Humanist Perspectives: issue 188, Spring 2014
Issue 188, Spring 2014
Humanist Perspectives is a refreshing, rational analysis of modern events and culture and is available at select magazine stores or by online subscription.
Editorial
- Actions Speak Louder Than Words
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It’s a shameful part of North American history that once upon a time, not so very long ago, you could be denied a seat on a bus, or admission into a school, or a patch of sand on a public beach if you happened to have the “wrong” skin colour. The so-called Jim Crow Laws that tainted so much of the United States up until just a few decades ago still haunt America’s collective psyche.
Read editorial online
Features
- Our Economic Development Policies Are Environmentally Disastrous
- While no single hyper-storm can be positively attributed to human disruption of the global climate system, climate models predict that extreme weather events will increase in frequency and violence...
- Franklin’s Unholy Lightning Rod
- It is well-known that the Catholic and Protestant churches opposed the scientific theories of Galileo and Copernicus, but did you know they also opposed Benjamin Franklin’s lightning rod?
- Human Nature: Genetic Propensities and Symbolic Language
- Why are human beings so different from every other species on earth, in spite of all we have in common?
- 75 Years of Atom Splitting
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On Christmas day in 1938, Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch took a famous walk in the snow in Sweden and solved the mystery – the “strange results” were actually the smaller products of uranium splitting, a process that Frisch coined “fission”.
Read article online - Native Spirituality: The making of a new religion
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Using historical data coupled with personal experience this article makes the case that native or aboriginal spirituality has been evolving into a religion similar to those of the Judeo-Christian tradition, with one surprising distinction: the concept of sin has been replaced by the concept of historical trauma.
Read article online - NOTEWORTHY
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A selection of news briefs from around the world. A link to the original is provided at the end of each brief.
Read article online - Me and My Microbiome
- Until recently I had always imagined that human beings, and other life forms, existed within well-defined limits as essentially self-contained operating physiological systems. We have our own built-in immune systems that help to protect us from hostile microbes ...
- Christoslovakia: A Thought Experiment
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Can you imagine a nation founded on the Ten Commandments? Michael Paulkovich gives it a shot.
Read article online - Unlikely Friendship
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Yesterday Jerry and I flew to Orlando, Florida, changing planes in Salt Lake City. Aboard the new flight we hoped for the privacy of all three seats, but a woman was assigned to our row...
Read article online - TV SERIES REVIEW
- Louise Martin reviews Call the Midwife.
- Glen Harper reviews Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life by James Daschuk
- In addition, Humanist Perspectives offers a lively Letters-to-the-Editor section as well as Book Reviews, books available for review and snippets of international news of interest to humanists.