Author: Adam Lee

For all its virtues, Star Trek was a series that often failed to do justice to its own ideas. We’re told that Starfleet is just one small part of a vast, advanced utopian civilization, but that means that the settings and characters of the various TV shows were atypical representatives of the Federation. We only…

Atlas Shrugged, part III, chapter III Now that we’ve finished our tour of Galt’s Gulch, we’re back in the outside world with Dagny. From this point on, Atlas Shrugged is less of an economic-philosophical diatribe and more of a straightforward adventure story, so I anticipate that the rest of the book will go quicker. But…

You may detect a theme this week. My latest column on the Guardian is up: “Abortion opposition is a religious stance. Atheists must help fight for choice“. Under an onslaught of anti-choice legislation, abortion rights in the U.S. are threatened as never before. But an ally is beckoning from an unexpected quarter: in spite of…

The latest religious-right attack on abortion rights is a set of undercover videos made by an anti-choice group calling itself the Center for Medical Progress. Posing as potential buyers for a medical research firm, they tried to get Planned Parenthood officials to accept illegal payments in exchange for tissue samples from aborted fetuses. (Profiting from…

The flow of religious junk mail in my mailbox seems to be accelerating. Here’s the latest, a begging letter from the American Bible Society. (Click for larger.) The thrust of this solicitation is that American soldiers deployed abroad desperately want to read Bibles, but somehow can’t get any – a near-certain falsehood to begin with,…

Atlas Shrugged, part III, chapter II Francisco’s copper mine in Galt’s Gulch, even though it has super-advanced mining robots to replace human laborers, still depends on mule carts to carry his ore. It’s not because his inventive genius petered out at the entrance to the mine; it’s because Rand’s characters, following the invisible law of…

On Sunday night, I went out to see the “super blood moon” eclipse. It was a clear autumn night, and I got a good view of the Earth’s shadow spreading across the Moon, like a dark slice taken out of a white sea. When the eclipse reached totality, the Moon’s face dimmed to a ruddy…

Summary: Like a watcher of the skies when a new planet swims into his ken. It’s a common belief that, when Europeans first encountered them, the Native Americans were living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle scarcely changed from that of the earliest humans. This idea spans the political spectrum: from those on the left, who idealize indigenous…

Shelley Segal is on tour in the U.S., and I got to see her perform at Rockwood Music Hall in Manhattan earlier this month. Here’s one of the songs she played, a feminist folk anthem from her latest EP, Strange Feeling:

Atlas Shrugged, part III, chapter II For all its fixation on economic theory, Atlas Shrugged shows a dismal, incurious ignorance of how the economy actually works. When Ayn Rand’s capitalists gather in sufficient numbers, consumer goods just spontaneously materialize around them. By all rights, the inhabitants of Galt’s Gulch ought to be living like primitive…