From Re-Public, a special issue on Time and Governance, including an essay on democracy in the age of neoliberal speed; an article on Kant, civil war and the folds of meaning; more on the re-engineering of time; an essay on working time flexibility as a socially questionable but politically favoured policy choice; reflections upon the relationship between space, time and governance; an article on real-time and the politics of presence; and what lies behind the notion of progress?; an interview with Bruno Latour on the end of progressivism, the limits of representation, and the irrelevance of parliaments; Richard Dawkins on time; an essay on temporality and Giorgio Agamben’s The Coming Community; and more.
From Open Letters Monthly, can a writer be objective about poverty? John Cotter thinks William T. Vollmann’s striking approach in Poor People is both beautiful and frustratingly distant. From Business Week, an interview with Robert Frank, author of The Economic Naturalist: In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas. The Art of Letting Go: Mark Skousen lauds a Chinese philosopher who drove away a third of the students in a class at Columbia Business School.
Too much of a good thing? Researchers are eager to accept funding from philanthropists. Some universities are better than others: In the competitive world of higher education, the market has spoken. From the latest Phyllis Schlafly Report, a look at what colleges teach — and don't teach. The people's scientist: Kathy Sykes made a microscope from a saucepan on telly and says academics must learn to listen.
Scientists have discovered element 118, the newest block on the periodic table. But why do scientists work so hard to create new elements that last for such a short time? The man behind the magnitude scale: A review of Richter’s Scale: Measure of an Earthquake, Measure of a Man (and more). Steve Donoghue gently debunks the anthropocentric conceits of Pulitzer Prize-winner Douglas Hofstadter’s newest book, I Am a Strange Loop.
From Natural History, the Cosmic Perspective: Neil deGrasse Tyson explains how embracing cosmic realities can give us a more enlightened view of human life; a review of The Invisible Sex: Uncovering the True Roles of Women in Prehistory; and Faces of the Human Past: Science and art combine to create a new portrait gallery of our hominid heritage. Obituary: Mary Douglas. Anthropology's "Other": A review of The Anthropology of Christianity, ed. by Fenella Cannell and Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter by Webb Keane.
And from The University Bookman, a review of Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense by N. T. Wright; a review of Politics and Economics. An Essay on the Genesis of Economic Development by Rocco Pezzimenti; a review of Cattolicesimo, protestantesimo e capitalismo by Paolo Zanotto; a review of Law and Revolution, II: The Impact of the Protestant Reformation on the Western Legal Tradition by Harold J. Berman; and a review of The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization by Bryan Ward-Perkins and The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians by Peter Heather
