148. THINKING ABOUT WORLD BOOK DAY - How Reading Is More Than The The Fetishisation of Books

“Instead of asking what we are reading on World Book Day, we ought to raise the level of questioning: what are we reading and how is it changing us? What is it making us think? What questions are the book raising? Even if the answer is, to all these questions, not a lot (I am unchanged, not thinking about anything, and asking no questions), to ask them makes us perhaps realise that some books are like junk food while others are more nutritious.“

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147. NOT ALL GOBSTOPPERS ARE EVERLASTING - Why I'm OK With Changing The Words of Roald Dahl

“Don’t let the illusion of sole authorship fool you.  Published writing has always been edited by many and influenced by audiences.  If you want to read the unblemished, pure and unfiltered draft straight from the author’s mind and onto the page, read something self-published (like this blog…although I do tend to do a few drafts).  Anything else you read, assume there have been drafts, edits, alterations, corrections, and the input of many. The author, often, is a group of authors. Dahl is no different.“

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146. THEY/THEM - Why We Need To Be Gender-Neutral About God

“of course God - a being defined in terms of transcendence - would not be confined to one single point on a spectrum or one limited half of a binary.  The very terms of transcendence that makes God God would necessitate God being beyond either a gender binary or the limits of a single gender. The omnipotent God responsible for creating both men and women in their own image, logic would suggest, must possess an image inclusive of both male and female (and everything in between).“

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144. CHALLENGING PERCEPTIONS - Why Top Tier Football Clubs Continue To Do Women's Football A Disservice

“Why complain about this in a philosophy blog?  Because a perpetual area of philosophical inquiry concerns perception versus reality, and sometimes this coming apart of perception from reality (or reality from perception) often leads to questions in ethics too.  I believe this problem - of the women’s teams of football clubs not sharing the same home ground as their male counterparts - touches on both.“

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141. THE VALUE OF SOCIAL MEDIA - Does It Have Any?

“I was struck by the idea that social media gives us a living example of what emotivism really would be like sufficient enough to demonstrate why Ayer is wrong about normal moral discourse. Places like Twitter or Facebook really are just expressing ‘boo’ or ‘hurrah’ about certain issues and moral discourse is rendered meaningless there.“

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137. NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS - On Our Obligation to Stay Informed

“If I told a colleague or friend that I have never watched Breaking Bad or watched The Godfather, they might be surprised, even incredulous, but they could not call me irresponsible. If I told them I didn’t watch the news, however, it would be a different order of outrage.“

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136. NO GODS NO MASTER-DONS - Decolonising Twitter Migration

“The site of struggle here being the realm of social media might seem trivial to some, and online colonisation lacks the bloodshed and brutality of historical imperialisms, but as a living model it has been instructive of the sorts of behaviours we see offline too.“

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131. UNWELCOME VISITORS - When Jordan Peterson Came to Michaela

“We should have more unwelcome visitors to our schools, not fewer. More opportunities for students to ask questions and poke holes. More academic freedom to develop an enduring culture of critique and scrutiny so that ideas are never accepted without a fight. If we are worried about the young and impressionable minds of our students, it’s time that we stopped them being so impressionable.“

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128. THE QUEEN IS DEAD - Long Live The King

“As Britain comes to terms with the loss of its longest reigning monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, who died on Thursday, I was struck by the immediacy of transition from Queen to King. In an instance the previous settled gender of certain phrases - our national anthem, ‘God save the Queen’, prayers within the Church of England asking to ‘replenish her with the grace of thy Holy Spirit, that she may always incline to thy will’, the pledges taken by members of parliament to ‘be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, her heirs and successors’ - had to update and adapt.“

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120. TALKING ABOUT MY CONSTITUTION - Why Conversation Is More Important Than Codification

“The very act of codifying into a constitution the core principles of how your society is to be run is to commit future generations to values that they may not actually hold. It is a normative act, wherein one generation is imposing a set of values in stone on the basis that they believe future generations ought to hold such values. But while human beings remain autonomous agents capable of choosing many different values such an imposition has no guarantee of sticking unless the values are, in fact, actually held by the citizens for whom they are endorsed. This means constitutions are either attempting the impossible and trying to force people into valuing something they don’t value, or they are redundant, as they simply articulate values already held.“

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118. SHOWING OUR TRUE SELVES - What Does It Tell Us When We Tidy Our House?

“If we all are running around like headless chickens to make things look nice whenever someone visits then that must mean that none of us actually live our lives in the way that we present to others that we do.“

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