A Thinking Reed

  • The smiling God

    I don’t usually write about Joel Osteen and his ilk because a. evangelicalism isn’t really my milieu and b. it seems a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. But if you like that sort of thing, Slate‘s review of Osteen’s new book is worth checking out.

  • The left-populist case for Ron Paul?

    This Fall I read Jeff Taylor’s Where Did the Party Go?: William Jennings Bryan, Hubert Humphrey, and the Jeffersonian Legacy, in which he argues that the Democrats have traded a “Jeffersonian” ideology (decentralist, populist, libertarian, and non-interventionist bordering on pacifist) for a “Hamiltonian” one (basically the opposite). Bryan and Humphrey are for Taylor emblematic figures…

  • We’re doomed, the continuing series

    When I read things like this, I can understand why people want to ignore the issue of climate change. If things are as bad as writers like McKibben say, and if the measures they describe are what’s called for, then I just can’t see how we’re going to pull off anything that radical in time…

  • The end of the world as we know it (3)

    (See here and here for previous posts.) The third part of The God of Hope and the End of the World is Polkinghorne’s attempt to construct a positive theological vision out of biblical insights, but one informed by what scientific cosmology tells us about the nature and destiny of the universe. The resurrection of Jesus,…

  • The end of the world as we know it (2)

    The key principle that Polkinghorne uses to construct his eschatological vision is that of continuity/discontinuity. If God is going to bring new life out of this fated-for-death universe, it must be both continuous with what has come before and discontinuous in overcoming the frailties, limitations, and evils of the present universe. The paradigmatic expression of…

  • The end of the world as we know it (1)

    One of the things I usually make a point of doing when we’re visiting my wife’s family in Indianapolis is to make a trip to Half Price Books. They sell both used books and remainders, and it’s rare that I can’t find some gem at low, low prices. (They also have HPB in California, but…

  • Living in an “endemic surveillance” society

    Go, USA! (link via Unqualified Offerings)

  • Real food

    Via Jeremy, a review Michael Pollan’s new book at Slate. Laura Shapiro defends Pollan from charges that he’s a mere “lifestyle guru” uninterested in political changes that could actually change the way we eat. That Pollan is interested in motivating political change should be clear to anyone who’s read his articles over the past year…

  • Where’s the anti-war mojo on the Left?

    With all the hype around the Ron Paul candidacy (admittedly still a long shot), I’ve wondered why there hasn’t been a comparable anti-war insurgency on the Left. Why, for instance, hasn’t Dennis Kucinich‘s campaign taken off? Is it that Democratic voters aren’t motivated primarily by the war, or is it that they regard the top…

  • It’s a small world

    The Mother Jones article on the global impact of China’s environmental problems that I mentioned the other day can be found online here. It’s long but well worth a read.