A Thinking Reed

  • Creation’s travail

    To hear some anti-green conservatives tell it, you’d think that nature-worship and radical environmentalism were making major inroads into our society. Of course, the opposite is much closer to the truth: the general attitude toward the natural world that underlies most of our daily activities is one that regards nature as little more than a…

  • June metal releases

    Two I’m looking forward to: June 23–Darkest Hour, Eternal Return (DC-based melodic death metal) June 30–Killswitch Engage, self-titled (the kings of Boston metalcore; though there are worries that this album is their attempt to break through to mainstream success, suggesting parallels with a certain self-tilted metal/pop crossover circa 1991…)

  • We’re number 37! USA! USA!

    The World Health Organization ranks the world’s health care systems. EDIT: Note that the ranking is several years out of date. I mistakenly thought it was new data. Post in haste, repent at leisure, I guess…

  • The resurrection of Eastern Market

    My wife and I live about a block and a half from Eastern Market, but the fire that gutted the building happended just before we moved here, about two years ago. Since then, the butchers, fish-monger, etc. have been housed in a makeshift building across the street, while the weekend produce vendors set their stalls…

  • One sentence movie review: Revolutionary Road

    I can’t decide if it was a good movie that failed to acheive greatness due to a couple of glaring flaws, or just a really well-made, but fundamentally bad movie.

  • What GHG emissions?

    Congress exempts factory farms from reporting their greenhouse gas emissions. Related, here’s an analysis of Waxman-Markey from the National Wildlife Federation.

  • John Gray on Isaiah Berlin

    Berlin is remembered by philosophers for defending ethical pluralism – the claim that human values make conflicting claims that cannot always be rationally reconciled – and arguing that this pluralism is the true basis of a liberal society. The argument is hardly demonstrative – if values can conflict in ways that have no rational solution,…

  • More command and control please!

    Interesting dissent on the Waxman-Markey climate change bill currently being stalled by farm-state Dems in Congress: …President Barack Obama has publicly described the bill as his and the Democrats’ preferred alternative to regulation. Without the bill, he has threatened, the EPA will directly regulate greenhouse-gas emissions, a power it was given by the Supreme Court…

  • Charles Wesley gets his due

    It appears that new scholarship is discovering some of the long-forgotten (or even suppressed) differences between Charles Wesley and his more famous brother. One interesting point that comes up in this piece is that C.W. leaned more heavily toward keeping Methodism as a movement within the Church of England. I suppose it doesn’t mark me…

  • Burke v. Madison

    Whether, like Burke, one believes that anarchy is the great threat to liberty and social peace, or, like Madison, that tyranny poses the greatest threat to liberty, goes a long way toward determining if one is a conservative or a liberal. –John McGowan, American Liberalism: An Interpretation for Our Time, p. 105 McGowan here is…