archive

The environment, conservatism, religion and the private sphere

Donald MacKenzie (Edinburgh): Finding the Ratchet: The Political Economy of Carbon Trading. From Sign and Sight, Leo Tuor has felt the effects of global warming right up to his belly button. Polymers are Forever: Alarming tales of a most prevalent and problematic substance. A review of Oil on The Brain: Adventures from the Pump to the Pipeline. A review of Ecology Without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics.

From Satya, an interview with Diane Beers, author of For the Prevention of Cruelty: The History and Legacy of Animal Rights Activism in the United States; and can’t a guy destroy a slaughterhouse without being called a “terrorist”? A review of Last Harvest: How a Cornfield Became New Daleville. From Satya, an interview with Juliette Williams on White Gold: The True Cost of Cotton; and an interview with Pietra Rivoli, author of The Travels of A T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power and Politics of World Trade.

From National Review, an interview with Peter Schweizer and Wynton C. Hall, editors of Landmark Speeches of the American Conservative Movement. As Giuliani emerges, conservative Catholic organizations are in the process of rolling out potentially broad-reaching “viral” initiatives with the common aim of denying him the Republican nomination. Uniting conservative Catholics, evangelicals and neoconservatives to fight a theoconservative holy war: A review of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army. Max Blumenthal on the Diary of a Christian Terrorist. P.R. firm for a Christian nation: Christian Newswire serves Jerry Falwell, Operation Rescue, Focus on the Family... and the White House.

From Skeptical Inquirer, an essay on Fighting the Fundamentalists: Chamberlain or Churchill?; a review of The God Delusion; are silent prayers transmissible to, or readable by, a supernatural being?; the ongoing debate between scientists and creationists has ignored the contradictions contained in Genesis; and psychic vibrations: An article on The Incredible Bouncing Cow. From Free Inquiry, Tom Flynn on the seductions of misbelief; a review of Philip Kitcher's Living with Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith; Peter Singer on treating (or not) the tiniest babies; and an essay on religion and child abuse.

Have we raised a generation of narcissists? It's 10 p.m. Do you know how big your child's ego is? The invisible mommies: A spate of new books about opting out adds more fuel to the mommy wars. But will our focus on educated, well-paid women ever trickle down to less fortunate moms? A review of Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success, by Sylvia Ann Hewlett. And do the cliches about the fortes and failings of men and women stand up to scientific scrutiny?