online archive
12:00PM
JUL 10 2007
Philosophy and politics, economics and academia
From TNR, Alan Wolfe on how the arguments of Russell Kirk's defenders are as shallow as his ideas. Transcending philosophy: An article on remembering Richard Rorty. Only Pinter remains: Terry Eagleton on how British literature's long and rich tradition of politically engaged writers has come to an end. A review of You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train by Howard Zinn. Katie Roiphe's morning after: With raves for Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Portraits of Married Life in London Literary Circles 1910-1939, her book dissecting modernist marriages and a hot new journalism job at NYU, has feminism's enfant terrible finally grown up?
A review of Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, and the Economics of Growth and Prosperity by William J. Baumol, Robert E. Litan and Carl J. Schramm. A review of Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction by Thomas McCraw. An interview with Brian Anderson, author of Democratic Capitalism and its Discontents. Dictatorships and Growth Standards: From an economic point of view, dictatorships have been outperforming democracies for many years. What should we make of that fact? A review of The Myth of the Rational Voter by Bryan Caplan. A review of Pop: Why Bubbles Are Great for the Economy by Daniel Gross and Surviving Large Losses: Financial Crises, the Middle Class, and the Development of Capital Markets by Philip Hoffman, Gilles Postel-Vinay and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal. A review of More Sex Is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics by Steven Landesburg. Tim Harford on how economic lessons can be learnt from illicit trades, but collecting the data is a tough call.
From Business Week, the Professor is a Headhunter: As companies compete fiercely for top talent on campus, they're forging closer relationships with influential faculty members—and they're not shy about spreading around the cash. A look at how employers are increasingly looking to psychometric testing to choose the best graduates to recruit. A Reunion at the "MIT of India": What's the most sought-after degree in Silicon Valley? Here's a hint: It isn't from Stanford. A look at how the elite military school Talpiot feeds Israel's tech firms.
A review of New England White (and more and more), and an interview with Stephen L Carter: The law professor, bestselling novelist, defender of faith and scout leader breaks liberal ranks when he explores race in America. The Boy on the Bus: Growing up in 1970s Florida, Joel Achenbach was a small cog in America's grand integration project. We thought it worked. Did it? Breaking Ranks: A college can't be reduced to a number in a magazine.
12:00PM
JUL 10 2007
Political economy, the environment and health care
From TAP, Global Safeguards for a Global Economy The FDA's failure to keep us safe from tainted goods produced abroad is a reminder that it's time to better regulate the global economy. James K. Galbraith on how liberal thinkers Benjamin Barber and Bill McKibben offer impassioned critiques of modern capitalism—and solutions that are the policy equivalents of bake sales. The grousers, the ignorant, the selfish: Peter Wilby argues that fairness must rule over choice. The Long-Term Value Moment: Corporate America is realizing that there is more to life than quarterly earnings. Now is the time for progressives to help businesses figure out what taking the long view actually means. From Business Week, many savvy companies are starting to realize that a good name can be their most important asset—and actually boost the stock price.
From National Journal, Hot Opportunities: American industries are bracing themselves for global warming's effects and anticipated federal controls that could pressure companies to draft "greener" business plans. Cooler Elites: Can the ruling classes save the world from global warming? Doug Henwood wants to know. A review of Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, the Mass Extinction of the Past, and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future by Peter D. Ward. A map shows a nation with equivalent greenhouse-gas emissions from energy for each state in the US, while another shows a nation with equivalent GDP for each state in the US.
With global warming leading the news, environmental activists have become bold and demanding. John Dingell's own caucus is shifting to their view. And a former adversary—a nerd from green-conscious West Hollywood—is threatening to undermine his empire. Democratic primary voters want a clean break with the Bush administration's focus on subsidizing dirty energy. The party's two front-runners for president might want to listen up. Drivers grumble about high gasoline prices all over the world. But with oil prices at record highs, many countries are saying goodbye to gas subsidies, making a trip to the filling station more expensive than ever.
From Financial Times, the world is facing an oil supply "crunch" within five years that will force up prices to record levels and increase the west's dependence on oil cartel OPEC, the International Energy Agency warns and Gideon Rachman on how the world has two energy crises but no real answers. Medicine After Oil: The good news about peak oil: it may be the key to fixing our health care system.
From Dissent, an article on Universal Health Insurance 2007: Can we learn from the past? Over Stated: Why the "laboratories of democracy" can't achieve universal health care. Health Research and the Remaking of Common Sense: An excerpt from Inclusion: The Politics of Difference in Medical Research by Steven Epstein. A side-by-side comparison of the presidential candidates' prescriptions for a healthier future.
12:00PM
JUL 10 2007
Global issues, Europe and American politics
The Copenhagen syndrome: How far does your radius of empathy extend? Are you prepared to include "others" in pursuit of a more inclusive "we"? The impact of immigration and poverty on everyday life make these questions a matter of personal as well as intellectual and governmental concern. Ban Ki-moon on why we should welcome the dawn of the migration age: The negative aspects of the era of mobility too often overshadow its potential power: to bring millions out of poverty. From The Economist, the eight commandments: In 2000 the world set itself goals to cut poverty, disease and illiteracy. It will take more than aid to meet them; taking stock: The world is winning its fight against poverty, mostly; and mid-way through, the UN's drive against poverty remains half crusade and half charade. A review of The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier.
From Ovi, an article on Dante's vision of a united Europe. The EU has reached an agreement and sidestepped catastrophe — but only just. An op-ed on Europe’s non-European Europeans. Islamophobes rejoice! EU countries are becoming more Christian: A review of In God’s Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe’s Religious Crisis by Philip Jenkins. Sometimes voluntarily, sometimes through gritted teeth and sometimes without even knowing, countries around the world are importing the EU's rules. It is a trend that has sparked concerns among foreign business leaders and that irritates US policymakers. Europe and Queen were two pretty awful soft metal bands from the Eighties, but fortunately, neither has anything to do with this anthropomorphic map of Europe as a queen.
From Dissent, Mitchell Cohen on Bush's Murphy's Law (and other presidential evolutions). Sean Wilentz on Mr. Cheney’s Minority Report: Part of Iran-contra’s legacy has now become a legacy of the Bush-Cheney administration. Bush's handling of the Libby case, and the way the nation as a whole has dealt with the Iraq war, reek of cognitive dissonance. Pardon me, Mr. President, I swear, I'm innocent: The power to forgive is used and abused by political leaders the world over.
From Newsweek, across the divide: How Barack Obama is shaking up old assumptions about what it means to be black and white in America. Star Trek extra, fascist, horseshoer, dark priest and the other presidential candidates: More than 100 other Americans most people have never ever heard of have thrown their hats into the ring. Hearts over minds, he tells Democrats: Brain researcher Drew Westen says the party needs to connect with voters' emotions to win. From the web to the White House: Since the 1960s, television has been the dominant medium in US presidential election campaigns. But YouTube has changed all that. Will the new medium aid democracy, or is it just a passing fad? The Right to Spend: Has the age of campaign-finance reform come to an end? Jeffrey Rosen wants to know.
12:00PM
JUL 10 2007
Technology
From Technology Review, Web 0.1 Before the Internet, there was videotex. Web 1.0 is likened to the simple ability to read content over the Internet, 2.0 offers read-write powers, and Web 3.0 will expand this to include read-write-execute. What does execute mean? Virtual dreams, real politics: The net embodies the information society long imagined by knowledge elites in east and west, so why is utopia no closer? A review of Infotopia by Cass Sunstein. The Net was supposed to dissolve anachronistic national borders and cultural boundaries. But the real territorialization of the Internet - the redrawing of its internal contours and the withdrawal of its libertarian foundations - is more pernicious, all-pervasive, quotidian, and surreptitiously gradual.
From Wired, Assignment Zero: Can crowds create fiction, architecture and photography?; and article on Creative Crowdwriting: The Open Book; a look at why Open-Source Journalism is a lot tougher than you think; and an interview with Andrea Grover is a curator of crowdsourced art and the founding director of the "Aurora Picture Show". From PressThink, an interview with James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds, on what crowds can and cannot do. Play peak oil before you live it: Collaborative intelligence wiz Jane McGonigal designs alternate reality games to solve the world's biggest problems. Enviros love her — but so does the military. A review of Second Lives: A Journey through Virtual Worlds by Tim Guest. Online, Second Life avatars are prosing and poetizing.
Covering almost 7.5m pages in more than 250 languages, Wikipedia is by far the biggest encyclopaedia ever written. But is it a vast online fount of human knowledge or an extreme example of "digital Maoism", as some critics claim? Tim Adams meets Jimmy Wales, the man behind the phenomenon, to get to the facts. All the News That’s Fit to Print Out: How did the world’s biggest online encyclopedia turn into a leading source of daily journalism? An interview with Kevin Rose, founder of Digg. A review of The Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen (more and more and more).
Old Friends on Facebook: The college students' favorite website begins to conquer social networking's final frontier: grownups. Etiquette pitfalls in the social web of wannabe friends: Schoolchildren, trendy teenagers, yuppies, celebrities all are having to say yes or no to an age-old plea: can I be in your gang? YouTube this! Will the all-seeing eye of the Internet help keep us all in line? Ask Bin Laden or the Mafia if they're worried about being embarrassed. Porn 2.0, and Its Victims: A look at how "private" sex tapes flood user-fed sites like YouPorn. Watch and Learn: Two sites aim to teach you everything you want to know how to do, one video at a time.
