1. Jerry Bower on how the "last week of [Jesus'] life was driven by clashes pertaining to wealth and poverty - freedom and tyranny."
Rome needed money to buy off the urban mob, and Herod needed Rome to keep down the Palestinian rabble. And so when the people, innocents at home, came to Jerusalem to make their offerings to God, they were met at each step in the process of religious devotion with another checkpoint at which tolls were extracted. The journey to Jerusalem often meant crossing a Roman checkpoint - ka-ching! Since the trip was long and hard on the animals, it was better to travel light and buy the sacrifices in Jerusalem - ka-ching! You can't use pagan Roman coins for that sort of thing, of course, so off to the money changers - ka-ching again. Tithes, offerings, sacrifices, festivals, Rome got her cut - ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching. In fact, that's the only reason there even was a temple or a King Herod. Rome would have long ago plundered it and killed him, except you don't kill the goose who lays the golden eggs.
If the temple was the bridge between heaven and earth, Herod was the troll who lived under the bridge. Every pilgrim was forced to pay the toll. That's what kept Herod in power, no ka-ching, no king. Ordinary Jews hated the regime, and the anger was boiling over, but Herod didn't care what they thought; he had Rome on his side.
Into this world steps the young son of a Galilean entrepreneur.
2. Ty Burr, of the Boston Globe, on the cultural force of media bad girls:
Bringing up children in 21st-century America is difficult enough, given a pop culture that constantly promotes a vulgar, empty celebration of self. But do some of our starlets have to work so hard at it? The Spears sisters, Britney and Jamie Lynn, have mutated from wholesome pop tarts to whacked-out baby factories. Lindsay Lohan acts out her rebellion against the entire culture on the evening news. Paris Hilton - well, Paris Hilton. That's all you need to say.
As a parent of two girls, age 11 and 13 at this writing, I should probably be wringing my hands. I'm not, because when I listen to my daughters and their friends, I hear a moral code being forged upon the paparazzi traumas of the famous and unfortunate. There are levels of judgment going on here, moral siftings and weighings. Children are both more and less innocent than adults take them for, and they process the role models our culture hands them in complex ways.The new bad girls, it's clear, are important figures in the culture. But they don't necessarily teach young girls how to behave - just as likely, they're teaching them how not to behave. They have become anti-role models.
3. Daniel Gross on the "dysfunctional class threatening American values":
For decades, social scientists, policy wonks, and politicians have studied and debated what's come to be known as the "culture of poverty." The consensus: A group of Americans is set apart from the mainstream by geography, class, and income. Its members adhere to norms that don't apply to the rest of society and engage in self-destructive behavior that imposes significant costs on the nation at large. The culture of poverty has made for potent politics (remember Ronald Reagan's fictitious welfare queen?) and spawned best-selling polemics from the right (Charles Murray) to the left (Jonathan Kozol).
We don't hear as much about the culture of poverty these days. Perhaps it's because the market turmoil is making us all feel a little poorer. Or perhaps it's because a highly visible group is now exhibiting all the outward appearances of the underclass: the overclass. Forget welfare queens and the culture of poverty. Think Wall Street kings and the culture of affluence.
4. Apple Logo Can Make You 'Think Different'
Whether you are a Mac person or a PC person, even the briefest exposure to the Apple logo may make you behave more creatively, according to recent research from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and the University of Waterloo, Canada....
The team conducted an experiment in which 341 university students completed what they believed was a visual acuity task, during which either the Apple or IBM logo was flashed so quickly that they were unaware they had been exposed to the brand logo. The participants then completed a task designed to evaluate how creative they were, listing all of the uses for a brick that they could imagine beyond building a wall.People who were exposed to the Apple logo generated significantly more unusual uses for the brick compared with those who were primed with the IBM logo, the researchers said. In addition, the unusual uses the Apple-primed participants generated were rated as more creative by independent judges.
5. The Museum of Online Museums
6. Quote of the Week: "Calvin says somewhere that each of us is an actor on a stage and God is the audience. That metaphor has always interested me, because it makes us artists of our own behavior, and the reaction of God to us might be thought of as aesthetic rather than morally judgmental in the ordinary sense." -- Novelist Marilynne Robinson, author of Gilead (HT: IMAGE blog)
7. Andrew Gelman on social class and views of corporations:
I was looking through the Pew surveys and they are just full of fascinating things... Republicans tend to like corporations, with little difference between the views of professional-class and working-class Republicans. For Democrats, though, there's a big gap, with professionals having a generally more negative view, compared to the working class...
- For some corporations (Halliburton, Walmart, Exxon, McDonald's, Pfizer, Coke), the working-class Democrats are much less supportive than the working-class Republicans. For these corporations, there is almost no difference between professional and working-class Republicans. The only exception is Coke, which was viewed much less favorably by professional-class than working-class Republicans.
- For the others (Citibank, GM, Coors, American Express, Target, Starbucks), working-class Democrats had views that were similar to or more favorable than their Republican counterparts. And for these, there was a consistent pattern of much stronger favorability by professional than working-class Republicans.
8. The Healthiest Places for You to Eat Out
With candy sales banned on school campuses, sugar pushers are the latest trend at local schools. Backpacks are filled with Snickers and Twinkees for all sweet tooths willing to pay the price.
"It's created a little underground economy, with businessmen selling everything from a pack of skittles to an energy drink," said Jim Nason, principal at Hook Junior High School in Victorville.
(HT: Marginal Revolution)
10. From Why We're Not Emergent: By Two Guys Who Should Be by DeYoung and Kluck (via One Eternal Day)
After reading nearly five thousand pages of emerging-church literature, I have no doubt that the emerging church, while loosely defined and far from uniform, can be described and critiqued as a diverse, but recognizable, movement. You might be an emergent Christian: if you listen to U2, Moby, and Johnny Cash's Hurt (sometimes in church), use sermon illustrations from The Sopranos, drink lattes in the afternoon and Guinness in the evenings, and always use a Mac; if your reading list consists primarily of Stanley Hauerwas, Henri Nouwen, N. T. Wright, Stan Grenz, Dallas Willard, Brennan Manning, Jim Wallis, Frederick Buechner, David Bosch, John Howard Yoder, Wendell Berry, Nancy Murphy, John Franke, Walter Winks and Lesslie Newbigin (not to mention McLaren, Pagitt, Bell, etc.) and your sparring partners include D. A. Carson, John Calvin, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and Wayne Grudem; if your idea of quintessential Christian discipleship is Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, or Desmond Tutu; if you don't like George W. Bush or institutions or big business or capitalism or Left Behind Christianity; if your political concerns are poverty, AIDS, imperialism, war-mongering, CEO salaries, consumerism, global warming, racism, and oppression and not so much abortion and gay marriage; if you are into bohemian, goth, rave, or indie; if you talk about the myth of redemptive violence and the myth of certainty; if you lie awake at night having nightmares about all the ways modernism has ruined your life; if you love the Bible as a beautiful, inspiring collection of works that lead us into the mystery of God but is not inerrant; if you search for truth but aren't sure it can be found; if you've ever been to a church with prayer labyrinths, candles, Play-Doh, chalk-drawings, couches, or beanbags (your youth group doesn't count); if you loathe words like linear, propositional, rational, machine, and hierarchy and use words like ancient-future, jazz, mosaic, matrix, missional, vintage, and dance; if you grew up in a very conservative Christian home that in retrospect seems legalistic, naïve, and rigid; if you support women in all levels of ministry, prioritize urban over suburban, and like your theology narrative instead of systematic; if you disbelieve in any sacred-secular divide; if you want to be the church and not just go to church; if you long for a community that is relational, tribal, and primal like a river or a garden; if you believe doctrine gets in the way of an interactive relationship with Jesus; if you believe who goes to hell is no one's business and no one may be there anyway; if you believe salvation has a little to do with atoning for guilt and a lot to do with bringing the whole creation back into shalom with its Maker; if you believe following Jesus is not believing the right things but living the right way; if it really bugs you when people talk about going to heaven instead of heaven coming to us; if you disdain monological, didactic preaching; if you use the word "story" in all your propositions about postmodernism--if all or most of this tortuously long sentence describes you, then you might be an emergent Christian.
11. Fact of the Week: Every second, the sun produces more energy than human civilizations have ever produced in history. (HT: Neatorama)
12. Kyle Smith on female equality:
Now that 140 women are graduating from college for every 100 men, it's become laughable to argue that girls are getting short shrift in school. Ladies are getting long shrift at work too: women execs get promoted after an average of 2.6 years in one job, men after 3.5 years in comparable posts. But the wage gap shrugs off this information. Even boys who are classified as learning disabled and drop out of school grow up to be higher earners, on average, than women with no mental disabilities. Billionaire dropouts like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates aren't quite as exceptional as you thought.
13. Sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh interviews two prostitutes about their work, one of whom explains why she decided to become a nurse:
A lot of people probably won't believe this, but much of our work is about therapy. These men who paid me thousands of dollars control their worlds. Everyone listens to them. And, at the same time, they are incredibly insecure people.
Every man I've had as a regular client went through a period of several months where he just cried -- and I still got paid. I pursued nursing because I realized I wanted to relieve people's anxieties in a more legitimate way.
14. Top 5 reasons why "The Customer Is Always Right" is wrong:
5: Some customers are just plain wrong
Herb Kelleher agrees, as this passage From Nuts! the excellent book about Southwest Airlines shows:
Herb Kelleher [...] makes it clear that his employees come first - even if it means dismissing customers. But aren't customers always right? "No, they are not," Kelleher snaps. "And I think that's one of the biggest betrayals of employees a boss can possibly commit. The customer is sometimes wrong. We don't carry those sorts of customers. We write to them and say, 'Fly somebody else. Don't abuse our people.'"
(HT: kottke.org)
15. Classic Works of Apologetics, an "online library of Christian apologetics literature both past and present." (HT: Tribalogue)
16. What Happened to Wartime Sacrifice?
Of all the manly virtues, sacrifice can arguably be said to be the greatest. Yet today it is also the virtue in shortest supply. Where men once saw great honor in being asked to sacrifice for a worthy cause, today they spend their time thinking how they might obtain something for nothing. Nowhere is this more manifest than in the sacrifice related to war.
Today we are involved in two wars: the war in Iraq and the war against terrorism. Yet what have Americans been asked to give up for these engagements? Absolutely nothing. Unless you count putting a "Support the Troops" ribbon on your SUV.
17.
18. 10 Most Historically Inaccurate Movies (HT: The Presurfer)
19. Reihan Salem on Why Stop-Loss Matters:
It's worth reflecting on the fact that during the Second World War, America's conscript army was full of terrified young men, only 15 to 25 percent of whom ever fired their weapons in combat. A remarkable number were maimed, killed, or felled by disease, and a far higher number were paralyzed by sheer terror and dread while on the battlefield. Though the volunteer army seems less egalitarian, it is undoubtedly far more effective and in its own way far more humane. One wonders about the kind of film Peirce would have made about the poor grunts sent off to fight Hirohito and Hitler, most of whom were subject to physical regimens that would be understood as abuse in our own time. Would she have made a stirring film dedicated to the cause of draft resistance? Well, no. The 1940s-equivalent of MTV Films would have presumably frowned on such a project, and the decent cosmopolitans of the time were convinced that European lives, at least, were worth saving. There appears to be no similar consensus about Iraqi lives.
21. Peter Suderman: What Tocqueville tells us about the web
22. Jurist Richard Posner on what teachers want:
From the standpoint of most teachers, right up to and including the level of teachers of college undergraduates, the ideal student is well behaved, unaggressive, docile, patient, meticulous, and empathetic in the sense of intuiting the response to the teacher that is most likely to please the teacher. Those are traits less characteristic of boys than of girls.
23. A map of the area covered by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on their Apollo 11 moon walks, superimposed on a soccer pitch for comparison purposes. (HT: kottke.org)
24. Josh Trevino reviews War and Peace:
It is difficult, in reviewing classics, to say things about them that have not been said before. It is especially difficult when those classics are part of the literary canon; and even more difficult when those classics are not mere novels, but purposeful epics. It is in this light that reviewing Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace is a challenge. The massive book -- ranging from 900 to 1,500 pages, depending upon the edition -- is a cornerstone of anyone's list of all-time great literature. Strangely, few have actually read it; and few reviewers of new editions do more than assess relative merits of the latest translation.
25. LOLCat LOLSloth of the Week
see more crazy cat pics
26. Joel Maners on Easter and Eggs:
I always used to wonder how eggs got into Easter. Oh yes I know all the stories of pagan worship and whatnot. But why do we still have this ritual of hunting eggs even after Easter Sunday worship services at church? Isn't this some sort of inconsistency. What does gorging yourself on sugary candy eggs have to do with the risen Christ anyway?
But then after my children came along, I got it. Easter eggs are about the joy of discovery. You just have to love the way kids squeal with delight at discovering a brightly colored egg in the grass. When I see the joy of that moment, I am reminded of the disciples at Jesus tomb on that early Sunday morning. Easter is about finding something amazing and beautiful in the midst of the mundane. It's about finding life in a place of death, peace in a place of chaos.
27. A time-lapse video of Wal-Mart expansion from 1962 until today. (HT: GOOD magazine)
28. 18 Foods That Make Your Skin Glow (HT: The Presurfer)
29. Increased knowledge about global warming leads to apathy, study shows -- The more you know the less you care -- at least that seems to be the case with global warming. A telephone survey of 1,093 Americans by two Texas A&M University political scientists and a former colleague indicates that trend, as explained in their recent article in the peer-reviewed journal Risk Analysis. "More informed respondents both feel less personally responsible for global warming, and also show less concern for global warming," states the article.
30. Yale study shows weight bias is as prevalent as racial discrimination -- Discrimination against overweight people--particularly women--is as common as racial discrimination, according to a study by the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at Yale University.
31. Spit Tests May Soon Replace Many Blood Tests -- One day soon patients may spit in a cup, instead of bracing for a needle prick, when being tested for cancer, heart disease or diabetes. A major step in that direction is the cataloguing of the "complete" salivary proteome, a set of proteins in human ductal saliva, identified by a consortium of three research teams, according to an article recently published in the Journal of Proteome Research. Replacing blood draws with saliva tests promises to make disease diagnosis, as well as the tracking of treatment efficacy, less invasive and costly.
32. Why Wallpaper Won't Peel Off Easily And Why Tape Refuses To Pull Off The Roll Straight -- Frustrated by tape that won't peel off the roll in a straight line? Angry at wallpaper that refuses to tear neatly off the wall? A new study reveals why these efforts can be so aggravating. ...The team found that those ubiquitous triangular tears arise from interactions between three inherent properties of adhesive materials: elasticity (stiffness), adhesive energy (how strongly the adhesive sticks to a surface) and fracture energy (how tough it is to rip). The researchers developed a formulation that predicts the angle of the triangle formed, based on those three properties.
33. The Job
(HT: The Presurfer)
Made you look!