The question of what makes a woman or a man is not an easy one. Ridiculous, you might say. One can always tell who are the women and who are the men. Well, almost always. It's hard with babies. And with people bundled up in winter clothes. Long hair can be confusing until you see whether the person has a beard (which...
Tag - book review
A few years back, a number of public interest groups in Washington got together to launch a "Food Action Campaign" aimed at alerting citizens to the concentrated power of the food industry and its evils. The Campaign called on a few wellknown people with particular credibility to travel around the country spreading...
Consuela Ramos, the brave and spirited woman of the title, is brown, female, fat, and crazy, an unlikely heroine for anything but a Saturday morning affirmative action TV cartoon show. She is as ordinary as any of us, and like so many of us, extraordinary when her story is known. But to the authorities, she is less...
Food For Nought is probably the most comprehensive book available on the subject of food cultivation, food manufacturing, food marketing, and food consumption. Hall, a professor of biochemistry at McMaster College, in Hamilton, Ontario systematically describes how the corporate world, agribusiness, and government work...
What motivates scientists to do tedious experiments, chemical dishwashing, mathematical manipulations that often lead nowhere? An aura of intellectual romance shrouds the scientific world. It hides scientists’ daily routines from public view, and mystifies the reasons they choose the work they do. For most people, the...
The following is a review of a book which tries to be about building a nonviolent alternative society, an idea that, unfortunately, seems to have special appeal to technically trained people, who have rebellion in their hearts. The book is Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher. After dealing briefly with the book...
During the last four years several hundred scientists and technologists from the United States have visited the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The duration of stay of recent visitors in the PRC has usually been from 2 to 4 weeks. In spite of the brevity of their visits, American scientists have returned with...
Did someone say the "energy crisis" is over? The panic may have passed with the fall in gasoline prices from last year's high, but in the near future new price increases are likely to be announced. This will not be a particularly surprising turn of events to those who have a good grasp of what's happening in the...
In a similar fashion, the theories put forth by the sociobiologists and their predecessors help to support maintenance of the status quo and to convince people that revolutionary changes in social relationships (e.g. class structure and sex roles) are impossible. One way we see this done is by the rapid incorporation...
The authors find that the conventional reasons given for the rise of (male) professionals are myths. The professional takeover of health care in both epochs occurred before there was any real scientific superiority of the practicing professionals. If anything, the medical craft practiced by (female) lay healers...