It is clear that in much of the so-called developed world, food has largely lost its meaning beyond nourishment. Julian Baggini has written about this, ten years ago in The Virtues of the Table, which is especially useful in considering how and why we eat. More recently Baggini has expanded his range in How the […]
Read more...Part the First: Functional Art from the Enigmatic Daunians. William Morris famously wrote, “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” Of course, his beauty in response to the immiseration of the working class was for the English rich but nothing is perfect. Our old […]
Read more...Today’s Coffee Break on a holiday weekend in the US is the simple recommendation that you go straight to this long essay in Front Porch Republic by W. Aaron Vandiver of Carbondale, Colorado: Trump and the Furies of Empire –– Trump, in his crude way, is forcing us to confront the false stories we have […]
Read more...On Independence Day of 2025 President Trump signed his One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) into law. Something that has not gotten much attention, so far, are the consequences OBBBA will have on students who must borrow money to attend college/university, graduate school, and/or professional school. Should American students be forced to go into debt […]
Read more...Dear gentle readers: Apologies for a somewhat ragged Coffee Break today. Traveling in Scotland and time has been taken up with details (all good) along with a few unexpected disconnects (as in stuff happens). Part the First: Scientists to the Rescue? Economic growth is not the answer to any of our problems in this finite […]
Read more...Part the First: Paper Mills and the Corruption of Research. No not Hammermill. I don’t think I have actually known of someone buying a “scholarly” paper for publication, and I remember reading (a few paragraphs) only a few that seemed to be purpose built. But following up on The Credibility Crisis in Science from earlier […]
Read more...Albert Einstein was chosen by Time magazine as the Person of the Twentieth Century. It was a good choice (and now is a good time to read Einstein more than seventy years after his death in April 1955, here and here). As noted by Thomas Plümper and Eric Neumayer in their newly published book, The […]
Read more...Part the First: The Attack on American Science Continues, Unabated. A few days ago the president fired the National Science Board (NSB), all twenty-two members of a statutory twenty-five, who served staggered six-year terms that preserved institutional memory. The NSB was created pursuant to the National Science Foundation Act of 1950 to “recommend and encourage […]
Read more...Part the First: Anti-amyloid Antibodies and Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). A Cochrane review of monoclonal antibodies targeting amyloid plaques in AD has found that these drugs have little to no effect on cognitive function of AD patients. Cochrane reviews are, to use one of the favorite tropes of the current administration, considered the “gold standard” of […]
Read more...We have discussed the Great American Food System (GAFS) throughout this series, most recently in review of What to Eat Now (2025) by Marion Nestle. That the GAFS is productive, in both tonnage and profit (for some) is a given. But a common view of its critics is that much of this production is misguided, […]
Read more...Part the First: Dealing with Scientific Misconduct. Trust in science has declined during my professional work life. Some, but not all, of this is due to misconduct by scientists, as it should be. The recent case of Sylvain Lesné is one of the more spectacular examples. We have discussed this previously. Dr. Lesné published a […]
Read more...Part the First: War Begets War, A Conversation. Daedalus hosted a conversation among Robert Jay Lifton (1926-2025), Neta C. Crawford, and Matthew Evangelista last year. It was preprinted recently in The MIT Press Reader. I immediately noticed the participation of Robert Jay Lifton. Back in my dark ages, when the university had a University Bookstore […]
Read more...Why is the United States at war with Iran in 2026? Several excuses have been used by the current administration to justify the spiral of conflict and ratchet of escalation over the past five weeks. These include but are probably not limited to: Iran exports terrorism across the globe. Iran is not a democracy and […]
Read more...Good afternoon. Time for a break. Given the wall-to-wall coverage by Yves and others here, nothing explicit on this Good Friday about the Ramadan War in West Asia. Instead, herewith a few reflections during holy season of the three great Abrahamic traditions. Part the First: Ethical Capitalism? Some argue about whether business can be ethical. […]
Read more...Part the First: The War in West Asia Viewed from East Asia. The daily updates compiled here have been essential for cutting through the fog of war associated with the current War in West Asia. Many people have marveled at the sheer stupidity of another unnecessary (to be redundant) war of choice in the Middle […]
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