Jacob Bender's Blog, page 21

On BNY Mellon Profiteering From Environmental Disaster

So I recently saw this absolutely horrifying TV ad, one breath-taking in its cheerful cynicism and opportunism.  It involves an investment company (it doesn't matter which one) outlining how global warming's catastrophic effects on Peruvian anchovie populations will in turn set off a horrific chain reaction that will drive up food prices across the globe.  But this ad is no mere environmental alarmist warning!  Oh, if only--no, this ad instead happily explains how this particul...

3 Nephi 1:9-14 and A Very Merry Wrestle-With-God Christmas

9 Now it came to pass that there was a day set apart by the unbelievers, that all those who believed in those traditions should be put to death except the sign should come to pass, which had been given by Samuel the prophet.
11 And it came to pass that he went out and bowed himself down upon the earth, and cried mightily to his God in behalf of his p...

30: The Big Gear Shift

Normally the older folks I know just smile indulgently on youngins like myself who bemoan how old we're feelin'.  Shoot, my own Aunt once called my Dad a "child" cause he was "only" 60.  Age is all just a matter of perspective I guess.

Except with 30, I've realized.  I hit the big 3-0 myself earlier this year, and even now it still feels like a car that's leaking transmission fluid making a gear shift in cold weather--lurching, jolting, heart-attack inducing, and slow to settle...

On Cell-Phones: A Resolution for the Coming New Year

One of my growing pet peeves is when older folks complain about how "kids these days" are always fiddling on their smartphones, becoming anti-social and cutting themselves off from all the beauty of the world around them and etc. 

Look, here's the God's-honest-truth--it's not that kids are always on their phones, it's that they are always on their phones around you.  

Suddenly that re-frames the problem, doesn't it.

In my experience as both a teacher and a student, when kids are...

The Physicality of Native American and Mormon Religious Experience

Last summer, a Navajo student approached me after class to get an absence excused.  She had to run back down to the reservation in Arizona, she explained, for some sort of emergency cleansing ritual for a cousin, of which the entire extended family needed to be present.   The cousin had been haunted by dark dreams of late, but the kicker was when a snake slithered by her cousin one day and whipped her ankle with its tail--a super-bad omen, all the more ominous in its physicality. "I...

Thomas Bingley and the Mystery of Santa: The Best Christmas Ever!

(A brief Yuletide yarn I wrote a few years back, one demonstrating how sometimes the melting snow dribbling down your underwear can be the warmest of all.  Merry Christmas etc)

“Brothers! Sisters! Neighborhood friends!” began Thomas Bingley, “I have not called you forth this day to our secret tree house fortress, asking you to brave the cold and the snow, to trifle with words, taking time from your precious Christmas break and hot chocolate and snow men and snowballs—

“I saw you throw that...

Sufjan Stevens' Silver & Gold: This Christmas, Love Will Tear Us Apart Again!

Last year I set out on a quest to find Christmas music I don't hate, and succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.

I sought music that at once captured that seasonal sense of wonder and awe as only children seem to be able to experience anymore, while also critiquing the creeping mass of consumerism and self-righteousness that ruined it all in the first place.  For I'd grown weary of Bing Crosby and Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas covers; and my soul was oppressed by the likes of "The Forgott...

Things I Wrote That Got For Realsy Published!

And not even just my aforementioned amazon e-book (looking for the perfect Holiday gift?  Why not try Her Eyes Were In The Stars instead?  "I laughed! I cried! An instant classic!" -J. Bender).  Other people, actual strangers, decided to publish the following!

Here's a personal essay I wrote once discussing my experience with summer sales in context of Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which appeared in Sunstone just this last Spring:

https://www.suns...