The Misconceptions of Anti-Postmodernists
Image by Zdeněk Tobiáš Anti-postmodern commentaries are certainly in vogue these days. Whether penned by conservatives or liberals, they all support the same basic assumption: postmodernism is dangerous. For instance, Robert…
Share
Did the Catholic Church Give Birth to Science?
Historically, the creation of ideas has been a messy process. Knowledge has not usually been delivered as an immaculate gem, but as a needle in a grubby haystack of wrong…
Share
The Unbeliever Knows His Qur’an Best
Photo by Masjid Pogung Dalangan The Koran! well, come put me to the test Lovely old book in hideous error drest Believe me, I can quote the Koran too, The…
Share
The UK’s Pyrrhic Victory Over Covid-19
As any experienced applied scientist is well aware, it is folly to use loose analogies to describe complex processes, and subsequently rely on such analogies to develop real world policy.…
Share
Will Coronavirus Prompt Social Media Giants to Address Disinformation?
In what now seems like a lifetime ago, before the World Health Organization had characterized the spread of Covid-19 as a global pandemic, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director general,…
Share
Welcome to the Areo Community on Letter
London, May 2020 Dear Writers and Readers, Welcome to the new Areo Magazine community on Letter. Since its launch in 2016, this magazine has provided a forum for calm, reasonable voices…
Share
Want to End Homeschooling? Fight Ideological Indoctrination in Public Schools
Photo by Jessica Lewis In a recent interview and article, Elizabeth Bartholet recommends a presumptive ban on homeschooling because its practitioners are disproportionately conservative Christians, eager to shield their children from…
Share
Towards a Post-Progressive Political Perspective
Photo by Martin Sanchez Ever since I cast my first vote—in 1980, for Jimmy Carter—I’ve identified as a progressive. But, now that the progressive worldview has come of age, dominating academia…
Share
Facebook Firing Squads: Tribalism in the Age of Covid-19
In a recent Washington Post op-ed, Matt Bai writes that Americans in crisis “have a certain blood lust.” When the chips are down, Bai opines, “we can be counted on…
Share
The Covid Wake-Up Call: Protecting Humanity Against Global Disasters
Should humanity have seen this pandemic coming? A 2007 scientific study called coronaviruses in bats a “time bomb.” In a 2015 TED lecture, Bill Gates warned that “we are not…
Share
Timshel: The Need for Compassion Within the Justice System
I first read John Steinbeck’s East of Eden more than thirty years ago, as a young lawyer who had just opened a criminal defense practice. I remember cherishing the vivid…
Share
Is There A New Third Way?
When Senator Bernie Sanders recently dropped out of the 2020 presidential race, many wondered how, despite his initial surge in the polls, he was defeated by Joe Biden, a gaffe-prone…
Share
Thomas Piketty’s “Capitalism and Ideology.” Book Review.
Thomas Piketty is a French economist and former wunderkind, who obtained his PhD from the London School of Economics at twenty-two. He is also that rarest of things: a bestselling academic author.…
Share
I’m a Non-White White Feminist
I’m not white. Applied to me, non-white is a meaningless descriptor, but it’s also a very obvious one. My complexion makes it difficult for this fact to go unnoticed, especially…
Share
Tiger King: Our Own Private China
Image by Swapnisha Joshi The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. Americans have retreated indoors, where we are bored out our wits, and obsessed with the idea of either an…
Share
We Contain Multitudes: A Review of “The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity” by Toby Ord
Photo by Joseph Chan Imagine the last group of humans, a few billion or trillion years from now. Let’s imagine two different versions of this group, representing two different outcomes for…
Share
Boris Johnson and the Language of Lockdown
Although we have a plan, it is a conditional plan.—Boris Johnson Last night, 11 May 2020, our pallid, convalescent prime minister announced the government’s strategy for gradually easing the coronavirus…
Share
The Asymmetry of Racial Discourse
No political topic can turn friends into strangers and strangers into enemies as predictably, swiftly and decisively as that of race in America.
Share