Nathan Smith | elephant journal

About: Nathan Smith

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Profile: Nathan Smith is a philosophy professor at Houston Community College - Northwest. He's a father of two and husband to fellow elephant columnist, Joana Smith. As a philosopher, he specializes in Descartes, the philosophy of mind, and phenomenology. He's interested in all kinds of things, but he blogs primarily about politics, spirituality, and good, green living. Follow him on twitter @smithnd. And share your thoughts in the comments; he doesn't bite.
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Posts by Nathan Smith:

In Honor of St. Valentine’s Day, Marry a GLBT Couple

by Nathan Smith on Feb 12, 2012

My daughter Abilene is in pre-Kindergarten. They are learning about St. Valentine and she wanted to know more. So, naturally, I turned to Wikipedia. Turns out that there may not be any one St. Valentine, but the earliest depiction of a St. Valentine is of a Roman priest, Valentinius, during the time of [...]

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More Drama from Obama? A Reply to Drew Westen.

by Nathan Smith on Aug 8, 2011

Does strong political rhetoric need a devil? Westen thinks so, but I don’t.

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What Must We Do to Create a Mindful Economy?

by Nathan Smith on Dec 2, 2010

And How Do We Avoid Giving Back Progress? The ruling principle of our capitalist economic system is that the individual owns her property and labor, and therefore owns the risks and rewards that come with it. Coupled with the ideal of personal ownership and personal responsibility is the idea of individual freedom. Not only is [...]

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Woah! How Far is Too Far to Make A Point About Climate Change?

by Nathan Smith on Oct 4, 2010

Thanks to Roger Pielke Jr.’s blog, I watched this public service announcement from the 10:10 people. The video plays with the following question: What should we do about those people who don’t want to participate in reducing green house gas emissions? Should we play nice–you know, no pressure, I understand it’s difficult to reduce carbon [...]

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In Defense of Bigotry.

by Nathan Smith on Jul 16, 2010

The recent firing of Dr. Kenneth Howell from the University of Illinois-Champaign has created a buzz in the academic blogosphere. Howell was an adjunct faculty member who was affiliated with a Catholic outreach center linked to UIC. He had been teaching a course called “Introduction to Catholicism” for nine years. His contract was not renewed [...]

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The Science of Climate Change is Not Settled.

by Nathan Smith on May 25, 2010

News Flash: Global Warming May or May Not be Something to Worry about. A couple of weeks ago, Boston.com published an article on two MIT climate scientists—Kerry Emanuel and Richard Lindzen—who disagree about whether or not we should be worried about global warming. If you haven’t seen the article already, check it out. If you [...]

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BP’s Oil Disaster: What you want to Know About It.

by Nathan Smith on May 14, 2010

If you haven’t seen the video of the massive, gushing volcano spewing oil out of BP’s well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, I’ve embedded it at the bottom of the post. But here’s the bottom line. Now that experts have had a chance to analyze actual footage of the “leak,” they have [...]

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Al Gore Calls Sarah Palin A 'Global Warming Denier'

Al Gore is a Hypocrite?

by Nathan Smith on May 5, 2010

If it weren’t for the fact that I follow Bill O’Reilly’s twitter feed, I probably wouldn’t have caught this. Yeah, that’s sad. Last week, the LA Times reported that Al and Tipper Gore purchased a roughly $9,000,000 Italian-style villa with an ocean view in Montecino, CA. The couple spent $8,875,000 on an ocean-view villa on [...]

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Reflections on Craving: Babies, Bottle Girls, and Catholic Priests

by Nathan Smith on Apr 28, 2010

We have a little baby girl, almost 6 mos. She’s at that adorable baby stage. We love her to death. She also has this habit, as I’m sure you’ve seen before, of putting everything she can get her hands on into her mouth. I was watching this behavior recently and I wondered: what is this [...]

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Provocative New Information that Should Make Us Think Twice Before Sending Soldiers Into Combat (With Video from Wikileaks)

by Nathan Smith on Apr 15, 2010

What are the real costs of war? Though I am no pacifist, I do think that modern warfare is one of the things for which we are profoundly bad at considering the costs and benefits. There is no need to rehash all of the nonsense leading up to our most recent armed conflicts. The interesting bit [...]

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When April Fool’s Gets Serious (or, how I killed the mommie revolution). An Easter Resurrection story, by a sorry daddy.

by Nathan Smith on Apr 3, 2010

I think I killed the mommie revolution and I’m really sorry. In the midst of the wildly successful (in my humble and unbiased opinion) elephantjournal April Fool’s edition, my wife Joana Smith posted a blog about a Houston megachurch closing it’s door because it couldn’t stay green. That part was just a joke. But then, [...]

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Save Me, Reverend Billy!

by Nathan Smith on Mar 24, 2010

I was just reminded of the inimitable, green, hip, artsy machine that is the Reverend Billy Talen and the Church of Life After Shopping via Climate Progress. He’s been around since 1996, but his message is worth repeating. And now he’s going after JP Morgan Chase for their financial backing of mountaintop removal (see video [...]

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Why Obama Is Not The Leader You Thought He Was

by Nathan Smith on Mar 23, 2010

The historic health-care reform package just passed is, I believe, really good news. There are *tons* of issues with the bill. For a brief sampling, you should check out Reihan Salam’s recent assessments of the cost-containing measures and projections for deficit. Ross Douthat is similarly good on this. Jonathan Chait tries to put a good [...]

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John Yoo, Torture, and the Law.

by Nathan Smith on Feb 26, 2010

Moral, political and legal implications of the Margolis memo. I can’t see much to like about John Yoo. I think he should be fired from Berkeley. But maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps he’s just the most intellectually-gifted defender of some of the most extreme and morally repulsive aspects of US law, as Clive Crook suggests. Recently, [...]

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The Insanity of the Center

by Nathan Smith on Feb 3, 2010

In the past week, there has been a lot of renewed discussion of bipartisanship, the need to work together, and the need to govern across the aisle. But this is not an easy thing and, in fact, if you start to look at actual budgets and the political process, it looks like the “political center” [...]

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That tone of civility you hear…

by Nathan Smith on Jan 31, 2010

One of the big issues that Barack Obama campaigned on was a change of tone in Washington politics. He promised a to make a real effort at bipartisanship, to eliminate some of the most blatantly profiteering and money-grubbing aspects of politics, and to try to “disagree without being disagreeable.” But, then came the reality of [...]

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Copenhagen: The Perfect, the Good, and the Ugly

by Nathan Smith on Dec 9, 2009

Yesterday, I thought Copenhagen was going to be all about not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. James Rachels, whom I admire enormously, had written a piece in the NYTimes arguing against cap and trade, a piece called “Cap and Fade.” I think cap and trade is a really clever idea that [...]

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Is Belief in Climate Change a Religious Belief?

by Nathan Smith on Nov 11, 2009

Tim Nicholson, from PA, printed in telegraph.co.uk Don’t know if you follow the guys over at Freakonomics, Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt. I find their observations to range from entertaining to insightful. But with their newest book, Superfreakonomics, they’ve decided to throw their hat into the debate about global climate change and have run into [...]

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Can Nicanor Perlas Change The Philippines? ~via Seth Jordan

by Nathan Smith on Oct 23, 2009

I received this email from Seth Jordan, a student of E.F. Schumacher’s buddhist economics and Rudolf Steiner’s social ideas and friend of a friend. He is currently the creative director at thinkoutword.org and is very passionate about the current candidate for the 2010 election of President of the Philippines, Nicanor Perlas. The Philippines is a country [...]

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Elephantjournal Has a New Look; But Is It Mindful?

by Nathan Smith on Oct 14, 2009

Full disclosure: this post was not my idea originally, it was my wife’s, you know, the poetical, lovely Joana Smith. Well, the post part wasn’t really her idea, but the topic is all her. Admittedly, this may be something I’m not as sensitive to as her. Basically she complains loudly pretty much every time she [...]

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Global Premier 2 of Age of Stupid: Video Trailers.

by Nathan Smith on Sep 26, 2009

That’s the question this movie asks us. Are we really stupid enough to allow our civilization to careen toward disaster if we have the power to stop it? Last night, we went to the Age of Stupid screening in Houston (part of Global Premier 2) with our local 350.org group. There was a small audience, [...]

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Persona Hurting your Career Potential? Waylon Lewis…

by Nathan Smith on Sep 25, 2009

The dangers of social media browsing rears its ugly head again. While scanning my tweetdeck, which contains a search for “Waylon Lewis,” this morning I came across the following tweet @reeuq: “GLBT News Headlines (T4T-6) Persona Hurting Your Career Potential? Waylon Lewis of… http://bit.ly/vVJbv #gay #news” In light of the recent flogging Waylon has taken [...]

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European Tough Guys; America The Wimpy?

by Nathan Smith on Sep 21, 2009

Thomas Friedman’s opinion piece Monday creatively links recent talk of staying the course in Afghanistan with the fact that a number of serious, necessary steps to end our reliance on foreign oil and reduce our carbon impact are simply “off the table.” Now that the price of oil is once again low, why can’t we find the [...]

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