Anyone who doubts the ability of philosophy to influence ‘real world’ politics should study the text of Obama’s victory address. They should then read John Rawls’s Political Liberalism. (That’s if they haven’t done so already, of course.)  …

Sabrina Stewart is a student at Dartmouth College who is visiting the Uehiro Centre this term. Newspaper health sections yield many headlines and subsequent articles that do not accurately reflect the research publication that is being repo…

“BDSM [Bondage, Discipline, Sadism, Masochism] might be mainstream now, but it has a new PR problem. I blame Christian Grey.” writes ‘sexual submissive’ Sophie Morgan in an article in the Guardian. I started reading E.L. James’ Fifty Shades…

This week is Living Wage Week. The aim of this campaign is to encourage employers to pay their lowest paid employees a Living Wage – the amount necessary to meet the basic cost of living –rather than the legally required minimum wage. Curre…

The agency that regulates fertility treatment and embryo research in the UK, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), has asked for public views on two possible new forms of fertility treatment that promise to prevent the tr…

Today we learnt that Barack Obama will be the President of the USA for another term. Much of the debate preceding Obama’s election victory focused on how each presidential candidate  planned to resuscitate the American economy. Time will te…

Due to a server upgrade, the blog will be unavailable between 11am and 12pm GMT today. Server is now back up. Please report any issues in the comments.

Last week, Steven Farrow was convicted of murdering a grandmother and a vicar. 77 year old Betty Yates was stabbed in the face. He had planned to crucify the vicar but had left behind his hammer an nails, instead covering his dead body in p…

Andrew Hessel, Marc Goodman and Steven Kotler sketches in an article in The Atlantic a not-too-far future when the combination of cheap bioengineering, synthetic biology and crowdsourcing of problem solving allows not just personalised medi…

Imagine that the Teetotaler party came to power. They stood for family, safety and old fashioned values. Their first target was the car and the speeding culture. They wanted driving to be as safe as possible. Indeed, they would have preferr…