New Deal | lullaby pit

An open letter to America’s progressive billionaires

Posted on 2009.03.10 by winterSmith 46 comments

Dear Mr. Buffet, Mr. Gates, Mr. Turner, Mr. Soros, Ms. Winfrey, and any other hyper-rich types with progressive political leanings: If this essay has, against all odds, somehow made its way to your desk, please, bear with me. It’s longish, but it winds eventually toward an exceedingly important conclusion. If you’ll give me a few minutes, I’ll do my best

LIFE and the long view: ideologies of science and technology since the Enlightenment

Posted on 2008.04.01 by winterSmith 7 comments

Part two in a series. As I suggested in Part One, the messianic/utopian view of science and technology attributed to LIFE Magazine is consistent with an ideological bent that traces its lineage to the dawn of the Enlightenment in Europe. Francis Baconâ€™s highly influential New Atlantis, first published in 1626, recounts the narratorâ€™s fictional shipwreck on the shores of Bensalem,