2007 reviews and more...
The Year in Ideas, 2007
The American Idea
Philip Pullman Addresses the Golden Compass Controversy
The Golden Compass was a box office disappointment and many are wondering if part of the reason is the furor over the books' perceived anti-religion and anti-Catholic stance. Author Philip Pullman is an atheist. The star of the film, Nicole Kidman is a devout Catholic who says the film is not anti-Catholic. Pullman discussed the controversy in recent interview.Roger Ebert's list of the best films of 2007.
Long long list of the most overrated and underrated books,...
A list of controversial fashion advertisements. Can't believe the...
COMMENT: Five events that have defined 2007 War in Iraq, Russia resurgent, China on the rise, turmoil in Pakistan and the credit crunch – the theme that links the most significant world events of the past year is the growing strain on the world’s sole superpower, writes Gideon Rachman
Financial Times What does 2008 have in store? Financial Times writers predict the issues that will shape the year ahead
NPQ Tariq Ramadan: A RESPONSE TO AYAAN HIRSI ALI: SELF-CRITICAL MUSLIMS ARE NOT SILENT -- BUT ARE NOT HEARD
The power of love: Love is the best antidepressant—but many of our ideas about it are wrong.
The New Yorker, twilight of the books: What will life be like if people stop reading? Caleb Crain investigates.
Opinion: A myth about consumer spending
"How to Cut Ph.D. Time to Degree," in InsideHigherEd.com. Humanities and social science doctoral students in the U.S. can sometimes take a decade or more to earn their Ph.D.s. Harvard came up with a solution, or, should we say, ultimatum: For every five students who are eight years or more into a doctoral program, the department loses one admissions slot. The policy seems to have worked.
Synthetic DNA on the Brink of Yielding New Life Forms
Was Bali a success?, Saleemul HuqCamilla Toulmin Oliver Tickell John Elkington
Eco-imperialism at the Bali summit?
Brief historicization (from www.spiked-online.com) of the latest inter-governmental eco-policy deal, looking into the way certain branches of capital established the 'Green' agenda long before its discovery by counter-culture and adoption by mainstream moralism. The ideology of Scarcity is perpetual, but it took on this distinct institutional form during the late 20th century Supply Side ascendancy. Incidentally the implicit contradiction between an 'eco-imperialist' drive to keep the 'underdeveloped' world that way (as a 'non-capitalist' source of loot) and industrial capitals' need to draw ever more labour-power into their orbit was explained by Rosa Luxemburg in 1913 in 'The Accumulation of Capital': "The conditions for the capitalization of surplus-value clash increasingly with the conditions for the renewal of the aggregate capital – a conflict which, incidentally, is merely a counterpart of the contradictions implied in the law of a declining profit rate".
The Media Mural Project: Empowering Youth in New Mass Media
This article describes the pedagogy, practice and outcomes of a digital art program developed to enable high school and middle school students to become active participants in new forms of grassroots public media. Students and their teachers become producers and controllers of art-based videos and associated digital dialogue which is distributed on the Internet.The end of postmodernism: the “new atheists” and democracy, Tina Beattie
The Economist recently published a colour supplement titled "In God's Name: A Special Report on Religion and Public Life" (3 November 2007). The accompanying leading article included a rueful admission: "The Economist was so confident of the Almighty's demise that we published His obituary in our millennium issue." There is an almost palpable sense of discomfort at a leading international journal finding itself confronted with the unexpected resurgence of religion as a newsworthy topic which merits serious debate.
