[hat tip to Lou Proyect for tagging this one] There is suspicion that the pharmaceutical industry is cooking the studies that prove that antidepressant drugs are safe and effective, and that the industry’s direct-to-consumer advertising is encouraging people to demand pills to cure conditions that are not diseases (like shyness) or to get through ordinary [...]

The Man the Hunter theory was largely developed by the South African hunting nut Raymond Dart and by Nazi anthropologists, partly as a misunderstanding of Darwin’s theory of struggle for survival. On archaeological sites, often the only things that survive are weapons and bones, giving the false impression that all these people did was use [...]

In the early 1990s, when I was living in northern Ghana, an elderly woman farmer decided that I needed some education. In a rather long lecture, she detailed the devastating effects that the Green Revolution – the first one, which outside experts and donors launched in Africa in the 1960s and 70s – had had [...]

Bouncing off an earlier thread, I realized that two superlative books written the past few years on the financial history of our current crisis are available as free pdf’s. Just throwing mud on the wall here, but combining these two for a study-discussion might be interesting as a kind of long-term discussion. If I’d seen [...]

I like cultural crit. Think it should be encouraged. Why are so many films so bad? This year’s Oscar nominations are a parade of propaganda, stereotypes and downright dishonesty. The dominant theme is as old as Hollywood: America’s divine right to invade other societies, steal their history and occupy our memory. When will directors and [...]

The press likes short wars. Its audience is never so eager for news as during an armed conflict. The first newspapers date from the wars of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Television likes the melodrama of exploding shells and blazing tanks. And it is this very eagerness to report the fighting that makes [...]

Despite selling out every night it screens at the cinema on Courtney Place and becoming the highest grossing film of all time, few have picked up on Avatar’s blatant allusions to the historical drama of Bougainville that happened on New Zealand’s doorstep thirteen years ago. The films names, plot and characters are almost direct references [...]

Correlations between anniversaries and historical conjunctures are likely to be ironic. When nlr was launched in London fifty years ago, in January 1960, it was one of myriad small harbingers of left renewal. Anti-colonial forces were registering victories in Africa, Asia and the Arab world; the Communist movement was emerging from the stranglehold of Stalinist [...]