Metacentricities

I keep wishing my brain had a tape recorder. I’ve overheard some amazing and funny things over the lunch and dinner tables over the past month. I can’t remember 99%, but here are some of the 1% that stuck. (These quotes are probably not exact.)

In response to the question "where do you want to live?" "I don’t care, I just need a church that will hire me." … "They said they’d reconstruct our faith once they were finished desconstructing it! (in a plaintive voice)" … "He said: you need to flog the flock." … "I mean, I think it’s a really great thing to know that my congregation can fire me!" … Question: "There must be Cliff Notes for the Bible? Right?" Response "There is the Bible for Dummies - really!" …  "I think we need t-shirts printed. PSR: gayest seminary ever"

I’m taking Cindy’s advice.

Sorry, but I really don’t want to be depressed alone. There’s a new study out, showing something that has been predicted, but not proven before: the Gulf Stream, that wonderful warming ocean current that keeps Britain, Northern Europe and Northeastern North America relatively warm and comfy, is slowing down. A cessation of that current could be disastrous.

Thanks, Fazia

I came across a site called NetDisaster. It’s virtual destruction of web sites, in some very funny ways. Like, for instance, a chainsaw, paintball gun:

Or, perhaps, my favorite, the hand of God!

But what got me to this originally, was the following:

This is what is distracting me from Art and Religion!

It’s a long one, but it’s worth it. Got it from Street Prophets. A snippet:

"And therein is the paradox. America is simultaneously the most professedly Christian of the developed nations and the least Christian in its behavior. That paradox—more important, perhaps, than the much touted ability of French women to stay thin on a diet of chocolate and cheese—illuminates the hollow at the core of our boastful, careening culture."

Need I say more? If you want to read more, check out this entry on the Weather Channel’s blog.

Remember the recent post about polar ice? Well, how about this:

The slow expansion of the tundra’s snow-free season by about 2.5 days per decade since the 1960s explains 95 percent of the recent rise in [arctic] summer temperatures, and is far more influential than changes in vegetation, sea ice, atmospheric circulation or clouds, according to a report published this week in Science Express.

…

"We argue that recent changes in the length of the snow-free season have triggered a set of interlinked feedbacks that will amplify future rates of summer warming," the authors wrote.

(Reminder - arctic temperatures are critical to global climate because the tundra.) Read the whole article. Positive feedback loops are exactly what you don’t want in this situation - you’d hope that there might be some ways that would lessen the impact of human-produced global warming on the environment, but it looks like we’re getting all sorts of positive feedback loops, which makes what we are doing much worse.

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life,” he said.

“Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

This was in an article about Apple.

This is an amazing story, from a new blog that is quickly becoming my favorite, called Street Prophets. Street Prophets is a Daily Kos community, that is focused around religion and politics. This story is a report from someone who has been spending time in New Orleans for the past few weeks. Worth a read.

… to a Ph.D. in neuroscience than a B- in a paper for Art and Religion. The major criticism of the TA, which I imagine is completely valid, is "you need to work on drawing conclusions and interacting with the existing scholarship." You might imagine that that comment made me kinda chuckle.

My next paper is going to be on a work (Number 207 - Red over Dark Blue on Dark Grey) by basically my favorite artist of all time, Mark Rothko. I think this might be a good thing. The good news is that the scholarship this time is not specific to Rothko, which is helpful. So I might do better this time - I can draw on my own knowledge and experience of Rothko’s work, and not have it affected by other people’s notions of what the work means.

I think that although I may learn about art criticism in this class, I do think I’m learning a fair bit about myself in the process. I find my very deep aversion to intellectualizing art kinda fascinating, because what’s generally true in my life is that I’ve had a tendency to over-intellectualize things. In my bible class, we’re doing a lot of archeology, as well as history. It’s so much fun to think about, for instance, the evidence present for estimating the population of an area of settlement, and how you make decisions about population density, etc. from the remains of settlements that are 4000 years old. Drawing conclusions, and interacting with scholarship was my bread and butter for years, and yet when it comes to art, I just can’t seem to go there.

I just want to sit, experience the art, perhaps, if I’m in the mood, say a few words to a friend who has shared the experience, then move on. But I guess part of the seminary experience is pushing myself to do things I’ve not done before. That part was expected, but I didn’t expect this particular boundary to be pushed.

Or maybe he’s just dumb. He gets my "people who are out of their minds" award for the week. There are all sorts of reasons to give him this award, but for this week, it is that he sold all of the stock in a hospital company that his family owned 2 weeks before a disappointing earnings report caused the stock to drop 15%. And this guy actually thinks he has a chance at the presidency?

Martha Stewart is probably having fun watching him squirm.

One cool thing - I discovered this new feature of the Washington Post website - it has a list of all the blogs talking about a particular article. I think this suggests that the Post knows people read blogs, and their influence, which is pretty cool.