11/30 Episteme Links, a valuable philosophy resources site, has several useful new features. Also check out these fun and serious philosophy-related products as well.
11/29 Read Peter Gordon’s web log.
11/28 The proceedings of the
2005 Libertarian Alliance Conference in London are now online.
11/26 Orangutan pee collector? Popular Science has
the ten worst jobs in science. (Via Geek Press.) And you’ve probably been wondering: What’s up with Mozart’s skull these days?
11/25 Now this is cool: Interesting data and fascinating presentation:
Human Development Trends 2005.
11/24 The morality of Thanksgiving: worth reading again are Roger Donway on whom we should thank [dead link] and David Mayer on why we celebrate Thanksgiving. And Alex Tabarrok
puts it well.
11/23 A free trade success story: Peter Mork on
Mexican avocados and Chinese shoes.
11/22 A Saudi schoolteacher spoke freely about religion with his students—and was found guilty and sentenced to 750 lashes. (Thanks to Joe K. for the link.)
11/21 Fruits of the Enlightenment: From anesthesia to arthroscopic surgery. Here is a brief overview of arthroscopic surgery at the ESPN site. And here is Dr. Henry Bigelow’s 1846 account of dentist William Thomas Green Morton’s demonstration of
the use of ether as an anesthetic during tooth extractions.
11/19 Architect Peter Creswell has pictures and comments on
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City concept. And here are pictures of Pier Luigi Nervi’s Palazetto dello Sport, built for the 1960 Olympics in Rome.
11/18 Two articles from the latest The New Individualist are now online: Bruce Thornton on multiculturalism and immigration and Edward Hudgins on the means and ends of the Islamists.
11/17
Is Red Lobster restaurant a tool of Satan? Clearly, God hates shrimp. (Via InstaPundit.) Richard Dawkins has a nice take on Marx’s opiate of the masses. (Thanks to Bob H. for the suggestion.) And of course we all know by now that the theory of gravity is only a secularist theory.
11/16 Roger Sandall on the significance of Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies. (Via Arts & Letters Daily.)
11/15 So sad: Gay marriage has ruined Massachusetts. (Via Tom Palmer.)
11/14 Creativity in advertising facelifts: ReBrand’s 2005 award winners. Urban facelifts and trompe l’oeil: Eric Grohe’s Middle American makeovers. (Thanks to Beverly for the link.) And a short article with pictures of trompe l’oeil in art history.
11/12 Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War is a timeless philosophical history of war and human nature. Here is a brief biography of Thucydides and assessment of his significance as the first to separate myth from history and to assess the credibility of his sources. Also check out Robert Strassler’s indispensable edition, The Landmark Thucydides, which contains the text with accompanying maps, timelines, and sketches of the major actors.
11/11 The always-thoughtful Will Wilkinson has started a Happiness and Public Policy web log.
11/10 Coming soon: the complete works of Charles Darwin online. And if you will be in New York City at some point between now and May, check out the Darwin Exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History. (Via Philosophy of Biology.)
11/9 Technology and education: a brief The New York Times article on podcasting and the future of education. Race and education: Uriah Kriegel explains one reason why blacks are underrepresented in academia.
11/8 The Newberry Archive gets bigger and better with excellent cross-listings by date, subject, and medium. And, after his move to New York City, here is Newberry’s latest studio update for November.
11/7 Socialism versus human health: Dead Meat is an online documentary about the Canadian medical system. Religion versus human health: one more skirmish in the ongoing battle.
11/5 Gruesome, even if you already know the history of communism: A review of the new biography of Mao. And the Left’s Western fellow-travelers do not come out too well either.
11/4 Philosopher Max Hocutt reviews Theodore Dalrymple’s Life at the Bottom. Hocutt is also the author of a justly scathing essay on Jean-Jacques Rousseau in The Independent Review.
11/3 Making arguments clear: Truth-mapping is an online, interactive graphical diagramming of arguments and debates.
11/2 Ayn Rand as literary artist. Three recent collections of essays worth adding to your library: William Thomas’s The Literary Art of Ayn Rand; and Robert Mayhew’s two volumes, Essays on Ayn Rand’s We the Living and Essays on Ayn Rand’s Anthem.
11/1 Fruits of the Enlightenment—or, Why we don’t have to worry about the following anymore: “Faeces discharged into water made China the world reservoir of lung, liver and intestinal flukes and the Oriental schistosome, all serious causes of chronic illness. Human excreta were used as a fertilizer, and soil-transmitted helminth infestation was an occupational hazard for the farmer. According to Han Suyin there was ninety percent worm infestation among children in Peking in the early twentieth century and worms were visible everywhere on paths and alongside buildings. … . India, with the unhygienic habit of defecating in public space, often in streams and rivers that also served for washing and drinking, may have been in even worse shape.” (Eric Jones, The European Miracle, pp. 6-7, quoted in David Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, n. p. 21)