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LATEST ARTICLES ( 1483 )

• Soldiers Without Borders: A Modest Proposal

  

  My daughter, Elizabeth Robinson, is studying International Relations at Tufts and will spend this fall with an NGO (“non-governmental organization”) in Jordan... Read more

  Posted on 27 May 2014 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Utilitarianism: Is Killing One to Save Five Moral?

  

  You are a bystander seeing a runaway trolley, about to hit and kill five people. You can grab a switch and reroute it to a different track where it will kill... Read more

  Posted on 24 May 2014 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Piketty Poo

  

  For to everyone who has, will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. Read more

  Posted on 20 May 2014 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Ideology and Insanity: What is Mental Illness?

  

  I was hooked in by the book’s title, Ideology and Insanity, by psychiatrist Thomas Szasz; ideology can verge on insanity. But Szasz’s focus is instead on the... Read more

  Posted on 16 May 2014 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• How I Got Irreligion

  

  At around age six, I was sent to a Jewish “Sunday school,” featuring Bible stories: Daniel and the lions, Noah’s ark, etc. I was fine with them, as stories. Read more

  Posted on 11 May 2014 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Andrew Cuomo: New York’s Odious Governor

  

  I actually thought Governor Andrew Cuomo started off admirably.For one thing, he seemed sensible toward fracking. But then the antis ramped up their campaign,... Read more

  Posted on 08 May 2014 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• The Worried Optimist: A “Broken Windows” Theory of World Order

  

  David Brooks’s 4/30 column helps crystallize my own thoughts. I’ve argued here, and in my 2009 book, The Case for Rational Optimism, that in the big picture... Read more

  Posted on 03 May 2014 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition*

  

  In the Spanish Inquisition, if your beliefs did not conform to religious orthodoxy, you would be tortured to change them; and failing that, burned alive. Read more

  Posted on 29 April 2014 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Are We Becoming Less Trustworthy – Or Just Less Trusting?

  

  A recent Associated Press-GfK poll finds declining levels of trust among Americans. Lost faith in institutions, like government, or churches, might be no... Read more

  Posted on 25 April 2014 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Lucretius, The Swerve, and Understanding Reality

  

  Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve centers on a book-length First Century BC poem by Lucretius, On The Nature Of Things; apparently lost (like so much ancient... Read more

  Posted on 21 April 2014 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Cheryl Strayed: Wild

  

  This best-selling memoir relates Cheryl Strayed’s 1995 1100-mile Pacific Crest Trail hike, from lower California through Oregon. Read more

  Posted on 16 April 2014 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Do Women Earn Less Than Men?

  

  President Obama’s been loudly hitting the supposed pay gap between women and men. All too typically, this is a phony issue distracting from our true economic... Read more

  Posted on 12 April 2014 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• My Love Poems

  

  April is National Poetry Month. So – having authored a novel as well as books about politics, coin collecting, and what I hubristically call philosophy – it’s... Read more

  Posted on 07 April 2014 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• PZ Myers, The Happy Atheist

  

  I’ve read the major atheist books – Harris, Dawkins, Hitchens – which might be called “combative.” Some feel the confrontational stance disserves the cause.... Read more

  Posted on 02 April 2014 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Our Dubai Trip: Shopping Mecca

  

  Dubai’s main attraction is shopping. Maybe not an obvious vacation choice for us non-shoppers.Luckily, there was a big international art fair, with worldwide... Read more

  Posted on 29 March 2014 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Russia Acting From Weakness — ?

  

  President Obama says Russia is actually acting out of weakness.Maybe the most fatuous thing I’ve heard a president say. If this is weakness, we could use some i... Read more

  Posted on 26 March 2014 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• “The World Without Us” — America’s Global Role

  

  We got this film from Netflix on a misunderstanding. A book with the same title imagined Earth’s future if humans disappeared. But the film is a documentary... Read more

  Posted on 23 March 2014 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• A New Cold War?

  

  DUBAI, U.A.E. — I recently  participated in a discussion where someone said, “Why is Obama taking such a strong stance on Syria?” Huh? Read more

  Posted on 17 March 2014 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Pleasantville: A Subversive Allegory

  

  “Pleasantville” was a 1998 film starring a young Tobey Maguire as Dave, a high schooler whom his popular slutty sister Jennifer (Reese Witherspoon) considers a... Read more

  Posted on 14 March 2014 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Freetards

  

  Paul Rapp is a local lawyer who writes a column on intellectual property in an “alternative” newspaper, Metroland. One of his 2013 columns started with a viciou... Read more

  Posted on 11 March 2014 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY