Summer reading

Here is a selection of interesting papers for your summer reading:

• Is it time to unplug our schools? – Almost everything published in Orion is interesting. This article looks at what schools are doing to teach a deep relationship to nature.
• Altar calls for true believers – on the challenge of practicing what we preach with respect to sustainability. This is a good piece on why systemic change in general doesn’t necessarily correlate with necessity.
• Horse Power – Old technology for a new world.
• No coffee – A great piece on Jurgen Habermas, coffeehouses and the power of conversation.
• Modern Cosmology: Science or folktale? – I think the cosmic story is both. This article argues the same, but from the perspective of a skeptical scientist.
• World Bank economist Kirk Hamilton on the planet’s real wealth. – It turns out that the greatest resource the world has is “intangible capital” – people’s wisdom and labour.
• Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero. A review of a new biography about the Italian patriot Giusepe Garibaldi, for whom my local extinct volcano at the head of Howe Sound was named.
• Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy’s Couch – Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom think it’s possible we live in The Matrix.
• Heretical thoughts about science and society – Freeman Dyson muses about the global warming crises. But he might be wrong. He’s been wrong before!
• The quandry of quality – a great blog post from Bob Sutton on what is hard to measure but essential nonetheless.

[tags]nature, sustainability, change, horses, Habermas, coffee, conversation, cosmology, big bang, human resources, Garibaldi, Matrix, Nick Bostrom, freeman dyson, robert crick, global warming[/tags]