Kerry Howley is mostly pleased with Barbaran Ehrenreich’s jeremiad against the power of positive thinking. Excerpt from her review: All the Oprah-ready gurus you would expect to populate this polemic show up to share some advice–here’s Joel Osteen warning us never to “verbalize a negative emotion,” there’s Tony Robbins exhorting us to “Get motivated!” In…

OK, I’m going to confess to you now that Santa Claus brought the Dreher chirren a Wii for Christmas — and it was a fantastic purchase, for the most part. The kids are getting actual exercise (both boys came out of their rooms on Dec. 26 complaining that they were “sick” — their shoulders hurt…

Poking around the Templeton Report archives this afternoon, I found this news of a Templeton-funded research project that examined life among a geographic segment of economically disadvantage British teenagers. Here’s one of the things researchers found: Hodge Hill is one of the most economically disadvantaged areas in the UK, and three-quarters of its population is…

Evgeny Morozov says that Western geeks who think that Twitter and related information technologies are going to topple authoritarian governments are naive. Excerpt: But this is an anachronistic view of the world. Modern authoritarian states have eagerly (but selectively) embraced globalisation to provide their citizens with at least a modicum of self-actualisation without ever abandoning…

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