torment of living without him. “Are you ill?” he asked, frowning and minutely studying her face. Snatching at the excuse he’d offered, she nodded hastily. “Yes. I haven’t been feeling well.” “Is that why you went to London? To see a physician?” She nodded a little wildly, and to her bewildered horror he started to smile-that lazy, tender smile that always made her senses leap. “Are you with child, darling? Is that why you’re acting so strangely?” Elizabeth was silent, trying to debate the wisdom of saying yes or no-she should say no, she realized. He’d hunt her to the ends of the earth if he believed she was carrying his babe. “No! He-the doctor said it is just-just-nerves.” “You’ve been working and playing too hard,” Ian said, looking like the picture of a worried, devoted husband. “You need more rest.” Elizabeth couldn’t bear any more of this-not his feigned tenderness or his concern or the memory of Robert’s battered back. “I’m going to sleep now,” she said in a strangled voice. “Alone,” she added, and his face whitened as if she had slapped him. During his entire adult life Ian had relied almost as much on his intuition as on his intellect, and at that moment he didn’t want to believe in the explanation they were both offering. His wife did not want him in her bed; she recoiled from his touch; she had been away for two consecutive nights; and-more alarming than any of that-guilt and fear were written all over her pale face. “Do you know what a man thinks,” he said in a calm voice that belied the pain streaking through him, “when his wife stays away at night and doesn’t want him in her bed when she does return?

Netanyahu then explained to me why the stakes were so high. The Iranian leaders, he said, “want to concentrate on completing their nuclear program because once they have that, then they could threaten the West in ways that are unimaginable today. They could take over the Persian Gulf on all its sides and take control of the oil reserves of the world. They could topple Saudi Arabia and Jordan in short order and, of course, Iraq. All your internal debates in America on [the future of] Iraq would be irrelevant because nuclear-armed Iran would subordinate Iraq in two seconds. Then they would threaten to create a second Holocaust in Israel and proceed on their idea of building a global empire, producing twenty-five atomic bombs a year—250 bombs in a decade—with missiles that they are already working on [and that they want to develop] to reach the eastern seaboard of the United States. Everything else pales in comparison to this development. This has to be stopped, for the sake of the world, not only for the sake of Israel.

Hope there isn’t anyone below us.” “If so, they’re already asleep. I mean, I’d already be asleep if you weren’t licking my ear. Why are you licking my ear?” Lex retrieved her tongue. “Because I feel like something awful is going to happen tomorrow. And I’m really hoping it doesn’t involve my grisly demise, or an even grislier demise for you than your last one, but—” She swallowed. “I want this night to be a happy one, because I think they’re going to be in short supply from now on.” “Yeah, but—” He glanced behind them. “With four friends, one uncle, one Pandora, and a comatose museum curator within hearing range?” “Good point.” Lex nodded thoughtfully, as if they were debating tax reform. “However: this.” She grabbed his hands and slapped them onto her chest. His eyes bulged, then met hers. “Compelling rebuttal.” Lex grinned and dove back into his face while Driggs’s hands reached around her back. “Ah, the over-shoulder boulder holder,” he said in a sneering voice, picking at her bra. “My old nemesis.” “Okay, don’t panic,” Lex said. “Do it just like we practiced.” “Right. The hook faces out.” “The hook faces in.” “DAMMIT.

You know those short, brown-toned South American immigrants that pick your fruit, slaughter your meat, and bus your tables? Would you—a respectable person with a middle-class upbringing—ever consider going on a date with one of them? It's a rude question, because it affects to inquire into what everyone gets to know at the cost of forever leaving it unspoken. But if you were to put your unspoken thoughts into words, they might sound something like this: Not only are these people busing the tables, slaughtering the meat, and picking the fruit; they are the descendants of the people who bused the tables, slaughtered the meat, and picked the fruit of the Aztecs and Incas. The Spanish colonisers slaughtered or mixed their blood with the princes, priests, scholars, artisans, warriors, and beautiful women of the indigenous Americas, leaving untouched a class of Morlocks bred for good-natured servility and thus now tailor-made to the demands of an increasingly feudal postindustrial America. That's, by the way, part of the undertow of the immigration debate, the thing that makes an honest appraisal of the issue impossible, because you can never put anything right without first admitting you're in the wrong.

The single book that has influenced me most is probably the last book in the world that anybody is gonna want to read: Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. This book is dense, difficult, long, full of blood and guts. It wasn’t written, as Thucydides himself attests at the start, to be easy or fun. But it is loaded with hardcore, timeless truths and the story it tells ought to be required reading for every citizen in a democracy. Thucydides was an Athenian general who was beaten and disgraced in a battle early in the 27-year conflagration that came to be called the Peloponnesian War. He decided to drop out of the fighting and dedicate himself to recording, in all the detail he could manage, this conflict, which, he felt certain, would turn out to be the greatest and most significant war ever fought up to that time. He did just that. Have you heard of Pericles’ Funeral Oration? Thucydides was there for it. He transcribed it. He was there for the debates in the Athenian assembly over the treatment of the island of Melos, the famous Melian Dialogue. If he wasn’t there for the defeat of the Athenian fleet at Syracuse or the betrayal of Athens by Alcibiades, he knew people who were there and he went to extremes to record what they told him.Thucydides, like all the Greeks of his era, was unencumbered by Christian theology, or Marxist dogma, or Freudian psychology, or any of the other “isms” that attempt to convince us that man is basically good, or perhaps perfectible. He saw things as they were, in my opinion. It’s a dark vision but tremendously bracing and empowering because it’s true. On the island of Corcyra, a great naval power in its day, one faction of citizens trapped their neighbors and fellow Corcyreans in a temple. They slaughtered the prisoners’ children outside before their eyes and when the captives gave themselves up based on pledges of clemency and oaths sworn before the gods, the captors massacred them as well. This was not a war of nation versus nation, this was brother against brother in the most civilized cities on earth. To read Thucydides is to see our own world in microcosm. It’s the study of how democracies destroy themselves by breaking down into warring factions, the Few versus the Many. Hoi polloi in Greek means “the many.” Oligoi means “the few.” I can’t recommend Thucydides for fun, but if you want to expose yourself to a towering intellect writing on the deepest stuff imaginable, give it a try.

The imperialist found it useful to incorporate the credible and seemingly unimpeachable wisdom of science to create a racial classification to be used in the appropriation and organization of lesser cultures. The works of Carolus Linnaeus, Georges Buffon, and Georges Cuvier, organized races in terms of a civilized us and a paradigmatic other. The other was uncivilized, barbaric, and wholly lower than the advanced races of Europe. This paradigm of imaginatively constructing a world predicated upon race was grounded in science, and expressed as philosophical axioms by John Locke and David Hume, offered compelling justification that Europe always ought to rule non-Europeans. This doctrine of cultural superiority had a direct bearing on Zionist practice and vision in Palestine. A civilized man, it was believed, could cultivate the land because it meant something to him; on it, accordingly, he produced useful arts and crafts, he created, he accomplished, he built. For uncivilized people, land was either farmed badly or it was left to rot. This was imperialism as theory and colonialism was the practice of changing the uselessly unoccupied territories of the world into useful new versions of Europe. It was this epistemic framework that shaped and informed Zionist attitudes towards the Arab Palestinian natives. This is the intellectual background that Zionism emerged from. Zionism saw Palestine through the same prism as the European did, as an empty territory paradoxically filled with ignoble or, better yet, dispensable natives. It allied itself, as Chaim Weizmann said, with the imperial powers in carrying out its plans for establishing a Jewish state in Palestine. The so-called natives did not take well to the idea of Jewish colonizers in Palestine. As the Zionist historians, Yehoshua Porath and Neville Mandel, have empirically shown, the ideas of Jewish colonizers in Palestine, this was well before World War I, were always met with resistance, not because the natives thought Jews were evil, but because most natives do not take kindly to having their territory settled by foreigners. Zionism not only accepted the unflattering and generic concepts of European culture, it also banked on the fact that Palestine was actually populated not by an advanced civilization, but by a backward people, over which it ought to be dominated. Zionism, therefore, developed with a unique consciousness of itself, but with little or nothing left over for the unfortunate natives. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if Palestine had been occupied by one of the well-established industrialized nations that ruled the world, then the problem of displacing German, French, or English inhabitants and introducing a new, nationally coherent element into the middle of their homeland would have been in the forefront of the consciousness of even the most ignorant and destitute Zionists. In short, all the constitutive energies of Zionism were premised on the excluded presence, that is, the functional absence of native people in Palestine; institutions were built deliberately shutting out the natives, laws were drafted when Israel came into being that made sure the natives would remain in their non-place, Jews in theirs, and so on. It is no wonder that today the one issue that electrifies Israel as a society is the problem of the Palestinians, whose negation is the consistent thread running through Zionism. And it is this perhaps unfortunate aspect of Zionism that ties it ineluctably to imperialism- at least so far as the Palestinian is concerned. In conclusion, I cannot affirm that Zionism is colonialism, but I can tell you the process by which Zionism flourished; the dialectic under which it became a reality was heavily influenced by the imperialist mindset of Europe. Thank you. -Fictional debate between Edward Said and Abba Eban.

Even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task; it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction – purpose and dignity – that afflicts us all. Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion a year, but that Gross National Product … counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

The Denisovan’s Tale is short, as befits a set of people about whom we know so little. They are named after the Denisova Cave in the Altai mountains of Siberia, and the cave itself is named after Denis, an eighteenth-century resident hermit. Less than a decade ago, few people would have heard of it, let alone known how to pronounce it.* Now it is centre stage in debates surrounding recent human evolution. In 2009 Johannes Krause and Qiaomei Fu attempted to extract DNA from one half of the tip of a 40,000-year-old finger bone, excavated from deep under the cave floor. An archaeologist at the site is reported to have described it as the ‘most unspectacular fossil I’ve ever seen’. What did turn out to be spectacular, however, was both the degree of DNA preservation, and the subsequent overturning of established views. First to be sequenced was the mitochondrial DNA. This was found to be distinct from both Moderns and Neanderthals. It lies on a much deeper branch of the gene tree. A year or so later it was joined by more mitochondrial DNA extracted from two molar teeth in almost the same layer of the Denisova excavations. The teeth were visibly larger than those of Neanderthals, more like molars in Homo erectus or the earlier hominids† that we will greet further along in our pilgrimage. Now that the fingertip has been pulverised for DNA extraction, the two teeth constitute all the tangible evidence we have of the Denisovans. Although what we have described so far is titillating, it is thin evidence for a new human subspecies.

How this complicated mosaic of [citizenship] statuses [among those who came under Roman control] had originated is again hard to know. Roman writers of the first century BCE, followed by modern legal scholars, tended to treat them as part of a highly technical, carefully calibrated system of civic rights and responsibilities. But that is almost certainly the product of later legal rationalisation. It is inconceivable that the men of the fourth century BCE sat down to debate the precise implications of civitas sine suffragio or the exact privileges that went with belonging to a 'Latin' colony. Much more likely, they were improvising their new relationships with different peoples in the outside world by using, and adjusting, their existing, rudimentary categories of citizenship and ethnicity. The implications, however, were again revolutionary. In extending citizenship to people who had no direct territorial connections with the city of Rome, they broke the link, which most people in the classical world took for granted, between citizenship and a single city. In a systematic way that was then unparalleled, they made it possible not just to become Roman but also to be a citizen of two places at once: one's home town and Rome. And in creating new Latin colonies all over Italy, they redefined the word 'Latin' so that it was no longer an ethnic identity but a political status unrelated to race or geography. This set the stage for a model of citizenship and 'belonging' that had enormous significance for Roman ideas of government, political rights, ethnicity and 'nationhood'. This model was shortly extended overseas and eventually underpinned the Roman Empire.

GCHQ has traveled a long and winding road. That road stretches from the wooden huts of Bletchley Park, past the domes and dishes of the Cold War, and on towards what some suggest will be the omniscient state of the Brave New World. As we look to the future, the docile and passive state described by Aldous Huxley in his Brave New World is perhaps more appropriate analogy than the strictly totalitarian predictions offered by George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Bizarrely, many British citizens are quite content in this new climate of hyper-surveillance, since its their own lifestyle choices that helped to create 'wired world' - or even wish for it, for as we have seen, the new torrents of data have been been a source of endless trouble for the overstretched secret agencies. As Ken Macdonald rightly points out, the real drives of our wired world have been private companies looking for growth, and private individuals in search of luxury and convenience at the click of a mouse. The sigint agencies have merely been handed the impossible task of making an interconnected society perfectly secure and risk-free, against the background of a globalized world that presents many unprecedented threats, and now has a few boundaries or borders to protect us. Who, then, is to blame for the rapid intensification of electronic surveillance? Instinctively, many might reply Osama bin Laden, or perhaps Pablo Escobar. Others might respond that governments have used these villains as a convenient excuse to extend state control. At first glance, the massive growth of security, which includes includes not only eavesdropping but also biometric monitoring, face recognition, universal fingerprinting and the gathering of DNA, looks like a sad response to new kinds of miscreants. However, the sad reality is that the Brave New World that looms ahead of us is ultimately a reflection of ourselves. It is driven by technologies such as text messaging and customer loyalty cards that are free to accept or reject as we choose. The public debate on surveillance is often cast in terms of a trade-off between security and privacy. The truth is that luxury and convenience have been pre-eminent themes in the last decade, and we have given them a much higher priority than either security or privacy. We have all been embraced the world of surveillance with remarkable eagerness, surfing the Internet in a global search for a better bargain, better friends, even a better partner. GCHQ vast new circular headquarters is sometimes represented as a 'ring of power', exercising unparalleled levels of surveillance over citizens at home and abroad, collecting every email, every telephone and every instance of internet acces. It has even been asserted that GCHQ is engaged in nothing short of 'algorithmic warfare' as part of a battle for control of global communications. By contrast, the occupants of 'Celtenham's Doughnut' claim that in reality they are increasingly weak, having been left behind by the unstoppable electronic communications that they cannot hope to listen to, still less analyse or make sense of. In fact, the frightening truth is that no one is in control. No person, no intelligence agency and no government is steering the accelerating electronic processes that may eventually enslave us. Most of the devices that cause us to leave a continual digital trail of everything we think or do were not devised by the state, but are merely symptoms of modernity. GCHQ is simply a vast mirror, and it reflects the spirit of the age.

Of course, we suffer from bottomless avidity. Our lives are so precious to us, we are so watchful of waste. Or perhaps a better name for it would be the Sense of Personal Destiny. Yes, I think that is better than avidity. Shall my life by one-thousandth of an inch fall short of its ultimate possibility? It is a different thing to value oneself, and to prize oneself crazily. And then there are our plans, idealizations. These are dangerous, too. They can consume us like parasites, eat us, drink us, and leave us lifelessly prostrate. And yet we are always inviting the parasite, as if we were eager to be drained and eaten. It is because we have been taught there is no limit to what a man can be. Six hundred years ago, a man was what he was born to be Satan and the Church, representing God, did battle over him. He, by reason of his choice, partially decided the outcome. But whether, after life, he went to hell or to heaven, his place among other men was given. It could not be contested. But, since, the stage has been reset and human beings only walk on it, and, under this revision, we have, instead, history to answer to. We were important enough then for our souls to be fought over. Now, each of us is responsible for his own salvation, which is in his greatness. And that, that greatness, is the rock our hearts are abraded on. Great minds, great beauties, great lovers and criminals surround us. From the great sadness and desperation of Werthers and Don Juans we went to the great ruling images of Napoleons; from these to murderers who had that right over victims because they were greater than the victims; to men who felt privileged to approach others with a whip; to schoolboys and clerks who roared like revolutionary lions; to those pimps and subway creatures, debaters in midnight cafeterias who believed they could be great in treachery and catch the throats of those they felt were sound and well in the lassos of their morbidity; to dreams of greatly beautiful shadows embracing on a flawless screen. Because of these things we hate immoderately and punish ourselves and one another immoderately. The fear of lagging pursues and maddens us. The fear lies in us like a cloud. It makes an inner climate of darkness. And occasionally there is a storm and hate and wounding rain out of us.

Would you say that that man is at leisure who arranges with finical care his Corinthian bronzes, that the mania of a few makes costly, and spends the greater part of each day upon rusty bits of copper? Who sits in a public wrestling-place (for, to our shame I we labour with vices that are not even Roman) watching the wrangling of lads? Who sorts out the herds of his pack-mules into pairs of the same age and colour? Who feeds all the newest athletes? Tell me, would you say that those men are at leisure who pass many hours at the barber’s while they are being stripped of whatever grew out the night before? while a solemn debate is held over each separate hair? while either disarranged locks are restored to their place or thinning ones drawn from this side and that toward the forehead? How angry they get if the barber has been a bit too careless, just as if he were shearing a real man! How they flare up if any of their mane is lopped off, if any of it lies out of order, if it does not all fall into its proper ringlets! Who of these would not rather have the state disordered than his hair? Who is not more concerned to have his head trim rather than safe? Who would not rather be well barbered than upright? Would you say that these are at leisure who are occupied with the comb and the mirror? And what of those who are engaged in composing, hearing, and learning songs, while they twist the voice, whose best and simplest movement Nature designed to be straightforward, into the meanderings of some indolent tune, who are always snapping their fingers as they beat time to some song they have in their head, who are overheard humming a tune when they have been summoned to serious, often even melancholy, matters? These have not leisure, but idle occupation. And their banquets, Heaven knows! I cannot reckon among their unoccupied hours, since I see how anxiously they set out their silver plate, how diligently they tie up the tunics of their pretty slave-boys, how breathlessly they watch to see in what style the wild boar issues from the hands of the cook, with what speed at a given signal smooth-faced boys hurry to perform their duties, with what skill the birds are carved into portions all according to rule, how carefully unhappy little lads wipe up the spittle of drunkards. By such means they seek the reputation for elegance and good taste, and to such an extent do their evils follow them into all the privacies of life that they can neither eat nor drink without ostentation. And

How exactly the debt should be funded was to be the most inflammatory political issue. During the Revolution, many affluent citizens had invested in bonds, and many war veterans had been paid with IOUs that then plummeted in price under the confederation. In many cases, these upright patriots, either needing cash or convinced they would never be repaid, had sold their securities to speculators for as little as fifteen cents on the dollar. Under the influence of his funding scheme, with government repayment guaranteed, Hamilton expected these bonds to soar from their depressed levels and regain their full face value. This pleasing prospect, however, presented a political quandary. If the bonds appreciated, should speculators pocket the windfall? Or should the money go to the original holders—many of them brave soldiers—who had sold their depressed government paper years earlier? The answer to this perplexing question, Hamilton knew, would define the future character of American capital markets. Doubtless taking a deep breath, he wrote that “after the most mature reflection” about whether to reward original holders and punish current speculators, he had decided against this approach as “ruinous to public credit.”25 The problem was partly that such “discrimination” in favor of former debt holders was unworkable. The government would have to track them down, ascertain their sale prices, then trace all intermediate investors who had held the debt before it was bought by the current owners—an administrative nightmare. Hamilton could have left it at that, ducking the political issue and taking refuge in technical jargon. Instead, he shifted the terms of the debate. He said that the first holders were not simply noble victims, nor were the current buyers simply predatory speculators. The original investors had gotten cash when they wanted it and had shown little faith in the country’s future. Speculators, meanwhile, had hazarded their money and should be rewarded for the risk. In this manner, Hamilton stole the moral high ground from opponents and established the legal and moral basis for securities trading in America: the notion that securities are freely transferable and that buyers assume all rights to profit or loss in transactions. The knowledge that government could not interfere retroactively with a financial transaction was so vital, Hamilton thought, as to outweigh any short-term expediency. To establish the concept of the “security of transfer,” Hamilton was willing, if necessary, to reward mercenary scoundrels and penalize patriotic citizens. With this huge gamble, Hamilton laid the foundations for America’s future financial preeminence.

I prefer that these reserves be spent in arguing whether Mary conceived without sin, whether Christ was God or man, rather than discussing whether my power is of divine origin and if, in short, I am deserving of it. Heresy, then, is tolerable as long as it is not employed directly against power.

They fall short on holding the government to account, scrutinizing and authorizing the spending of public money, reviewing and refining legislation, and acting as an effective forum to debate the important issues of the day.

Visitors wanted a perspective on the issues and risks associated with the promise of science. Addressing the public means including their questioning in the museum's presentation strategies. This is achieved on the one hand by associating the ideas and the questioning, and on the other by including social issues in the proposals submitted for debate: in short, the museum must be a true public place that the public seeks.

The question is whether the redemptive-movement hermeneutic is itself hermeneutically persuasive and exegetically faithful. Reaoch demonstrates that it falls short on both levels. The author’s work is marked by careful exegesis, hermeneutical awareness, and charity toward those with whom he disagrees. I am grateful for this book, for Reaoch believes that God’s final and definitive Word is found in the NT, and that the ethic of the NT does not need to be improved upon, for it is the living and abiding Word of God. Thomas R. Schreiner

The science fiction magazine has played a unique role in the development of this fiction, functioning partly as a medium for publication and partly as a forum for ongoing debate about the nature of this fiction. SF pieces were being published in a range of popular magazines by the 1890s, but the first SF-dedicated periodical was Amazing Stories, founded in 1926 by Hugo Gernsback. The opening issue identified a tradition by publishing tales by Poe, Verne, and Wells, who Gernsback situated within what he was now calling ‘scientifiction’, tales in which ‘a charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision’.

Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl,” he said. “Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

The corollary of this visceral desire to avoid confrontation at all costs is that debate and argument do not function as a means of resolving differences. Between the extremes of acquiescence and violence there is no middle ground. The

Rudd was scathing on the provincial reflex: ‘It’s like so many of the debates in Australia, it’s couched as a zero-sum game – you can’t have an activist foreign policy at the same time as an activist domestic reform policy,’ he said in an interview for this paper shortly before returning to the prime ministership in 2013. Zero-sum-ism is a deep malady in Australian politics. But foreign policy becomes domestic and external becomes internal. For God’s sake, in a country with a million people overseas at any given time, we have a deep interest in engaging. The truth is that foreign policy and what we sell to the world are core national interests and anybody who pretends otherwise is engaging in a tawdry political exercise. Zero-sum-ism is not only analytically flawed – you can be active on both fronts, domestic and foreign – it also undermines Australia’s national interests.

Beneath debates about science and economics he found arguments about morality and the proper relations between humans and nature—though those involved often do not, or will not acknowledge this. In short, all sides purport to be weighing what is true and false, while really arguing about right and wrong.

and his ‘cross of gold’ speech against the gold standard that secured him the Democratic nomination in 1896 remains the, um, gold standard of US political oratory.

the Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

The individual must choose in which direction they want to take this world of ours - will they take it down the same rotten path of sectarianism like our ancestors did, or will they build a whole new civilized path - a path that facilitates love, not hate - a path that facilitates discussion, not debate - a path that unites, not divides - in short, a path that is human, not savage!

Demand that your people pursue two seemingly conflicting things at the same time. Make it your mission to understand the nuances of your businesses so that you can shape and guide your teams’ intellectual inquiry. Allocate your time thoughtfully; don’t become a victim of your calendar. Carve out time to read, research, and think. Turn your meetings into vigorous, instructive debates.

An incapacitous patient who becomes pregnant may be forced, against her will, to have an abortion. The judgment will typically be expressed in the language of the best interests both of the mother and of the welfare (were it to be born) of the child. What’s happening here? The maternal best interests part of the analysis is fairly straightforward. This isn’t really an abortion against the mother’s will. She’s got no (rightly directed) will. But what about the interests of the putative child? A couple of points. First: it is given a voice in the debate (although for other purposes it has no legal existence) because it is convenient for it to have it. It will obligingly deliver a speech saying that it doesn’t want to exist, and will then shut up. It’s allowed no other speech. Second: in the law of the UK and in many other jurisdictions a child cannot bring a claim based on the assertion ‘It were better that my mother had not borne me.’ It’s regarded as offensive to public policy: see, for instance, McKay v Essex AHA (1982).

I do not wish to disclose the real name of the woman I had married. The issue is the least likely to induce archaeologists to engage in heated debates. But the copper plaque bearing her etched name is also the canvas of my heart. I have difficulty imagining that that canvas or the name on it will someday cease to exist. But the eternal abode where it abides is beyond the reach of historians. In this account I need a name for her—any name. So I'll call her Sisir or drops of dew because dewdrops are reminiscent of laughter as well as tears and because in dewdrops dawn's tidings melt into the morning.

In short, the moral hierarchy is an implicit part of the culture wars.

In short, the private depends on the public.

This introduces us to several things about Mark's Gospel. First, he writes at an absolutely breakneck pace, often focusing on deeds without many words. For example, his account of Jesus' temptation by Satan does not include the mini-debate familiar from Matthew and Luke. Mark portrays Jesus as relentlessly active, driven by a sense that time is short and he has much to do. Things inevitably slow down after this remarkable opening chapter, but Mark will still move his narrative along. Second, we see the importance the evangelist puts upon Jesus' authority. He differs from everyone else. He is unique. The world has never seen his like and never will again. Human history has changed because of him, although few knew it at the time. Third, one reason few people knew him was that Jesus kept cautioning those he healed as well as the evil spirits to tell no one about the work he did. On the surface this makes little sense. How can he cure someone in a synagogue or when the whole town is present and expect word of that not to get around? The answer is that this is a Markan literary device.

The issue of how kin and group selection relate illustrates one striking aspect of the levels of selection debate in biology, which explains why it has captured the attention of philosophers. The debate involves a curious mix of empirical and conceptual questions, often intertwined. At first blush, the levels question may seem purely empirical. Given that natural selection can occur at more than one level, surely we just need to find out the level(s) at which it does occur, or has done in the past? With enough empirical data, surely the question can be straightforwardly answered? In fact, matters are not so simple. Certainly, the debate is responsible to empirical data, but there is more to it than this. For not infrequently, one finds authors who agree about the basic biological facts in a given case, but who disagree about how to identify the level(s) of selection. Such disagreements are not the ‘normal’ scientific ones that can be resolved by collecting data, but have a conceptual, and in some cases even an ideological, dimension.

In short, although the excesses of Aryan ideology in Europe would be hard to surpass, the Indians themselves were not averse to attempting to extract political mileage from the Aryan theme to support their own agendas. Indeed, in about 1920, one Visnu Sakharam Pandit filed an immigration court case in America, claiming to be a European. Since immigration was closed to Asiatics at that time, the ingenious fellow said he could prove that he was a Brahman and therefore a fellow Aryan. The argument was even entertained for a while, until a California court ruled that the Aryan invasion theory was precisely that: just a theory, and therefore not citable as credible proof for immigration purposes.

In 2018 the British Labour Party found itself embroiled in controversy inside and outside the party when it attempted to amend the examples—not the working definition, it must be said—to ensure that legitimate criticism of Israel was not prevented by adopting the definition and all its examples. After lengthy debate the Labour Party has now accepted in full all the examples as well as the working definition.

The debates have now become too wide ranging and the literature too voluminous to be considered in any depth here.

Well, since you’re so in the loop and seem to hear—or find out—everything, what am I supposed to wear tonight?” “Well, my personal belief is the shorter, the better,” he says with a smirk but then refocuses. “But so far, I’ve heard a few things. I’m not the best with descriptions, but I’ll do my best. Uh, one girl is wearing a short dress with a sweetheart neckline—not sure what that is. Another is doing a cocktail dress that’s black with shiny beads. Another is wearing something red and lacy. The girls behind me were debating jersey dresses. They say that they either make you look amazing or like a stuffed sausage. Though I’m not really sure why they would wear a sports jersey to the club.

Marx’s specific argument was that, for certain technical reasons, value, and therefore profits, can only be extracted from human labor. Competition forces factory owners to mechanize production, so as to reduce labor costs, but while this is to the short-term advantage of the individual firm, the overall effect of such mechanization is actually to drive the overall rate of profit of all firms down. For almost two centuries now, economists have debated whether all this is really true. But if it is true, the otherwise mysterious decision by industrialists not to pour research funds into the invention of the robot factories that everyone was anticipating in the sixties, and instead to begin to relocate their factories to more labor-intensive, low-tech facilities in China or the Global South, makes perfect sense.

Most comb jellies have little direct effect on humans, except through a minor role in marine food webs. One species, however, stands apart as the villain of the basal invertebrates. In the 1980s, the Atlantic comb jelly Mnemiopsis was accidentally introduced into the Black Sea, probably in ballast water carried by commercial shipping. Once in its new environment, away from natural competitors and predators, it reproduced rapidly – all the while consuming vast quantities of larval fish and crustaceans. Some (controversial) estimates placed the total seething mass of diminutive comb jellies in the Black Sea at over half a billion tonnes. The local anchovy fishery, already under heavy fishing pressure, was decimated. While ecologists debated what to do, a possible solution arrived, unplanned, in the shape of another accidental introduction. The newcomer was a second comb jelly, this time the voracious Beroe. Fortuitously, Beroe does not eat fish or crustaceans, but is instead a specialist predator of other comb jellies and nothing else. As the invading Beroe now feast on the Mnemiopsis, the fish stocks are showing gradual and welcome signs of recovery.