• If you have to run a four-paragraph correction that explains that all the key facts of the original article were wrong, proving the opposite of its entire argument, then you probably shouldn’t be running a correction. You should retract the original story and run an apology.
• Richard Beck: “Jesus: In Microcosm.” It’s very short, but irreducible, so go read the whole thing.
• A lovely piece of news that’s guaranteed to pucker all the right sphincters: Sen.-Elect Elizabeth Warren will serve on the Banking Committee.
• When avoiding “internal and external disruption of the Hospital’s function and business within this community” is a euphemism for “caving in to terroristic threats.”
Oh, and remember, those threats of disruption, harassment and violence come from devoutly religious folk insisting that they possess the moral high ground.
• Mark Evanier has a post about Danny Kaye that ends with a video of his duet with Louis Armstrong on “When the Saints Go Marching In.” … I said there’s a video of Danny Kaye and Louis Armstrong singing a duet of “When the Saints Go Marching In,” why are you still here?
• Here’s a depressing bit of news from Merriam-Webster: “Socialism and capitalism were the most looked-up words on the Merriam-Webster website this past US election year, the publishers of the authoritative dictionary of American English said Wednesday.”
Why is this depressing? Because it probably indicates that lots of people are writing arguments that somewhere include the phrase: “According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, X is defined as …”
Don’t do this. Don’t use dictionary definitions as clobber-verses.
• The Iranian government does its best to create a creepy theocratic cocoon, but it always seems one step behind the American evangelical subculture. Just this month, Tehran has announced it will launch it’s own, cloistered version of YouTube.
Evangelicals got there first. Here’s GodTube, the “Christian alternative to YouTube.” And ere are Xt3, Faith Freaks, Dust Off the Bible, and Shoutlife — just a few of the social network sites that bill themselves as the “Christian alternative to Facebook.”
• The “Greek” system at American universities — fraternities and sororities — still seems to me to be a desperate effort to retain the social structure of high school for people who are no longer in high school. It thus tends to include a disproportionate number of people who liked the social structure of high school. And that contributes to things like this.
• They Are Coming for Your Birth Control. Yes, they really are.
• Yes, Buzzfeed just posts photo collections like this as linkbait. I’m OK with that in this case: “26 Moments That Restored Our Faith in Humanity This Year.”
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