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"Some part of all of us wants to be credited and enjoys the acclaim. And a big part of all of us likes getting answers. But we now live in a world where counter-intuitive bullshitting is valorized, where the pose of argument is more important than the actual pursuit of truth, where clever answers take precedence over profound questions. We have no patience for mystery. We want the deciphering of gods. We want oracles. And we want all of it right now."
Ta-Nehisi Coates on journalism, Jonah Lehrer, and the truth. (via theatlantic)
(via theatlantic)
"Children have no real sense of how life can flip. School perpetrates an illusion of stasis. If you are 15, and mostly hating the social world of your high school, it is incredibly easily to conclude that your life will always be that way. Childhood is so closed-off and institutionalized. It is a prison. Self-esteem, in the main, comes from three places—school, sports, and the opposite sex. If you fail at those things you are likely to have a harder time. Worse, it’s easy to conclude that this is your life, that whatever you’re experiencing is somehow a sign-posts for the rest of years. If that is the case, why not end it? The tragedy is that childhood—and specifically young adulthood—is such a slender, ridiculously small sliver, of the human lifespan. It’s sad to think of people who only get to see that."
Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Nerd Culture As Suicide Intervention” (via theatlantic)
(Source: Spotify)
The Classical Kegerator: Pairing Beer With Music
NPR: As I paired a flight of wines with a menu of wonderful music a few months ago, I thought that we’d take the same tack with beer: pick a program of fabulous music and find the perfect accompanying brew. With bottles in hand and iPod on full blast, I set out to find suitable matches. (Tough job, I know.) Aaron Sherman is the sommelier at NoMI Kitchen at the Park Hyatt Chicago, a 2012 Wine Spectator restaurant award winner. As a percussionist, he has played with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Lyric Opera of Chicago. (via NPR)
Notes on Dialogue by Stringfellow Barr
Were we to apply the ten rules of thumb sketched above, we would certainly produce many of those brief interludes of bedlam when dialectical collisions occur, even though these moments of vocal static would decrease in length and in number as we gained practice with free dialectic. Such static is not dialogue’s worst problem. Plato and Shakespeare both speak of the mind’s eye, that eye that alone sees intellectual light. I suggest there is a mind’s ear too, a listening, mindful ear. I suggest that the chief reason that conversations deteriorate is that the mind’s ear fails.
"Maybe the internet has made all of us think our little lives, all listless and uncertain, are fascinating and worth attention and praise. And maybe it’s convinced us that, despite all our storybook flailing and I’m-such-a-fabulous-mess-ing, we secretly do have things pretty well covered. Because a small corner of the internet has told us we do"
Richard Lawson, The Shrinking Boundaries of Being a (Certain Kind of) Twentysomething (via theatlantic)
(via theatlantic)
![theatlantic:
Happy Birthday, Aldous Huxley: A Rare, Prophetic 1958 Interview
It’s extremely important, here and now, to start thinking about these problems—not to let ourselves be taken by surprise by the new advances of technology.
[…]
We can foresee, and we can do a great deal to forestall. After all, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
Read more. This post can also be seen on Brain Pickings, an Atlantic partner site.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7s0ks15xO1qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
Happy Birthday, Aldous Huxley: A Rare, Prophetic 1958 Interview
It’s extremely important, here and now, to start thinking about these problems—not to let ourselves be taken by surprise by the new advances of technology.
[…]
We can foresee, and we can do a great deal to forestall. After all, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
Read more. This post can also be seen on Brain Pickings, an Atlantic partner site.
Jacob van Loon, Flora and Fauna, 2011 | On tumblr
What Do We Mean By "Evil"?
What does it mean, in the twenty-first century, to call a person like James Holmes “evil”? In centuries past, “evil” was used to describe all manner of ills, from natural disasters to the impulse to do wrong. Today it’s used mostly to emphasize the gravity of a crime, trading on the term’s aura of religious finality. The meaning of “evil” has become increasingly unsettled even as it has narrowed, yet the word has proven to be an unshakable unit in our moral lexicon. Why does “evil” persist? What Do We Mean By “Evil”?: http://nyr.kr/QjHNeK
Francisco de Zurbarán, The Lamb of God, c. 1635-40
From the Museo del Prado:
This votive image was wide-spread in seventeenth-century Spain. It represents an Agnus Dei or “Lamb of God,” in allusion to Christ’s sacrificial death to save humanity. The straightforward composition consists exclusively of an image of the young animal with its legs bound, lying on a windowsill and brightly light by a single light source.
