Noteworthy reads from last week:
“What Will it Take to Get Electricity to the World’s Poor?” David Roberts
“Choices made in those parts of the world today, at the front end of growth, will influence the course of global energy and carbon emissions for decades to come.”
“Against the Grain,” Michael Specter
“How could gluten, present in a staple food that has sustained humanity for thousands of years, have suddenly become so threatening?”
“Jewish History is Not Just About the Holocaust. Finally, a Museum Gets That.” James McAuley
“The last thing Poland needs is a Holocaust museum…The whole country is a Holocaust museum.”
“Shrinking Prisons: Good Crime-Fighting and Good Government,” Eric Schnurer
“Corrections is the ultimate human service—and it can be done more cheaply and more effectively without locking so many people up.”
“2014 Midterms: The 27 Candidates to Watch,” Colin Daileda
“They are politicians whose presence and ideas have a chance to redefine how we view politics in America, and you may soon be hearing their names a lot more.”
“Like many modern approaches to religion that embrace theistic evolution, Francis’ statements endorse evolution by enforcing God’s role in it.”
And some Halloween-themed ones for good measure:
"The Uncanny Power of Weird Fiction," Jeff Vandermeer
"Here, in what is actually our infancy of understanding the world—this era in which we think we are older than we are—it is cathartic to seek out and tell stories that do not seek to reconcile the illogical, the contradictory, and often instinctual way in which human beings perceive the world, but instead accentuate these elements as a way of showing us as we truly are."
"The Struggle of Being Asian-American for Halloween," Steve Haruch
"As I was trying to figure out what to be for Halloween this year, I had a recollection of my mom using eyebrow pencil to draw a Fu Manchu-style mustache on my face as part of a costume when I was a kid."
"Halloween: Everything that’s wrong with America?," Adam Kotsko
"Halloween has…become the most striking symbol of the white middle class’s arrested development, its perpetual adolescence."