online archive
12:00PM
JUL 1 2007
Critical theory, social science, natural science and academia
From the latest issue of The Commoner, Massimiliano Tomba (Padova): Differentials of surplus-value in the contemporary forms of exploitation; Ferruccio Gambino (Padova): A critique of Fordism and the Regulation School; and Mariarosa Dalla Costa (Padova): Reruralizing the World.
A new issue of Colloquy is out, including David Lane (Monash): On Truth and Lie in a Rhetorical Sense; Semantic Perils in Nietzschean Thought; and a review of Paul Celan and Martin Heidegger. An Unresolved Conversation, 1951 - 1970 by James K. Lyon. From Naked Punch, an interview with Richard Shusterman, author of Surface and Depth: Dialectics of Criticism and Culture. From Radical Society, Aristotle in America: Joseph Lough reclaims a classic.
Peter A. Hall (Harvard): The Dilemmas of Contemporary Social Science. A review of Freedom and Determinism. A review of The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod. Chimpanzees, as well as 18-month-old children, will assist strangers even when getting no personal reward, suggesting that human altruism has deep evolutionary roots. Ain't misbehaving: Adultery yields benefits to females as well as males. Recent studies suggest that labeling and talking about it — literally, just getting it out in the open — can help us deal with intense emotional experiences.
From the latest issue of the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, a review of Applied Evolutionary Economics and the Knowledge-Based Economy by Andreas Pyka and Horst Hanusch; a review of Innovation, Evolution and Complexity Theory by Koen Frenken; and a review of I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter.
The first chapter from The Pythagorean Theorem: A 4,000-Year History by Eli Maor. A Golden Sales Pitch: A design incorporating the golden ratio makes blue jeans aesthetically pleasing, or so the manufacturer claims. What are the top 10 science pop songs? From the threat of nuclear war to the wonder of heterosexual love the pop song reaches places other science fears to tread – namely, the intimate headspace of a brooding teen.
From Harvard Magazine, A Scholar in the House: A profile of President Drew Gilpin Faust. Who killed Antioch? Womyn: The college went from liberal bastion to PC laughingstock with its sex and dating policy. An article on how law schools are also ranked by blogs now.
12:00PM
JUL 1 2007
American foreign policy, the Supreme Court, sex and religion
From CRB, Charles R. Kesler on Iraq and the Neoconservatives: Beyond the Bush Doctrine; a review of At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA by George Tenet and Safe For Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA by John Prados; and an essay on Taming Big Government: Congress won't and the president can't; the Greatness and Decline of American Oratory: A review of American Speeches: Political Oratory from the Revolution to the Civil War and American Speeches: Political Oratory from Abraham Lincoln to Bill Clinton edited by Ted Widmer. From Naked Punch, an interview with Noam Chomsky on hegemony and counter-hegemony (and part 2 and part 3); and Artemy Kalinovsky on understanding empire. Will to win: Why do big, powerful countries with strong militaries sometimes lose wars to small countries with weak ones?
Cass R. Sunstein on Minimalists vs. Visionaries: The real divide on the Supreme Court is between two kinds of conservatives (and more from TNR). Geoffrey R. Stone on Roberts, Alito and the rule of law. Erwin Chemerinsky on how Roberts and Alito delivered high court ideology and Ellen Goodman on the transformation of Justice Ginsburg. Blinded by the Law: Teen sex case shows that focusing on the letter of the law doesn't always spell justice. Linda Kimball wants to know.
From PopMatters, a review of Courting Equality: A Documentary History of America's First Legal Same-Sex Marriages by Patricia A. Gozemba and Karen Kahn; and I'm Comin' with the U-Haul, Baby: Society as a whole is relatively indifferent to the lesbian community, whether through acceptance, titillation, or oblivion. Out and proud parents: As tolerance spreads, gay life is becoming more suburban, contented and even dull. An interview with Mike Jones, author of I Had to Say Something: The Art of Ted Haggard's Fall.
From GQ, Hail Mary, U.S.A.: Domino’s Pizza founder Tom Monaghan has built a town in southern Florida dedicated to hard-core Catholic living. James O’Brien walks among the blessed. From Christianity Today, I Love, Therefore You Are: A look at why the modern search for self ends in despair. Sam Harris writes In Defense of Witchcraft. Am I a dwarf or a horseman? Christopher Hitchens wants to know: "It's an honour to be mentioned in the same breath as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris. We could become known as the Four Horsemen of the Counter-Apocalypse". A camp they can believe in Ohio's Camp Quest lets young atheists enjoy summer fun with like-minded children.
12:00PM
JUL 1 2007
Global issues
Bold gambit for disjointed UN: Launched this year in 8 countries, the One UN pilot aims to improve coordination between agencies. Don’t Kick the Inspectors Out of the U.N.: While individual governments will always track and analyze weaponry, their own national conclusions can never form a credible basis for action by the international community. From The Economist, a review of Swords and Ploughshares: Bringing Peace to the 21st Century by Paddy Ashdown.
From Fortune, Jeffrey Sachs on how he'd fix the World Bank. Protecting the global poor: Almost all rich countries got wealthy by protecting infant industries and limiting foreign investment. But these countries are now denying poor ones the same chance to grow by forcing free-trade rules on them before they are strong enough. From New Statesman, a review of State of World Population 2007: Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth. The combined forces of population growth and urbanisation are creating a planet of slums, where the urban population will have doubled by 2030, according to a report released by the United Nations. With 4D Cities, now we can watch for ourselves the way great cities have grown upwards through time, using software that creates a virtual historical tour. Designing Cities for People: In an age where parks are sacrificed for parking lots, how can city planning benefit people — not cars?
The FT Global 500: The annual snapshot of the world’s largest companies gives a remarkable picture of how corporate fortunes have changed in the past year; and for richer, for poorer: Income inequality within a country can make those at the bottom feel poorer, no matter how high their absolute income. A report finds the number of wealthy individuals worldwide climbed to 9.5 million in 2006, an 8.3% increase from 2005, according to the report. The combined wealth of high-net-worth individuals world-wide increased to $37.2 trillion, up 11.4% from 2005. An article on The Case for Taxing Globalization's Big Winners. The Double Edge of Globalization: An excerpt from Bound Together: How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers, and Warriors Shaped Globalization by Nayan Chanda.
From The Walrus, Alienated Cosmopolitans: Can we be world citizens yet still retain a sense of place? From Ode, an essay on the instinct to save the planet; the world grows Wiser A new global databank aims to connect good work everywhere; solutions for the problems of growing megacities can be found in their slums and shantytowns; anthropologist Jeremy Narby is bringing together indigenous knowledge and Western science to inform the search for a sustainable future; and a review of We-Think: The Power of Mass Creativity by Charles Leadbeater. Make the game, change the world: agoraXchange is an online community for designing a massive multi-player global politics game challenging the violence and inequality of our present political system.
12:00PM
JUL 1 2007
Media and technology
From Time, an interview with Rupert Murdoch: "They're taking five billion dollars out of me and want to keep control in an industry in crisis!" The Rupert Murdoch effect: The progressive LA Weekly has gone from a well-reported newspaper to a flashy tabloid with "gotcha" articles. From n+1, a review of How Sassy Changed My Life: A Love Letter to the Greatest Teen Magazine of All Time by Kara Jesella and Marisa Meltzer. A new monthly satirical tabloid, The Levee, aims to get New Orleans residents to see the humor in their situation while at the same time holding local officials accountable for their post-Katrina misdeeds. Right now, many companies are trying to figure out cool new ways to use paper. But who is trying to figure out cool new ways to employ smart, highly trained print journalists? Prostitution is Legal: When advertising is king, media that "puts out" can be queen.
From Salon, a review of It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap as News. Once a novel idea, now a must: Though a technological minimalist, Marianne Wiggins, like, totally got why she needed a video for her latest book. The literary universe is bigger in the blogosphere: Literary opinions on the web do not have the same status as those in the established press, but they have a much wider scope. A review of Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages by Alex Wright. The iCommons harvest: There's no tragedy in a digital commons where quality content is king. When public records are too public: Open records are an established tradition, but does Internet access call for a change? One of the thorniest problems of the information age: data collected for one purpose and then used for another, or "data reuse".
From The Atlantic Monthly, Caitlin Flanagan reviews Generation Myspace: Helping Your Teen Survive Online Adolescence and To Catch a Predator: Protecting Your Kids from Online Enemies Already in Your Home. How the second-generation Internet is spawning a global youth culture. Do you prefer Facebook to MySpace? The class divide is thriving on the internet. Facebook gets help from its friends: Music, horoscopes help boost site's user base; will new offerings allow it to catch MySpace? In Your Face: How Facebook could crush MySpace, Yahoo!, and Google. Oh, that John Locke: There's a new sport on the Internet: competing to come up with the best examples of how Wikipedia, the Web's home-grown reference source, is skewed towards pop-culture topics. A review of The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture by Andrew Keen.
