A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Coffee

  • The evil empire–a little less evil

    Starbucks is going all fair trade in the UK. (via) (I don’t really think Starbucks is evil; but this still seems like a good thing–though I realize there’s debate over the effectiveness of fair trade programs.) Read more

  • Assorted links with no particular unifying theme

    –Lynn on why some people are pro-choice on abortion but anti-gay marriage and the various meanings of “sodomy” –Matt Yglesias on DC Statehood (bonus: a couple of nifty images of US flags with 51 stars from Yglesias commenters) –Humane Society CEO Wayne Pacelle recently appeared on the Kojo Nnamdi show, an excellent program on DC’s Read more

  • Evil empire?

    P.J. O’Rourke reviews a new book on Starbucks that offers some counterintuitive facts: Clark is frank about his bias: “Starbucks diminishes the world’s diversity every time it builds a new cafe, and I can’t help but feel troubled by this.” But when Clark looks at whether the towering Mount St. Helens that is Starbucks, with Read more

  • “Green consumerism” vs. consuming less

    A couple of weeks ago the New York Times ran a story on the new “green consumerism.” Today George Monbiot writes that it’s not good enough to “buy green”; we have to buy less. His contention is that “green” consumption is at this point a supplement to rather than a replacement of conventional consumption and Read more