Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 2624

Virtual Guest

by Zoe Pollock

Are live video feeds the wave of the future for weddings? Miriam Kotzin of the Smart Set watches happily from the sidelines:

I watched friends and relatives greet the jovial groom, who looked notone whit nervous, and now the wedding procession was starting. And thenthe procession was over, and the ceremony began. The groom was beaming,the bride radiant.

Each close-up of the bride and groom as well as the soundtrack's fadingout during the address mimicked the shifting attention I w...

The Age Of Paine

by Zoe Pollock

Commonweal's Cathleen Kaveny tracks early American snark. Here's John Adams' comment on the title of Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason:

I am willing you should call this the Age of Frivolity, asyou do, and would not object if you had named it the Age of Folly, Vice,Frenzy, Brutality, Daemons, Bonaparte, Tom Paine, or the Age of the BurningBrand from the Bottomless Pit, or anything but the Age of Reason. I know notwhether any man in the world has had more influence on its...

The Value Of Truth

by Zoe Pollock

Bill Vallicella takes a closer look at the philosophy of Hitch:

What would Hitch lose by believing?  Of course, he can't bring himself to believe, it is not a Jamesian live option, but suppose he could.  Would he lose 'the truth'?  But nobody knows what the truth is about death and the hereafter.  People only think they do. Well, suppose 'the truth' is that we are nothing but complex physical systems slated for annihilation.  Why would knowing this 'truth' be a value?  Even if...

Infinite Imagery

by Zoe Pollock

Get ready to lose the next couple hours of your life. National Geographic has created a matrix of photos that only lead deeper into themselves and never end. 

(Photograph by Geo. W. Griffith, Library of Congress)

National Geographic Society - Library of Congress - National Geographic - Recreation - United States

Age Of Engagement

by Zoe Pollock

The Big Think hosts an interview with professor Matthew Nisbet, asking if atheists or believers are better bloggers:

In part the new atheist movement is almost a social movement within thelarger scientific community.  Many of the people that are attracted tonew atheist movement identify with science or are scientists themselvesand certainly scientists have been online for a long time.  In fact,many of the most prominent bloggers, new atheist bloggers, they cameabout… they came...

Mental Health Break

by Chris Bodenner

Nathan Miller took a trip:

Dear Japan from Matthew Brown on Vimeo.

Vimeo - Recreation - Travelogues - Travel - Personal

Intelligent Smattering

by Zoe Pollock

In honor of British literary critic Frank Kermode who died this week, a classic quote from 2006:

One of the great benefits of seriously reading English is you're forced
to read a lot of other things. You may not have a very deep
acquaintance with Hegel but you need to know something about Hegel. Or
Hobbes, or Aristotle, or Roland Barthes. We're all smatterers in a way, I
suppose. But a certain amount of civilisation depends on intelligent
smattering.

Frank...

Can Church Be Hip?

by Chris Bodenner

Nicole Greenfield reviews Hipster Christianity:

For [author Brett:] McCracken, there are two types of hip churches, two types ofhipster Christians: the natural and the marketed, the authentic and thewannabe. Both Resurrection and its leader fall squarely into the formercategories. And after presenting a brief history of the evolution ofcool and proffering definitions of key terms—the hipster, for example,is defined in a remarkably vague way as "fashionable...

Your Brain on Sleep

by Zoe Pollock

The Oxford University Press blog continues to delve into sleep and the unconscious with Dr. Rosalind Cartwright who says:

The unconscious only comes up into the surface during our waking hours if we daydream and let our mind wander freely. In sleep the unconscious selects new experiences to save in memory, particularly new experiences that have an emotional charge. If you worked hard to learn something new you will remember it better after a period of sleep than if you stay...

A Poem For Sunday

By Zoe Pollock

Another from the wondrous Atlantic Archives, here's "I Am" by John Clare:

I am—yet what I am none cares or knows;
…My friends forsake me like a memory lost:—
I am the self-consumer of my woes;—
…They rise and vanish in oblivion's host,
Like shadows in love's frenzied stifled throes
And yet I am, and live—like vapours tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,—
…Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
…But the vast shipwreck of my life's...