From Wired, Peter Thiel makes down payment on libertarian ocean colonies. Electric Kool-Aid Conservatism: How cloning Tom Wolfe can save right-wing journalism. From The New Yorker, George Packer on the fall of conservatism: Have the Republicans run out of ideas?; Jeffrey Toobin decodes McCain's judicial speech; and is there any hope for the hung over? Joan Acocella investigates. From Boston Review, this ecstatic nation: Learning from Emily Dickinson after 9/11. From Scientific American, a cover story on the ethics of climate change: Pay now or pay more later?; and a look at why grassroots initiatives can't fix climate change. James Wood has some serious blind spots about fiction, writes Delia Falconer. Little League, huge effect: How youth sports shape the economic, academic, and social prospects of Americans. There is a game Americans like to play and a title they like to confer: It's called Worst President of All Time; and more and more and more and more and more and more and more on Rick Perlstein's Nixonland (and an excerpt at Bookforum). Chalmers Johnson reviews Sheldon Wolin's Democracy Incorporated. The Holy Guide to Coital Positions: The Church was OK with sex in the Middle Ages, so long as it was done in a very particular way. A review of New Pragmatists. Why nations fail to act: Loss of feeling after first victim can allow atrocities to occur.
