IN THIS ISSUE

Humanist NEW

Volume 122 No 3 May/June 2007

EDITOR Caspar Melville COMMISSIONING EDITOR Laurie Taylor ASSOCIATE EDITOR Sally Feldman EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Paul Sims

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Website www.newhumanist.org.uk ISSN 0306-512X Published by the Rationalist Association. RA ASSOCIATES PRESIDENT: JONATHAN MILLER Vice Presidents: Baroness Susan Greenfield,Paul Kurtz,Laurie Taylor Honorary Associates : David Aaronovitch, Peter Atkins,Lord Birt,Harold Blackham, Colin Blakemore,Alan Brownjohn,Colin Campbell,Philip Campbell,Noam Chomsky, Bernard Crick,Helena Cronin,Richard Dawkins,Sanal Edamaruku,Paul Edwards, Ekow Eshun,Winston Fletcher,Antony Flew, Michael Foot,AC Grayling,Stuart Hall,Tony Harrison,Simon Heffer,James Hemming, Christopher Hitchens,Eric Hobsbawm, Richard Hoggart,Ted Honderich,Linton Kwesi Johnson,Sir Ludovic Kennedy,Richard Leakey, Sir Michael Levey,Sir John Maddox,Haydn Mason,George Melly,Edwin Mullins, Conor Cruise O’Brien,John Postgate,Claire Rayner, Amartya Sen,David Starkey,Ralph Steadman, DJ Stewart,Ian Stewart,Hazhir Teimourian, Claire Tomalin,David Tribe,Baroness Turner of Camden,Arnold Wesker,Francis Wheen, Lewis Wolpert

4 NEWHUMANIST

CONTENTS VOLUME 122 NO 3 MAY/JUNE 2007

21COSY CONCRETE The organic Modernism of Alvar Aalto is nice. Maybe too nice, argues Owen Hatherley

BOOK REVIEWS 34MICHAEL BINYON visits the Pyramids with Napoleon

NINA POWER relishes a Dracula for the TV generation

AC GRAYLING cheers as the scientists vanquish Intelligent Design

PHILIP WOMACKis impressed by Chris Paling’s mind

LEWIS WOLPERT learns the facts of life from plants

JONATHAN DERBYSHIRE stays up for a rendezvous with Haruki Murakami

COLUMNS

6 DIARY Martin Rowson’s labour pains

11 BE TOLERANT OR ELSE Eliane Glaser challenges a core British virtue

17 WAKING DREAM Isabelle McNeill on Surrealist film

17 FAREWELL,MR VONNEGUT Caspar Melville salutes a passed master

REGULARS 3 EDITORIAL He did God

7 PARISH NEWS

40 YOURS SCEPTICALLY Readers’ letters

41 CONCRETE REASONING Quiz

42 ENDGAME Laurie Taylor’s stuck IN THIS ISSUE

FEATURES

8BLIND FAITH Deluded and deranged? Laurie Taylor tries to understand believers

12FREE FROM CROOKED THINGS Misogynist and irrational it may be,but it would be wrong to overlook Buddhism’s brave resistance,argues Karen Connelly

18CHOICE BUSTERS The battle against women’s rights to choose is going global,finds Solana Larsen

28CHANGE,CHANGE,CHANGE HRT or reclaiming your wrinkles? Hot flushes or “power surges”? Sally Feldman hits the menopausal maelstrom

32BEING RIGHT Nick Cohen confronts the liberals in denial

COVER STORY

14 HOLY RELICS What are the bishops doing in the Lords? asks Jake Bromberg

24GURUS OF ENDLESS WAR The neocons are not finished yet,warns Shadia Drury

CONTRIBUTORS

Karen Connelly,who writes about Buddhist radicalism on page 12,is a Canadian author. Her latest novel,The Lizard Cage,a harrowing story of human resilience set in Burma’s notorious prison system,has been shortlisted for the Orange New Writers Prize

Political columnistNick Cohen caused a furore when he published What’s Left?, an excoriating attack on what he sees as liberal hypocrisy. He answers his critics on page 32

Shadia Drury is a political philosopher at the University of Regina,Saskatchewan. She has been tracking the influence of philosopher Leo Strauss on the neoconservatives since the 1990s. Though widely reviled by “Straussians”,even they agree that her book The Political Ideas of Leo Struassis the best explication of Strauss’s Machivellian vision of society

Solana Larsen is a Danish-Puerto Rican journalist based in New York City. She researched her story on the rebranding of the abortion issue (page 18) while blogging the UN Commission on the Status of Women for the political website openDemocracy.net

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