A new issue of Cosmos and History is out. Sarah Brouillette (Carleton): Unesco and the Book in the Developing World. Paolo Chiocchetti (King’s College): Filling the Vacuum? The Development of the Partisan Radical Left in Germany, France and Italy, 1989-2013. Harold James warns that Europe’s fringes apppear determined to escape into the past. From the THR blog, and who is a person? Philip Lorish on the problem with Hobby Lobby (and part 2). Veiled Pensioners of the Mystic Sofa: The great mystery of Freemasonry — and of all these other slowly expiring fraternal societies — is not the profundity they convey across the centuries, but the way they slam together the sacred and the profane in a train wreck of confused symbolism. Steven Chu and Yi Cui describe how an overhaul of the unglamorous battery will jump-start a shift to renewable energy. From American Scientist, the quest for randomness: Scott Aaronson on how determining whether numbers truly can have no pattern has implications for quantum mechanics, not to mention the stock market and data security. The lesson from a hoax: People are gullible and lazy and prefer comforting, easily found, and easily assimilated information to reliable information — that’s why librarians are always fighting a losing battle. Anthony Faiola on how the new land of opportunity for immigrants is Germany. What’s God got to do with religion? Charles Mathewes reviews Religion Without God by Ronald Dworkin. Chandra Swope on the chapel of a godless society — an architectural thesis. The Civil Rights Act is 50 years old: These two pictures were taken 50 years apart — behold our progress.
