Mark Lynas is working on a new book about global warming, after touring the world for three years to find stories. A preview article in the Guardian mentions rising oceans in Tuvalu, retreating glaciers in Peru, warming summers in Alaska and a host of other real examples of changing climate.
So I knew there would be change, and that the glaciers in my father's pictures would almost certainly be smaller.
Peter Lindberg links to a very interesting piece on the power of groups to promote creativity and innovation. Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, in a review of books about comedy, Saturday Night Live and the Sociology of Philosophy makes the following point:
One of the peculiar features of group dynamics is that clusters of people will come to decisions that are far more extreme than any individual member would have come to on his own.
Via McGee’s Musings who got it from OL Daily comes this interesting paper “Beyond Selfishness” in contemporary culture. The authors Henry Mintzberg, Robert Simmons, and Kunal Basu are business professors from McGill, Harvard, and Templeton College, respectively.
The essay describes and responds to some of the common beliefs adopted and promoted over the past decade.
A tight little model - we call it a syndrome of selfishness - has taken hold of our corporations and our societies, as well as our minds.
In my continuing effort to read across the spectrum of politics I’d like to commend two pieces and the routes I found to them. The first comes from Erin O’Connor, the author of Critical Mass, a weblog I should probably read more often. If there is a political tendency to the posts it is more conservative than liberal. Recently she pointed out a piece by Eric Raymond about a contemporary ‘Treson of the Intellectuals’.
OpenDemocracy carries an intriguing essay about the different ways the left press treats fundamentalism in Christianity and Islam. After 9-11 the press has gone out of its way to present a positive portrait of Islam. In the past they’ve been less kind to moralistic Christians.
Multiculturalism is good but can go too far. It mustn’t be allowed to trump universal human rights. All cultures are not as good as each other: some are racist, some preach death to homosexuals or Jews, some believe the weak should go to the wall, or all non-Christians to hell.