Hot Semiotics

Last updated on: September 15, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Wanting to figure out what makes someone attractive on Tinder, Anne Helen Petersen created her own experimental knock-off and tested it on about 800 people. She reports her findings at buzzfeed.com. Petersen found that race was an important factor in attraction, as was religion. Even when religion was not explicitly mentioned anywhere, people imputed religious to the faces they saw. She discovered that “we swipe because someone’s ‘hot,’ but we find someone ‘hot’ based on unconscious codes of class, race, education... Read more

Social Trinity

Last updated on: September 15, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Three things stand out in Charles Lowry’s 1946 essay on The Trinity and Christian Devotion. The first is that the book exists at all, since it comes from a time when Trinitarian theology was supposed to be pretty much moribund. (Rahner’s book was published in 1970.) The second is that Lowry describes the nineteenth century as the era of a “very widespread conscious turning to a social doctrine of the Trinity,” a turning so energetic that “by the end of the... Read more

Social Trinity

Last updated on: September 15, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Coen Brother Populism

Last updated on: September 13, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

The Atlantic is running a series of essays on Coen Brothers’ films (are they Brothers, or just brothers?), written by Christopher Orr, who is re-watching the brothers’ feature films and sharing his notes. Orr gets Hudsucker wrong, but still, it’s a worthy effort. Orr’s series took me back to a December 2013 essay by Noah Gittell on the “subtle politics” of the Coen Brother films. The Coens seem apolitical, but Gittell spots a “populist vein that runs through their work”: “Their working-class... Read more

What Scotland Will Decide

Last updated on: September 13, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In Comment, Jonathan Chaplin helpfully defines the decision to be made in Scotland’s referendum next week. To clarify what’s being decided, Chaplin distinguishes between “nation” and “state.” “Nations are thickly-textured, evolving, porous, morally ambiguous societal amalgams. While one nation may be more or less recognisable when set against another, nations lack the crucial features of centred identity and independent agency.” But a “Yes” vote on independence isn’t an affirmation of the Scottish nation. It’s a vote for the creation of “a... Read more

Whom Are We Arming?