A Thinking Reed

  • A very kinky book

    The new book Superfreakonomics (sequel to the much-ballyhooed Freakonomics) hasn’t even been published yet, and it’s already receiving massive smack-downs for its highly misleading chapter on global warming. See Joseph Romm (here, here, and here) and Paul Krugman.

  • Pardon our dust

    Experimenting with a more minimalist look around here. I found a very minimalist WP theme I liked, but for some reason it didn’t allow block-quotes, which would make many of my posts downright confusing. This one-column theme is a compromise. Any thoughts? UPDATE: Decided to go back to the old tried-and-true format.

  • Friday Metal: Converge, “No Heroes”

    An acquired taste, to be sure:

  • “A severely conservative moral stance”

    James Rachels on vegetarianism: Vegetarianism is often regarded as an eccentric moral view, and it is assumed that a vegetarian must subscribe to principles at odds with common sense. But if this reasoning is sound, the opposite is true: the rule against causing unnecessary pain is the least eccentric of all moral principles, and that…

  • The cosmic prodigal son

    I’ve been reading a book called Created from Animals: the Moral Implications of Darwinism by the late philosopher James Rachels. The thesis is that Darwinism does have far-reaching implications for morality, even if not the ones commonly thought. This is in contrast to those, like Stephen Jay Gould, who tried to erect an insuperable wall…

  • Yes, Virginia, the pope believes in global warming

    Apparently some right-wing Catholics have interpreted the fact that the words “global warming” or “climate change” do not appear in Benedict XVI’s recent encyclical to mean that the pope is a global warming skeptic of some sort. Neil Ormerod, a Catholic theologian in Australia, attempts to set the record straight.

  • Friday Metal: Nobel Prize edition

  • Prayer for a squirrel

    Christopher has a terrific piece up at Episcopal Cafe on how prayer can and does connect us with our fellow creatures: …to bless God for the life of just one animal, who has been a friend and companion, begins to have us think anew about our fellow creatures, about creation, about ourselves, about God. Such…

  • Economies of scale

    How does iTunes justify charging 99 cents for Napalm Death’s “You Suffer,” which, I believe, holds the Guinness world record for shortest song ever recorded (4 seconds!)? Of course, you can get the entire album–28 songs–for $5.99. (In this video the song ends at 0:03.)

  • She Who Is wrap-up

    I’m not going to offer a blow-by-blow account of the rest of Elizabeth Johnson’s She Who Is, mostly because I don’t think I could do justice to the many nuances and illuminating insights it contains. It’s definitely changed how I think about these issues. Also, it’s a highly readable book for academic theology, and anyone…