ethics

Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital is a much longer and expanded version of the Pulitzer Prize winning article Sheri Fink wrote about the suspicious deaths in a New Orleans hospital following hurricane Katrina. The author has collected the accounts of surviving doctors, patients, and rescuers, as they tried to save patients when the hospital was flooded, then lost power, and finally lost almost all access to communication to the outside world.  The book can be divided into two sections: the first, stronger half is about the storm and immediate aftermath.  The

If you've played the original PS2 versions of both of these games, then the PS3 upgrade doesn't make that much difference.  Sure, the games are prettier in HD, and the textures are gorgeous to behold (and if that's your thing, then I'm hardly going to discourage you!), but the glory of these games lies in the content, not the resolution.  If you've never played either of these, then this is a perfect opportunity for you.

Ico (pronounced EE-koh) is the first game in the series, and it's not without its flaws, but I feel that the flaws are vastly overshadowed by its brilliance.  You play as a

When Henrietta Lacks died in 1951, she didn't take everything with her. The doctors at Johns Hopkins took samples of her cancerous cervical tissue and turned them over to researchers, who discovered their amazing properties - HeLa, as the cells were named, became the first immortal cell line. Samples of the hardy cells were shipped all over the world, and for the first time incredibly advanced scientific research became possible. From the polio vaccine to space exploration to atomic bomb experiments, HeLa cells are seemingly omnipresent in a way Henrietta would never be... especially for

Greg M. Epstein, Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University, takes on the challenging assertion made by believers that with no God there can't be morality or meaning to one's life.  Epstein, wading into the battlefield left by the “New Atheists” Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens, puts together a compelling argument for a godless ethic.  Epstein doesn't pull any punches as he addresses the perceived and/or nagging intellectual and emotional entanglements of non-belief.  Epstein's argument is religiously erudite, concise, humble, and often quite brilliant in its