Michael Cook
 Michael Cook likes bad puns, bushwalking and black coffee. He did a BA at Harvard University in the US where it was good for networking, but moved to Sydney where it wasn’t. He also did a PhD on an obscure corner of Australian literature. He has worked as a book editor and magazine editor and has published articles in magazines and newspapers in the US, the UK and Australia. Currently he is the editor of BioEdge, a newsletter about bioethics, and MercatorNet. |
"Amazing" decline in Arab fertility
Michael Cook | 18 Apr 2009
The decline in fertility in Middle Eastern Islamic countries -- including Iran -- is "amazing", says the head of the UN's population division, Hania Zlotnik. Eight of the 15 countries that experienced the biggest drop in population growth since 1980 are in the Middle East.
Ballade of Certain Demographers
Michael Cook | 17 Apr 2009
This is just a bit of fun for lovers of doggerel. Normally we don’t publish doggerel, or even poetry for that matter, in MercatorNet, but the editor does not feel bound to follow the rules. This bit of fun was composed a few years ago, after seeing that Chapter 2 of Paul Ehrlich’s 1995 book about the coming crisis of widespread starvation, The Stork and the Plow, is entitled “The Only Animal That Practices Birth Control”.
Russia slides into a demographic abyss
Michael Cook | 14 Apr 2009
This is the sort of stuff that sub-editors love. Over the weekend AFP reported that a 22-year-old Russian man downed three bottles of vodka and then, to the horror of his wife, hurled himself from the balcony of his fifth-floor apartment. He fell 15 metres (about 50 feet) and landed with barely a scratch. He staggered upstairs to his home where his wife began to berate him. So once again he jumped from the balcony -- and again survived with barely a scratch. Alexei Roskov now swears that he has given up the bottle. But many Russian men are not as lucky as Mr Roskov. Nicholas Eberstadt summarises the state of Russian health in a dismaying article in World Affairs Journal.
The hibernating culture wars
Michael Cook | 13 Apr 2009
How much did you hear about the culture wars in the 2008 election? I suppose that it depends on which newspapers and blogs you read. But by and large the pundits described it as an "it’s the economy, stupid!" election. The financial crisis preoccupied voters, so much so that it is unsure whether the culture wars will be a potent electoral issue in 2012.
The future of feminism in an ageing world
Michael Cook | 9 Apr 2009
Women have to be wary of solutions to the ageing crisis which would limit reproductive rights. This, at any rate, is the theme of a new book by journalist Michelle Goldberg, The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power and the Future of the World. The problem, as she sees it, is that the obvious solution to increasing birth rates is for women to have more babies. But this could wind back the clock on issues like abortion, women in the workforce, and so on.
America’s vanishing teachers
Michael Cook | 9 Apr 2009
More than a third of America’s 3.2 million teachers could retire within the next 4 years, according to a report from the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future. Within the next 10 years, more than half – 1.7 million -- could leave teaching. What’s going on? The ageing of the teaching profession. More than half of American teachers and principals are Baby Boomers.
Bleaker House
Michael Cook | 8 Apr 2009
Do I detect a new genre of film and novel emerging about below-replacement fertility? The first that came to my attention was Alfonso Cuarón's bleak film Children of Men. This was set in the UK in 2027, when global fertility has mysteriously dropped to 0.00. P.D. James's novel with the same title, upon which the film is based, is, if anything, bleaker still. Now I see that Booker Prize winner Anita Brookner has published a new novel, Strangers, about a retired bank manager who has no wife, no children and no relatives.
