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Prof Bob Davis

@rokewood.bsky.social

1.3K followers 1.3K following 1.8K posts

Prof of Religious & Cultural Education, University of Glasgow. Chair of Philosophy of Education Soc. Religion, Myth, Arts, Humanities, Music, Education, football, birds. We’ve 3 sons—‘the crow makes wing to the rooky wood’—all posts etc personal

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Prof Bob Davis @rokewood.bsky.social · Feb 23

On the seemingly ruinous 2025 moment in which we live. Walter Benjamin & the Angel of History.
‘Awaken the Dead’

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Prof Bob Davis @rokewood.bsky.social · 7m

Brilliant thread from @rsmythfreelance.bsky.social on a topic that merits much deliberation in our literature

Richard Smyth @rsmythfreelance.bsky.social · 1d

Today I am mostly thinking about the popular inter-war literary genre 'animal stories written by fascists'. Join me.

Title page of a collection of animal stories by Henry Williamson: TARKA THE OTTER, SALAR THE SALMON, THE EPIC OF BROCK THE BADGER, CHAKCHEK THE PEREGRINE.

Reposted by Prof Bob Davis

Richard Smyth @rsmythfreelance.bsky.social · 1d

Today I am mostly thinking about the popular inter-war literary genre 'animal stories written by fascists'. Join me.

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Reposted by Prof Bob Davis

Jeremy Noel-Tod @jntod.bsky.social · 3d

I wrote about what I found this week digging about in the enormous new Poems of Seamus Heaney someflowerssoon.substack.com/p/pinks-37-t...

Pinks #37: The Melancholy Spouts of Tractors

On The Poems of Seamus Heaney (2025)

someflowerssoon.substack.com

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Reposted by Prof Bob Davis

London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 1d

‘Voltaire described him as “a blind man guided by blind masters”. Pico della Mirandola was a scholastic, and he defended medieval university philosophy against the eloquent, self-consciously innovating humanists who were his friends and lovers.’

Erin Maglaque: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Erin Maglaque · Thishereness: Pico in Purgatory

Pico’s Oration contravenes the very idea of human possibility that we think the Renaissance is about – yet we think...

www.lrb.co.uk

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Prof Bob Davis @rokewood.bsky.social · 5h

Of course none of that exempts anyone or any culture from searching self-criticism — including (off the top of my head…) scientific & media establishments in love with eg neuro-eliminativist accounts of human consciousness 😉

Prof Bob Davis @rokewood.bsky.social · 5h

No names, no nations. But I recall the discussion at COP26 Glasgow, where I was firmly informed by an activist that her country’s restoration of Witchcraft to its penal code (c300 prosecutions pa) was a reassertion of indigenous knowledge over imposed colonial jurisprudence …

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Prof Bob Davis @rokewood.bsky.social · 5h

Also my recurrent anthropologist’s scepticism towards ‘romantic indigeneity’. For alongside its welcome hospitality to non-Western knowledge systems, it is often i) a colonially patronising construct; ii) cherry-picked; iii) as morally ambivalent as Big Pharma & Big Oil …

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Prof Bob Davis @rokewood.bsky.social · 5h

The occasional eyebrow-raise tribute, channeling eg my inner Popper to defend what we mean by ‘scientific proof’. Remembering the nice man in Business who reassured me our flight to China was kept aloft not by the laws of physics or aerodynamics, but the Archon of the Air …

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Prof Bob Davis @rokewood.bsky.social · 5h

refreshing & epistemically diverse perspectives on science, method & the age of doubt here on BBCFreeThinking. @shahidhabari.bsky.social talks to Dafydd M Daniel @sandyknapp.bsky.social
@hannahdevlin.bsky.social
@nickebs.bsky.social
@adamrutherford.bsky.social
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, The status of science

Shahidha Bari and guests discuss the status of science in society and culture.

www.bbc.co.uk

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Prof Bob Davis @rokewood.bsky.social · 19h

This is a superb way of commemorating the 40th anniversary of #KateBush #HoundsOfLove
www.nme.com/news/music/k...

Kate Bush invites 52 visual artists to create ‘Running Up That Hill’ work to benefit War Child

Kate Bush has invited 52 visual artists to create work inspired by her seminal hit 'Running Up That Hill' to benefit War Child.

www.nme.com

Prof Bob Davis @rokewood.bsky.social · 19h

Just listening now to the 2018 remastered #HoundsOfLove & the magical Anglo-Celtic arthuriana earth-magic of the ‘B Side’ sequence, The Ninth Wave: which released into English female rock singing a miraculous archaic energy. All through summoning another ritual British archetype—

Reposted by Prof Bob Davis

Dan Snow @thehistoryguy.bsky.social · 1d

I am once again begging you to boycott Tesla

Mark Chadbourn @chadbourn.bsky.social · 1d

Musk is funding the legal battle of UK Far Right activist Tommy Robinson - real name Stephen Yaxley Lennon - as he faces charges brought by counterterrorism police.

Tommy Robinson claims Elon Musk is funding his legal battle — The Times and The Sunday Times

Tommy Robinson has claimed Elon Musk was paying his legal costs as he went on trial for refusing to comply with a request made by counterterrorism police as he tried to leave Britain last year. Robins...

apple.news

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Prof Bob Davis @rokewood.bsky.social · 19h

Honest to God. That poor family
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

DNA test 'proved' woman was not missing Madeleine McCann

Julia Wandelt and Karen Spragg deny stalking Kate and Gerry McCann over several years.

www.bbc.co.uk

Reposted by Prof Bob Davis

Jan Rosenow @janrosenow.bsky.social · 2d

Grid scale batteries are changing our electricity system. Excellent new visual story on batteries in FT today shows just how far this technology has evolved.

Fasten your seatbelts, this is just the beginning.

ig.ft.com/mega-batteri...

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Prof Bob Davis @rokewood.bsky.social · 1d

Given his expertise, I shouldn’t be surprised if Sverker Sörlin’s current book sets a new standard in the history of snow. However, as an academic who has explored literary snowscapes since my doctorate 40+ years ago, I recognise some accomplished forerunners🙂. Small sample—

Prof Bob Davis @rokewood.bsky.social · 1d

A real opening near the start for the insight of the great Max Weinreich—
‘a shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot’
‘A language is a dialect with an army and a navy’
(Comment he made to a questioner after a lecture he gave in 1943/44)

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Prof Bob Davis @rokewood.bsky.social · 1d

An important & fresh discussion of the interrelated nature-culture themes of language loss, environmental stress & geopolitical rivalries in Monday’s BBCRadio4 #bbcstw. @adamrutherford.bsky.social
talks to Mandana Seyfeddinipur, Sverker Sörlin, @klausdodds.bsky.social
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

BBC Radio 4 - Start the Week, Endangered languages and vanishing landscapes

Mandana Seyfeddinipur, Klaus Dodds and Sverker Sörlin, with Adam Rutherford

www.bbc.co.uk

Prof Bob Davis @rokewood.bsky.social · 1d

The notion that today's events in #Israel represent a triumph of US & Mr #Trump's diplomacy is fanciful. Whatever moral assessments are to be made of the various suspect protagonists, the key is the comprehensive defeat of #Hamas & the threat of withdrawal of US supply, as American opinion turns

Reposted by Prof Bob Davis

Lewis Baston @lewisbaston.bsky.social · 3d

It’s infuriating that so mediocre and crude a power as Russia is running rings round European democracies and that they have so many willing collaborators.

Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 3d

New post just out:

The relationship between Russia and the European radical right goes well beyond Reform's Nathan Gill being bribed.

In this post I trace the history back to the 1990s and look at the threat it poses now.

(£/free trial)

open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/r...

Russia and the rise of the radical right

Marine Le Pen meets with Putin before the 2017 French Presidential election (Photo credit Mikhail Klimentyev/AFP via Getty Images)

open.substack.com

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Prof Bob Davis @rokewood.bsky.social · 2d

that #Belarus have had to dig into their Under-21 squad has actually made them stronger. This should have been factored into our planning.
Still I see little to persuade me that this #Scotland team, or manager, are capable of doing anything special in a big tournament #SCOBLR

Prof Bob Davis @rokewood.bsky.social · 2d

#31DaysOfHalloween #Halloween #Halloween2025. This is the ‘Advent Calendar’ build-up @theguardian.com talked about. On the one hand, a strong feature of British #Halloween when it falls on a weekend. On the other, dwarfed by what you see now in eg North America across #October

Prof Bob Davis @rokewood.bsky.social · 2d

The BBC at its very best here. BBCWorldatOne World This Weekend #bbcwtw BBCRadio4 with a 1hr special on #Gaza & the hopes for a lasting peace
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...