New Year madness is a thing of quite modern making, and hardly an improvement on the tradition that long preceded it, which called for a somewhat sober, respectful and reflective morning celebration. I blame the Scots for the worldwide embrace of midnight debauchery. And, of course, whoever it was that, some little while beforehand, went and invented public clocks. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Believers have got into a tangle trying to fend off the likes of Richard Dawkins. And then there’s the problem of the horticultural parable. Anthony Gottlieb does some digging … <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Claiborne Pell died at age 90 on January 1, 2009. In the weeks that followed, the former Democratic senator from Rhode Island was lauded for his many achievements, but one stood out: The first sentence of Pell’s obituary in The New York Times cited “the college grant program that bears his name.” Pell Grants are the quintessential progressive policy, dedicated to helping low-income students cross into the promised land of opportunity and higher education. “That is a legacy,” said Joe Biden, “that will live on for generations to come.” But is it? <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
The surprise Swiss vote last month to ban new minarets triggered the expected gnashing of teeth from those who believe Islam, the least tolerant of faiths when administered by autocrats and absolute monarchs, should not only be tolerated, but encouraged. “It is an expression of intolerance, and I detest intolerance,” commented French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner. “I hope the Swiss will reverse this decision quickly.” <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Of the 6,500 languages spoken in the world, half are expected to die out by the end of this century. Now, one man is trying to keep those voices alive by reigniting local pride in heritage and identity. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
It’s no secret that conservative Christians dominate the U.S. military, but when higher-ups start talking about conversion missions, it’s time to worry. The author meets a group of soldiers who aren’t having it. Christopher Hitchens on Church and State. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Most of us have genes that make us as hardy as dandelions: able to take root and survive almost anywhere. A few of us, however, are more like the orchid: fragile and fickle, but capable of blooming spectacularly if given greenhouse care. So holds a provocative new theory of genetics, which asserts that the very genes that give us the most trouble as a species, causing behaviors that are self-destructive and antisocial, also underlie humankind’s phenomenal adaptability and evolutionary success. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
On December 25, Christians around the world will gather to celebrate Jesus’ birth. Joyful carols, special liturgies, brightly wrapped gifts, festive foods—these all characterize the feast today, at least in the northern hemisphere. But just how did the Christmas festival originate? How did December 25 come to be associated with Jesus’ birthday? <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Belgium already looks less like a country than a loose confederation of two states. Partly thanks to half a dozen reforms pushed through since the 1970s by nationalists on both sides, French speakers and Dutch speakers inhabit different cultural universes. Most people have never heard of the major politicians, the major actresses, and sometimes even the major athletes on the other side of a country that is smaller than Maryland. They inhabit different political universes, too. Except in one nettlesome suburban area of Brussels, Flemings and Walloons are not permitted to vote for the same parties at the national level. They don’t even obey the same laws. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
In 1991, Donald W. Livingston threw a party—well, a conference—and nobody showed up. It was during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and Mr. Livingston, a professor of philosophy at Emory University and raised in South Carolina, decided there should be more thoughtful discourse on the topic of secession. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
When I first moved to Kyoto in 1999, I knew about 50 words of Japanese. My attempts to string together a few broken phrases were met with excessive praise, and I assumed everyone was being nice. “No,” I remember my friend Yuki saying. “People mean it. They really are impressed.” She was referring to the widespread belief that Japanese, with its nuanced formal expressions and three different writing systems, is a uniquely complex language. How could a foreigner possibly learn it? <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
The reason women love to spend hours browsing in shops while men prefer to be in and out of the high street in minutes is down to their hunter-gathering past, claim scientists. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Where I intend to be divisive is with respect to the argument that religion, and moral education more generally, represent the only — or perhaps even the ultimate — source of moral reasoning. If anything, moral education is often motivated by self-interest, to do what’s best for those within a moral community, preaching singularity, not plurality. Blame nurture, not nature, for our moral atrocities against humanity. And blame educated partiality more generally, as this allows us to lump into one category all those who fail to acknowledge our shared humanity and fail to use secular reasoning to practice compassion. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
In 1945, the United States faced a dire threat. The rising power of the Soviet Union and the spread of communism in Eastern Europe — and, soon enough, worldwide — represented a new enemy that imperiled postwar hopes for a peaceful and prosperous world. The United States was poorly equipped to comprehend, let alone respond to, this emerging global danger. How should the creation of Sovietology guide today’s threats? <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
We live at a time when friendship has become both all and nothing at all. Already the characteristically modern relationship, it has in recent decades become the universal one: the form of connection in terms of which all others are understood, against which they are all measured, into which they have all dissolved <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
In the struggle for equality between the sexes, it keeps coming down to motherhood, doesn’t it? Consider a recent article by Hanna Rosin in The Atlantic. Rosin finds that nursing her infant is holding her back from the work she enjoys, despite her plan for a fully egalitarian marriage. She combs through research on the health benefits of breast-feeding for babies and makes a convincing case that they aren’t as strong as experts have insisted. So does she quit nursing? She does not—even though, she admits, “I’m not really sure why.” <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
On a dark November night in 1978, 18 Chinese peasants from Xiaogang village in Anhui province secretly divided communal land to be farmed by individual families, who would keep what was left over after meeting state quotas. Such a division was illegal and highly dangerous, but the peasants felt the risks were worth it. Thus, without fanfare, began economic reform, as spontaneous land division spread to other villages. Ten years later, in August of 1988, Mikhail Gorbachev lifted his nation’s 50-year-old prohibition against private farming, offering 50-year leases to farm families who would subsequently work off of contracts with the state. The results in each country could not have been more different. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Last month, the architect and author Christopher Alexander received the Vincent Scully Prize, given annually by the National Building Museum “to recognize exemplary practice, scholarship or criticism in architecture, historic preservation and urban design.” For the last 45 years, Alexander has been a controversial figure on the architectural scene, both revered and reviled; yet in an period burdened by flocks of architectural theorists, I would guess that he is one of very few whose work will endure. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
When New Moon, the second film adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s four-part Twilight series, opens in theaters this month, those who see it will not be getting great art. The faults of Meyer’s immensely popular teen vampire-romance novels have been endlessly, and publicly, rehashed: the retrograde gender roles, the plodding plotlines, the super-heated goofiness of Meyer’s prose. I can confirm for you that these faults are real! <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
The Mumbai attacks: sixty harrowing hours. Jason Motlagh’s minute-by-minute account shows us scenes of great heroism and horrifying cruelty. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Google has become synonymous with user-friendly efficiency, via its search engine and its many free and easy-to-use offshoots. But as used in the title of Ken Auletta’s new book, “Googled: The End of the World as We Know It,” the word takes on a more aggressive edge. “Googled” is the sound of old media being outfoxed, slamdunked, left for dead. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
For the past seven years, David Guttenfelder has witnessed and documented the changing landscape of Afghanistan. Although mostly embedded with coalition troops, he has also covered the presidential elections, bodybuilders in Kabul, the state of Afghan prisons and daily life in the country. Guttenfelder is the chief Asia photographer for The Associated Press and over the past seven years has offered the general public a close-up, intimate look at the lives of troops fighting in the mountains and remote regions of Afghanistan. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
It is a sign of these confused, amnesiac times that a straight-faced discussion can be held across the liberal-leaning pages of the New York Times and the Chronicle Review about whether to burn the books of one-time Nazi and full-time philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
But early on in his studies, Petrarch identified a very basic problem. To appreciate classical literature and history, he realized, he needed to understand the geographical context in which they had been written and had taken place. This presented a host of difficulties. How could one study a history of the Roman campaigns in Gaul, for example, without knowing what the ancients had considered Gaul to be? <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
My taxi driver was an Indian or Pakistani with the look of one who had few friends. I spent a long minute arguing with him, trying, at some length, to give him the address of my destination. Finally he turned his whole body toward me and sharply corrected me, but then, looking me over a second longer and ascertaining that there was no great malice in me but only a newcomer’s ineptitude, he pondered my accent and asked, to sweeten my mood, “What country you come from?” <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Is it conceivable that Franklin D. Roosevelt’s doctors knew he had widespread cancer in 1944 and still let him run for his fourth term as president? New research makes this astounding argument—and claims that the physician who supposedly told the truth about Roosevelt’s death in 1970 was in fact continuing the deception he had helped create. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
On 12 November, spiked editor Brendan O’Neill debated Roger Martin, chairman of the Optimum Population Trust, at the Wellcome Collection in London. To kick off spiked’s campaign against neo-Malthusianism and all forms of population control, O’Neill’s speech is published on spike. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Amid the smoldering wreckage of the popular culture, the author blames Reality TV, which has not only ruined network values, destroyed the classic documentary, and debased the art of bad acting, but also fomented class warfare, antisocial behavior, and murder. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
In Somalia’s main pirate lair of Haradheere, the sea gangs have set up a cooperative to fund their hijackings offshore, a sort of stock exchange meets criminal syndicate. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
My son just turned 3. He loves trains, fire trucks, tools of all kinds, throwing balls, catching balls, spinning until he falls down, chasing cats, tackling dogs, etc. That doesn’t make him unusual; in fact, in many ways, he couldn’t be more typical. Which may be why a relative recently said, “Well, he’s definitely all boy.” It’s a statement that sounds reasonable enough until you think about it. What does “all boy” mean? Masculine? Straight? Something else? Are there partial boys? And is this relative aware of my son’s fondness for Hello Kitty and tea sets? <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
When people in South Africa say “Limpopo,” they mean the middle of nowhere. They are referring to the northernmost province of the country, along the border with Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique, where few people have cars or running water or opportunities for greatness. The members of the Moletjie Athletics Club, who live throughout the area in villages of small brick houses and mud-and-dung huts, have high hopes nonetheless. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
