From changes to sixth- and seventh-grade social-science textbooks used in California, proposed by religious organizations and scholars. Last fall the California Curriculum Commission reviewed a total of 684 suggested changes and tentatively approved 499.

The Choosy People (Harpers.org)

Do people have a fundamental right to genetically and biotechnologically enhance their bodies and brains? That question was central to the "Human Enhancement Technologies and Human Rights" (HETHR) Conference held over the Memorial Day weekend at Stanford University's Law School. The conference was sponsored by the Stanford Center for Law and the Biosciences along with a number of technoprogressive groups including the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics, geneforum, and ExtraLife.

Is genetic modification of people moral?

Last week an exhilarating and perplexing mixture of visionaries, philosophers, transhumanists, legal scholars, and technophiles along with some crackpots and naysayers gathered for a two day meeting at Stanford University's Law School to ponder the future of human enhancement and posthumanity. The occasion was the Human Enhancement Technologies and Human Rights (HETHR) conference. HETHR featured lectures ranging from sober discussions of the parental rights and the consent of the unborn and future generations, to the use of steroids and gene enhancement in sports and constitutional rights to enhancements, to uplifting animals to human level intelligence and uploading our personalities and memories into computer networks.

Uplifting animals and the rapture of the nerds

IT IS OFTEN SAID THAT the United States isn't easy on its scholars and public intellectuals--that they are not accorded the prestige and respect that they are given in the Old World. This complaint, usually made by left-wingers struggling against the tide in the United States, isn't totally without merit. A good literary scholar or classicist in the United States perhaps doesn't quite have the same social cachet as would a similarly accomplished scholar at Oxford or the Sorbonne. But when scholars do make it in the United States--and there certainly seem to be vastly more European scholars hoping to make it in America than Americans trying to snag a sinecure in Europe--there is simply no comparison in the eminence, influence, and renown that they can achieve.

The Last Orientalist

“In this exploration of the changing economics of our information-based world, Lanham . . . proposes the problem with the information economy is 'information doesn't seem to be in short supply. Precisely the opposite. We're drowning in it.' . . . Lanham's points are strong and well-researched . . . clear, jargon-free and forward-thinking.” —Publishers Weekly

The Economics of Attention: Style and Substance in the Age of Information by Richard A. Lanham, an excerpt

Warsh, who had a long-running economics column in theBoston Globe, here journeys through the discipline's history en route to an analysis of an influential 1990 technical paper. Written by Paul Romer, "Endogenous Technological Change" is described by Warsh as mathematically formidable, which is the way modern economists like their fare, begging the question of why its story would be of general interest. First, hundreds of thousands annually enroll in university-level economics courses; second, Romer's paper, pertinent to the information revolution that is our zeitgeist, is clearly explained by Warsh; and third, Warsh reveals the occupation of economics to the benefit of those who aspire to it. After historical exegesis of Adam Smith and his successors, Warsh depicts post-1945 schools of thought, biographically summarizing figures such as monetarist Milton Friedman and Keynesian Robert Solow, and those of Romer's generation now in their career primes. Appraising the intellectual lineage and gestation of Romer's paper, Warsh imparts in a comprehensible way the engagement many have with economic thought.

Knowledge and the Wealth Of Nations: A Story of Economic Discovery

It is common knowledge that televised political ads are meant to appeal to voters' emotions, yet little is known about how or if these tactics actually work. Ted Brader's innovative book is the first scientific study to examine the effects that these emotional appeals in political advertising have on voter decision-making. At the heart of this book are ingenious experiments, conducted by Brader during an election, with truly eye-opening results that upset conventional wisdom. They show, for example, that simply changing the music or imagery of ads while retaining the same text provokes completely different responses. He reveals that politically informed citizens are more easily manipulated by emotional appeals than less-involved citizens and that positive "enthusiasm ads" are in fact more polarizing than negative "fear ads." Black-and-white video images are ten times more likely to signal an appeal to fear or anger than one of enthusiasm or pride, and the emotional appeal triumphs over the logical appeal in nearly three-quarters of all political ads. Brader backs up these surprising findings with an unprecedented survey of emotional appeals in contemporary political campaigns. Politicians do set out to campaign for the hearts and minds of voters, and, for better or for worse, it is primarily through hearts that minds are won. Campaigning for Hearts and Minds will be indispensable for anyone wishing to understand how American politics is influenced by advertising today.

Campaigning for Hearts and Minds : How Emotional Appeals in Political Ads Work

Every culture has its own word for this nothing. Synonymous with the idea of absolute space and time, the ether is an ancient concept that has continually determined our definition of environment, our relations to each other, and our ideas about technology. It has also instigated our desire to know something irrepressibly beyond all that.

In Ether, the histories of mysticism and the unseen merge with discussions of the technology and science of electromagnetism. Joe Milutis explores how the ideas of Anton Mesmer and Isaac Newton have manifested themselves as the inspiration for occult theories and artistic practices from Edgar Allan Poe’s works to today. In doing so, he demonstrates that fading in and out of scientific favor has not prevented the ether, a uniquely immaterial concept, from being a powerful force for material progress.

Milutis deftly weaves the origins of electrical science with alchemical lore, nineteenth-century industrialism with yogic science, and network space with dreams of the absolute. Linking the ether to phenomena such as radio noise, space travel, avant-garde film, and the rise of the Internet, he lends it an almost physical presence and currency. From Federico Fellini to Gilles Deleuze, Japanese anime to Italian Futurism, Jean Cocteau to NASA, Shirley Temple to Wilhelm Reich, Ether traverses geographical boundaries, spiritual planes, and the divide between popular and high culture.

Navigating more than three hundred years of the ether’s cultural and artistic history, Milutis reveals its continuous reinvention and tangible impact without ever losing sight of its ephemeral, elusive nature. The true meaning of ether, Milutis suggests, may be that it can never be fully grasped.

Ether : The Nothing That Connects Everything

From Publishers Weekly
Law professor and bioethicist Goodwin sheds much needed light in this disturbing examination of yet another failure of the American health care system: an organ donation process that leads to the sale of human organs. Despite some highly technical sections, the author artfully uses case law and tragic stories of people caught in the machinery of an organ marketplace that favors the well connected. Even readers well versed in current events are likely to be shocked by the prevalence of "presumed consent" legislation in 28 states that shifts the choice to donate away from potential donors —corneas, for instance, are routinely harvested by local coroners unless a specific prior refusal has been communicated (and sometimes even despite such a directive). The author does a good job of linking this country's history of medical scandals that victimized African-Americans to that community's misgivings about serving as either donors or seekers of a spot on the coveted transplant waiting lists. Her controversial recommendations, which include lifting the taboo on selling cadaveric organs to address the organ deficit, should spark much discussion.

Black Markets : The Supply and Demand of Body Parts

Book Description
Humans are a striking anomaly in the natural world. While we are similar to other mammals in many ways, our behavior sets us apart. Our unparalleled ability to adapt has allowed us to occupy virtually every habitat on earth using an incredible variety of tools and subsistence techniques. Our societies are larger, more complex, and more cooperative than any other mammal's. In this stunning exploration of human adaptation, Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd argue that only a Darwinian theory of cultural evolution can explain these unique characteristics.

Not by Genes Alone offers a radical interpretation of human evolution, arguing that our ecological dominance and our singular social systems stem from a psychology uniquely adapted to create complex culture. Richerson and Boyd illustrate here that culture is neither superorganic nor the handmaiden of the genes. Rather, it is essential to human adaptation, as much a part of human biology as bipedal locomotion. Drawing on work in the fields of anthropology, political science, sociology, and economics—and building their case with such fascinating examples as kayaks, corporations, clever knots, and yams that require twelve men to carry them—Richerson and Boyd convincingly demonstrate that culture and biology are inextricably linked, and they show us how to think about their interaction in a way that yields a richer understanding of human nature.

In abandoning the nature-versus-nurture debate as fundamentally misconceived, Not by Genes Alone is a truly original and groundbreaking theory of the role of culture in evolution and a book to be reckoned with for generations to come.

“I continue to be surprised by the number of educated people (many of them biologists) who think that offering explanations for human behavior in terms of culture somehow disproves the suggestion that human behavior can be explained in Darwinian evolutionary terms. Fortunately, we now have a book to which they may be directed for enlightenment . . . . It is a book full of good sense and the kinds of intellectual rigor and clarity of writing that we have come to expect from the Boyd/Richerson stable.”—Robin Dunbar, Nature

“Not by Genes Alone is a valuable and very readable synthesis of a still embryonic but very important subject straddling the sciences and humanities.”—E. O. Wilson, Harvard University

Not by Genes Alone : How Culture Transformed Human Evolution