A Thinking Reed

  • The literature of peace

    Here’s a review of an interesting-sounding book on pacifism and English literature (though, given the subject, the review spends a surprising amount of time talking about Tolstoy).

  • Friday metal – Tony Stark edition

    This afternoon I went to see Iron Man with my pal Andrew. Big fun – exactly what a superhero movie should be. Definitely a cut above some recent superhero mediocrities; the A-list cast certainly didn’t hurt. Robert Downy Jr. has become one of my favorite actors in recent years. So, naturally: Oh, and I don’t…

  • The death knell of factory farming?

    Matt Halteman has a good round up of coverage on the Pew factory farming report. Could be that things are coming to a head as the confluence of a lot of factors (climate change, the price of oil, Pollan-inspired foodieism) seems to be convincing more and more people that our industrial food system is unsustainable.

  • Gravel the libertarian?

    According to several of those political quizzes circulating on the Internet, Alaska-Senator-turned-bitter-curmudgeon/longshot-Democratic-presidential-candidate Mike Gravel was one of my top matches for president. I guess should be heartened, then, to see that Gravel is apparently now pursuing the Libertarian nomination. Gravel’s platform is actually an odd grab-bag of proposals, including replacing the income tax with a…

  • The church and social justice

    Derek and Christopher have both been pondering the issue. Also relevant is this post on Niebuhr’s Moral Man and Immoral Society from Fr. Chris. I’ve wondered from time to time if part of the problem isn’t that the church has lost the idea of vocation. Instead of equipping lay people for ministry in the world…

  • Pew Commission vs. factory farming

    Wayne Pacelle’s Humane Society blog reports that the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production at The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has released a report recommending a “a phase-out of ‘the most intensive and inhumane confinement practices’—gestation and veal crates and battery cages.” This fall California will be voting on a ballot…

  • Quote of the day

    “Animals are metal“

  • King’s X – “Over My Head”

    I don’t know if folks remember the hard rock/soul/prog/funk act King’s X – this clip is from their 1989 album “Gretchen Goes to Nebraska”: The band is still together and, in fact, have a new album coming out next month. (They were also, perhaps unfairly, dogged by the “Christian rock” label for much of their…

  • Creative destruction

    The book reviewed here asks if capitalism as we know it is compatible with reining in environmental destruction. The author is pretty convinced that the answer is no. If this is right, the problem then seems to be that 1. there’s no particularly attractive alternative to capitalism currently on offer and 2. even if there…

  • The high price of “cheap” meat

    From Ethicurean: Here’s a number to knock you out of that mid-day stupor: every year, taxpayers shell out between $7.1 billion and $8.2 billion to subsidize or clean up after our nation’s 9,900 confined animal feeding operations. That’s the finding of “CAFOs Uncovered,” a new report released earlier today by the Union of Concerned Scientists.…