Everybody loves Lists (!)

Well, perhaps not everybody (1), (2), (3).
Anyway, Iain Dale is compiling his annual list of top political blogs. If you care about this sort of thing, the instructions regarding how to vote can be found here.
I had a flick through last year’s Guide to Political Blogging (a housemate of mine owned a copy), and [...]

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“Political Philosophy & Taxation” conference

Via Thom Brooks comes news of this conference at UCL (which is free and open to all) in September. The conference description reads:

This conference on Political Philosophy and Taxation will address the issue of how the activities of the state should best be funded. The conference will bring together a number of leading political [...]

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A worry of mine (democracy, procedural fairness and vote-selling)

Right, I’m sure there’s a pretty simple solution to this, but I just can’t think of it. By way of background, a student in Canada has been charged with trying to sell his vote on eBay. It was discussion of this news story on a forum I read that prompted this worry.
Basically, I [...]

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Bang on the money

“Now Labour plans to bar white men from jobs” – just one of the recent screaming tabloid headlines about the Equality Bill.
[...]
I’m not sure what is worse – believing that the person who wrote the headline was so ignorant of the story they thought it was true – or so cynical they were happy to [...]

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Wow!

This is seriously cool. It’s a knife that can inject compressed gas into your target.

The manufacturers are mainly aiming it at hunters and divers (ie. to fend off sharks etc), as they claim it can drop many pretty large predators. Not sure how much use it’d be against a big [...]

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Ho ho ho …

Over at CT, John Holbo writes:

But surely if African-Americans feel the need to be specifically receptive to long-dead candidates of not just one but both parties, then a oijia board, not a ballot box, is the appropriate medium.

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Shame on the BBC

This report says that:
the think-tank The Fabian Society says it [the word 'chav' - Peter] is sneering and patronising, and should be banned
Now, it’s the “should be banned bit” I’m interested in, because it seems fairly obvious that banning the use of the word ‘chav’ would be a stupid policy move. And unless the [...]

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What is an atheist?

Jean Kazez tries to define ‘atheism’ over at TPM blog.  As her draft definition, she takes it to be:
Atheism is the belief that there is no god (and there are no gods). The belief can be held explicitly and expressed; the atheist may think and say “God does not exist.” Or the belief can be [...]

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Religious Discrimination, Again

This is an interesting story – one on which I’m not sure of my opinion.

A marriage registrar was harassed for refusing to conduct same-sex ceremonies, a tribunal has ruled.
Lillian Ladele, who said the civil partnership ceremonies went against her Christian faith, hailed the decision as a “victory for religious liberty”.
Brett over at Harry’s Place thinks [...]

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(Isaiah) Berlin and the Blogosphere

Some of my readers might be interested in this. Johann Hari wrote a piece on the negative/positive liberty debate, and Conservative blogger Dizzy takes it that Hari hasn’t read Berlin closely enough.
Is Dizzy right? What say you?
For those unfamiliar, Berlin’s famous essay can be found over here (WARNING – .pdf):
http://www.nyu.edu/projects/nissenbaum/papers/twoconcepts.pdf

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