Seen Elsewhere

Hopefully I’ll have finished something which will give me enough scheduled entries to see me into the New Year with no hassle over the Christmas period. Which is another way of saying I was unexpectedly out today, so I didn’t get the thing completed. I’ve also been reading other interesting stuff.

Coturnix points to A Natural History of Peace, an essay in Foreign Affairs by Robert Sapolsky. He’s the guy who wrote the excellent “A Primate’s Memoir“.

Glaukôpis has some thoughts on two Egyptian men hugging. The favoured idea is that they’re like the Robbie Williams and Jason Donovan of the Ancient Egyptian world, being unmistakably heterosexual.

Debitage comments on a post at the Volokh Conspiracy. The discussion is “Should a journal refuse to publish an article by someone who has made racist statements in the past?” Eugene Volokh puts forward five options and goes with the last option (e) – is the article any good? That’s the answer I’d like to go with, but neither mention option (f) – Will publishing an article by a racist dissuade many more people to not submit to the journal?. The World Archaeological Congress was set up in the 1980s because many African nations would not attend a conference with South African delegates. It’s a thorny issue. You could rightly get up in arms about it being an issue of freedom of speech, but what about my freedom of speech which would include not associating my work with racists? If you enforce a rule that racists must be given a platform in journal X, then you’re quashing my freedom if I’m the editor. I’d also go along with the idea that “is the article any good?” should be the answer, but it’s not an easy answer. Both posts give it the longer discussion it deserves.

Further racism in publishing comes from Brett Holman at Airminded in An unpleasant surprise. Brett descibes finding the book The Peril of the White caught by Sir Leo Chiozza Money, and then descibes what he finds inside it. I should point out that you can’t believe everything you read on the web and when Brett claimed there was an author Admiral Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, I had to check it. But it’s true, there is!