Saturday Links

propaganda producers?
I'm so undecided about the role of billionaire movie producers with political axes to grind. The consolidation of capital is a disgusting and inevitable result of unfettered capitalism, yet that's not going to change any time soon, so why should lefties be the only ones ethical enough to abstain from peddling propaganda? And when the results are middlebrow pablum like Syriana, everyone wins, right?

white man's burden
A fun article about the White Man's Burden, Iraq, and American exceptionalism. It really is so hard being white and having all these responsibilities.

pop economics
A short article in which a Financial Times writer bemoans and celebrates dumbed down pop economics. Get your freak on.

WSJ
Non-dumbed-down pop economics. How do you split a cab ride in which each person gets off at different stops? Um, just make sure you're getting out first and stick the dope at the end with the fare. Duh.


richard dawkins interview
God I love Richard Dawkins. They never really got over his departure from Family Feud.

religion and politics
I had never heard of Axess Magazine until this, but it's a good article by a professor of philosophy of science discussing how religion's creep into the political realm often leads to a really dangerous kind of retrogade nationalism (shock! horror!). Sort of academic but worth a read. Here's the abstract:

Dilemmas of secularism in India and America. Parallels between the Christian right in the US and Hindu nationalists in India show how crucial it is to defend the Enlightenment idea of the secular state. While it is important to give faith its due, faith too must give reason its due. The postmodern deconstruction of
science has, ironically, been very hospitable to reactionary religiosity. As long as divine revelations or spiritual laws continue to be invoked as the basis for morality in the private sphere, it is unreasonable to expect a diminution of God talk from the public sphere. In other words, the care and maintenance of secular tates requires secularisation of culture. Without deep enough roots in secular civic cultures, secular states will remain at a risk of being hijacked by traditionalist and nationalist forces.

atheist manifesto
The author of The End of Faith intelligently rants about how religious extremism is the number one threat to peace and civilization. Hm, I didn't really mean this blog to take such a rah-rah atheist tone. At some point maybe I'll blog about being a Quaker...