Sharecropping–in Color

If you’ve never seen color images from the 1940s, prepare to be amazed. I ran across this Library of Congress exhibit sometime last year, and the images (especially of the WWII era South) amazed me. There is some indefinite line that a color image crosses that makes it seem more real. I’ve read about things [...]

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Democracy, Drugs, and Imprisonment

An article in the NY TImes today informs me that while the United States has only 5% of the world’s population, it has 25% of the world’s incarcerated population. Indeed, 1 in 100 American adults are in prison, and that ratio rises dramatically when applied to minority populations. 
At the other end of the list, by [...]

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Readings

Here, for the last time together, appeared a triumvirate of old men, relics of a golden age, who still towered like giants above the creatures of a later time: Webster, the kind of senator that Richard Wagner might have created at the height of his powers; Calhoun, the most majestic champion of error since Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost; and Clay, [...]

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Science vs. Religion head scratcher

A recent article in the Economist pointed out the irony of attempts by evolutionary biologists working on the “Explaining Religion” Project to find an evolutionary explanation for religious belief.
The irony is that a group a people who do not believe have spent a lot of time discovering and describing the evolutionary advantages and benefits of [...]

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