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Animal cruelty, pigs in shit, and the end of the human race
Eating Animals, by Jonathan Safran Foer @@@@ (4 out of 5) I am not now, nor have I ever been, a vegetarian. However, living as I do in Berkeley, California, from time to time I find myself in the...
View ArticleTen big issues Washington is ducking, and not just under Republicans
This is the time of year when most of us record the New Year’s resolutions that will load us with guilt throughout the year because we never follow through with them. So, for a change this year, I...
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My five favorite books of 2013
A popular local website called Berkeleyside had asked me to pick my five favorite books for the year just ending. This proved to be a tough assignment. Of the 50 or so books I’d read so far in 2013,...
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Do vegetarians love animals more than people?
Eating Animals, by Jonathan Safran Foer @@@@ (4 out of 5) I am not now, nor have I ever been, a vegetarian. However, living as I do in Berkeley, California, from time to time I find myself in the...
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What makes social change happen?
A review of The Social Labs Revolution: A New Approach to Solving Our Most Complex Challenges, by Zaid Hassan @@@@ (4 out of 5) “Planning based-approaches — so common across government, civil society,...
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A colony on Mars? Really? An astronomy professor thinks so.
Beyond: Our Future in Space by Chris Impey @@@@ (4 out of 5) A colony on Mars? Really? Some of us grasp the existential crisis humanity faces today, and fear that global climate change, an asteroid...
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Overpopulation in fiction and on film
Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison @@@ (3 out of 5) In 1973, American filmgoers were shocked by a film entitled Soylent Green, starring Charlton Heston and Leigh Taylor-Young. The film depicts New...
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Global warming and climate change: the next fifty years
Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth by Mark Hertsgaard @@@@ (4 out of 5) We are now at least a decade into what journalist Mark Hertsgaard terms the “second era of global warming,” which...
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Eight recent books that illuminate the state of affairs in America today
In recent months I’ve reviewed eight nonfiction books in this blog that collectively represent a panoramic view of America today — and of our prospects to thrive in the future. It’s a decidedly...
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“Primitive” by Mark Nykanen: to wake up the world to global warming
Primitive by Mark Nykanen @@@@ (4 out of 5) A middle-aged model is kidnapped by a community of environmental activists so passionately convinced of the imminence of climate chaos that they’ve...
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