Adam Smith, protectionist, progressive income tax supporter and unionist

Here is a great "interview" with Adam Smith, he who is idealized by shallow libertarians and Clintonoids who think the NAFTA is just swell!

Michael Lind, who wrote the article, may have been familiar with others who have made similar points about Adam Smith, including John Kenneth Galbraith, who wrote an article on this very subject for Harper's about 30 years ago. Here is one quote from the "Wealth of Nations" that Lind missed:

“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” [Wealth of Nations, I.x.c.27: p 145]

Hat tip to David Brin. David believes Democrats are well-advised to re-claim Smith as our own. Perhaps. I'd like to claim Hamilton, who is very close to home. I think he'd sniff a bit at my support of unions, but I don't think a man who proposed the government regulated bank would be against government paid for health insurance...Plus, he was a big promoter of tariffs (See Federalist Paper No. 11, paragraph 3, for example).

News Jews Can Use in America...from Israel of course

The American corporate media has continued its news blackout of things that might highlight to American Jews just how horrible Israeli politicians and leaders are behaving.

Here is Gideon Levy delivering a well-deserved smack-down of Israeli President Shimon Peres for his, again, horrible comments regarding Justice Goldstone. And if anyone thinks the Goldstone Report is a dishonest, ridiculous and patently unfair attack on Israel, then please read this post of mine which quotes a more conservative writer at Haaretz who found the report to be fair.

And, somewhat related to this imbroglio, here is another example of the irony behind the statement that organized religion is a source of kindness and the best of humanity. I expect a general to state things like that, and probably I'd want a general to say something like that at some point in a military campaign. That's his job. But a chaplain should refrain from such talk as he is the one who has to help guide soldiers in that twilight zone where there may actually be need for mercy at that same point in a military campaign. People have roles to play, and it is not a play in the sense of theater, but a recognition that the world remains a complicated place where conflicting feelings, values and actions have to be harmonized. The choices soldiers face in life and death situations is horribly difficult, and not a choice between saving or not saving a life, but one where multiple innocents are going to die no matter which choice is made.

It is on that ground that one may question the extent of usefulness of any report post-war on the conduct of a war, especially one where Israel militarily struck another nation, "Gaza," for the rockets it was raining down on Israel's people. That civilians died or that some soldiers behaved badly is not a surprise. And yes, it is important to acknowledge for those who are howling against the Goldstone report that the Goldstone report cannot really tell us the U.S. or other countries could not be challenged in a similar manner as was stated in the Goldstone report with regard to wars the U.S. or other nations have engaged in. Yet, what makes the Goldstone report fair, according to the conservative writer at Haaretz, was that the report was at least as tough on Hamas. That is an improvement with the U.N., and the Israeli government missed a great opportunity to have further improved the contours of the Goldstone investigation while it was being undertaken. Instead, they alternated between snarling at and ignoring Goldstone, a committed Zionist and Jew, from the beginning.

But all is not bad news coming out of the Israeli-Palestinian Hundred Years War. Here is an amazing article about Palestinian government efforts to fully create an independent state over the next two years, starting in the West Bank. This unilateral move was praised by....U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman, who was with the Palestinian Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, at a press conference. Read it and believe it!

We are in a moment where nearly 60% of Jewish Israelis want to talk with Hamas (even as the "peace movement" in Israel is apparently in tatters), and Hamas' main leader has publicly stated that Hamas will at least accept 1967 borders. But so far, the Nutty-Yahoo government insists on missing this moment, and this virus of snarling stupidity has now infected Shimon Peres.

(Edited)

Deification of Gilded Age Financiers in a Time of Economic Ruin

In this week's issue of The Nation, Steve Fraser does a solid job of providing the background to the spate of biographies in recent years regarding post-US Civil War economic tycoons, and does a takedown of the latest biography of Corneilius Vanderbilt. I had enjoyed David Nasaw's book on Andrew Carnegie because there was a sense that AC was hypocritical and downright tough on his workers. Nasaw was also brilliant in helping the reader understand how tariffs in the 1870s made Carnegie go from merely rich to super-super rich as a steel magnate. As for T.J. Stiles' "The First Tycoon," about Vanderbilt, I have picked it up and put it down in several bookstores because I sensed the book was failing to recognize the very little redeeming values in Vanderbilt, particularly with regard to labor relations. It struck me as more hagiography than biography.

Fraser's review nails this point towards the end of the review. Here are the three "money" paragraphs (pardon the slight pun):

"Stiles thinks the (Henry & Charles) Adamses, (E.L.) Godkin and other patrician critics of the First Tycoon were cynics (in their harsh condemnation of Vanderbilt). After all, they loathed trade unions, lamented that Anglo-Protestant America was being mongrelized by immigrants, feared and deplored mass democratic politics, considered Populists to be hayseeds and were appalled as much by the vulgarity of the new tycoonery as they were by its inordinate power. Stiles says these unsavory views discredit the Brahmins' withering critique of the robber barons' greed, corruption and exploitation. But the charge is a cheap shot and also reflects a kind of intellectual snobbery. After all, the Brahmins' criticisms were echoed in the indictments against the robber barons leveled by the Knights of Labor, farmer-labor and greenback political parties and anti-monopoly leagues, men and women untainted by the reactionary views of their social superiors. But these anonymous or less well-known political actors don't turn up in The First Tycoon. They are as invisible to Stiles as they were noxious to Godkin. (Parentheses added)

...

Stiles insists that Vanderbilt deserves to be treated as a pioneer of modern industrial capitalism. If that's so, and certainly there's a case to be made, then what is more fundamental than understanding his relationship to wage labor, upon which the whole system rests? Thousands of workers, not Vanderbilt alone, made the road what it was. Did they end up dead and disabled in numbers comparable to, less than or more than their co-workers on other lines? Was the Commodore particularly solicitous about their welfare? Did he install the air brake? If not, why not? Did he share the bellicose view of people like Tom Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad or was he, given his lowly social origins, more sympathetic, conciliatory perhaps? What was it like to work for one of the Commodore's great enterprises? The First Tycoon has little to say about any of this, and its silence helps sustain the romance of the misunderstood robber baron.

Not that everyone was silent. Stiles cites an open letter of 1869 from Mark Twain to Vanderbilt in which Twain indicts the tycoon's rapaciousness and greed. But what really bothers Twain (and Stiles emphasizes this) is the idolatry that Vanderbilt's fortune inspired among ordinary people: "You seem to be the idol of only a crawling swarm of small souls, who love to glorify your most flagrant unworthiness in print or praise your vast possessions worshippingly; or sing of your unimportant private habits and sayings and doings, as if your millions gave them dignity." Anyone living during the last quarter century must be acutely aware that the inclination to genuflect before great wealth has once again become a national pastime...

What is especially great about the first sentence of the first paragraph quoted above is that Fraser exposes what I've long said about E.L. Godkin, an original founding editor of The Nation not long after the US Civil War. He was a noxious elitist who hated organized and organizing labor. Godkin may have been anti-racist, but long time editor and publisher Victor Navasky's elevation of Godkin as a great editor of The Nation, while never missing a chance to belittle Freda Kirchwey,* a wonderful editor of The Nation from the 1930s through 1950s, is something that has long left me scratching my head with admittedly some anger.

* The usual attack on Kirchwey is that she was supposedly soft on the Soviet Union during the 1930s. Compared to the editor of The New Republic at the time (Bruce Bliven), she was definitely not. Further, anyone reading her essay at the end of August 1939 called "Red Totalitarianism" (sadly not available online unless one subscribes to The Nation archives) would recognize her as a true liberal-minded person who saw Stalinism as a menace to free thought and liberty.

Fraser's article, however, is worth reading in its entirety.

(Edited)

A Disturbance of Galt

It is with amusement, and yes some jealousy that I read articles like Reason magazine editor Brian Doherty's about Ayn Rand. I don't want to be Ayn Rand--and her personal life was something of a mess that I have thankfully avoided in my life so far...It's a great article, though, as Doherty understands well that Rand's atheism is at least somewhat connected to her attack on moralists in economics--and therefore the right wing Republicans in Congress who embrace her should be a bit careful.

But it remains true, from a personal standpoint, that I wrote "A Disturbance of Fate" to be an answer to Ayn Rand's (and Milton Friedman's) philosophy and literature. Sinclair Lewis and Charles Dickens may have been my muses at that time, but Rand was often in my head, too. I used to joke that I wanted a college student or precocious high school student to walk around with my book the way some did and do with "The Fountainhead" or "Atlas Shrugged" and say, "Man, this is the book you gotta read! It's all here!" Of course, part of the reason for the irony in my book, and giving some great lines to people like Ronald Reagan and Roger Ailes, was to give the reader a chance to step back and ponder the larger ironies of nearly any ideology and political movements, including the ideas and political movements with which the author and RFK agreed or supported. In other words, "the Answer" is not all here, there...or anywhere.

My favorite positive review of my book came from a judge on the committee of the Sidewise Awards, who told me he was a major self-proclaimed "right wing libertarian." He said my book was the best answer to Ayn Rand he'd ever read--and that he truly liked my book for its willingness to doubt, and its sense of humor and irony, things he felt Rand had a problem with. He also said he tried very hard to poke a hole in the events described as alternative history in my book, but found even the ironic ending both reasonable and compelling based upon what had appeared in each previous step. His analysis showed a more subtle reading of the book than some critical reviewers on the Amazon site who see my book as one big Bobby Kennedy or left wing love fest, or amazingly enough, anti-Semitic or anti-Zionist in its sections on Israel and the Middle East (My truly left wing uncle thought I was way too tough on Arafat; his perception is actually closer to the mark).

Unlike Rand, I don't have a Nathaniel Braden to market my book. I don't have wealthy benefactors who want to hear a message that is closer to Michael* Harrington's vision (and RFK was definitely closer to Michael Harrington's vision in RFK's Senate years) than a vision that says it is morally good to make unlimited gobs of money and to defy the government under which one has made those ungodly sums. Some readers have told me that Obama's ascension made my book very timely, but I remain feeling Michael Harrington's and RFK's policy proposals and values remain elusive in our time. A relatively small publisher promises to release my book next year in soft cover, but that was supposed to happen this year, and didn't. So who knows?

I would be honored if some professor of literature or political philosophy were to put "A Disturbance of Fate" head to head with one of Rand's leading novels, and let college students compare and contrast at literary, political, historical or philosophical levels. Certainly, I am honored that at least one prominent literature professor has favorably compared the structure of my alternative history to Philip Roth's poorly structured alternative history. Nonetheless, I continue to need my day job as a lawyer, and as Vonnegut liked to say, "So it goes."

* The link contains a nice biography of Harrington, but fails to mention one of Harrington's earliest books, "Retail Clerks," released the same year as "The Other America." It may have been before "The Other America," but I'm simply not sure. It is in any event missing from the biography at that link. Good old Wikipedia has it listed second, and Wikipedia may be correct.

(Edited)

Sunday night review of book reviews

I have long believed a good reviewer of a book should be able to describe the book under review so that even if one disagrees with the reviewer's opinion, one can decide whether a book is worth looking at to read. The NY Times today offers two examples of this:

1. I have awaited Barbara Kingsolver's "The Lacuna" with bated breath and desire. Yet, reading this very positive review leaves me deeply troubled. I am unsure Kingsolver's latest book is going to work for me, since I find the politics of Diego Rivera and Frida Khalo to be rather dumb and mean, even as I share some of their general sensibility. I share I.F. Stone's disdain of Trotsky and Stalin, though that does not excuse Stalin's brutal murder of Trotsky in the least. I therefore wonder about the new book. Still, when I went to read the first two pages in the excerpt provided by the NY Times, Kingsolver's brilliant prose is still there--all of it. I will have to take a longer look at this book before reading it...

2. The same feeling of hestitancy pervades me as I read about the new John Irving novel, also given a largely good review here in the NY Times. I think I would like the self-consciousness, but I may not like the parts the reviewer found moving or strong.

Elsewhere, some notable book reviews from the Washington Post Book World:

* The history of Arlington Cemetery is one we should know as we approach yet another war anniversary, this time Armistice Day, now known as Veteran's Day. I love that the reviewer castigates the author for not mentioning the racial segregation in Arlingon up through World War II, when Arlington Cemetery had itself been the result of the US government confiscating the land from Robert E. Lee during the Civil War, a war fought largely over slavery...

* Here is a nice review of a writer who we will soon celebrate his 200th Birthday in 2012: Charles Dickens. I believe Dickens to be most neglected by readers of the modern world, even as he is constantly mentioned and venerated. I have taken the time to read several of his novels, and found them very gratifying and finely written. 21st Century readers will be pleasantly surprised by his modern sense of irony and sacrasm, and will find relief in his very adult and wistful sentimentalism.

* A too short discussion of a new book on the longest running modern television show, "The Simpsons." The reviewer should have been allowed to flesh out the ideological/non-ideological aspects of the show, though a stronger analysis would conclude that there is a general culturally left bent to the show, a love-hate relationship with labor and labor unions, a strong environmentalism and remarkably astute cultural references from the past 100 years in American and European history. The love-hate with labor unions stems from its use of foreign animators and its sadly successful fight against the animators in America who had been in a union going back to the 1930s--something not in the review, unfortunately.

Finally, from the LA Times:

* On the 20th anniversary of the fall of the horrible and dreaded Berlin Wall, Carlin Romano provides a good introduction for American readers regarding that mystical and often scary place known as Eastern Europe (formerly known in the 19th and early 20th Centuries as "Central Europe") and the end of Communist control in that benighted area and in Russia. The great book on the rise of Communist control after World War II in Eastern Europe awaits an English speaking author (or at least an English translation of such a book, should one have already been written elsewhere). I believe understanding the complicated timeline as to how and when those societies went Communist would make the fall of those Communist dictatorships all the more illuminating. My knowledge of that time of 1945-1950 comes from two American journalists, William Shirer and George Seldes, who each went to that area during those years and...well, another time.

* For my vegetarian son, this review of Jonathan Foer's new book, "Eating Animals," enhances my guilt about being a carnivore, and yet I am not going to become a vegetarian without more people becoming vegetarian before me. I am a bad person in this regard--for I will not go more than a few weeks without going to McDonald's or some other fast food place. Is it the pace of my life? Perhaps. Is it laziness and abject denial of the twisted nature of factory farming that produces so much fast food while being so cruel to cows, chickens and the like? Undoubtedly.

There is something, however, I would like to add: One of our synagogue members is a Holocaust survivor, having survived one of the death camps. His brother, whom he revered, was killed. This synagogue member, after being liberated, vowed he would not eat animals and became a vegetarian. He told me he saw cruelty in how we ate animals that reminded him of the death camp he was in. It was that simple, he said. To me, his willpower is extraordinary and it likely played a role in how he survived such a horrific situation. That perhaps is something for all of us to think about--especially the next time we get worked up with outrage when animal rights groups quote the noted 20th Century Jewish writer, Issac Singer, to compare the mass killing of chickens to the Holocaust. At least it should destroy the glibness of this review of a book on "Jewish" delicatessens in the same LA Times.

(Edited)

Pelosi and Reid should resign as leaders in Congress

Pelosi and Reid should each resign as leaders in Congress--particularly if this monstrosity passes. It does nothing to cut costs in how medical services are delivered and paid for--but it does put Medicare on a collision course with a watered-down public option that looks like a weak expansion over time of Medicaid. And it does not even come close to helping insure most Americans for another 4 to 10 years--and does it through mandates that require people to pay the same inefficient, greedy insurance companies who bankrupt more and more Americans every year when they deny or limit coverage that should otherwise be provided to Americans simply based upon their being...Americans.

Plus, if this stupid (Stupak) amendment passes, sorry Ezra, that is not worth staying the course to vote for the monstrosity. (See below that the Stupid-Stupak Amendment did pass. Oy.)

All the cajoling and ridiculous level of compromise and delay has resulted in no Republican votes in the House, and not even a guarantee of a vote from the insurance company laden Olympia Snowe (R-ME) in the Senate.

If Pelosi and Reid were real leaders, they would let the Weiner Amendment go to the floor of the House and the Senate, and push for that vote. If you're going to be called "socialist" and have to deal with obstreperous bullshit like this stuff* the Women's Caucus went through in the past 24 hours, then go for the gusto of what is really needed and what any sensible person should want: Medicare for All. And yes, like any other insurance policy, it should include a small stipend that pays for an abortion if a woman wants one.

And this is how a real leader gets that done: By telling every Democrat who votes against Medicare for All that he or she is immediately stipped of committee leadership or seniority, that each will get a primary challenge and will get no money from the DNC. And in the Senate, you just amend the rules to get rid of the filibuster.

Reid and Pelosi: You have failed. You need to resign regardless of whether the health insurance monstrosity passes. And Obama, you better start taking Krugman's calls and tell your friends like Valerie Jarrett or Rahm Emmanuel, and certainly Geithner and Summers, who all wouldn't know a labor union member if they fell on one, to get the hell out of the way. You've got a nation to save, and to maintain.

*Yes, it's a legal parlimentary maneuver. The request was for unanimous consent. The objection makes it less than unanimous. So there would have to be a vote or the person speaking must stop speaking. The reason we haven't seen what the Republicans have now done is that the tradition in Congress is that congresspeople be allowed to speak. No non-racist Democrat in recent decades (or more) ever thought of doing something like what Republicans have just done. See? Republicans don't believe in tradition. They don't believe in decorum. And you think they would not be ending the filibuster if the Dems acted like the Republicans are now acting? It is to laugh.

(Edited)

ADDENDUM: Pete DeFazio, mostly one of the good guys (D-OR), is trying to sell us on this monstosity, saying it ends pre-existing condition denials--without telling us that the insurers get to charge whatever they want. He also tells us it ends insurers' anti-trust exemptions--as if years long anti-trust suits do anyone but us lawyers any good. Yeah, we see how our lives have been changed by the successful anti-trust suit against Microsoft and before that AT&T, for two examples. The problem is that DeFazio, again a great guy in so many ways, has his head so far up the ass of the Congressional building that he confuses his rhetoric with the reality of the situation. This is not reform we are debating anymore. This is deform. This is a cruel hoax for those of us who thought we were going to improve access of people to affordable, government-sponsored and supported health insurance. You know, just like most civilized countries.

ADDENDUM #2: The monstrosity passed this evening. Anything AARP and the AMA want is bad for America. Democrats will rue this vote unless something drastic changes in the "conferencing" on this bill. If not substantially changed, people will wonder a year from now what the hell this so-called reform changed for them, if anything. Going along with this bill is blindness to the pain people are suffering. These politicians really think they can fool people with statements like "making history" when this will change nobody's lives for the better--unless of course you are in the private insurance business. This is Phase II of the Big Business Bailout more than anything else it is purported to be. Shameful, Obama. Shameful, Pelosi. Shameful, Reid. And worse for these three corporate marinated careerists, it is politically tone deaf. Tom Foley anyone?

ADDENDUM #3: Kucinich gets it. He voted against the monstrosity. No surprise there. He also voted against the Stupid-Stupak Amendment.

(Edited)

Obama finding his inner...Hoover

So says historical fiction writer, Kevin Baker in the July 2009 Harpers. I am sorry I missed this compelling essay, as Obama's timidity in the face of crisis is something I've been frustrated about, though the most I could muster was Weimar analogies (or Clinton with a better marriage), not Hoover. And truthfully, I kept wishing Obama would find his inner FDR, which kept me from an historical analogy far closer to FDR's time and place. And I know exactly what Baker's talking about when he is essentially writing about the tragedy of Hoover as a person and a leader.

Alas, Obama has solved only a quarter of the economic challenge, which quarter was, in fact, a short term not long term challenge (propping up banks and financial institutions). The remaining economic challenges Obama faces are going to overwhelm the good news that the current economic situation offers. Instead of WPA projects, as Paul Krugman (and MF Blog) recommends, Obama has taken care of the banks as unemployment grows. He has refused to support Medicare for all, when just discussing it would put the insurance company and fascistic forces on their back heels. He has refused to support labor law reform to help put a brake on the runaway growth in profit taking at the top that comes from rising stocks. And his re-appointing Bernanke at the Federal Reserve Board was one of those moments that captures the essence of a policy favoring the wealthiest segments of society.

The concerns I had with Obama well before his ascension to the top of the Democratic Party have been largely realized. I am
reminded again why I voted for Nader in 1996 and 2000, and why I had joined the Reform Party in the early 1990s. But then, very sadly, I am reminded what happened when Republicans took over in 1994 and then overall after the 2000 presidential election. Double sigh.

We truly alternate between smart bankers and dumb bankers as leaders while our corporate media keeps too many of us diverted with pseudo-political talk that is really gossip. That is the choice America continues to make. It is part of the formula for an Idiocracy.

(Edited)

Point No Counterpoint: California needs to raise and restructure taxes on business and the wealthy

The LA Times today ran a point-counterpoint on the state of the State of California.

The point, laid out in a compelling way by Rebecca Solnit, stresses the need to change the distribution of the tax burden in California, and the prison spending, which are both important factors rarely discussed in any corporate media discussions.

The counterpoint, written by some pro-corporate think tanker at the Claremont Review of Books, reveals why what passes for modern "conservative" thought is very little thought, and monocausation based upon an emotional hatred of government and outright ignorance.

The Claremonter writes that California schools perform no better than Texas' schools now while spending 12% more in its overall budget. He then writes that California public employees have the highest compensation in the nation. This causes him to say: "The 'dues' paid by taxpayers in order to belong to Club California purchase benefits that, increasingly, are enjoyed by the staff instead of the members." He also says Texas "spends its citizens' dollars more efficiently than California..."

What's missing from this corporate think-tanker's analysis, just for starters, is any statement about the cost of living in Texas compared to California. Buy a house or rent an apartment in Texas and check out the price difference from California. The difference is more than the difference in school spending of 12%. Check out the difference in pay scale in the private sector in any number of jobs and you'll see the same pattern. So it's not as if Club California members get less for their money because the State is inefficient. It's because it costs more to live in a relative paradise, weatherwise.

He then cites a study from McKinsey & Company saying that California students are two years behind Texas students. If so, how does he explain that Texas still ranks #49 out of 50 states on the Verbal portion of the SAT and #46 out of 50 states in the Math portion? California students scored higher than Texas students in all three categories of the SAT--Critical Thinking, Math and Verbal (Writing)--last year and this year.

Oh, and Texas' scores have been going down for the past five years. This is obviously news to the Claremonter and Joel Kotkin, who the Claremonter favorably cited in his propaganda piece. Maybe both need to get out of their limos a little more when they go on their corporate sponsored junkets...?

The Claremonter also notes how people are leaving California, never once analyzing the circumstances--such as whether they are leaving because...again...the lower cost of living in other states, starting with housing. See this article from the LA Times in 2004 (during the housing bubble) that showed how well paid folks were leaving California for cheaper housing and lower costs of living not tied to taxes. And now, in these bad times, if I'm semi-employed, it's economically (though not necessarily culturally) better for my family to have me semi-employed in Iowa or Texas, where housing costs are much lower, than trying to pay the mortgage or pay the landlord in California. What's the consistent fact between good economic times and bad: The high cost of housing in the Golden State, even as housing prices significantly decline in that still Golden State.

Oh well. The Tax Cut Cult remains alive in the halls of Claremont College and the op-ed page of the Los Angeles Times.

For those who wonder just what to do about the state of this still wonderful state of California, the state needs five reforms, as I've noted before:

1. Let the market rates for real estate decide property taxes for businesses (in other words, reform Proposition 13 to free up property taxation for business property owners). Yes, you read that right. I said "market rates." Yup, market rates...See? I'm not always against market rates.

2. Reform the "Three Strikes" criminal sentencing law so that we are not overcrowding our prisons with lifers who smoked too much weed or were caught with cocaine as their "third strike."

3. Reform the requirement to balance the budget and raise taxes so that "only" a supermajority of 55%, not 67% of the votes of both the Assembly and State Senate are needed.

4. Limit the scope of initiatives or ban them outright. They have become captives of truly special interests across the board and have done more harm to this State than just about anything else from an institutional standpoint.

5. Increase the state income tax on the top 5% to what it was under Republican Governor Pete Wilson in the 1990s, including increasing the top rate to its Wilson-era rate of 11%.

Equal time critique: Did we note Rebecca Solnit's point about the distribution of water in this State? That 80% of our water goes to agriculture, and 40% of our water goes to water the crops that constitute 1% of the gross output of our State? That may not be true, and if it is true about alfalfa and rice, the subsidy may be worth it. Also, here is the Pacific Institute's report to which Ms. Solnit may be referring: The study's summary shows the 80% water usage figure is limited to the Sacramento-San Jacquin Delta, not the entire state. Otherwise, Ms. Solnit is fairly spot on about what's needed in our state as far as institutional reform.

(Edited)

Natural History magazine highlights

I love Natural History magazine. Whenever we receive a new issue, I hug it and immediately browse through it to say, "Oh, I can't wait to read THAT one." And usually, later that night, I do.

I am so glad the editors allowed for the re-design of the Natural History magazine website, and are including some articles so people can see what I am talking about instead of shaking their heads wondering if I've lost my usual humanities major mind. But what makes Natural History so outstanding is the very fact that it is written with the layperson--and yes, humanities major--in mind.

Here is a lively review of the new biography of the physicist, Paul Dirac.

Here is a story on what are the earliest known primate brains, and helps us understand what some more religious folks call "macro-evolution."

Here is a wonderful story about an Arctic expedition in the 1930s that is as much cultural history and anthropological as anything else.

Here is an article on the social lives of great white sharks.

As Maude said to Harold, "Explore..."