1. Good news for the procrastinators out there. The Wall Street Journal published “How To Be A Better Procrastinator” this week, which analyzes when and why procrastinators procrastinate–and, surprise suprise–it has a lot to do with judgment and perfectionism. Normalizing its symptoms, the article gives some gracious comfort to those who have always looked at their habits as a hedge to their successes. In fact, it’s just a part of being human. And more than that, the dawdling before getting down to business doubles as a fruitful getting lost that actually aids productivity and creativity. Still, people are inclined to view…
America / Art / Celebrity / Children / Film / Identity / Law / Religion / Social Science / Suffering / Week In Review
Another Week Ends: Un-Free Shoppers, Artists, Procrastinators, Middle Class Ambitions, Celebrity Spectacles, Keanu Talks Bill and Ted Three
Little Lies and Not-So-Little Lies (We Can’t Disguise)
Behavioral economist Dan Ariely hit an anthropological home run in the Wall Street Journal this past weekend with “Why We Lie,” a preview of his ridiculously well-titled upcoming book, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone—Especially Ourselves. (You can watch the Predicatably Irrational author’s wonderful TED talk here). What Ariely and his team of researchers have uncovered will come as no surprise to those familiar with the New Testament: everyone lies, everyone is both perpetrator and victim in this respect, lying is primarily an emotional phenomenon (as opposed to a rational one), the basis of which is…
The Crazy-Making IPO: Facebook Madness and the Compulsive iDisorder
Add one more to the tally, after Franzen, after Marche, after Turkle. The Wall Street Journal‘s “Smart Money” blog, Pay Dirt, which does a lot of interesting behavioral economics writing, performed a quick psychoanalytic survey of the madness of Facebook “liking,” in wake of the IPO attention the company is getting. Its findings were telling if not all that remarkably surprising: we compulsively compare, and the comparison to such inaccurate standards leads to compulsive modes of depression. When we see standards with whom we are well- (or at least perceivedly well-) acquainted, the Law of Liking meets us where we…
Addiction / Film / Grace in Practice / Humor / Interviews / Literature / Music / Religion / Social Science / Suffering / TV / Week In Review
Another Week Ends: John Carter, Obesity FAILs, Mary Karr on Suffering, Winning!, Friends with Kids, Springsteen’s Wrecking Ball and Community Returns
1. “I am not Jesus, but I have the same initials.” Thus sang Jarvis Cocker on the classic Pulp track “Dishes” (at bottom), and it now looks like he has a new contender to the throne, Tim Riggins himself, Mr. John Carter of Mars. That’s right: Finding Nemo director Andrew Stanton’s first live-action feature is out this weekend, and the consensus thus far is that there’s no consensus. Some claim that it’s an overblown mess, others that it’s the sort of exceedingly fun pulp adventure that doesn’t get made anymore. But Stanton is a filmmaker that I trust over any…
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Another Week Ends: Inner Machiavellians, Lutheran Insults, Whisky Priests, Monkees, Mets, Parenthood, Veep, Viola Davis and Frankenweenie
1. I’ll admit it: I’ve been trying to lay off the David Brooks, at least in the Weekend columns. As insightful as he frequently is, there are plenty of fish in the digital sea, are there not? Well, to paraphrase a Pacino, every time I think I’m out, he pulls me back in. That is to say, giving anything top billing other than his NY Times column from yesterday, “The Machiavellian Temptation,” would be dishonest. It’s getting to the point where I suspect we’re being punked a la Candid Camera. Anyway, this time around Herr Brooks is contrasting recent breakthroughs…
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
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…
We (Don’t) Need To Talk About Pierre: The Benefits of French Parenting?
Judging from the amount of forwards to my inbox, Pamela Druckerman’s “Why French Parents Are Superior” has some relevant things to say. The article is another in a line of Wall Street Journal humdingers about parenting, and also the first time I’ve come across the brilliant new term, ‘kindergarchy.’ The gist of Druckerman’s argument is that French parents produce more well-behaved kids (or at least more self-controlled ones) because they are less worried about saying No to their children, that they believe that one of the parents’ primary tasks to teach the child about patience, and that temperament is not…
Books / Business / Children / Film / Humor / Music / Religion / Science / Social Science / Technology / Week In Review
Another Week Ends: Immortal Smartphones, Jefferson Bethke, Adolescent Rewards, Profound Comedy, Therapeutic Irony, more George Lucas, Pixar and Hunger Games
1. In last weekend’s NY Times Magazine, Carina Chocano explained “The Dilemma of Being a Cyborg” – AKA what our current obsession with “data” has to say about our humanity – dropping her usual allotment of insight bombs along the way. Not only does she point out the increasingly prevailing illusion that if something wasn’t ‘documented’ it didn’t happen, she gets at the real crux of our smartphoned existence: the false promise of immortality. In other words, a familiar serpent has found its way into the, um, Apple Store:
This is the dilemma of being a cyborg: It’s not just that…
Unaccompanied Minors and the War Against the Goonies
A fitting follow-up to the recent post on the tragic decline of unstructured play in the lives of children, not to mention yesterday’s one on insomnia, this time in a Wall Street Journal editorial by Lenore Skenazy, “The War on Childhood.” She uses Amtrak’s recent decision to bump their unaccompanied minor age from 8 to 13(!) to talk about the competing forces of control and freedom when it comes to the treatment of children. Control appears to be winning by landslide these days, and, as reasonable as some of the decisions in question might be, the hidden cost of the…
Another Week Ends: Zombied Church, The Hill and Wood, Full Eyes, Soda Bans, (The Paradox of) Dysfunctional Families, Joe Pa and Scandal Love
1) Something’s in the water at The Atlantic lately, because inspired after inspired article seems to be finding its way into the proverbial stream, including an intriguing article about tv show The Walking Dead‘s “Come-to-Jesus Moment.” As the review is aware (and mind you, if you’re not caught up on the show, spoilers), it’s certainly a dissatisfying presentation of faith’s power in crisis, but it has a lot to say about the human compulsions to lean on something in hard times, and the ease of and inevitable infidelity of that leaning becoming a leaning on one’s self. In a hellish…
Steve Jobs Is My Co-Pilot?
Hopefully you saw Andy Crouch’s thoughtful piece in the Wall Street Journal this past weekend, “Steve Jobs, The Secular Prophet”, which explores the religious parallels that have become increasingly blatant (everywhere you look) in the days following Jobs’ death. I mentioned some bewilderment at the widespread emotional outpouring in Friday’s Another Week Ends column, and Crouch’s article touches on a number of the reasons why. Clearly a major spiritual vein has been exposed, one that goes beyond mere cultural preoccupation. Crouch does a fine job of unpacking the dynamics at work, particularly as it relates to the ‘message’ or hope…
Fail Harder: Why Big Business Wants Your Weakness
Let’s say you spied a rather large trophy on the mantle of a house you were visiting. On its plaque read “Heroic Failure.” Where would you think it came from? I’d first guess a peewee sport, maybe an example of the unassailable over-affirmation of the weakling child who never caught the ball but was, you know, a great sport. But “failure” would probably be too condemning a word for an insecure and untalented child athlete. Next you guess that it’s just a jeering office trophy, given by colleagues as an inside joke, a representation of office camaraderie more than whatever…
An Exhausting Aggression: Alphas, Betas, and the Masters of the Universe
Despite what you hoped you might become, it’s generally just a matter of time before you find yourself finding yourself out. This is no big secret, that despite the narratives we love to spin about our experiences/relationships/(mis)demeanors, providence dependably illuminates who we really are–Full Monty style. This violent illumination, in turn, allows a person to see what’s there and, yes, what’s sadly not. Sigh.
The Wall Street Journal offers one such Providential exposé in their recent article, “Are Alpha Males Healthy?” It’s a brief study of the two archetypes, the alpha and the beta, and the perceived-vs.-real health of both personality…
Another Week Ends: Christian Neurotics, Shrieking Children, Grunge-Love, Steve Jobs, and Idiot Brothers
At week’s end, despite the continued reverberations, ironic photo blogs, and miraculous happenings, all is still in post-quake Central Virginia! The Mockingbird offices remain in functional tact…
1) Over at First Things, and similarly confronting the stigmas of mental health as discussed in an earlier post this week, “The Christian Neurotic” ponders “neurosis” and its impact (good and bad) upon one’s grasp on the dual nature of reality, that is, one fraught with despair and yet, in the framework of Christian belief, tinged with hope:
The psychological conflict of living in two cultures at once can be overbearing. However, it should also…
Addiction / Church / Forgiveness / Humor / Music / Poetry / Religion / Sports / Technology / Theology / TV / Week In Review
Another Week Ends: More Forgiveness, Addiction and Maslow; Lying Pundits, Tolerance Cults, Googling Mormons, Santiago Casilla, Elvis, Tom Waits and Cookie Monster
1. On the subject of forgiveness, The Daily Beast’s Andrew Sullivan posted a comment from one of his readers that gets at what I was trying to say in this week’s article, namely, that any attempt to tack a requirement or condition onto forgiveness (in the case of the HuffPo piece, repentance) robs it of its power and beauty, rendering it just another peg on the oppressive scale of achievement/deservedness – rather than an escape/rescue from “works” or identity altogether. There’s very little worth getting hot under the collar about vis a vis mainstream coverage of Christianity, but the radical…
John Zahl: Fantastic review of a great film! Thanks, Dave. Undefeated is one mo...
Ken: What a rich interview. I especially love the part where he wonders if ...
DBab: Ethan...this was great! I will use "holy bananas" the rest of the wee...
Alison: Thank you Ethan. That was encouraging....
Darren Sombke: One of our former students and chapel band members at Rockford Luthera...