Two Thoughts

While in Chicago this weekend, I realized two new things:

1. We often talk about how stereotypes can damage or harm a person's ability or potential, but the reverse of that happened to me: I was the nerd who was "supposed" to succeed. It's a very strange kind of privilege, because that sort of praise is also isolating, but I hadn't fully realized it until this weekend.
2. I think churches need to start to explicitly welcome "friends" in addition to "members." Spirituality is a difficult topic, but churches do far too many wonderful things that go beyond embracing a creed. Some of the most loving people I know aren't explicitly religious, though I think their love of fellow man makes them more Christian than others who wear their faith on their sleeve.

Confusing Me

Why is the SEC investigating JP Morgan Chase for losing a bunch of money? That happens sometimes; part of capitalism, right?

Why Google Isn’t Making Us Stupid…or Smart - Chad Wellmon

IASC: The Hedgehog Review - Volume 14, No. 1 (Spring 2012) - Why Google Isn’t Making Us Stupid…or Smart - Chad Wellmon: As historian Ann Blair has recently demonstrated, our contemporary worries about information overload resonate with historical complaints about “too many books.” Historical analogues afford us insight not only into the history of particular anxieties, but also into the ways humans have always been impacted by their own technologies. These complaints have their biblical antecedents: Ecclesiastes 12:12, “Of making books there is no end”; their classical ones: Seneca, “the abundance of books is a distraction”8; and their early modern ones: Leibniz, the “horrible mass of books keeps growing.”9 After the invention of the printing press around 1450 and the attendant drop in book prices, according to some estimates by as much as 80 percent, these complaints took on new meaning.

The Avengers: A Review

Robert Ebert ends his review of this movie as follows:

"The Avengers" is done well by Joss Whedon, with style and energy. It provides its fans with exactly what they desire. Whether it is exactly what they deserve is arguable.

In the immediate aftermath of watching the movie, with all of the amazement and awe at the sheer scale of it all, I wanted to throw this back into Ebert's face: "How dare you question this movie?" It's remarkable what Whedon did - he took a bunch of different characters and made them interact and fight in a way that cinematically gelled. The movie is full of moments - Hulk providing many - and will doubtlessly be remembered for many of them, from arcade games to the ship they were played on to an AMAZING tracking shot of the heroes united.

This movie could have been a massive screwup - the script might not have worked, and the was substantial opportunity to fail in a work that combined so many type-A characters and their A-list. (Joss Whedon apparently mollified Downey by following his suggestions and showing Downey that they wouldn't work.) It's not a screw-up; in fact it is an entirely solid and entertaining film, but in retrospect I miss a few things:

1. The music isn't memorable. See Iron Man got that right. What about musical motifs for each character?
2. All of the characters are basically invincible, espeically the two "normal" humans that never seem to be injured. There's no arc of "damage," possibly because all of the other films involve that.
3. I could have been more clever than a split up > ship> city structure.

One World Trade Center 2004-2012

Shepard Smith delivers again

The Maddow Blog - Romney takes credit for Obama policy he condemned

The Maddow Blog - Romney takes credit for Obama policy he condemned: Just at face value, it takes a fair amount of chutzpah to face a crisis, get it wrong, then whine about the way in which the other guy got it right. But it takes truck loads worth of chutzpah to condemn the other guy then take credit for his success.

George Hotz, Sony, and the Anonymous Hacker Wars : The New Yorker

George Hotz, Sony, and the Anonymous Hacker Wars : The New Yorker: A California district court granted Sony the restraining order against Hotz, preventing him from hacking and disseminating more details about its machines. It also approved a request by Sony to subpoena information from Twitter, Google, YouTube, and Bluehost, Hotz’s Internet provider, including the Internet Protocol addresses of anyone who downloaded the instructions from his site—a move that further incensed digital-rights advocates. Sony also gained access to records from Hotz’s PayPal account. In some circles, the rebel leader was becoming a martyr. As one fan of Hotz’s posted: “geohot = savior of mankind.”

The argument for college.

One argument about the usefulness of college is that studying history, racism, the US after 9/11, plants, chemistry, and so on gives us a strong basis as workers, as citizens, in a way that is "objectively" useful. But that seems to cheapen the other argument - that experiencing the liberal arts is, in itself, the good - the endpoint.

That we might have a collegiate experience that embraces the earth, sky, and the vast ranges of humanity between.

One of the strongest arguments against big government today is in articles like these

Medicaid hack update: 500,000 records and 280,000 SSNs stolen | ZDNet: The Utah Department of Health hack has grown once again, and the FBI is now involved. The latest total is 780,000 victims: 500,000 records and 280,000 Social Security numbers (SSNs) stolen.

A few things to be Thankful For, From Reddit

1. Within 30 seconds of where you are sitting right now, there's a sit-down toilet next to a tap that delivers clean, drinkable water and/or hot water suitable for showering. 
2. You've got a credit card in your pocket, and some cash. If you want more, there's an ATM where you work. You regularly come into contact with poor people, but no one so poor that they can't afford food, or are dying of an illness that is treatable through handwashing, mosquito nets or inexpensive medication. You almost never encounter a malnourished child.
3. Your family and friends are easy to reach and get in touch with. You have shared experiences with them and they understand your life and what you're going through.

Easter

Quoting Walter Russell Mead:

Christians, especially in countries like the United States where the ideal of religious liberty has been an important element of Christian teaching for centuries, believe that the rise of religious tolerance in the Christian world is one of the signs that Christianity is true: believers are becoming more like Christ in his infinite compassion and profound respect and love of every human soul despite error and sin. Moreover they see the spread of tolerance and the repudiation of false ideals like “holy wars” (such as the Crusades, fought not only against Muslims but against heretics inside the Christian world) as signs that God is working in human history to bring us to a greater light and deeper understanding.

For many Muslims, however, the rise of tolerance in Christianity looks less like maturity and self confidence than like the senescence of a religion in decline. Christianity, these critics say, is losing its hold on the western mind. The rise in religious tolerance is the result of necessity — the churches are weak, the believers indifferent, and so Christians no longer have the inner conviction to stand up for their faith. Just as Christian countries tolerate a range of vices and practices that in the past, when their faith was stronger, they opposed (homosexuality, abortion, sexual immorality of all kinds, blasphemy and obscenity), so now they also don’t care very much about what religion people profess because their own faith doesn’t mean all that much to the shrinking minority that still has one.

The link has a lot more interesting content about the macro-relationship of Christianity and Islam, but on this Easter Sunday, I'm glad to have a faith that is, at its core, about hope, resurrection, and other evidences of things not seen.