I have never done one of these. I routinely share about dozen links a week from my Google Reader account, but I thought I’d see if a link post is A. helpful and B. easy. So here’s some of the best short pieces I’ve seen recently, mostly about (social) media and society:
Why the revolution will not be tweeted: Malcolm Gladwell compares social media’s potential for real social change to the American Civil Rights Movement, NAACP, and the black church. Guess who wins.
According to Metacritic, The Social Network is already one of the highest rated films of the decade. So what? Well, Wikipedia leads us to at least one technological idealist/imperialist that labels it the anti-geek movie. Unfortunately, Jeff Jarvis fails to recognize the ontological/political differences between Web 2.0 and the Internet. (More on this later.)
The Last Psychiatrist ‘reviews’ Catfish and the ideas of online privacy and identity. Quote:
The agreement we’ve all accepted, it is there in your ISP contract, is that we are willing to trade exhibitionism/voyeurism for greater respect in real life. Or, less privacy online for more privacy offline. …
Nev breaks the deal. You can’t fault him for googling and investigating, but he’s not permitted to go to her house. That’s the deal. …
Only — and I can’t believe I’m about to say this — a male dominated, female-as-commodity narcissistic perspective would think that the moral of [Catfish] is that a man might get fooled. The real moral is that some men will drive 300 miles just on the chance that you are hot. Imagine how far they’ll go to kill you.
A new blog chronicles horrible accounts of sexism in Philosophy departments. I’m afraid to think what an equivalent for theology would look like.
Along with linking the above, Adam Kotsko advocates the abolition of undergraduate minors, and perhaps even majors. I concur.
At The Other Journal, Jamie Smith skewers poser Brett McCracken and his critique of ‘Hipster’ Christianity, and KJ Swanson continues her confrontation with the Evangelical embrace of Twilight.
Reactions to the Pew Forum’s Religious ‘Knowledge’ Survey abound, including from Ryan Dueck, Martin Marty, and The Immanent Frame.
Multiculturalism: it doesn’t work, at least as long as it ignores identity; it works, at least in Quebec; it has something to do with Zizek, I am Legend, and Stephen Colbert.
Also from Canada: a hard-hitting yet heartfelt defence of Insite, a supervised injection site in Vancouver.
Finally, The Onion presents arguments for and against teaching both sides of the end-times debate: Biblical Armageddon and Global Warming. Who says modernity lacks an eschatology?
