Social Science
Targeted Shopping Habits and Preemptive Diaper Ads
Business / Economics / Psychology / Social Science

Targeted Shopping Habits and Preemptive Diaper Ads

by David Zahl on Feb 21, 2012 • 1 Comment

Yikes! The NY Times ran a lengthy piece by Charles Duhigg this past weekend about absurdly precise, borderline Big Brother market research techniques that companies like Target (pun sort of intended…sigh) are pioneering to capture our dollars. The article doubles as an overview of recent breakthroughs in the study of habit formation, and it’s disconcerting on a number of levels.

For our purposes, the main ‘takeaway’ isn’t exactly news: we are all creatures of enormous habit, much of which is unconscious, and  regardless of how autonomously we like to think of ourselves, it is our painful predictability that unites us –…

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Batman: The Agony of Loss and the Madness of Desire, Part 4c
Comics / Film / Identity / TV

Batman: The Agony of Loss and the Madness of Desire, Part 4c

by Mockingbird on Feb 17, 2012 • No Comments

You guessed it, Bat-Fans: this time The Riddler is our subject. As always, to start with, er, year one of Jeremiah Lawson’s soon-to-be-definitive exploration of Batman mythology, go here. Or to simply catch up on the current arc, the villain-themed The Wounds of Discovery, go here.

PART FOUR: THE WOUNDS OF DISCOVERY

3. The Life and Death of the Mind

All this I tested by wisdom and I said, “I am determined to be wise” — but this was beyond me. Ecclesiastes 7:28

Do you see a man wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.
Proverbs…

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Didn’t We Almost Have It All: Whitney Houston’s Life as Impasse
Addiction / Celebrity / Film / Music / Suffering

Didn’t We Almost Have It All: Whitney Houston’s Life as Impasse

by Jeff Hual on Feb 17, 2012 • 3 Comments

My wife and I were watching Saturday Night Live when NBC broke the news that Whitney Houston had died. Other than the time and place of her death, no other details were given. And, truthfully, we didn’t need any other details to have an inkling of what had happened. Just as with the announcement of Michael Jackson’s passing, we had all watched Whitney slide into her downward spiral.

I was in High School when “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” started airing on MTV. I’m sure everyone has seen it. Think about what we see there: one can’t help but see the…

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Book Review: The Meaning of Marriage by Tim Keller
Books / Relationships / Reviews / Theology

Book Review: The Meaning of Marriage by Tim Keller

by Bryan J. on Feb 16, 2012 • 3 Comments

Two things led me to pick up Tim Keller’s new book on marriage, both of which were pressing. The first: I needed a “marriage book” for Pastoral Care class at seminary. The second: I had an engagement ring burning a hole in my pocket, and it was gonna be there for another week before I could “unload it.” So you might say matrimony has been on my mind, for both academic and personal reasons. Seeing as I also happen to contribute on occasion to Mockingbird, the question quickly took on a larger scope: where does a grace-dependent Gospel junkie like me…

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Why Am I So Obsessed With That Person From Sixth Grade? Cyberstalking and the Permanent Reunion
Identity / Law / Social Science / Technology

Why Am I So Obsessed With That Person From Sixth Grade? Cyberstalking and the Permanent Reunion

by David Zahl on Feb 15, 2012 • 3 Comments

The rejection we feel when we find out that someone has de-friended us on Facebook or stopped following us on Twitter must be the definition of a ‘modern problem.’ We usually discover these things by accident, which probably accounts for why they sneak through our defenses so easily. Just the other day, for example, I noticed that someone had un-followed me on Twitter, and almost immediately, I found myself drawn into a web of self-recrimination. It was particularly silly since I was about to stop following them. And I knew my reasons had very little to do with my esteem…

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Hope for Perfectionist Workaholic Control Freaks: Vulnerability and the Birthplace of Love
Addiction / Identity / Law / Psychology / Social Science

Hope for Perfectionist Workaholic Control Freaks: Vulnerability and the Birthplace of Love

by David Zahl on Feb 14, 2012 • No Comments

We’ve made no secret of our love for author/researcher/social worker Brene Brown. The Washington Post published a wonderful Valentine’s Day piece of hers, “A Love Note to a Workaholic,” which represents a fresh take on her familiar theme of vulnerability and its counter-intuitive power. Although she may make a distinction between vulnerability and weakness, I’m not so sure she isn’t describing the horizontal (and universal!) meat on the vertical bones of 2 Cor 12:9 (“strength made perfect in weakness”). When she speaks of perfectionism or workaholism, for example, she is talking about two of the more insidious modern iterations of…

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Adam Phillips on Why You Are a Fundamentalist
Books / Identity / Psychology

Adam Phillips on Why You Are a Fundamentalist

by Ethan on Feb 13, 2012 • 1 Comment

From the psychoanalyst’s essay, “On What Is Fundamental” from his book On Balance:

And yet, of course–and this is the kind of move that psychoanalysis has made all too available to us–we are all fundamentalists about something. There must be, psychoanalysis might tell us, to put it in as silly a way as possible, a fundamentalist in all of us; we may think of ourselves consciously so to speak as liberals and modernists, but what these relatively new forms of self-description are up against is a more old-fashioned, even archaic inner fundamentalist.

…We are free to speak (as the democrat defends) so…

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Another Week Ends: Joseph Mills, Commitment Devices, Anxiety Rights, Bible Rescue, Imposter Syndrome, Hitch on Chesterton, Elmer Bernstein and Liz Lemon
Addiction / America / Art / Bible / Books / Education / Film / Humor / Music / Psychology / Religion / TV / Week In Review

Another Week Ends: Joseph Mills, Commitment Devices, Anxiety Rights, Bible Rescue, Imposter Syndrome, Hitch on Chesterton, Elmer Bernstein and Liz Lemon

by David Zahl on Feb 10, 2012 • 6 Comments

1. One of the many things to adore about David Foster Wallace’s A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again is the cover (of the US edition). The collage manages to capture the torrential intellect at the heart of that wonderful collection without losing the humor. But it wasn’t until this past week that I knew anything about its designer, photographer/artist/pumpkin farmer Joseph Mills. The Washington City Paper did a feature on him back in 2003 in conjunction with an exhibit at the Corcoran, and Joseph’s words–and personal history with psychosis and depression–pack quite a punch, ht SJ:

When asked about…

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“Weeping and Lifting Weights”: Getting Real with The Bachelor
America / Books / Celebrity / Everyday / Identity / Relationships / TV

“Weeping and Lifting Weights”: Getting Real with The Bachelor

by Ethan on Feb 10, 2012 • No Comments

Did you see this Monday’s Bachelor? When Casey S. got called to come outside and talk to Chris about something important, you knew, you knew it was something important. You just knew her bags were packed, she was leaving her chance at, her life with Ben. Casey S. had that look, like “I know I’m about to be found out, but I’m going to hold these cards up until the very last minute. I can’t give in. Well, I want to, but I don’t want to, you know?” You know? The scene was so perfect. Out the heavily windowed courtyard,…

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Humility Is Endless: A Few Choice Cuts From The Merciful Impasse
Death / Forgiveness / Grace in Practice / Law / Relationships / Religion / Theology

Humility Is Endless: A Few Choice Cuts From The Merciful Impasse

by Mockingbird on Feb 10, 2012 • 3 Comments

If you’re one of the few who has been holding out on Paul Zahl’s The Merciful Impasse: The Sermon on the Mount for People Who’ve Crashed (and Burned), the audio collection that Mockingbird released this past Fall, hold out no longer! Here are a few soundbites to whet your appetite. The only aspect of the set they don’t capture is the truly laugh-out-loud humor:

What I’m really talking about is the roots of the problem of being human. Why are we the way we are? What causes us to be intractably defensive, and resistant, and feeling terribly vulnerable to people’s judgments…

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Comics / Humor / Relationships

From The New Yorker

by David Zahl on Feb 9, 2012 • 1 Comment

Walker Percy, Staying a Step Ahead, and Island News “So 42 Seconds Ago”
America / Books / Identity / Technology / TV

Walker Percy, Staying a Step Ahead, and Island News “So 42 Seconds Ago”

by Ethan on Feb 9, 2012 • 2 Comments

AT&T’s most recent ad campaign is all about getting there first, “staying a step ahead,” being the closest possible to the newest source of the newest News–and chiding the stragglers, those who got there too late, those for whom the News is Old News. Shame! They miss the “flash” mob, they miss the party, they miss the boat, they miss their future spouse, they miss the free office masseuse–because they were not a step ahead, like everyone else, they were a step back, and they miss The Next Thing. Their technology restrained them. Because they did not have the Samsung…

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