No. 17Summer 2007
No. 17
Summer 2007
Essays
Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism
Christine Rosen on MySpace, Facebook, and the costs of social networking
Human Dignity and Public Bioethics
Gilbert Meilaender on dignity as a useful concept
Melancholy’s Whole Physician
Algis Valiunas reads Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy
Heroism, Modernism, and the Utopian Impulse
James Bowman on cowboys, communists, and dreams of perfection
Reviews and Reconsiderations
Drug Addiction and the Open Society
Lee Harris on freedom and self-mastery
Parenthood at Any Price
Cheryl Miller reviews Liza Mundy’s Everything Conceivable
Intimations of the Soul
Paul J. Cella III on idolatry in the Age of Machines
Devaluing Science
Jonathan H. Adler on scientists and politics
State of the Art
‘Less Morally Problematic Alternatives’
Yuval Levin
Soldiers for Rent
Habib Moody
The Man in the Moon
Stephen Bertman
Faces Disappearing
Richard W. Sams II
‘For Better or Worse’
Tony Blair on Politics and the Media
Notes & Briefs
Live Earth, Mr. Wizard, Solving Checkers, etc.
No. 18Fall 2007
No. 18
Fall 2007
Essays
Achieving Energy Victory
Robert Zubrin on how to win the war on terror by breaking free of oil
Ghosts in the Evolutionary Machinery
Steve Talbott on digital organisms and disembodied science
The Conquest of Space and the Stature of Man
Hannah Arendt on scientists, common sense, and man’s limitations
Nature, Man, and Common Sense
Patrick J. Deneen
Science and Totalitarianism
Rita Koganzon
Thumos in Space
Charles T. Rubin
Chariots in the Sky
Stephen Bertman
Our Proud Human Future
Peter Augustine Lawler
Reviews and Reconsiderations
Launching the Space Age
James E. Oberg on the dramatic story of Sputnik
The New Pioneers
Rand Simberg on the burgeoning private space industry
The Evangelical Ecologist
S.M. Hutchens on E. O. Wilson’s Earth-piety
The Painless Peace of Twilight Sleep
Cheryl Miller on an overlooked Edith Wharton gem
State of the Art
Shot in the Dark
Caitrin Nicol
Science Warrior
Yuval Levin
Unclassifiable
Christine Rosen
Card’s Game
Peter Suderman
‘Americans Will Not Like It’
Michael Griffin on the Global Space Economy
Notes & Briefs
Blackwater Fallout, Caves on Mars, Missing Mass, etc.
No. 19Winter 2008
No. 19
Winter 2008
Essays
Science and the Left
Yuval Levin on the past and future of the “party of science”
Neuroimaging and Capital Punishment
O. Carter Snead on brain scans and the conflicted aspirations of neuroscience
The Limits of Neuro-Talk
Matthew B. Crawford on the dangers of a mindless brain science
Blogging Infertility
Cheryl Miller on the lively and fractious community of “infertiles”
Reviews and Reconsiderations
Masters and Possessors of Nature
Thomas W. Merrill reads Descartes’ Discourse on Method
Shop Till You Drop?
Jeremy Lott on suburbs, bomb shelters, and bottled water
Sick and Famous
Christy Hall Robinson on celebrity patients as advocates
State of the Art
The Clipboard of the Future
James C. Capretta
Till Malfunction Do Us Part
Caitrin Nicol
The Moral Life of Cubicles
David Franz
‘The Steroids Era’
George Mitchell on Drugs in Baseball
Notes & Briefs
Green Collars, Plastic Bags, MySpace Gangsters, etc.
No. 20Spring 2008
No. 20
Spring 2008
Essays
In Defense of Biofuels
Robert Zubrin on ethanol and its critics
Health Care 2008: A Political Primer
James C. Capretta on how and why McCain's health care plan might work
Public Opinion and the Embryo Debates
Yuval Levin analyzes a revealing new poll on bioethics
Technology and Authenticity
Bruno Macaes on enhancement, action, and truth
Biotech Enhancement and Natural Law
Ryan T. Anderson and Christopher Tollefsen on distinctions in an age of novelty
The Myth of Multitasking
Christine Rosen on doing too much at once
The Technology of Memory
James Poulos on forgetting how to remember
The Motives That Ought to Encourage Us to the Sciences
A discourse by Montesquieu translated for the first time into English by Diana Schaub
Montesquieu’s Popular Science
Diana Schaub on the study of science and the life of the mind
Reviews and Reconsiderations
Einstein’s Quest for Truth
Algis Valiunas on the mind of the man behind relativity
At Home with Down Syndrome
Caitrin Nicol reads memoirs of gratitude
No. 21Summer 2008
No. 21
Summer 2008
Essays
Nuclear Policy and the Presidential Election
Henry Sokolski on nuclear matters and why they matter
Conservatives, Climate Change, and the Carbon Tax
Jim Manzi on the cost of thinking impractically about potential risk
Donated Generation
Cheryl Miller on releasing the identities of egg and sperm donors
Rethinking Public Opinion
Thomas Fitzgerald on the problems of polling
Technology, Culture, and Virtue
Patrick J. Deneen on Wendell Berry’s unnatured man
Reviews and Reconsiderations
Is Stupid Making Us Google?
James Bowman on the “Dumbest Generation”
We Are the Change We’ve Been Waiting For
Sebastian Waisman on the “Millennial Generation”
The World Made New
Rita Koganzon on Second Life and real life
The Brat Pack of Quantum Mechanics
John Derbsyhire on a pivotal year for modern physics
The Prudence of Neuroscience
Ivan Kenneally reviews The Heart of Judgment
State of the Art
An Animal to Save the World
Jonathan H. Adler
Taking the Earth’s Temperature
Jordan R. Raney
Pipeline Diplomacy
Adam Blinick
‘Leadership from the Bottom’
Wendell Berry on Rural Revival
Notes & Briefs
Chocolate DNA, Prozac for Puppies, ELIZA, etc.
No. 22Fall 2008
No. 22
Fall 2008
Essays
Petrodollar Science
Waleed Al-Shobakky on research and education in the Arab world
People of the Screen
Christine Rosen tells a tale of two literacies
Ten Years of “Death with Dignity”
Courtney S. Campbell on Oregon’s experience with physician-assisted suicide
Fixing American Health Care
Joseph V. Kennedy on cost, quality, and competition
Health Care with a Conscience
James C. Capretta on protecting Catholic hospitals
Reviews and Reconsiderations
Beyond Mankind
Charles T. Rubin on John Harris’s “sanshumanist” project
The Confused Congresswoman
Yuval Levin on Diana DeGette’s assault on reason
Green Bridge to Nowhere
Jonathan H. Adler on Gus Speth’s unsustainable environmentalism
State of the Art
Capturing Carbon
Jordan R. Raney
Staying Afloat
Peter Suderman
‘Categories of Warfare Are Blurring’
Robert Gates on the Tactics and Tools of Tomorrow’s Battles
Notes & Briefs
Eco-Vandalism, Noise Laws, the Billion-Dollar Click, etc.
No. 23Winter 2009
No. 23
Winter 2009
Essays
The Ethics of Counterinsurgency
Keith Pavlischek on irregular warfare and international law
Military Robots and the Laws of War
P. W. Singer on how unmanned systems are transforming armed conflict
Why Minds Are Not Like Computers
Ari N. Schulman on fundamental confusion about artificial intelligence
Reality and the Postmodern Wink
James Bowman champions curmudgeonliness as an antidote to cynicism
Nations, Liberalism, and Science
Peter Augustine Lawler on civil theology and civil biology
Socialism and Cancer
David Gratzer on how government ruins medicine
Reviews and Reconsiderations
The Great Breath of Hell
Algis Valiunas on the modern way of madness
Making Men Modern
Wayne Ambler on reform and recalcitrance in Twain’s Connecticut Yankee
No. 24Spring 2009
No. 24
Spring 2009
Essays
AIDS Relief and Moral Myopia
Travis Kavulla on African culture and the public health community
Embryos in Limbo
Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill on IVF and indecision about nascent life
What and When Is Death?
Alan Rubenstein on knowing human living to define human dying
Technocracy and Populism
Ivan Kenneally on President Obama and putting politics behind us
Reviews and Reconsiderations
Is Water a Human Right?
Kendra Okonski on market solutions to the world’s “water crisis”
In Search of Chinese Science
John Derbyshire on Joseph Needham, sinologist and scientist
The Virtual Public Square
Alan Jacobs reviews Richard John Neuhaus’s final book
The True Face of Digital Democracy
Sebastian Waisman on the Internet and civic engagement
State of the Art
The Road to Rationing
Paul Howard and David Gratzer
Keeping Books Safe
Elizabeth Mullaney Nicol
The Rise of Cyber-Schools
Liam Julian
Disability Politics
Ari Ne’eman
At the Gates of a Magical Garden
G. Anthony Gorry
Down in Flames
James E. Oberg
No. 25Summer 2009
No. 25
Summer 2009
Essays
A Space Program for the Rest of Us
Rand Simberg on the wrong lessons of Apollo and the right way to reach space
The Lost Prestige of Nuclear Physics
N. J. Slabbert on the American retreat from nuclear technology
Science and Medicine in Fiction
The Ambiguous Utopia of Iain M. Banks
Alan Jacobs on the “Culture” novels and the price of bliss
Plato in Space
Charles T. Rubin on science, politics, and faith in Neal Stephenson’s Anathem
Unchosen Lives
Caitrin Nicol on Jodi Picoult’s tales at the threshold
Creating Frankenstein
Jeremy Kessler on Victor’s monster and the Shelleys’ story
Reviews and Reconsiderations
The Fusion Illusion
Max Schulz on false starts, fraud, and the real promise of nuclear fusion
Too Hot to Handle
Jordan R. Raney throws cold water on climate extremists
Medicine and Moral Authority
Daniel P. Sulmasy reviews Jonathan Imber’s Trusting Doctors
State of the Art
Fighting Fake Drugs
Roger Bate
Test Ban Treaty, Take Two
Christopher A. Ford
Romancing the Atom
Robert R. Johnson
China’s Organ Market
S. Elizabeth Forsythe
Nutrition and Tradition
John Schwenkler
No. 26Fall 2009 - Winter 2010
No. 26
Fall 2009 - Winter 2010
Essays
The Future of Chemical Weapons
Jonathan B. Tucker on a neglected threat and what to do about it
The Financial Crisis and the Scientific Mindset
Paul J. Cella III on shadow banking and the returns of rationalism
On Bioethics in Public
Gilbert Meilaender reflects on the method and legacy of the President’s Council on Bioethics
Science and the Decline of the Liberal Arts
Patrick J. Deneen
The Technocratic American University
Ivan Kenneally
Human Dignity and Higher Education
Peter Augustine Lawler
The Soul of the Scientist of Man
Shilo Brooks
The Ivy League Lament
Rita Koganzon
Reviews and Reconsiderations
Darwin’s World of Pain and Wonder
Algis Valiunas on the great scientist’s spiritual torment
Cheap Thrills
Noemie Emery defends the American consumer
The Formation of Character
David Skinner on how we write and who we are
Why We Walk
Jennifer Graf Groneberg on the origins of man and the end of walking
Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Spirit of Science
The Editors kick off a series on scientific progress and the American literary genius
Wasting the Water of Life
Kevin Laskowski on “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment” and the allure of immortality
Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment
Online only: A new critical edition of Hawthorne’s story
No. 27Spring 2010
No. 27
Spring 2010
Essays
Why Not Nuclear Disarmament?
Christopher A. Ford on the questions that disarmament advocates must answer
Proportionality in Warfare
Keith Pavlischek on the abuse of an important just war principle
The Tortured Logic of Obama’s Drone War
Hillel Ofek on the strategic, legal, and moral implications of targeted killing
The Most Useful Man Who Ever Lived
William Rosen on making heroes of inventors
Reviews and Reconsiderations
Scientists Fallen Among Poets
Algis Valiunas on what the Romantics learned from scientists, and vice versa
One Man’s Quantum Culture
Jeremy Axelrod reviews a memoir of strange science and swanky society
Avatar and the Flight from Reality
James Bowman on the sci-fi blockbuster and the mimetic tradition in art
From Cursive to Cursor
Alan Jacobs on whether it matters how we write
Bad Advice for Scientists
Ari N. Schulman reviews Unscientific America
Artful by Nature
Charles T. Rubin reads “The New Adam and Eve”
The New Adam and Eve
Online only: A new critical edition of Hawthorne’s story
State of the Art
A Regrettable Reform
David Gratzer
Going Nowhere
Robert Zubrin
Claude Lévi-Strauss, RIP
Travis Kavulla
Missing the Big Picture
Jeff Robbins
The Case for Boredom
Adam J. Cox
Avatars in the Workplace
G. Anthony Gorry
‘The Unique Worth of an Individual Human Life’
On conversing with and learning from Paul Ramsey
No. 28Summer 2010
No. 28
Summer 2010
Essays
Getting Over the Code Delusion
Steve Talbott on epigenetics and the demise of DNA as destiny
How Can I Possibly Be Free?
Raymond Tallis on the neuroscientific case against free will, and why it’s wrong
Hiding Behind the Screen
Roger Scruton on the risks of friendship and the costs of shirking them
Environmentalism as Religion
Joel Garreau on energy sinners and carbon Calvinism
Churchill on Science and Civilization
Justin D. Lyons on politics and the humanities, war and peace, in the age of science
Reviews and Reconsiderations
The Science of Self-Help
Algis Valiunas on goofy advice, dubious wisdom, and neuro-gurus
Disenchanting Determinism
Caitrin Nicol reviews novels by Richard Powers and Rebecca Newberger Goldstein
From Hearth-Fires to Hell-Fires
Diana Schaub reads three tales on the flames of progress
Ethan Brand
Online only: A new critical edition of Hawthorne’s story
Earth’s Holocaust
Online only: A new critical edition of Hawthorne’s story
Fire Worship
Online only: A new critical edition of Hawthorne’s story
No. 29Fall 2010
No. 29
Fall 2010
Essays
What Neuroscience Cannot Tell Us About Ourselves
Raymond Tallis debunks the tropes of “neuromythology”
The Unbearable Wholeness of Beings
Steve Talbott confronts the language of organism-as-machine
The Trouble with Cyber Arms Control
Christopher A. Ford on why we should be wary of Russian and Chinese proposals
Humanism and Transhumanism
Fred Baumann on the utopian impulse and the ends of man
NASA’s Course Correction
Jeff Foust
Opening Space with a ‘Transorbital Railroad’
Robert Zubrin
In Search of a Conservative Space Policy
Rand Simberg
Reviews and Reconsiderations
The Climate of Climate Change
John Murdock examines four books on why we fight about global warming
Out of the Garden, Into the Laboratory
Jeremy Kessler on science as an answer to Original Sin
What Scientists Believe
Peter Lopatin on negotiating reason and revelation
History as Wall Art
Alan Jacobs reviews Cartographies of Time
State of the Art
Heading Off the Next Pandemic
Tevi Troy
The Untapped Potential of the NPT
Henry Sokolski
Slacking as Self-Discovery
Rita Koganzon
An American Education
Daniel Eugene Williams
The Digital Law Practice
Sam A. Mackie
No. 30Winter 2011
No. 30
Winter 2011
Essays
Why the Arabic World Turned Away from Science
Hillel Ofek on the lost Golden Age and the rejection of reason
What Do Organisms Mean?
Steve Talbott on how life speaks at every level
Proposing a ‘Coast Guard’ for Space
James C. Bennett on what ails America’s space sector and how to fix it
The Near Miracle of Male Infertility Treatment
Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill on creating infertile fathers
Locke, Darwin, and America’s Future
Peter Augustine Lawler on rights, nature, and progress
Reviews and Reconsiderations
Bridges and the Bottom Line
Adam J. White on why infrastructure must always be a matter of politics
You Can’t Handle the Truth
Jeremy Kessler reviews After Finitude by Quentin Meillasoux
The Last Temptation of Science
Algis Valiunas on “Rappaccini’s Daughter” and the crooked path to Paradise
Rappaccini’s Daughter
Online only: A new critical edition of Hawthorne’s story
No. 31Spring 2011
No. 31
Spring 2011
GPS and the End of the Road
Ari Schulman on the transformation of travel and discovery
The Particularities of Place
Wilfred M. McClay
The New Meaning of Mobility
Christine Rosen
Place-Conscious Transportation Policy
Gary Toth
The Rise of Localist Politics
Brian Brown
Frog: A Tale of Home
Justin Race
Essays
Could Terrorists Exploit Synthetic Biology?
Jonathan B. Tucker on the potential risks of “de-skilling” bioengineering
Transitional Humanity
Gilbert Meilaender on the longing to defeat mortality and transcend embodiment
Psychology’s Magician
Algis Valiunas on the life and career of Carl Jung, mystic scientist of the mind
Reviews and Reconsiderations
Why Bother with Marshall McLuhan?
Alan Jacobs on the man, the medium, and his message
The Challenge of Regulating Objectively
Jonathan H. Adler on cost-benefit analysis and the precautionary principle
Philosophy Is Here to Stay
Benjamin Storey takes on David Brooks’s social scientism
The Unmanning of America
Rita Koganzon on the rise of women and the fall of men