Month: October 2011

R. J. Stove explains why he converted to Catholicism:

We Catholics repeatedly make a very stupid error when we try to play the Pentecostal holy-rollers' game. The demagogic televangelist will always do that sort of thing better than we can. Shrieking rapture is not our religion's chief didactic glory. As to what is, [Evelyn] Waugh admirably phrased the matter in his life of Campion: "the [Catholic] faith is absolutely satisfactory to the mind, enlisting all knowledge and all reason in its cause…it is completely compelling to any who give it an 'indifferent and quiet audience'." 

"Aristotle" by Billy Collins:

This is the beginning. 
Almost anything can happen. 
This is where you find 
the creation of light, a fish wriggling onto land, 
the first word of Paradise Lost on an empty page. 
Think of an egg, the letter A, 
a woman ironing on a bare stage as the heavy curtain rises. 
This is the very beginning. 
The first-person narrator introduces himself, 
tells us about his lineage. 
The mezzo-soprano stands in the wings. 
Here the climbers are studying a map 
or pulling on their long woolen socks. 
This is early on, years before the Ark, dawn. 

Continued here. 

(Photo by Duncan Rawlinson)

Jordan Smith crowns him the Zelig of theologians, for being coopted by both conservatives and liberals:

In his magnum opus, The Nature and Destiny of Man (1941), Niebuhr wrote that the Christian is "'both sinner and righteous' … Christ is what we ought to be and also what we cannot be." A wise man recognizes "that the power of God is in us and the power of God is against us in judgement and mercy." If this sounds paradoxical, that was the point. He had the sermonizer's appreciation of the power of contradictions to heighten moral awareness.

Jackson Lears expands on those inherent contradictions:

As [Sidney Hook] observed with grudging admiration: "There must be something extremely paradoxical in the thought of Reinhold Niebuhr to make so many who are so far apart in their allegiances feel so akin to him." Niebuhr would have loved the characterization: "paradox" was one of his favorite words. How could it not be, for a Protestant intellectual who embraced the contradictions of his beliefs—losing all to gain all, cultivating doubt to deepen faith? 

Meghan Clark connects Niebuhr's writings to our conceptions about wealth and holiness today. And Joseph A. Komonchak contrasts the theologian with John Courtney Murray.

Tracy Clark-Flory investigates the romantic rumors around OWS:

It’s easy to see how reports of drugs, public sex and other licentiousness could take off at an overnight camp site. But while some on the right have seized on such stories to dismiss the movement as one big public orgy, the truth is that those like Alexander — who boasts of fooling around with "a chick" under a tarp just feet from a police officer — are easy to find but not the norm.

Not even among the hardcore protesters who camp out every night. "Sex doesn’t happen here," says John, a 22-year-old college graduate from Virginia Beach who has slept in the square for a couple of days now. "There are a lot of people in a very tight space. It’d be really hard to do." A handful of other protesters in their 20s tell me that they haven’t seen any of the apparently apocryphal "lawn sex" or condoms littering the ground. Indeed, Zuccotti Park is by far the cleanest sliver of the city that I’ve seen.

(Video via LAist)

Lucy Moore explains a little-known BDSM activity called "electrostimulation":

The practice, igniting sexual encounters since (purportedly!) the 1740s, involves stimulation of genital and/or erogenous zones through electrical currents produced by TENS, EMS, Violet Wands, or other control pad devices that administer power through bodily nerves. While some call it simply an expensive hobby–with beginner kits starting at about $300–many swear by the adrenaline rush ignited by using electricity in the bedroom and the deep throbbing waves that coarse through one's genitals. Through pads, tubes and other attachments that connect to one's body (only below the waist!), electrical currents stimulate nerves usually only slightly aroused during intercourse. When used properly, this results in high levels of pleasure, increased ejaculation (male and female), and heightened orgasm.

On dudes with low libidos:

As long as we believe that male sexual desire is invariably voracious, those who buy into that myth will assume that a man with low sex drive for a female partner must be attracted to men. That’s much easier to comprehend than a genuinely modest libido. And while there may still be plenty of closeted gay men trying to fake it through a heterosexual relationship, there are a lot more men who know that they’re straight—but who, for any number of permanent or temporary reasons, just aren’t as interested in sex as their female partners. To insinuate that these guys are gay leaves no room for the idea that straight men (like everyone else) are found at every point on the "horniness spectrum," running from omnipresent lust to near asexuality.

Previous coverage of asexuality here and here.

(Photo from the new tumblr "Women Looking Dissatisfied In Bed")

Explained by the DC market.

With 300 detectable chemical compounds, the liquor is more complex than human blood:

Tannin, which makes tea brown, gives whisky its golden glow. Oak lactones also mingle in, giving a hint of sweet coconut. The carbon lining of charred whisky helps to release vanillin from the oak. The active carbon filters out undesirable substances like sulphur that cause an eggy taste. Gaps and pores in the cask’s wood let in air. Gently, gently, this air oxidises the alcohols, breathing new life into the spirit. 

"Mourir de ne pas mourir" (“Dying Of Not Dying”) by Paul Éluard:

Because I love you, everything moves
We must advance to live 
Aim straight ahead toward those you love

I went toward you, endlessly toward the light
If you smile, it enfolds me all the better

Continued here. Xeni Jardin on why she loves the above passage:

They express for me, better than my own words can, what it means to submit to the vulnerability that love requires. They capture what it means to accept that control and order are illusion, never mind what technology promises; chaos and chance are the magic in intimacy.

(Image by Neil Craver from the Underwater Nude rock quarry series)

According to an unparalleled new study on the personality types of donors:

[It] indicates that the sperm donors described themselves as being less worried, uncertain, shy and less subject to fatigue. Furthermore, we also found significant differences on the character dimensions, where the sperm donors showed higher means on self-directedness. This indicates that they perceived themselves as more autonomous individuals, with a capacity for responsibility, as behaving in a more goal-directed manner, and to be more resourceful and self-acceptant than the comparison group.

Vaughan Bell chuckles:

I suspect, however, that ‘not easily fatigued’ may be a selection bias due to the demands of the job.