A Thinking Reed

  • “Green consumerism” vs. consuming less

    A couple of weeks ago the New York Times ran a story on the new “green consumerism.” Today George Monbiot writes that it’s not good enough to “buy green”; we have to buy less. His contention is that “green” consumption is at this point a supplement to rather than a replacement of conventional consumption and…

  • NYT: Public doesn’t want to hear ideas for universal health care or getting out of Iraq

    A friend of mine sent a link to this excellent post at the American Prospect’s Beat the Press blog, tearing a NY Times op-ed for pronouncing, seemingly without evidence, that “minor” candidates like Rep. Dennis Kucinich should be barred from the presidential debates since no one cares what they have to say. On the contrary,…

  • Tammy Faye Messner (Bakker), RIP

    Tammy Faye, one of the symbols of the corruption of American televangelism lost her battle with cancer. A few months ago my wife and I watched the documentary The Eyes of Tammy Faye. I have to say that I came away from that much more sympathetically disposed to her. Obviously the kind of fundraising she…

  • Paging Dr. No

    Here’s a pretty sympathetic if not uncritical profile of Ron Paul in the New York Times Magazine by Christopher Caldwell. One of the things I took away from this piece is that Paul’s ability to attract a broad spectrum of support from people who are alienated from the political status quo is the flip side…

  • Friday metal – Darkest Hour, “Sadist Nation”

    These guys are local – I’ve been listening to their new album Deliver Us most of this week. This one’s from their 2003 realease (not for the faint of heart):

  • The Making and Unmaking of Technological Society 3: The Christian revolution

    (See previous posts here and here.) In chapter 8 Jardine discusses what he calls the cosmological and anthropological revolution wrought by Christianity and why it holds the key to facing the dilemma of the technological society. That dilemma, recall, is that we human beings have found ourselves with the capacity to radically alter our environment…

  • Does God want us to be free?

    (Switching gears here; we’re talking about political freedom now, not the metaphysical variety.) There’s been an interesting debate recently, swirling around some of President Bush’s more exuberant comments about political freedom being a “gift from the Almighty.” The reference comes from a recent David Brooks column (not accessible to us proles who don’t subscribe to…

  • May the farm be with you

    Genius (via Zippy Catholic). Grocery Store Wars

  • Could we turn out not to have free will?

    Ramesh Ponnuru wrote a blog post suggesting that some forms of atheism make free will and moral reasoning absurd. Will Wilkinson responded by essentially saying that this is a psuedo-problem (link via Unqualified Offerings). I think Wilkinson doesn’t really acknowledge the source of the worry here. He writes: Here are two things you know: free…

  • Disfranchised

    I see the signs for DC Vote all over the place. Is there a compelling reason why residents of the District shouldn’t have congressional representation? For those of a more radical bent there’s also the DC Statehood Party (which merged with the Greens). You can also get yourself the (quite popular) “Taxation without Representation” license…