archive

A deeper web

Ellen D. Katz (Michigan): On Overreaching, or Why Rick Perry May Save the Voting Rights Act but Destroy Affirmative Action. From The New Yorker, how much do evolutionary stories reveal about the mind? A review essay by Anthony Gottlieb. The Sorrow and the Pretty: Model Alliance looks to empower the really, really ridiculously good-looking. Losing faith in hope: William Wall reviews Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, ed. Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank. An intra-Left debate: Is Obama the “more effective” of two evils? From TLS, a review of a book on ambergris, sperm whale faeces that have been transformed by intestinal bacteria and oxidation into a solid, waxy mass that is pleasantly aromatic, though not without betraying a whiff of its origins. Republican convention speeches are fluff masking their unspoken core issue, inheritance insurance. Our favorite heretic: Allan Nadler on misquoting, misrepresenting, and misusing Baruch Spinoza. Leaks or lies: Did journalist David Sanger discover the true story behind Stuxnet, or was he caught in a deeper web of deception?