Article: French TV Stars Rock the World of Theoretical Physics, chronicle.com Related: Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science, Alan Sokal Two brothers publish a paper no one seems to understand: "It's an interesting case study in how stuff that is basically nonsense is easily gotten past referees these days," says Peter G. Woit, a theoretical physicist who directs instruction in the mathematics department at Columbia University. "There really was a serious failure of the refereeing here." However, the French brothers, Igor and Grichka Bogdanov, maintain that they are doing serious work that seeks to answer one of the most fundamental questions of all: What was the universe like at the moment of the Big Bang?"

Article: An Animal's Place, nytimes.com "Peter Singer's argument is disarmingly simple and, if you accept its premises, difficult to refute. Take the premise of equality, which most people readily accept. Yet what do we really mean by it? People are not, as a matter of fact, equal at all -- some are smarter than others, better looking, more gifted. ''Equality is a moral idea,'' Singer points out, ''not an assertion of fact.'' The moral idea is that everyone's interests ought to receive equal consideration, regardless of ''what abilities they may possess.'' Fair enough; many philosophers have gone this far. But fewer have taken the next logical step. ''If possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one human to use another for his or her own ends, how can it entitle humans to exploit nonhumans for the same purpose?'' This is the nub of Singer's argument, and right around here I began scribbling objections in the margin. "