Posted in In The News, Book Reviews, Opinion on Mar 13th, 2007
[Capitalism, Climate Change, Conservation, Environmentalism, Pragmatism]You’re forgiven if you have missed it, but there’s a rhetorical war being waged on blogs and in the tradition media for the soul of the modern environmental movement. I’ve written of this concept before, and as I see it there are two primary groups involved: the conservationists and […]
Posted in Book Reviews on Sep 19th, 2006
[1491, Charles Mann, Futurism, History, Native Americans]The Coda at the end of 1491 is a brilliant cap on a work that presents ideas perhaps unpalatable to many. The dominance of Europe both technologically and culturally is greatly challenged by the revelations in 1491. The histories that we have all been told are to […]
Posted in Book Reviews, Opinion on Sep 17th, 2006
[1491, Charles Mann, Conservation, Environmentalism, New Environmentalism]The final chapter in Charles C. Mann’s 1491 entitled “The Artificial Wilderness” elaborates his vision of the New World as having been thoroughly shaped by its Indian peoples. In the previous chapter, “Amazonia”, Mann suggests that as much as 1/8th of the Amazonian dryland forests may be in […]
Posted in Book Reviews, Informative Articles on Jul 27th, 2006
[1491, Amazon, Archaeology, Charles Mann, Rainforest, Soil, Sustainability, Terra Preta]Rarely does one see the words “Amazon” and “sustainable” in the same sentence, let alone the same title. To the modern mind, the Amazon is synonymous with two things: astounding ecological diversity and rapacious environmental degradation. As I’m learning from Charles Mann’s masterwork 1491, […]
Posted in Book Reviews on Jun 29th, 2006
[1491, Anthropology, Beni, Charles Mann]In the comments thread of my most recent Damn Interesting article (linked in my RSS feed, go check it out if you haven’t subscribed) about the Passenger Pigeon, a reader mentioned the book 1491 by Charles C. Mann. It’s about the latest ideas in archaeology and anthropology relating to native […]
Posted in Book Reviews on May 31st, 2006
[Amish, Progress, Society, Technology]Late last year I read “Radical Evolution” by Joel Garreau and got fairly excited about the prospect of the technological singularity we are supposedly approaching. Because I enjoy reading completely opposing viewpoints (with the exception of most of the scarcely-readable screed that passes for political writing), I picked up a copy […]
Posted in Book Reviews on Dec 20th, 2005
[Book Review, Extended Piece, PIG Science, Tom Bethell]I’ve just finished a series of 11 detailed chapter-by-chapter reviews of Tom Bethell’s The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, and in this final summary review I will discuss the successes and failures of his work, along with the fundamental problems in how Bethell presents his subjects. In […]
Posted in Book Reviews on Dec 20th, 2005
[Book Review, Evolution, Extended Piece, Fossil Record, Intelligent Design, PIG Science, Religion, Science]This, the final chapter of Tom Bethell’s The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science follows immediately after the previous chapter in his line of argument. The previous chapter was largely about the mechanism of Natural Selection proposed by Darwin, while Chapter 14: “Evolution: […]
Posted in Book Reviews on Dec 19th, 2005
[Book Review, Evolution, Extended Piece, Intelligent Design, PIG Science]Like the previous chapter of Bethell’s The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, Chapter 13: “By Chance or By Design” seems written to appeal to a certain crowd. This chapter, supposedly about Intelligent Design, is a shallow critique of “Darwinism” that meagerly attempts to posit ID as […]
Posted in Book Reviews on Dec 14th, 2005
[Book Review, Extended Piece, Flat Earth, Galileo, PIG Science, Religion, Science]We are nearing the end of Tom Bethell’s “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science,” and with it we are chewing into some themes related to science and religion. Happily, Chapter 12 , entitled “The Abiding Myths: Flat Earth and Warfare Between Science and Religion” […]
