Roger Magnusson (Sydney): Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Christopher Hitchens, and the Libertarian Critique of Bloomberg's Public Health Legacy. John Reynolds (NUI-Galway): Apartheid, International Law, and the Occupied Palestinian Territory. From LRB, Seymour Hersh on how Barack Obama did not tell the whole story this autumn when he tried to make the case that Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack near Damascus on 21 August. It is commonly agreed that we have many general and specific moral or religious duties to avoid sexual activity (no rape, no pedophilia, no adultery, no bestiality, etc.); it is less acknowledged and infrequently discussed that we might have moral or religious duties to engage in sexual activity — and that engaging in sexual activity in certain circumstances may be morally or religiously required as a duty commanded by a secular principle or benevolence or by "Love Thy Neighbor." Michael J. Lewis on philanthropic tyranny at the NYPL: The Central Library Plan's renovations to the New York Public Library will hurt both scholars and average users. Of the 7,776 languages in use in the greater offline world, less than five percent are in use online. Scott Barry Kaufman on the heritability of intelligence. Kathleen Geier writes in praise of viciousness: The case for negative reviews, plus links to twelve classic hatchet jobs. Janet Reitman on Snowden and Greenwald, the men who leaked the secrets: How two alienated, angry geeks broke the story of the year.
