{"id":16481,"date":"2013-07-24T11:01:17","date_gmt":"2013-07-24T15:01:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=16481"},"modified":"2013-07-23T22:53:44","modified_gmt":"2013-07-24T02:53:44","slug":"7-things-11-oclock-7-24","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2013\/07\/24\/7-things-11-oclock-7-24\/","title":{"rendered":"7 things @ 11 o’clock (7.24)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

1.<\/strong> Goldman Sachs may be in trouble<\/a> for running some kind of aluminum-hoarding commodities trading scheme. (In the case of Goldman Sachs, of course, \u201cin trouble\u201d doesn\u2019t refer to criminal or civil penalties \u2014 those don\u2019t apply to the Too Big to Jail firm. But if it can be proved that Goldman is doing something illegal, then lawmakers may crack down hard with several uncomfortable questions for the next Goldman exec nominated to a state or federal cabinet post. And that could be briefly awkward.)<\/p>\n

Izabella Kaminska explains how this scheme works<\/a> (free registration required) using a familiar story:<\/p>\n

This is Joseph. He is a well-known commodity forecaster. This is Pharaoh. Pharaoh is worried about future scarcity of commodities \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Another reminder that the biblical Joseph is a pretty despicable character. Preying on the desperation of starving people to steal their land and enslave the entire world doesn\u2019t make you a Good Guy. (Alas, my old post on this \u2014 \u201cJoseph and the Appalling Tyrannical Despot\u201d \u2014 got lost in the move to Patheos.)<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Consumerist\u2019s Laura Northrup<\/a> explains commodities trading by using a different set of familiar characters: Billy Ray Valentine and Louis Winthorpe III.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Turns out the insider-trading at the heart of Trading Places<\/em> wasn\u2019t illegal back in 1983 when that movie came out. It\u2019s illegal now thanks to a provision of the Dodd-Frank Act. That provision is called \u201cThe Eddie Murphy Rule.\u201d<\/p>\n

2.<\/strong> World keep on turnin<\/a>\u2018. \u2026 Stevie Wonder\u2019s Florida boycott<\/a> has picked up some big support, including Jay Z, Kanye West, Rihanna, Madonna, Usher and Justin Timberlake.<\/p>\n

Wonder\u2019s boycott calls for the repeal of Florida\u2019s \u201cStand Your Ground\u201d law. I think that\u2019s a more constructive long-term challenge than the call for a retrial of George Zimmerman on civil rights grounds. It\u2019s a specific and measurable demand, which could make this boycott an effective strategy \u2014 particularly if it broadens from entertainers refusing to perform there to include tourists refusing to go there. If attendance drops off at Disney and Florida\u2019s beaches, that could really start to pinch.<\/p>\n

3.<\/strong> This is terrorism<\/a>.<\/p>\n

4.<\/strong> Checks for the $40 million settlement over Skechers \u201cShape Ups\u201d<\/a> are on their way to consumers who bought the sneakers based on the misleading ad campaign that promised fitness results the shoes don\u2019t deliver. I think of the brief, weird popularity of Shape Ups and its various, equally ineffective competitors whenever I see one of those ads for Lumosity.com<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s like a personal trainer for your brain,\u201d the ads say, \u201cimproving your performance with the science of neuroplasticity.\u201d I suspect that\u2019s pretty much the same thing as neurophlebotinum.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith shape-ups you can finally<\/em> get in shape without going to the gym,\u201d the old Skechers ads promised. Now Lumosity promises you can finally<\/em> get smarter without going to the library.<\/p>\n

5.<\/strong> This is what the actual Bible actually says in Ezekiel 16:49-50<\/a>:<\/p>\n

This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty, and did abominable things before me; therefore I removed them when I saw it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I repeat that a lot. But I\u2019ll keep on repeating it so long as there are biblically illiterate Christians out there pretending that the story of Sodom justifies the condemnation of gay people<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Future generations will look at the horrifically mangled exegesis that gave us the ugly misnomer of \u201csodomy\u201d precisely the same way we now view the vile twisting of scripture that gave us all that racist \u201ccurse of Ham\u201d crap.<\/p>\n

6.<\/strong> Real Clear Religion offers a couple of link-sucking photo galleries: \u201cThe Ugliest Churches in the World<\/a>\u201d and \u201cEven More Ugly Churches<\/a>.\u201d I suppose ugly is in the eye of the beholder, because some of these look beautiful to me.<\/p>\n

7.<\/strong> Update your bookmarks and RSS feeds: Addie Zierman\u2019s \u201cHow to Talk Evangelical\u201d blog is now just AddieZierman.com<\/a>. Jamelle Bouie<\/a> has left The American Prospect to become a staff writer for the Daily Beast<\/a>. If you\u2019re not familiar with either of them, follow those links and check them out.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Understanding commodities schemes with help from Joseph, Pharaoh, Louis and Billy Ray. Stevie Wonder’s Florida boycott gets more support from more big names. Lumosity promises to do for your brain what Shape Ups promised to do for your calves. Ezekiel says one thing, Pat Robertson says the opposite — who are you going to trust? Some of the “Ugliest Churches in the World” are rather beautiful. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n7 things @ 11 o'clock (7.24)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Understanding commodities schemes with help from Joseph, Pharaoh, Louis and Billy Ray. Stevie Wonder's Florida boycott gets more support from more big names. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. 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