Michael’s Picks

by Michael De Dora

* I recently appeared on the first video edition of the podcast Point of Inquiry to discuss the case of Alexander Aan, an Indonesian atheist jailed for allegedly “disseminating information aimed at inciting religious hatred and animosity.”

* Speaking of Aan, he has reportedly penned a letter to supporters from his prison cell. Learn how you can help him in his fight for freedom here.

* A Louisiana federal district court has adopted recommendations declaring that a city’s ban on “palmistry, card reading, astrology, fortune-telling, [and] phrenology” violates the First Amendment.

* The clauses of Egypt’s new constitution dealing with the role of Islam and Sharia law and freedom of belief and expression, which are nearing finalization, will certainly not please secularists.

* Abraham Flexner writes in Harpers Magazine in 1939 on the usefulness of useless knowledge: “In this paper I shall concern myself with the question of the extent to which the pursuit of … useless satisfactions proves unexpectedly the source from which undreamed-of utility is derived.”

* Pot-smoking mothers are apparently tired of being negatively judged by wine-drinking mothers, says Corey Binns.

* The Boston Review recently conducted an interesting interview with philosopher Martha Nussbaum on her new book, The New Religious Intolerance: Overcoming the Politics of Fear in an Anxious Age, which discusses the growing anti-Islam agitations in Europe and the United States.

* James Gray has put together a philosophy dictionary, which he calls “an attempt to comprehensively define all of the most important philosophy terms in a way that could be understood by anyone without requiring an extensive philosophical education.” Take a look. It’s both extensive and comprehensible.