** Revolution X - "Strong suspicion has arisen among parents and students that the suspension was because Nevins, who coaches the Rio Rancho school poetry team, did not prevent students from publicly performing poems that opposed the US attack on Iraq and criticised the US government. Nevins was suspended soon after an anti-war poem — "Revolution X" — was performed over the school's closed-circuit TV system."

Read full poem here and send protest letters to New Mexico governor Bill Richardson from his website.


** Prevention Programs And Scientific Nonsense - Policy Review on critical thinking.

"It remains true, however, that most evaluations in this area have come to resemble exercises in what the philosopher Mark Notturno called, in his book Science and the Open Society (Central European University Press, 2000), “political thinking” — that is, thinking motivated by the need to be accepted by and to defer to apparent authorities. In the case of the anti-science evident in community-based health promotion, the authorities are those that have declared a new postmodernist era in program evaluation. The heretics are those who hang on to their old positivist ways — individuals who at best are misguided or at worse agents of oppression and exploitation. Vanquishing these positivists is what passes for political activism among postmodernist academics. Hence, silencing those who suggest that research evidence be used to determine whether ideologically driven programs such as “Boy Talk” and “Girl Power!” are funded is perfectly acceptable."

[...]

"It is interesting to note in this respect that both the proponents of postmodernist evaluation and the proponents of “research-based” health promotion invoke the idea of a paradigm shift in describing their activities. As noted above, the former explicitly present their approach to theory, research, and practice as a radical break with what they call “positivism.” For their part, the advocates of the “research-based” approach present this as a fundamental break with previous approaches such as information dissemination, fear arousal, moral appeals, and alternatives. This is significant, for, as Notturno observes, what is most debilitating about paradigms is that they require the uncritical commitment of followers: Allegiance to the community of fellow adherents and solidarity of belief are what matter, not rational and free thought. Thus, censoring critics and ostracizing those who have yet to convert are not aberrations; they are precisely the functions that the paradigm-based community is intended to serve." hmm...


** Ludwig Wittgenstein 26 April 1889 - 29 April 1951 - the most reflective positivist?


Russell on Wittgenstein: "Do you remember that at the time when you were seeing Vittoz I wrote a lot of stuff about the theory of knowledge which Wittgenstein criticised with the greatest severity? His criticism, tho' I don't think you realised it at the time, was an event of first rate importance in my life, and affected everything I have done since. I saw that he was right, and I saw that I could not hope ever again to do fundamental work in philosophy. My impulse was shattered, like a wave dashed to pieces against a breakwater. I became filled with utter despair, and tried to turn to you for consolation."





marxist.org: Wittgenstein lectures on philosophy
Tractatus logico-philosophicus (bilingual version!)