August 9, 2012
‘What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America’ (2004) is a book by American journalist and historian Thomas Frank, which explores the rise of populist anti-elitist Conservatism in the United States, centering on the experience of Kansas, Frank’s native state.
In the late 19th century, Kansas was known as a hotbed of the left-wing Populist movement, but in recent decades, it has become overwhelmingly conservative. The book was published in Britain and Australia as ‘What’s the Matter with America?’ According to the book, the political discourse of recent decades has dramatically shifted from the social and economic equality to one in which ‘explosive’ cultural issues, such as abortion and gay marriage, are used to redirect anger towards ‘liberal elites.’
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August 9, 2012
‘Irrational exuberance‘ is a phrase used by the then-Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Alan Greenspan, in a speech given at the American Enterprise Institute during the Dot-com bubble of the 1990s. The phrase was interpreted as a warning that the market might be somewhat overvalued.
Greenspan’s comment was made in late 1996: ‘[…] Clearly, sustained low inflation implies less uncertainty about the future, and lower risk premiums imply higher prices of stocks and other earning assets. We can see that in the inverse relationship exhibited by price/earnings ratios and the rate of inflation in the past. But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade?’
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August 9, 2012
Feminazi is a term popularized by radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh to describe ‘an extreme or militant feminist.’ In 2004, Limbaugh named feminist activists Gloria Steinem, Susan Sarandon, Christine Lahti, and Camryn Manheim as ‘famous feminazis.’
Feminazi is a portmanteau of the nouns feminist and Nazi. The term is used pejoratively by some U.S. conservatives to criticize feminists that they perceive as extreme.
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August 9, 2012
The Manipulated Man (German: ‘Der Dressierte Mann’) is a 1971 book by author Argentinian-German writer Esther Vilar, which argues that, contrary to common feminist and women’s rights rhetoric, women in industrialized cultures are not oppressed, but rather exploit a well-established system of manipulating men.
A third edition of the book was released in 2009. Vilar writes, ‘Men have been trained and conditioned by women, not unlike the way Pavlov conditioned his dogs, into becoming their slaves. As compensation for their labors men are given periodic use of a woman’s vagina.’ The book contends that young boys are encouraged to associate their masculinity with their ability to be sexually intimate with a woman, and that a woman can control a man by socially empowering herself to be the gate-keeper to his sense of masculinity.
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August 6, 2012
In science and history, consilience [kun-sil-ee-ehns] (also convergence of evidence or concordance of evidence) refers to the principle that evidence from independent, unrelated sources can ‘converge’ to strong conclusions. That is, when multiple sources of evidence are in agreement, the conclusion can be very strong even when none of the individual sources of evidence are very strong on their own. Most established scientific knowledge is supported by a convergence of evidence: if not, the evidence is comparatively weak, and there will not likely be a strong scientific consensus.
The principle is based on the unity of knowledge (a thesis in philosophy of science that says that all the sciences form a unified whole); measuring the same result by several different methods should lead to the same answer. For example, it should not matter whether one measures the distance between the Great Pyramids of Giza by laser rangefinding, by satellite imaging, or with a meter stick – in all three cases, the answer should be approximately the same. For the same reason, different dating methods in geochronology should concur, a result in chemistry should not contradict a result in geology, etc.
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August 6, 2012
‘Consilience [kun-sil-ee-ehns]: The Unity of Knowledge’ is a 1998 book by biologist E. O. Wilson on the unification of scientific fields of inquiry and the potential unification of hard and soft sciences (humanities). Wilson uses the term to describe the synthesis of knowledge from different specialized fields of human endeavor.
He defines it as: ‘Literally a ‘jumping together’ of knowledge by the linking of facts and fact-based theory across disciplines to create a common groundwork of explanation.’ Examples include the unification of Darwin’s theory of evolution with genetics; the unification of forces in modern physics; Einstein’s work unifying Brownian motion with atomic theory; Rene Descartes’ unification of geometry and algebra; and Newton’s universal gravitation, which unified the laws of falling bodies with the laws of planetary motion.
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August 6, 2012
The Wilson Quarterly is a magazine published by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. The magazine was founded in 1976 by journalist Peter Braestrup and James H. Billington, the thirteenth Librarian of the United States Congress. The ‘Quarterly’ is noted for its nonpartisan, nonideological approach to current issues, with articles written from various perspectives.
Designed to make the research and debates of scholars and intellectuals accessible to a general audience, it covers a wide range of topics, from science policy and literature to foreign affairs. In 2012, the ‘Quarterly’ changed to a digital-only publishing model.
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August 6, 2012
‘Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World’ is a 2006 book by law professors Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu that offers an assessment of the struggle to control the Internet. Starting with a discussion of the early vision of a borderless global community, the authors present some of the most prominent individuals, ideas, and movements that have played key roles in developing the Internet.
The book asserts the important role of government in maintaining Internet law and order while debunking the claims of techno-utopianism that have been espoused by theorists such as Thomas Friedman. In the 1990s the Internet was greeted as the ‘New New Thing’: It would erase national borders, give rise to communal societies that invented their own rules, undermine the power of governments. Goldsmith and Wu explain why these early assumptions were mostly wrong. The Internet turns out to illustrate the enduring importance of Old Old Things, such as law and national power and business logic.
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July 30, 2012
Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) is a non-fiction book by social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, first published in 2007. It deals with cognitive dissonance (discomfort caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously), self-serving bias (attributing successes to internal factors and failures to external factors), and other cognitive biases (deviations in judgment), using these psychological theories to illustrate how the perpetrators of hurtful acts justify and rationalize their behavior.
It describes a positive feedback loop of action and self-deception by which slight differences between people’s attitudes become polarized. Topics covered include: the doomsday cult described in ‘When Prophecy Fails’; the MMR vaccine controversy and Andrew Wakefield; marriage; day care sex abuse hysteria and false memory syndrome, confabulation of autobiographical memory; George W. Bush and the Iraq War; Criminal interrogations, trials, and capital punishment; Mel Gibson; and Oprah Winfrey and her involvement in the James Frey controversy.
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July 30, 2012
Po Bronson (b. 1964) is an American journalist and author who lives in San Francisco. After attending Lakeside School in Seattle, he graduated from Stanford University in 1986 and briefly worked as an assistant bond salesman in San Francisco.
He abandoned finance to pursue writing, publishing short stories and eventually a comedic novel based upon his bond trading experiences. ‘Bombardiers’ was an international best seller in 1995.
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July 30, 2012
Madeline Levine, Ph. D., is a practicing psychologist in Marin County, California. She is the author of several non-fiction books: ‘Viewing Violence’ published in 1996, ‘See No Evil: A Guide to Protecting Our Children from Media Violence’ published in 1998, and ‘The Price of Privilege: how parental pressure and material advantage are creating a generation of disconnected and unhappy kids’ published in 2006. The first two books represent an analysis of the negative effects of media violence on child development.
Her third book is a study of the psychological ailments plaguing teens from affluent families. ‘The Price of Privilege’ is based not only on her 25 years of experience in treating such teens within Marin County (an affluent community within the San Francisco Bay Area) but also on her consultations with colleagues around the United States—particularly research psychologist Suniya S. Luthar — as well as her review of the contemporary psychological research on the subject. Her latest book is ‘Teach Your Children Well: Parenting for Authentic Success.’
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July 27, 2012
‘Cyber Rights: Defending Free speech in the Digital Age’ is a 1998 non-fiction book about cyberlaw, written by free speech lawyer Mike Godwin. Godwin graduated from the University of Texas School of Law in 1990 and was the first staff counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Written with a first-person perspective, ‘Cyber Rights’ gives the reader a background in legal issues and history pertaining to free speech on the Internet.
It documents the author’s experiences in defending free speech online, and puts forth the thesis that ‘the remedy for the abuse of free speech is more speech.’ Godwin emphasizes that decisions made about the expression of ideas on the Internet have an impact on freedom of speech in other mediums of communication as well, as granted by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
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