archive

The barest hint of luxury

Emre Gokalp (Anadolu): Pride and Anger: Orhan Pamuk's Nobel Prize and Discourses of Nationalism. From Jacobin, by revealing the increasing impotence and irrelevance of the American empire, the people of Egypt and Libya helped free us to concentrate on our own domestic struggles (and an addendum). On Libya’s Revolutionary Road: Robert F. Worth on the sudden, bloody transformation of normal citizens into rebels. A review of Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking by Nathan Myhrvold, Chris Young, and Maxime Bilet (and more and more). Pat Kane on ten years of the Play Ethic: There's nothing like the tenth anniversary of your own cultural meme to help you mark the passage of time. Canada, how does it work? Michelle Dean on Canada, its politics and the upcoming election. Donald Trump, birther: Will the Republican candidates for 2012 make Obama's birth certificate a primary issue? A new obsession sweeps Japan: With hundreds of thousands of people displaced and many still missing, anything with the barest hint of luxury invites condemnation in post-tsunami Japan. Let’s talk about the differences between environmentalists and scientists. The first sexual revolution and its discontents: How the sex freedom of the 1920s sexual revolution was not intended to promote true freedom, especially not for women. The first chapter from Mafias on the Move: How Organized Crime Conquers New Territories by Federico Varese. An interview with Alex Steffen of Worldchanging: "The big open secret about sustainability work is not how bad things are. It is how good things can get". Mark Phelan argues that our judgements about the intentions of others are not as simple as they seem.