Did America slip into a semiliterate, polarized, pre-fascist state over the past decade or so, allowing greedy oligarchs and corporate elites to run the government? Two books I recently read offer reasonably persuasive evidence and arguments that the country did, and a third suggests that dictatorial mindsets could besiege Americans, with an assist from the Internet, if they don't come to their more deliberative senses. Each of the books offers an informed diagnosis of the dangers that widespread ignorance and ideological polarization pose for American democracy, though none offers a ... Read More
Testing People Who Get Spittin’ Mad
December 23, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
OK, boys, cast your mind back to Election Night 2008, and be honest: When you found out Barack Obama had been elected president, did you feel like you'd lost a little something? Perhaps you didn't quite feel as manly as before? Gee, that's too bad. You must have voted for a loser. (Cue bar fight ...) But there's something to this odd thesis. Researchers at the universities of Duke and Michigan have found that young men who cast their ballots in the 2008 presidential election for unsuccessful Republican candidate John McCain or Libertarian Robert Barr suffered a large dip in testosterone ... Read More
Which Dog Is the Smartest?
December 22, 2009 • By • 33 Comments
The American Psychological Association's 117th annual convention featured psychologist and leading canine researcher Stanley Coren, widely published author from the University of British Columbia. The subject of his talk: "How Dogs Think." The good news: Dogs are as smart as 2-year-old kids, can comprehend more than 150 words (although "super dogs" can understand 250), and can count up to four or five. The bad news: They are "consciously deceptive" and trick people into giving them what they want. "And they are nearly as successful in deceiving humans as humans are in deceiving dogs," Coren ... Read More
The Dirt on Climate Change
December 21, 2009 • By • 3 Comments
Conflicts tend to scatter people, and ideas, in unexpected ways. After the American Civil War, a flood of so-called Confederados fled the devastated South and set up farms in the Brazilian Amazon. They planted rice and sugar cane and tobacco, and they prospered. But the lands they settled — primarily high bluffs along rivers — weren't any more pristine than Alabama or the Carolinas had been. As they plowed, the settlers unearthed vast quantities of potsherds that showed the land had been inhabited before. And the ceramics weren't the only sign of previous human cultivation: The deep black ... Read More
Handwriting Is History
December 17, 2009 • By • 45 Comments
At 11 p.m. on Dec. 27, I checked my inbox out of habit. I had 581 new e-mails. All had been sent between 8 and 11 p.m. The days between Christmas and New Year's are not usually a busy time for e-mailing. What was going on? It turns out that the home page for MSN.com had linked to a short article I had published a year earlier. In the article, I argue that we should stop teaching cursive in primary schools and provide some background on the history of handwriting to back up my claims. The comments on my piece were hostile, insulting and vehemently opposed to my argument. The onslaught ... Read More
Adventures in Capitolism
December 16, 2009 • By • 4 Comments
In the wake of the 2009 elections — really, ever since the stimulus plan passed early last year — a pair of conflicting narratives has dominated the U.S. politico-media landscape. Though told in many ways and forms, the double-story actually boils down to a simple either/or proposition: either ... President Obama is an able, courageous leader who's trying to accomplish, all at once, many difficult, fundamental changes needed to keep America the world's leading economy. or ... President Obama is a silver-tongued, overambitious politician who is stealthily extending the federal ... Read More
Fishing for Answers in Alaska
December 15, 2009 • By • 4 Comments
Sand Point, Alaska It was drizzling rain as we pulled out of the harbor a little after 9 a.m. in the middle of last August. A light wind was blowing from the northeast, and the usual fog obscured our view of the mountains that line the Alaskan Peninsula. Vaguely, in the distance, loomed the big boy of the region, a snow-covered volcano known as Mount Pavlov. Flying over Pavlov at night, it's said, you can make out a faint glow pulsating ominously from down inside the cone. Our boat was the 37-foot gill netter Melissa Marie, captained by Benjamin Mobeck Jr., 41, and named for his daughter. ... Read More
