Sleep … is a standing affront to capitalism. That is the argument of Jonathan Crary’s provocative and fascinating essay, which takes “24/7” as a spectral umbrella term for round-the-clock consumption and production in today’s world. The human power nap is a macho response to what Crary notes is the alarming shrinkage of sleep in modernity. “The average North American adult now sleeps approximately six and a half hours a night,” he observes, which is “an erosion from eight hours a generation ago” and “ten hours in the early 20th century”.
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Despite … rhetorical surfeit, Crary’s book is, on the whole, a humane and bracingly splenetic counterblast, with a lot of interesting micro-theses along the way….
(Steven Poole in the New Statesman, reviewing “24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep.” H/T Arts & Letters Daily.)
“The art of the church is theology for the masses.” (Fuller Theological Seminary’s Todd Johnson to his New York City Immersion class.) Fuller is rooted in Evangelicalism.
Venerating icons, having them in churches and homes, is what the Church teaches. They are “open books to remind us of God.” Those who lack the time or learning to study theology need only to enter a church to see the mysteries of the Christian religion unfolded before them.
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Icons are necessary and essential because they protect the full and proper doctrine of the Incarnation. While God cannot be represented in His eternal nature (“…no man has seen God”, John 1:18), He can be depicted simply because He “became human and took flesh.” Of Him who took a material body, material images can be made. In so taking a material body, God proved that matter can be redeemed. He deified matter, making it spirit-bearing, and so if flesh can be a medium for the Spirit, so can wood or paint, although in a different fashion.
I do not worship matter, but the Creator of matter, who for my sake became material and deigned to dwell in matter, who through matter effected my salvation… —St. John of Damascus
(Orthodoxwiki on the decisions of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, which anathematized the iconoclasts).
This lawsuit story‘s so good I don’t want to risk letting Snopes ruin it:
The plaintiff, Chris Sevier, is an attorney in Nashville. A news report of his arrest last month on unrelated charges of stalking country music star John Rich (the guy whose obnoxious song mars my weekly viewing of College GameDay) states that Sevier’s 36, though his Model Mayhem bio says he’s 26. For someone mad about porn on the Internet, he’s already adopted its first cardinal rule: models always lie about their age.
Sevier’s complaint makes a simple request: Apple should sell all products with an installed filter blocking all Internet porn.
How could Sevier have known that typing “fuckbook.com” instead of “facebook.com” could take him to usavory sites? Apple’s Safari web browser should have blocked it! And Apple also unfairly competed with his wife and interfered with the marital contact:
The Plaintiff became totally out of synch in his romantic relationship with his wife, which was a consequence of his use of his Apple product. The Plaintiff began desiring, younger more beautiful girls featured in porn videos than his wife, who was no longer 21.
I have seen complaints this bad. Maybe that’s why I avoid litigation now.
Presumably, Vanderbilt Law won’t be giving him an Alumnus of the Year award.
(H/T iPhoneJD)
President Obama’s Friday comments on the Zimmerman/Martin affair may have been his finest moment. I assume that the right blogosphere will be teeming with people twisting his words and advancing tendentious paraphrases, so I want to get this said and scheduled for posting before I’m tempted to pull back on anything.
I’ve always appreciated – despite his radical voting record in Illinois and in the U.S. Senate on issues dear to me, despite his cribbed and statist views on religious freedom, despite his monomaniacal focus on making a health care omelette (and damn the eggs that need to be broken) – the symbolic importance of an African-American President. It’s hard to overestimate the importance of that. Yet I can understand how African-Americans might have been (indeed, reportedly have been) disappointed that Obama has done so little for causes dear to them.
Friday, he did something of potentially great importance, and he did it without resorting the Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton style grievance-mongering. He made it personal. He kept it factual. He asked good questions, and then didn’t answer himself. He put to use again, as in the past, his ability to articulate views – even views he rejects – better than most of their own proponents.
There’s some considerable comfort in feeling that one has “been heard” even if one loses the debate in the end; indeed, that’s an important basis of orderly rules for democratic decision-making: let the deliberate majority have its way, but let the determined minority force the majority to listen to them and truly deliberate. Obama again demonstrated his ability and willingness to hear America, if only on this one important meta-political issue.
Really: it’s no reason to convict Zimmerman that a jury might have convicted Martin had the roles been reversed. The President didn’t say it was. But he asked us to imagine the outcome if the roles had been reversed.
Could Trayvon have followed Zimmerman because he thought he looked suspicious? If Zimmerman had turned to confront him, or even have thrown a punch and followed it with an astraddle pummeling, could Martin have defended himself with lethal gunfire and gotten an acquittal? Would prosecutors have hesitated to charge him as long as they hesitated to charge Zimmerman?
Are some men more equal than others when it comes to “standing their ground”? Is this extension of the self-defense concept misguided – a lapse into utopian libertarian reveries?
These are serious, non-inflammatory questions. There may be good reason to answer them other than as the President might prefer. But you’re going to have to persuade me that he did a bad, rather than a healing, thing by asking them.
Today’s the commemoration of the Holy Glorious Prophet Elijah. We local Orthodoxen will do a liturgy and then Father Gregory will bless our chariots.
It ain’t a St. Christopher medal, but I’m a lot less inclined to mock St. Christopher medals these days.
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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 