№ 427. The Art of Stringing Facts

"We all have one life, but books make that life richer by letting us experience the lives of others - real or imagined.... Lists are often boring, but stories strings facts together with an underlying logic that makes them both interesting and memorable.... I appreciate the logic that makes for a great scientific idea, as well as the art of thought that produces a great story.... Book makes the one life we live that much richer. Life isn't always beautiful and enjoyable, but good writing always is." --- Lisa Randall, theoretical physicist and writer.

№ 426. Id & Ego

Trump is Calvin

"One might compare the relation of the ego to the id with that between a rider and his horse. The horse provides the locomotor energy, and the rider has the prerogative of determining the goal and of guiding the movements of his powerful mount towards it. But all too often in the relations between the ego and the id we find a picture of the less ideal situation in which the rider is obliged to guide his horse in the direction in which it itself wants to go." --- Sigmund Freud

№ 425. The Social Media Coliseum

The philosophers Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke have proposed the useful phrase moral grandstanding to describe what happens when people use moral talk to enhance their prestige in a public forum. Like a succession of orators speaking to a skeptical audience, each person strives to outdo previous speakers, leading to some common patterns. Grandstanders tend to “trump up moral charges, pile on in cases of public shaming, announce that anyone who disagrees with them is obviously wrong, or exaggerate emotional displays.” Nuance and truth are casualties in this competition to gain the approval of the audience. Grandstanders scrutinize every word spoken by their opponents—and sometimes even their friends—for the potential to evoke public outrage. Context collapses. The speaker’s intent is ignored.

Christoph Niemann

№ 424. The Crown

What, exactly, is the point of the royal family? Why, in a time of boisterous populism and expanding social consciousness, do the British continue to tolerate this emblem of entitlement and reaction? No one seems to know the answer, least of all the royals themselves, and herein lies the fundamental irony of Morgan’s show, which returns Nov. 17 for a third season. Constitutionally, the role of the monarch is to keep his or her mouth shut, to abjure what Elizabeth, in “The Queen,” calls “the sheer joy of being partial.” This sphinxlike silence is, in turn, conducive to a second, more intangible function: to serve as a conduit for mass emotion, a projection screen for national yearning or catharsis. In other words, the royals are celebrities. For about a thousand years, they were the only celebrities. As that began to change, around the midpoint of the last century, the House of Windsor found itself fumbling for a fresh raison d’être.

№ 423. Gander

Gander’s population may have been small, but the town was also immensely hospitable. To say the locals bent over backwards to accommodate their unexpected guests would be a gross understatement. When flyers stepped off of their planes, Gander’s citizens met them with homemade bagged lunches. The town converted its schools and large buildings into temporary shelters, and when those lodgings filled up, citizens took strangers into their own homes. Medical personnel saw patients and filled prescriptions free of charge.

Meg's Blog

№ 422. Tokyo 東京 Through Square Lenses 2

№ 421. Tokyo 東京 Through Square Lenses

№ 420. Climate Change

Climate change is not a belief system.

We know that the earth’s climate is changing thanks to observations, facts and data that we can see with our eyes and test with the sound minds that God has given us.

And still more fundamentally, here's why it matters: because real people are being affected today; and as Christians we believe that God’s love has been poured in our hearts to share with our brothers and sisters here and around the world who are suffering.

Caring about this planet and every living thing on it is not somehow antithetical to who we are as Christians, but rather central to it.

Being concerned about climate change is a genuine expression of our faith, bringing our attitudes and actions more closely into line with who we already are and what we most want to be.

And not only that; if we truly believe we’ve been given responsibility for every living thing on this planet (including each other) as it says in Genesis 1, then it isn’t only a matter of caring: we should be at the front of the line demanding action.