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<\/a><\/p>\nBrad Wright<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cWith presidential elections coming up, we\u2019ll hear a lot more about every aspect of politics, including its link to religion\u2014especially Christianity.\u00a0 I would like to step back and ask a very simple question: Is it possible to derive a distinct political position or affiliation from the tenets of the Bible?\u00a0 My answer is \u201cprobably not.\u201d URL is digging into Joel Osteen\u2019s and Al Mohler\u2019s statements about attending a gay\/lesbian wedding<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n Go Philippa Fawcett<\/strong><\/a>!<\/p>\n I really like this post by Fr Rob<\/strong><\/a>. Mark Noll remembers Art Holmes<\/strong><\/a>. As a college student my philosophy professor, Ron Mayers, took a group to Wheaton\u2019s philosophy conference and it was there that I first heard Art Holmes and I became a reader of his stuff on educational theory. (Speaking of Wheaton folks, there\u2019s a new blog by some Wheaton students called, well, Wheaton Blog<\/strong><\/a>.)<\/p>\n Christine Scheller on Obama and black unemployment<\/strong><\/a>. Karen has some Q&A with a Mormon<\/strong><\/a>, and it\u2019s worth your read. Music and sounds and the brain and health<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n Two singles, platonic relationship, by Enuma Okoro<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cDesire is beautiful. No denying we are sexual beings, and intellectual and emotional attraction can easily lead to sexual attraction between friends. But being single and feeling something toward someone else who happens to be single does not mean that we should act on our desires. We each come with unique personal histories; sometimes it takes a while to figure out what lies behind certain desires. It may have little to do with the person in front of me and more to do with misdirecting specific unmet needs. Part of the conversation around nurturing male-female friendships has to include how we order and discipline our desires.\u00a0 I believe my friendship with Andrew will have a positive impact on my next romantic relationship. But it is also beautiful for its own sake, without thought of its broader utility. He is teaching me to argue better, to share my discontent in less hurtful ways. I am learning that deepening our friendship means not shying away from difficult conversations. I cannot hide behind verbal jabs offered in pseudo jokes. He speaks forthrightly to me and mirrors his desire for me to be transparent, to say what I mean and to not couch my emotional needs in half-truths. I hear him and often still stifle in defense. It is risky to nurture the kind of friendship that compels us to reach out from our fears and insecurities. Friendship takes courage, even the ones that offer to reminds us of who we are, and who we are created to be.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019m not a zombie watcher, but Wade Hodges has some interesting ideas about the fascination with zombies<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cI started thinking about why Zombies are so popular.<\/strong> Why can\u2019t we look away from stories about the undead who come either to feast on or infect us? Since I\u2019m not a lifelong Zombie aficionado, I don\u2019t have a working knowledge of the Zombie mythology. I haven\u2019t read any commentary on or critical analysis of the Zombie genre. I\u2019m trying to figure all of this out for myself. I\u2019ve come to the conclusion that Zombie stories are an enduring part of our culture because they teach us life lessons that remain stubbornly hidden until backlit by the macabre.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n The Catholic Church is changing<\/strong><\/a>, big time: \u201cAn overwhelming majority, 88%, say \u201chow a person lives is more important than whether he or she is Catholic,\u201d according to\u00a0Catholics in America: Persistence and change in the Catholic landscape<\/em>. The survey, a comprehensive look at the beliefs and practices of 1,442 U.S. adults identifying themselves as Catholics, also finds that 86% say \u201cyou can disagree with aspects of church teachings and still remain loyal to the church.\u201d As an anabaptist Protestant I find this kind of report discouraging for all of us. God have mercy on the church.<\/p>\n Speaking of churches changing<\/strong><\/a>, I\u2019m tempted to say about five things that I won\u2019t say\u2026 And Bill Donahue says of changing churches \u2026 flatten the church<\/strong><\/a>. Speaking of churches\u2026 what happens when a Jew becomes messianic? Read Jewish adventures in Church-land<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n And speaking of churches failing, EPIC Fail is back for 2012.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Tom Perez<\/strong><\/a> and trafficking in Portland. Cracks in the Occupy Wall Street protests<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cThe Occupy Wall Street <\/a>volunteer kitchen staff launched a \u201ccounter\u201d revolution yesterday \u2014 because they\u2019re angry about working 18-hour days to provide food for \u201cprofessional homeless\u201d people and ex-cons masquerading as protesters.For three days beginning tomorrow, the cooks will serve only brown rice and other spartan grub instead of the usual menu of organic chicken and vegetables, spaghetti bolognese, and roasted beet and sheep\u2019s-milk-cheese salad.They will also provide directions to local soup kitchens for the vagrants, criminals and other freeloaders who have been descending on Zuccotti Park in increasing numbers every day.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanderings in the News<\/p>\n Like Arafat, Gaddafi was super-rich<\/strong><\/a>, maybe the richest man in the world.<\/p>\n If you touch a baby bird\u2026? Mike Truchon<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cWhen I was a kid, our living room opened out onto a back deck through a set of French doors. A pine tree stood over the deck, providing a home for countless birds. Baby birds would regularly fall from their nests onto the deck, and would lie there crying in full view of my brother and me as we sat on the floor watching TV. Our parents always told us that we should never attempt to rescue these birds, no matter how long they were out on the deck, because our scent would cause their parents to reject and abandon them. Some of these babies would get their act together and find their way back into the nest. Some would get dragged off by neighborhood cats. A few got plucked off the deck by hawks (and, once, devoured as I watched). Whatever happened to the birds, though, my brother and I dutifully listened to our mother. These days, I feel bad about that. It turns out my mom is full of baloney.\u201d<\/p>\n The out-of-Iraq decision was a Bush-Iraq decision<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n Is Denmark\u2019s \u201cfat tax\u201d helping? Marion Nestle<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cTHE Danish government\u2019s now infamous \u201cfat tax\u201d has caused an international uproar, applauded by public health advocates on the one hand and dismissed on the other as nanny-state social engineering gone berserk. I see it as one country\u2019s attempt to stave off rising obesity rates, and its associated medical conditions, when other options seem less feasible. But the policies appear confusing. Why Denmark of all places? Why particular foods? Will such taxes really change eating behaviour? And aren\u2019t there better ways to halt or reverse rising rates of diet-related chronic disease? Before getting to these questions, let\u2019s look at what Denmark has done\u2026.\u201d [Gotta love that I guy with the name \u201cNestle\u201d is writing this.]<\/p>\n But this is not Calvinism<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n Occupy Wall Street, which I\u2019ve been watching from a safe distance, now has a social theorist in John Rawls who can prop up the praxis. This piece by Stephen V. Mazie<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cBut to move forward and make a difference, Occupy Wall Street needs specific goals backed by a more coherent, more inspiring vision for American democracy.\u00a0 To their credit,\u00a0protestors have recently begun debating<\/a> which specific demands the movement should make, but their conversations appear to be unguided by any deeper wisdom.\u00a0 A perfect intellectual touchstone would be the work of\u00a0John Rawls<\/a>, the American political philosopher who was one of the 20th<\/sup> century\u2019s most influential theorists of equality. Rawls named his theory \u201cjustice as fairness,\u201d and emphasized in his later writings that its premises are rooted in the history and aspirations of American constitutionalism.\u00a0 So it\u2019s a home-grown theory that is ripe for the picking.<\/p>\n Nature vs. Nurture and Epigenetics<\/strong><\/a>. Drugs falling off the patent cliff<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n Nathan Jurgenson probes into Chomsky\u2019s claims about Twitter<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cBut even if we grant Chomsky, Carr and the others that social media is less deep and more instantaneous, the important questions then become: Is instant, digital communication less true? Less worthy? Less valuable? Less linguistically creative? Less politically efficacious? Chomsky, a politically progressive linguist, should know better than to dismiss new forms of language-production that he does not understand as \u201cshallow.\u201d This argument, whether voiced by him or others, risks reducing those who primarily communicate in this way as an \u201cother,\u201d one who is less fully human and capable. This was Foucault\u2019s point: Any claim to knowledge is always a claim to power. We might ask Chomsky today, when digital communications are disqualified as less deep, who benefits?\u201d<\/p>\n Meanderings in Sports<\/p>\n<\/a>Patrick reports on Tom Wright in Dublin<\/strong><\/a> for the CS Lewis lecture. And The Burner has a graphic report of Peter Rollins\u2019 time at Fuller<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 I think she makes her point loud and clear<\/strong><\/a>, says I who found that article through a tweet read on my iPad and that I typed on my MacBook.<\/p>\n