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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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Did you know ...

North African amulet in the shape of a hand

... that in the jewellery of the Berber cultures, a silver amulet of a hand (example pictured) was believed by both Muslims and Jews to protect against the evil eye?
... that illustrator Al Hirschfeld knew he would get his own Broadway theater for his 100th birthday, but he died before the renaming?
... that Alexander Buchan, one of the artists on the first voyage of James Cook, was not mentioned in Cook's journals until he died after an epileptic fit?
... that Los Angeles was built with the labor of Indigenous Yaangavit people whose village was destroyed to make space for it?
... that German economist Ingo Böbel became Professor of Economics at International University of Monaco after serving a prison sentence for embezzlement and tax evasion?
... that the educational computer games Designasaurus and UMS 1 together gained their publisher more than $5 million during 18 months in the 1980s?
... that the Neon Genesis Evangelion episode "Asuka Strikes!" includes references to the works of William Shakespeare?
... that the 1979 Book of Common Prayer contains a Star Wars prayer?

In the news

Cyclone Batsirai

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.
Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi dies in a US military raid in Atme, Syria.

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 – Newspaper and magazine publisher 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

Plate 3 of Ignace-Gaston Pardies's celestial atlas

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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