James A. Gardner (Buffalo): How to Do Things with Boundaries: Redistricting and the Construction of Politics. From the Journal of Future Studies, a special issue on Path Dependence as Theoretical Scaffolding for Futures Studies. "God is dead" theologian William Hamilton dies. A feminist theologian has stoked controversy by publishing a paper arguing that Jesus might have been a hermaphrodite. From International Socialist Review, James Illingworth on slavery and the origins of the Civil War; the rise and fall of New World slavery: An interview with Robin Blackburn, author of The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights; and reading Karl Marx with Abraham Lincoln: John Nichols on utopian socialists, German communists, and other republicans. Forget bookcases: Now you can buy an entire house from IKEA. The inside story of how the banks beat Washington: Why the Federal Reserve let Wall Street institutions return money to shareholders. Alex Rosenberg on why understanding science is hard and seduction by the humanities is easy. Ezra Klein on the invisible welfare state of the top one percent.
