The difference between deaths here and "over there": Thirteen soldiers die in Texas and it's all we talk about; two million die in Afghanistan and Iraq and we don't notice. From Boston Review, an essay on God, the Army, and PTSD: Is religion an obstacle to treatment? If gays can openly serve, will straights still want to? How the quest for sex shaped the modern man: Meet Faye Flam, a talented journalist and media personality who makes science sexy and makes sex “sciencey”. Grand Conversations: Small, elite groups of writers are forming salon-like blogs, which are some of the more interesting nodes of content on the Web. How to shrink the banks: The only way to restore sanity and security to finance is to stop banks growing so big. From The New Yorker, James Surowiecki on how the tax code makes debtors of us all; and what’s the recipe? Adam Gopnik on our hunger for cookbooks. Jumping the Snark: In an age of Yes Men, flash mobs, birthers, and fake pundits, is the prank dead? The real enemies of reason: Ophelia Benson and Dan Hind go head-to-head on the threat to Enlightenment values. Conquering fate: Frank Furedi on the birth of a world “made by man”. What if you had a remote-sensing mechanism that could record how millions of people around the world were feeling on any particular day? Hauntings, ghosts, and prophets can be found within the pages of Swords from the Desert and Swords from the West by Harold Lamb. The case for the seeing-eye horse: What if a blind man with a guide dog had taken on a Muslim bed-and-breakfast owner?
