The earth spins on and on and so much news is bad

• Jayson D. Bradley offers up his list of “5 Christian Books I Wish I’d Never Read.” It’s a good list — by which I mean, of course, it’s a terrible list. I commend Bradley for posting this. I started to try posting a similar list back in 2003, but it took me six years just to get through commenting on the first book.

Semi-related: “It’s a secret that, against all odds, stays a secret.”

• “When graphic design goes terribly wrong.”

• And speaking of mustard seeds … An hour well-spent and my yard is now free of all visible Alliaria petiola. Wikipedia tells me that garlic mustard has a long history as a culinary herb in Europe. Here in North America, it has a long history of being an invasive weed that chokes out native plants. It’ll be back, and I’ll be here, waiting.

• Dzokhar Tsarnaev was found guilty of all 30 counts against him and a Boston jury is now deciding his sentence — either execution or life in prison without the possibility of parole. Scott Lemieux reminds us that at the time of Tsarnaev’s arrest, many leading Republicans in Congress argued that America’s justice system was not capable of handling this case. They didn’t want this trial in an American courtroom, but wanted Tsarnaev designated and “enemy combatant” and shipped off to the lawless offshore world of Gitmo.

They were wrong.

• Atrios expresses some thoughtful ambivalence about residency requirements for civil service jobs. Rather than a residency requirement, how about a residency bump in pay? If employers want their employees to live in the community, then they should pay more for that. How much more? Well, that’s what markets are for, right?

• Chaplain Mike of Internet Monk is blogging his way through John Walton’s The Lost World of Adam and Eve. It’s interesting, but frustrating. Walton seems to take a clear-eyed look at the evidence, and then to flinch at the last moment in what seems like an attempt to cling to his Evangelical Tribal Identity card. Here’s CM’s summary:

Here are the next propositions John Walton makes regarding Adam and Eve and the account of Genesis 2-3:

• The second creation account can be viewed as a sequel to the creation account in Genesis 1 (not a recapitulation of the sixth day).
• “Forming from dust” and “building from rib” are archetypical claims and not claims of material origins.
• Forming of humans in ANE literature is archetypical, so it would not be unusual for Israelites to think that way.
• The New Testament is more interested in Adam and Eve as archetypes than as biological progrenitors.
• Though Adam and Eve are archetypal, they are nonetheless real people who lived in a real past.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, and hunh? No. Everything about the text is archetypal and that’s where everything points, but at the last second, Walton seems to veer off to a conclusion that seems uncalled for. How does that Upton Sinclair quote go again? Something like: “It is difficult to get an evangelical scholar to admit something when his career depends upon his not admitting it.”