A Thinking Reed

  • Economics as master narrative

    Did you know that economists can tell us how much we should care about future generations or how risk averse we ought to be? Yeah, me neither! I’ve recently found myself increasingly irritated at the way economics (or, worse, a popularized version of it) has begun to function as a kind of master narrative among…

  • Subversive slowness

    Here’s a lovely essay by Rebecca Solnit on “slowness [as] an act of resistance” to the cult of efficiency, speed, innovation, and techno-mastery. (Via James Poulos @ the American Scene)

  • Edwards on confinement farming

    The former North Carolina senator told audiences that he would push for a national moratorium on building or expanding livestock confinement facilities. He also said he would push for tougher federal environmental regulations and for rigorous enforcement of current manure disposal laws. One of the oft-neglected aspects of factory farming is the environmental degradation it…

  • Immigration, wildlife and the wall

    This article at Grist examines the reasons that environmental groups have been slow to criticize the proposed border wall between the U.S. and Mexico, which will likely have extremely destructive consequences for the wildlife in the area. The reason, writes Glenn Hurowitz, is that they don’t want to invite the kind of bitter controversy over…

  • Not your typical Mormons

    Via Reason’s Hit and Run blog, this has to be the most interesting link of the day: The Mormon Worker, which appears to be just what it sounds like – a Mormon version of Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker, “devoted to promoting Mormonism, Anarchism, and Pacifism”! Maybe we can get Russell Arben Fox to comment on…

  • Save the whales!

    Here’s a sad article about the danger that “right whales” (originally so named because they were considered the “right” whales to kill on account of their tendency to float on the surface after being harpooned) face from shipping vessels and the political lobbying that is trying to prevent new regulations aimed at saving this endangered…

  • ABC on abortion

    Also via Thinking Anglicans, Rowan Williams writes about abortion in Britain and the “slippage” from a presumption of extending protection of fetal life with exceptions for extraordinary circumstances, to a presumption of liberty of choice with respect to abortion. It seems to me that the U.S. is, if anything, more locked into the language of…

  • Anglicanism, protestantism and “denominational families”

    Interesting piece by Alister McGrath in the (Anglican) Church of Ireland Gazzette. He argues that Anglicanism is, historically and theologically, Protestant and that the concept of “denominational families” – the kind of loose federations that characterize world Lutheranism and Methodism, for example – could provide a fruitful model for the future of the Anglican Communion.…

  • Aliens without sin

    Recently I’ve been reading A Case of Conscience by James Blish. This is a science fiction novel written in the 50s about a Jesuit priest/biologist studying a race of reptillian anthropoids on a distant planet. They have a seemingly perfect ethical society without friction or conflict, but also utterly destitute of religion or any sense…

  • Indie rock

    Too white or too class-based? Or just sexless and boring? 😉