Month: December 2011

That's what Maywa Montenegro and Terry Glavin label our loss of languages, species, and cultures:

Even before we’ve been able to take stock of the enormous diversity that today exists — from undescribed microbes to undocumented tongues — this epidemic carries away an entire human language every two weeks, destroys a domesticated food-crop variety every six hours, and kills off an entire species every few minutes. The fallout isn’t merely an assault to our aesthetic or even ethical values: As cultures and languages vanish, along with them go vast and ancient storehouses of accumulated knowledge. And as species disappear, along with them go not just valuable genetic resources, but critical links in complex ecological webs.

Sarah Posner highlights some of Newt's attempts to merge church and state. Along the same lines, here's an example of Newt's rhetoric from March of this year:

I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they’re my age they will bein in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.

Will Wilkinson dismantled some of Gingrich's common tropes this summer.

A fantastic cartoon from the Manchester Union-Leader about George Romney's bid for the 1968 New Hampshire primary:

"Teaching science without evolution is like teaching sentence structure without the alphabet," – Carin Bondar, one of many scientists explaining why evolution needs to be taught in public schools.

Dan Ariely enlisted a student to help him test what methods are most successful. They discovered standing up and engaging strangers with eye contact worked the best; then a pro showed them the ropes:

There was another beggar on the street – a professional beggar – who approached young Daniel and said, “Look kid, you don’t know what you’re doing. Let me teach you.” And so he did. This beggar took our concept of effort and human contact to the next level, walking right up to people and offering his hand up for them to shake. With this dramatic gesture, people had a very hard time refusing him or pretending that they did not seen him. Apparently, the social forces of a handshake are simply too strong and too deeply engrained to resist – and many people gave in and shook his hand. Of course, once they shook his hand, they would also look him in the eyes; the beggar succeeded at breaking the social barrier and was able to get many people to give him money.

"Lighthead's Guide to the Galaxy" by Terrance Hayes:

Ladies and gentlemen, ghosts and children of the state,
I am here because I could never get the hang of Time.
This hour, for example, would be like all the others
were it not for the rain falling through the roof.
I'd better not be too explicit. My night is careless
with itself, troublesome as a woman wearing no bra
in winter. I believe everything is a metaphor for sex.
Lovemaking mimics the act of departure, moonlight
drips from the leaves. You can spend your whole life
doing no more than preparing for life and thinking.
"Is this all there is?" Thus, I am here where poets come
to drink a dark strong poison with tiny shards of ice,
something to loosen my primate tongue and its syllables
of debris.

The poem continues, via TNC.

(Photo: "A fantastic jumble of young blue star clusters, gigantic glowing gas clouds, and imposing dark dust lanes surrounds the central region of the active galaxy Centaurus A. … Infrared images from the Hubble have also shown that hidden at the center of this activity are what seem to be disks of matter spiraling into a black hole with a billion times the mass of the Sun" via NASA)

A new study sheds light on the personality traits that make us more likely to say sorry:

The researchers were most surprised to find that a strong sense of justice was negatively correlated with a willingness to apologize, perhaps suggesting that contrition and an “eye for an eye” philosophy are incompatible. Reconciliation may end a conflict, but it cannot always settle a score.

Christopher Jobson:

Just spotted this wonderfully crafty stop motion piece from director Kevin Parry that follows the history of the world from the big bang through, well, I don’t want to ruin it. Lovely work.

Mark Twain's longevity advice on his 70th birthday, in 1905:

I have achieved my seventy years in the usual way: by sticking strictly to a scheme of life which would kill anybody else. It sounds like an exaggeration, but that is really the common rule for attaining to old age. When we examine the programme of any of these garrulous old people we always find that the habits which have preserved them would have decayed us; that the way of life which enabled them to live upon the property of their heirs so long, as Mr. Choate says, would have put us out of commission ahead of time. I will offer here, as a sound maxim, this: That we can’t reach old age by another man’s road.

(Hat tip: Maud Newton)

Dreher contemplates how aesthetics and ritual prepare one for encountering God:

If you read Bellah’s book, “Religion in Human Evolution,” you understand why ritual is more important than theology. No doubt that ritual completely disconnected from theology is empty. But humans never outgrow the deep need for ritual. It’s built into the biological fabric of our being. You mess with that, you’re messing with things you ought not touch.