Should the BBC become more like Buzzfeed?

By Caleb | May 21, 2014

Neil Postman, who wrote Amusing Ourselves to Death, might have been grimly amused to see Sir Howard Stringer recommending that BBC News online emulate Buzzfeed. Now there may be some very general principles that the BBC can learn from about creating engaging, sharable content. But the news should be very different from cat photos and […]

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Men Against Porn?

By Caleb | February 7, 2011

Opinion piece for Gair Rhydd, published 15th November 2010. Believe it or not, I’ve never looked at porn. Far from being harmless “adult entertainment”, I believe porn degrades both women and men, and damages relationships and society. Defenders of porn say that people know the difference between porn and reality. But the unreality of porn […]

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Oh, the humanities!

By Caleb | January 31, 2011

Article written for Gair Rhydd, published 11th October 2010:Cuts are everywhere, but the arts and humanities have their head against the block. With plans to cut its funding by as much as 25%, they are treated as an expensive luxury rather than a vital part of our national life. I’ve just returned to university to […]

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CICC off with Question Time

By Caleb | March 16, 2010

I’m always excited to see Christians engaging with contemporary issues, so I was very pleased to see that Evangelical Alliance Wales are launching the Cymru Institute for Contemporary Christianity (CICC for short – “Cymru” means “Wales” in Welsh, by the way). Kicking off CICC, a series of events was held across Wales, including a Question […]

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Are our opinions about art only subjective?

By Caleb | August 16, 2009

Recently Roger Ebert provoked quite a reaction with his trashing of Michael Bay’s multi-million dollar sequel, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Many people who enjoyed the film reacted angrily – surely if they liked it, then it was good for them? But Ebert had the audacity not just to personally dislike the film, but insisted […]

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Has feminism gone nuts?

By Caleb | August 7, 2009

The Times has an interesting article titled When Feminism went nuts: How did it come to this? When the lads’ weekly magazines were launched five years ago where were the voices arguing that titles with 30 pairs of breasts an issue and a harsh misogynist tone — “Win your girlfriend a boob job” — were […]

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America and new atheism

By Caleb | March 17, 2009

This week’s Sunday Times contained an interesting article by Andrew Sullivan on the shifting religious scene in America, including the rise of atheism. It concludes that: American Christianity, despite so many resources, has ignored its intellectual responsibility. And atheists, if this continues much longer, will continue to pick up that slack. However, while this diagnosis […]

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The Culture of Narcissism

By Caleb | September 5, 2008

The modern person is in the grip of a new psychological consciousness – one that is extremely pre-occupied with the self. We have become a culture of Narcissism. So says Andrew Fellows in his paper “The Culture of Narcissism“, which can be downloaded from the L’Abri website. He also has a series of four lectures […]

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