1. Jim Macdonald at Making Light points us to a fascinating older post by Maciej Ceglowski on “Scott and Scurvy.” It reads like a parable.
2. The Consumerist asks “What Kind of Jerk Refuses to Tip a Waiter Because He’s Gay?”
Can you guess what kind of jerk? Did you guess the sanctimonious religious type who demonizes others in a desperate attempt to pretend they’re holy?
Because that, it turns out, is the kind of jerk who does this jerky thing. Because “religious liberty.”
3. Also from Consumerist: “Americans Racking Up Debt Faster Than We Save for Retirement.” A new study finds that 60 percent of American households are accumulating debt faster than retirement savings. (What are these “retirement savings” you speak of?)
This is news to the researchers conducting this study, but it’s not news, of course, to 60 percent of American households, except maybe the news that what is true for them is true for three-fifths of the rest of the country. Or maybe the news that life is somehow not like this for about two fifths of the country.
Jubilee. We await the year of God’s favor. It really is our only hope.
4. Spoiler Alert: Mark Driscoll’s Jesus is Tyler Durden, which means …. OMG!
5. Here’s Scot McKnight discussing Claude Mariottini’s discussion of one of my favorite biblical idioms: “any that pisseth against the wall.” They argue that something meaningful is lost when this phrase gets sanitized into a polite, neutral euphemism for “males.” I enjoyed this discussion for the same silly reasons I enjoyed all those “pisseth against the wall” verses when I was a kid in KJV-only fundie circles, but there’s a more serious point here too. The biblical writers knew the word for “males” and — in these instances — they chose not to use it. Ignoring that rude choice, or contradicting it, disregards and disrespects the text. Yet because this disregard and disrespect is based on a notion of “inspiration” that plays down the human agency of the biblical writers, it’s inaccurately referred to as a “high view of scripture.”
6. Corporations may be powers and principalities, but the legal agreement creating them does not breathe into them a living soul:
By incorporating his business, Potter voluntarily forfeited his rights to bring individual actions for alleged corporate injuries in exchange for the liability and financial protections otherwise afforded him by utilization of the corporate form. Adoption of Potter’s argument that he should not be liable individually for corporate debts and wrongs, but still should be allowed to challenge, as an individual, duties and restrictions placed upon the corporation would undermine completely the principles upon which our nation’s corporate laws and structures are based. We are not inclined to so ignore law, precedent, and reason.
7. Yesterday was the Slacktivixen’s birthday, so how’s about a love song?
7.
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