This is a sign at the church my brother, Rick, attends in South Bend, Ind. They are apparently a very progressive church.
They were actually abbreviating “potatoes.” Somebody noticed the “issue” here, and they changed it to “taters.” But not before a photo could be taken.
A sign in my less-than-orderly office says, “Creativity is not a pretty sight.” And now I feel validated in being a slob.
A new study published in Psychological Science shows that people are more creative sitting in a messy room. ““Disorderly environments seem to inspire breaking free of tradition, which can produce fresh insights. Orderly environments, in contrast, encourage convention and playing it safe.”
48 university students were asked to come up with 10 unconventional uses for ping-pong balls. Half were situated in a neatly-organized room, half in a messy room. The ideas were scored from “not at all creative” to “very creative.” The two groups came up with as many ideas, but the ideas from the messy-room students were more innovative.
Another study, though, shows that people in neat environments tend to be more thoughtful and more prone to make healthy choices and follow social norms. In other words: Boooring!
I’m wondering: what did Jesus’ carpenter shop look like? My instinct is to picture it as well organized, with every tool in its place and all sawdust swept up. But maybe Jesus didn’t care about neatness–a purely temporal thing. He’d rather spend his time on more important things. Just wondering.
So Tea Party favorite Ted Cruz, who is expected to run for President, was born in Canada–absolutely no doubt about it. But since his mom was an American citizen, the argument goes, he’s qualified to be president. Then we have Barack Obama, whose mom was an American citizen, and for whom no evidence exists that he was born anywhere but in the United States. But SOME right wing people–including the same ones who would vote for Ted Cruz–still insist Obama’s unqualified to be president.
About half of Republicans, according to surveys, insist Obama isn’t eligible to be president. They agree that his mother was American, but since (as they believe) Barack wasn’t born in America, he’s not eligible. By their own logic, Ted Cruz isn’t eligible either.
But nobody should expect logic from the Tea Party. It’s fun reading some of the articles on the internet in which Tea Party types try to explain away their own hypocrisy.
Amusingly, birthers seem to be changing their argument. What they REALLY objected to, they now say, has nothing to do with whether or not Obama was born on US soil. Instead, it’s about a massive conspiracy on Obama’s part to alter the facts about his birth, fabricate a birth certificate, etc.
Sometimes you just have to laugh.
Gotta shake your head over this. Hurricane Katrina, of course, happened in 2005. But a new poll shows that only 28% of Louisiana Republicans think George Bush is to blame for the slow federal response to Katrina. Meanwhile, 29% think Obama is to blame–though he didn’t become president until 2009–and 44% aren’t sure who to blame. We live in a world with more information than ever before, and yet.
Interesting piece on Time.com about industries that are losing money because of the popularity of smartphones.
Those are the ones mentioned in the article. I would guess these products are also affected.
What am I missing?
I just caught up with Walter Kirn’s excellent article in the New Republic last January, “What Gun Owners Really Want.” Kirn is a gun owner, but the article takes a very common-sense approach, showing where both sides–the anti-gun people, and the pro-gun people–are sometimes silly and unreasonable. It’s well worth reading.
I was intrigued by one part where he talked about some of the appeal, at least to him, of shooting guns.
“They push back when they’re fired. That’s the elemental fact involved…. They kick at your will in the instant they also project it, reminding you that force is always two-sided. It’s a shock the first time, an insult to the senses, but once you’ve learned to expect it, absorb it, ride it, recoil becomes a source of pleasure. You’re up on your board turning turbulence to flow….
“When I shoot at the range, I don’t feel personally powerful, but like the custodian of something powerful. I feel like a successful disciplinarian of something radically alien and potent….It’s not the gun that the so-called ‘clingers’ cling to and don’t like the thought of anybody screwing with. It’s not even the power of the gun. It’s the power over the power of the gun.”
Obviously, that’s not the only appeal of shooting. But it can be one thing, to at least some people. It resonates a bit with me.
This same principal, I’m guessing, applies to the allure of driving powerful cars, of engaging in extreme sports, of bull-fighting, of white-water rafting, and many other things. It’s the raw thrill of prevailing over something risky, powerful, or dangerous.
As a young kid, I remember friends coming over, and we’d play cowboy-and-Indians or Army. We would mow down the enemy, and we would die in dramatic fashion…over and over…while continuing to pop up after a token period of death to fight again. It was fun, it was imaginative. It was what boys do.
Read a fascinating article on Time.com about how schools aren’t letting young boys do what comes naturally–be boys. One 7-year-old boy was suspended for using a pencil to “shoot” a bad guy. In another school, a boy was suspended for throwing an imaginary grenade at “bad guys” to save the world. Tug of war, dodgeball and tag–these are violent and hurt the self-esteem of the “losers.” Superhero play–inappropriate and violent.
For boys, imaginative play typically involves action, but schools are banning it with zero tolerance policies. Innocent boys are getting suspended, punished, publicly humiliated for doing what most of us grew up doing.
Would schools be happier if boys played with dolls? Would that meet the school goals of reducing violence and improving self esteem? Just wondering.
There are two ways to let people know you’re starting a new paragraph.
1. Indent the first line of the paragraph.
2. Leave a space between paragraphs.
But don’t do both–leave a space, AND indent. Unless we’re talking about a bulleted or numbered list. It’s wrong. It’s redundant.
And it looks stupid.
I needed to get that off my chest.
Congressman Scott DesJarlais
Last week, a Republican Congressman from Tennessee, Scott DesJarlais, held a town meeting. He’s a Tea Party guy. An 11-year-old Hispanic girl named Josie Molina, whose father was about to be deported, came to the microphone. She said, “I have papers, but I have a dad who’s undocumented. What can I do to have him stay with me?”
Desjarlais said, “This is a big, intimidating crowd, and I appreciate you coming forward and asking a question. But the answer still kind of remains the same, that we have laws and we need to follow those laws, and that’s where we’re at.”
Desjarlais is being criticized for an “uncaring” response. However, watching the video, I felt he handled it okay. It was a good, on-the-spot response. He’s got stupid views on some subjects and a terrible record of personal immorality. But in this instance, I don’t believe he was being insensitive.
However, what really disturbed me was the crowd’s reaction.
Here’s this courageous little girl who faces the prospect of having her father forcibly taken away, or of leaving her home, friends, school–her country–to be with him in a foreign land. She takes the risk of going before a person of power to seek help. And as the Congressman gives his answer as she returns to her seat amidst this unsympathetic crowd, the people around her whoop and cheer and applaud the Congressman’s answer.
“Yeah, put those wetbacks in their place!” they seemed to be saying.
“Take her daddy away!” is the sentiment Josie Molina would have heard.
It just struck me as very, very wrong. Turned my stomach, in fact. As one writer put it, “If there’s one place I wouldn’t want to be, it’s in front of a crowd that delights in the suffering of children.”
Would Jesus have sided with a child wanting to keep her family together, or with the crowd zealous about enforcing The Law?
Attitudes like this from Tea Party types is just another of the reasons I will no longer identify as a Republican. The Republican Party of my youth has been taken over by extremists.
How about naming your baby “Messiah”? It’s been steadily growing in popularity, rising from about 900th place in 2005 to 387th place in 2012. Apparently, there are a lot of Messiahs running around. As it was in the time of Jesus.
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Copyright © 2013 Steve Dennie | All rights reserved
