Benjamin Sutton explains the meme's newest iteration:
The hysterical art historical abomination, as far as we can trace it back, was posted on Peruvian national Felipe Revueltas’s Facebook wall very early [Thursday morning]. It is, as yet, the best iteration of the Cecilia Gimenez restoration meme we’ve seen — although if someone were to photoshop a "restored" version of Manet’s "Le déjeuner sur l’herbe," we might change our minds.
More meme versions here.
Rose Wilder Lane, the daughter of Little House on the Prairie author Laura Ingalls Wilder and a best-selling writer herself, claimed to be a "fundamentalist American." Lane believed in "a frontier democracy—a Republic of the Fittest—with no handouts or entitlements, and minimal taxation." She came to these tenets after experiencing the ravages of the Great Depression, and such political sympathies brought her into contact with Ayn Rand. Judith Therman details the revealing correspondence between the two libertarian women:
Lane and Rand exchanged collegial letters for a while in the late nineteen-forties and early nineteen-fifties. But when Lane invoked the Biblical imperative to “love thy neighbor as thyself,” and protested that “without some form of mutual coöperation, it is literally impossible for one person on this planet to survive,” Rand “tore apart [her] logic” and denounced it as collectivist heresy. That sort of impulse, she concluded (to help your neighbor save his burning house, for example) led inexorably “to the New Deal.”
Reviewing David R. Montgomery's new book, The Rocks Don’t Lie:A Geologist Investigates Noah's Flood, Scott K. Johnson notes that creationism hasn't always held such sway:
Major figures in Christian history—including Origen, Clement, Augustine, Jerome, and Thomas Aquinas—considered literal readings of Genesis to be a sign that one was uneducated. Faced with evidence in nature that contradicted a certain reading of the Bible, all of them decided that the only sensible response was to adjust how they read the Bible. In their view, nature clearly showed the way things were, so any discrepancy had to lie with one’s understanding of scripture. It actually wasn’t until the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s that literalism became prominent.
The book doesn't hesitate to point out the "impossible wrongness of thinking a global flood is a plausible explanation for the complexities in Earth’s crust":
For example, the evaporite rocks of western Texas are so thick you’d have to evaporate a 450 mile deep ocean to precipitate them. At the maximum rate observed on the Earth, this would take at least 100,000 years.
(Lego Street Art In Warsaw, Poland via Street Art Utopia)
The Bible claims Jesus was a descendant of King David. Dr. Yan Wong shows that this is true ("all of Jesus's contemporaries" were as well), and repeats the geneological experiment for today's larger population:
How far do we have to go back to find the most recent common ancestor of all humans alive today? Again, estimates are remarkably short. Even taking account of distant isolation and local inbreeding, the quoted figures are 100 or so generations in the past: a mere 3,000 years ago. And one can, of course, project this model into the future, too. The maths tells us that in 3,000 years someone alive today will be the common ancestor of all humanity.
In a long, searching essay on altruism, William Flesch contends that living "in the shadow of our own mortality" is a neglected source of human cooperation. Our knowledge of suffering – our own and others – gives rise to kindness:
I think the fact that we know we're going to die is part of the structure of altruism. The desire to convince others to cooperate, and to empathize with cooperators, takes on its most urgent colors because we know, and expect them to know, that suffering is a standing possibility and inevitable eventuality for all human beings. When we look at humans we look at them as capable of suffering, and so we punish those who make them suffer needlessly, knowing too that in punishing we are ‘correcting’ by causing suffering. … “How can you put someone in danger, you who know what death is, you who know that you too are mortal?” might be the whisper behind all altruistic punishment. And also behind all “human love,” as W.H. Auden puts it: what it means to be human is to see others, and to know oneself as seen by them, as creatures who are at various times and according to various moods and situations, “mortal, guilty, but…entirely beautiful.”
Lahaina, Hawaii, 6 am
Stephen Covey, who died last month, was the author of the famed self-help book, The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People – and also a devout Mormon. Matthew Bowman explains their connection:
In Seven Habits, Covey took a particular point of Mormon doctrine and constructed a practical system to apply it. Covey’s PhD, after all, was granted from Brigham Young University in “religious education,” a subject particular to BYU that is closer to training in youth ministry – techniques of motivation, evangelism, and spiritual formation – than it is to religious studies. He was interested primarily in how Mormon doctrine might explain why people functioned as they did and as a method for how they might function better. It is no surprise, then, that Covey produced what we might call a management theology: Mormonism brought to bear on particular systems of human relationships, translated into the language of business consulting and self-help, two vernaculars endemic in late twentieth century America.
The foundation of Covey’s theology is the Mormon notion that God’s divine power derives from his understanding and manipulation of the natural laws that govern the universe, and that God has taken as his responsibility guiding and uplifting humanity toward the same capacity. As humans learn the moral and natural laws undergirding the universe, they progress in knowledge and capacity, and hence become eligible for greater divine light. The Doctrine and Covenants, a collection of Joseph Smith’s revelations, teaches that “Whatever principle of education we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the resurrection,” and further, “There is a law irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world upon which all blessings are predicated – and when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated.” (D&C 130:18-21). Seven Habits’ conception of success closely follows the Doctrine and Covenants here; it declares of the seven habits that “They represent the internalization of correct principles upon which enduring happiness and success are based.” That internalization “produces happiness, 'the object and design of our existence.’” (23, 48) Covey’s source for that last quotation is Joseph Smith Some of Covey’s habits, like the first (being “proactive”) reflect this sense of responsibility; as the Book of Mormon teaches, humans “have become free forever, knowing good from evil; to act for themselves and not to be acted upon.” (2 Nephi 2:26).
Steven Zeitchik examines the troubled life of the NC-17 rating, conceived in the late '80s to replace the X rating and "usher in an era of mainstream acceptance for films with serious adult themes." That didn't work out so well:
Now, even as basic cable is constantly pushing into ever-more steamy and violent territory and a wide variety of pornography is easily available on the Web, movie theaters are practically devoid of formally adults-only films. The number of movies released with the NC-17 rating has plummeted; those that do go out with that stamp do little business at the box office. The reasons are clear: Some theater chains, including Cinemark, the nation's third-largest circuit, won't play them. A number of media outlets, particularly newspapers and television stations in more conservative states, won't accept advertising for them. Wal-Mart and other retailers won't sell copies on DVD. Now at 22 years old — the same age as the X was when it was retired — the NC-17 is seen inside Hollywood and beyond as ineffective and broken. But no one can agree on how to fix it.
Another problem is the fickle nature of film ratings:
Though many moviegoers know, for instance, that multiple uses of the F-word can turn an otherwise PG-13 movie into an R film, the boundary between R and NC-17 is much less distinct. The MPAA says NC-17 ratings can be based on "violence, sex, aberrational behavior, drug abuse or any other element that most parents would consider too strong and therefore off-limits for viewing by their children." The group says an NC-17 "does not mean 'obscene' or 'pornographic' in the common or legal meaning of those words, and should not be construed as a negative judgment in any sense. The rating simply signals that the content is appropriate only for an adult audience." But many adults won't go to an NC-17 movie, convinced that they're going to watch smut.
(Hat tip: Ebert)
Judy Berman describes a cool new project:
What is the relationship between the real people who read fashion magazines and the images of model-perfection that pervade the publications’ ads? Even if we know that they represent something unattainable, it’s nearly impossible not to compare our own faces and bodies to their luxe, often romantic ideal. Photographers Dagmar Keller and Martin Wittwer dramatize this tension in a series called Knew Some of You Better Than Others, But I Miss You All, which we discovered via My Modern Met. In these self-portraits, Keller and Wittwer hold magazine closeups of models’ visages over their own faces, creating a striking contrast between real bodies and their digitally perfected counterparts.
(Photo by Keller and Wittwer)
The Dish 
