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Terry Eagleton, author

Why Marx Was Right is a 2011 book by the British academic Terry Eagleton (pictured) on the philosopher Karl Marx and Marxism. Eagleton outlines ten objections to Marxism that he attempts to refute. These include that it is irrelevant, determinist, utopian, authoritarian and opposed to reform. Eagleton says class struggle is central to Marxism and history is viewed as a series of modes of production that describe the nature and organisation of labour. He describes how revolution could lead to socialism in which the working class have control and make the state obsolete. He explores the failures of the Soviet Union and other communist countries. The book was published in 2011 and reprinted in 2018, 200 years after Marx's birth. Critics gave mixed feedback on the prose style, although the commentary on historical materialism was praised. The book was criticised for its defence of the Soviet Union and other Marxist states. (Full article...)

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"Boy Scouts of America"

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... that the 1992 documentary film Daddy and the Muscle Academy, which focuses on the life of gay erotic artist Tom of Finland, has been broadcast on Finnish television multiple times?
... that the Colonial Defence Committee advised British colonies not to permit more than two foreign warships into harbour at a time, in case of a surprise attack?

In the news

Cyclone Batsirai

A state of emergency is declared following protests against COVID-19 mandates in Ottawa, Canada.
Cyclone Batsirai (satellite image shown) makes landfall in Madagascar, displacing at least 69,000 people and leaving at least 20 others dead.
Indian playback singer and composer Lata Mangeshkar dies at the age of 92.
The Winter Olympics open in Beijing, China.

On this day

February 8

William D. Boyce

1601 – Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, led a failed rebellion against Queen Elizabeth I of England.
1879 – Angered by a controversial umpiring decision, cricket spectators rioted and attacked the England team during a match in Sydney, Australia.
1910 – William D. Boyce (pictured) established the Boy Scouts of America, expanding the Scout Movement into the United States.
1965 – After taking evasive action to avoid a mid-air collision just after taking off from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, Eastern Air Lines Flight 663 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 84 people on board.
2010 – A freak storm triggered a series of avalanches that buried more than 3.5 km (2.2 mi) of road near the Salang Tunnel in Afghanistan, killing 175 people and trapping more than 2,500 travellers.

Helen of Anjou (d. 1314)
Kate Chopin (b. 1850)
Peter Kropotkin (d. 1921)

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Today's featured picture

Ignace-Gaston Pardies (1636–1673) was a French Catholic priest and scientist. His celestial atlas, entitled Globi coelestis in tabulas planas redacti descriptio, comprised six charts of the night sky and was first published in 1674. The atlas uses a gnomonic projection so that the plates make up a cube of the celestial sphere. The constellation figures are drawn from Uranometria, but were carefully reworked and adapted to a broader view of the sky. This is the third plate from a 1693 edition of Pardies's atlas, featuring constellations including Cancer, Gemini and Taurus, visible in the northern sky.

Map credit: Ignace-Gaston Pardies

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