online archive

The environment, economics, gender and gay issues

From Rolling Stone, an interview with Al Gore on the fight against the climate crisis. The Earth today stands in imminent peril and nothing short of a planetary rescue will save it from the environmental cataclysm of dangerous climate change. Those are not the words of eco-warriors but the considered opinion of a group of eminent scientists writing in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. An interview with Barry Commoner, the environmentalist from the ’70s who still has hope. Preposterous Prefix Parables: An eco-lexical eco-spasm for the modern eco-age.

From the Mises Institute, can dikes be private? An argument against public goods theory. There is more than meets the eye even to a simple transaction such as buying fish. Martin Wolf on the new capitalism: This modern mutation of capitalism has loyal friends and fierce foes. But both can agree that its emergence is among the most significant events or our time. Why has America produced so many successful young entrepreneurs? Ben Casnocha, 19, author of the new book My Start-Up Life: What a (Very) Young C.E.O. Learned on His Journey Through Silicon Valley, offers clues.

Shop ’Til You Drop: More on Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole by Benjamin R. Barber. Twenty Things You Should Know About Corporate Crime: Did you know that corporate crime inflicts far more damage on society than all street crime combined? What vacation days? Despite being one of the richest nations, America denies its workers mandated paid vacations and sick days. Compassionate Capitalism? A review of Social Intelligence by Daniel Goleman.

From PopMatters, a review of Pushed: The Painful Truth About Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care by Jennifer Block. Cathy Young reviews The Dangerous Book for Boys. Male sex symbols, silence and snore bores: Do male youths want to be sex symbols? Why do some women dress in an unprofessional way at work and then get mad when men stare? No one talks of "crying burglary": There is no other crime in which a victim is so widely disbelieved as rape.

From Women's Review of Books, a review of The Heart to Artemis: A Writer’s Memoir and The Player’s Boy by Bryher Ashfield and Women Together/Women Apart: Portraits of Lesbian Paris by Tirza True Latimer. A review of Gay Life and Culture: A World History. When we went gay: An excerpt from the new afterword to The Gay Metropolis. Back in the Closet: For Jews, the ex-gay movement should sound eerily familiar. Gay Cure: Things are getting even stranger in the right’s campaign to counsel people out of their homosexuality. Michael Kinsley on The Quiet Gay Revolution: As gays have moved into the mainstream, Republicans have landed on the wrong side of history.

From TAP, The Future of Anti-Gay Activism: The Christian Right is recruiting black pastors to make the case that equating gay rights with civil rights is an affront to African Americans; The Good News for Gay Rights: Victories won by "undemocratic" courts haven't produced the backlash that many pundits expected. The Science of Gaydar: If sexual orientation is biological, are the traits that make people seem gay innate, too? The new research on everything from voice pitch to hair whorl.