“If you visit a Northwest ocean beach this summer, you’ll likely run across objects from last year’s Japanese tsunami.

The things you’ll likely see include milk jugs, detergent bottles, tooth brushes and bottles for water, pop or juices with Japanese stamps, marks and labels. Perhaps a soccer ball or a volleyball — two that washed up on an Alaskan island have been claimed by their Japanese owners.

The things you are highly unlikely to see are human remains, refrigerators or anything else that would have to be sealed to float or can come apart, like bigger parts of houses. Months on the ocean will breakup anything with parts, experts say.” (via KPLU News for Seattle and the Northwest).

 

Paul Krugman: “So Mitt Romney gave a speech at a closed Ohio drywall factory, which he tried to use as a symbol of Obama’s economic failure. The symbolism was perfect — not as an illustration of Obama’s failure, but as an illustration of just how stupid Romney thinks we are.

Even regular reporters noticed that the factory in question closed under, yes, George W. Bush — a fact Romney failed to mention, although his campaign scrambled to cover for him afterwards.

What I didn’t see mentioned was the point that this was a drywall factory — that is, a supplier of a product largely used in home construction. It’s one thing to say that Obama should have revived the economy as a whole; it’s another to say that he should have brought back the housing bubble!

Finally, why should we believe that Romney’s policies — basically tax cuts for the rich, as usual — would yield great economic results? Well, I guess you can point to Bush’s example; how did his administration at this point compare with Obama? From BLS data:

You can offer various excuses for Bush’s record, I guess. But on the face of it, what possible reason is there to think that Bush-like policies would be an improvement?” (via NYTimes.com).

“While baboons can’t read, they can tell the difference between real English words and nonsensical ones, a new study reports.” (via NYTimes).

The name of the author is the first to go

followed obediently by the title, the plot,

the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel

which suddenly becomes one you have never read,

never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor

decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,

to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye

and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,

and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,

the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,

it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,

not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river

whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,

well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those

who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night

to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.

No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted

out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

 – Billy Collins

Very funny. How many of these have happened to you? (via The New Yorker)

“As you educate yourself about your own talent and ambitions, you graduate from doing a task right to doing the right task. It takes some experience to realize that a lot of work is better left undone. It might be busywork that is performed out of habit, or it might be work that is heading in the wrong direction. Working smart means making sure you are spending your time on jobs that are effective and that actually need to be done.” (via Smarterware).

“I’m typically a year or two behind any cultural trend, so you probably already know about gender-reveal parties. I first heard of them over the weekend: a couple, strangers to me, had invited friends and relatives over to bite into cupcakes at the same instant and share the moment when the blue or pink custard inside would inform them all of the sex of the baby. (The sonogram result had gone from lab to baker without being seen by anyone else, including the parents-to-be.) Other couples choose different methods of revelation: grip the knife together and cut into a cake with blue or pink filling. Open a sealed box that releases pink or blue helium balloons. Then put the scene on the Web so that everyone not invited can participate vicariously.

These events are becoming more and more popular. The first video of a gender-reveal party was posted on YouTube in 2008, but in just the last six months almost two thousand have been uploaded. You can watch one from last month. (Spoiler alert: it’s a girl.)

Maybe it was the context—I happened to hear about the gender-reveal party in a rundown inner-city café full of ex-felons who were having a very hard time finding jobs—but my initial take was incredulity trending negative. These parties seem to marry the oversharing of Facebook and Instagram with the contrived ceremonies that modern people in search of meaning impose on normal life events: food journaling, birthday parties for grownups, workout diaries, birth-experience planning. (One birth-planning center offers a “baby gender selection kit” involving three safe and natural steps that turn sex itself into a gender-reveal party.)

In the case of gender-reveal parties, couples take a private moment made possible by science and oblige others to join in, with the result—as in so many invented rituals of our day—that the focus turns from where it ought to be (in this case, the baby) to the self. At a bris or christening, the emotional emphasis falls on the arrival of a new life in the embrace of family and community. At a gender-reveal party, the camera is on the expectant father tearing up at the sight of pink cake.

That’s the nature of manufactured customs and instant traditions. They emerge from an atomized society in order to fill a perceived void where real ceremonies used to be, and they end by reflecting that society’s narcissism. Is it too much to say that gender-reveal parties are a mild symptom of cultural despair?” (via The New Yorker)

“Last Friday, …we asked readers to propose a single English word that should be eliminated from the language. Suggestions were made via Facebook or Twitter, with the hashtag #tnyquestion. We started the contest with high hopes that readers would help to streamline the language, but the first wave of responses was not auspicious…” (via The New Yorker).

Some of the scurrilous suggestions are not surprising, but the runaway favorite is.

 

The Forty-Year Itch (Adam Gopnik):  “So it seems time to pronounce a rule about American popular culture: the Golden Forty-Year Rule. The prime site of nostalgia is always whatever happened, or is thought to have happened, in the decade between forty and fifty years past. (And the particular force of nostalgia, one should bear in mind, is not simply that it is a good setting for a story but that it is a good setting for you.)” (via The New Yorker).

Here’s something I said on FmH ten years ago today:

“In case any FmH readers were wondering how I’ve come by my opinionated gall, it may have something to do with the fact that I turn 50 years old today. (Others may be thinking I probably shouldn’t be doing this at my age…). And my son turns eight today…”

So today my son is eighteen, and I’ve put on a few years too. Thanks to everyone for all the wonderful birthday greetings.

‘Dmitri Krioukov, a senior research scientist at UCSD, successfully appealed his failure-to-stop ticket using a physics and math argument that ultimately swayed a San Diego judge.

In the paper, entitled “The Proof of Innocence,” Krioukov offered a series of equations and graphs to show that it was physically impossible for him to have broken the law, as an officer claimed.

The judge was “very, very smart,” Krioukov told The Times. “She got my point, I think, very precisely.”

Krioukov compared the problem to the way a person sees a train approaching from the platform and thinks it is moving slowly, when in fact it is barreling down the track. Using math and physics, Krioukov determined that a car moving at a constant speed can appear to move in the same way as a car that is moving fast but stops for a short time and then accelerates again.

In other words, a car that appears to be moving at a constant speed through a stop sign could have actually stopped at the stop sign, before speeding up again.’ (via LATimes).

Levon Helm performing with The Band. Hamburg, May 1971.

Sad news. Levon Helm is near death, according to this note posted on his website by his family:

“Dear Friends,

Levon is in the final stages of his battle with cancer. Please send your prayers and love to him as he makes his way through this part of his journey.

Thank you fans and music lovers who have made his life so filled with joy and celebration… he has loved nothing more than to play, to fill the room up with music, lay down the back beat, and make the people dance! He did it every time he took the stage…

We appreciate all the love and support and concern.

From his daughter Amy, and wife Sandy”

The Band‘s brown album would be one of my ten desert island discs, for sure, and always has heavy rotation on my iPod. My best friend, if anything a more intense fiend for the Band, and I were always planning to get to one of the Midnight Rambles Helm had been holding on his farm. Sorrowfully, not to be. Saving grace is that he is soon to join Richard Manuel and Rick Danko in the Angel Band. (via Levon Helm Studios, with thanks to abby for the original heads-up).

And: Levon Helms’ finest musical moments. (via Recordonline)

“Exactly one hundred years ago Sunday, an ocean liner struck a block of ice and sank in the North Atlantic. The story of the ocean liner has been told hundreds of times. This story is about the block of ice.

[These] photos … are quite possibly the only known photographic evidence of the actual iceberg that struck the Titanic. Understandably, nobody had bothered to snap any photographs while the ship was actually sinking, so it’s impossible to make an absolutely confirmed positive identification. But both photographs feature the telltale sign of a collision with a ship, and likely a recent one at that: a streak of red paint.” (via Wired)

“A massive genetics study relying on fMRI brain scans and DNA samples from over 20,000 people has revealed what is claimed as the biggest effect yet of a single gene on intelligence…” (via New Scientist).

But that is not the most significant aspect of this finding. The effect, although real, was miniscule, accounting for less than 2 points in IQ. So, is it any surprise that the authors conclude that, to the extent that genetics influences intelligence, it is a function of the interplay of multiple genes, not just one?

“An incredibly stunning solar flare erupted from the sun’s surface, throwing charged particles and searing plasma millions of miles out into space on Apr. 16.

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured data from the flare — a medium-sized M-class event — which was turned into a movie by Steele Hill, media specialist at the Goddard Space Flight Center. The blast was not directed at the Earth and is unlikely to hit any of the planets in our solar system….

The sun is currently entering a time of renewed activity, following a quiet period in its 11-year solar cycle. Peak action is expected from early- to mid-2013. Though it is predicted to be one of the least active cycles in the last 100 years, we have already witnessed several massive flares this year.” (via Wired).

Michael Apted

‘The latest installment of the Up Series of documentary films is due out in the UK in May. The films have followed the development of fourteen British children since 1964 with a new film appearing every seven years…the participants are now 56.

…

This may be the last film in the series…director Michael Apted will be 78 when the next film is due and he’s unwilling to pass it off to someone else to finish.” (via kottke) 

Any documentary lover and any Anglophile (I count myself as both) should have been following this fascinating and unprecedented series of films.

Language Log discusses the New York Times’ relationship with obscenity. Update here. 

“The New York Times won two Pulitzer Prizes on Monday, for its reporting on Africa and for an investigative series on obscure tax code provisions that let the wealthiest Americans and corporations avoid paying taxes. And in a sign of the changing media landscape, online news outlets made a significant mark among the winners, with The Huffington Post and Politico capturing their first Pulitzer Prizes.

Also notable this year was the absence of prizes in two categories. The Pulitzer Prize Board at Columbia University in New York, which administers the awards, did not name a winner in the editorial writing category and more notably declined to name a winner of the coveted prize for fiction. The last time no winner was named for fiction was in 1977.” (via NYTimes).

Related:

• Pulitzer Committee Confirms: Editorial Writing Is Worthless [Media] (gawker.com)
• Pulitzer prizes announced; no fiction? (newsday.com)

3D representation of brodmann areas

“It has not been know exactly how ECT works. It is known that ECT reduces brain activity and raises seizure threshold (makes it less likely to have a seizure). This implies that overall neuronal activity is reduced, so perhaps ECT is inhibiting overactivity in a part of the brain that is driving the depression. That hypothesis is supported by a recent study that uses fMRI scanning to look at brain activity in nine patients with major depression before and after ECT. They found:

A comparison of pre- and posttreatment functional connectivity data in a group of nine patients revealed a significant cluster of voxels in and around the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortical region (Brodmann areas 44, 45, and 46), where the average global functional connectivity was considerably decreased after ECT treatment (P < 0.05, family-wise error-corrected). This decrease in functional connectivity was accompanied by a significant improvement (P < 0.001) in depressive symptoms

Once way to interpret this result is that some patients with major depression have overactive connectivity between that part of the brain that generates the emotion of depression and the part of the brain involved in cognition and concentration. In these patients, therefore, their depressed mood has a significant effect on their thoughts and ability to concentrate. ECT appears to reduce this hyperconnectivity, which should significantly reduce the symptoms of depression.

This is all consistent with prior research on depression, and makes good sense. Still, it’s a small study that needs to be replicated and the whole question further explored.” (via NeuroLogica Blog ).

“When traveling across the United States, it sometimes feels like the locals are speaking a whole different language. That’s where the Dictionary of American Regional English comes to the rescue. The last installment of this staggering five-volume tome, edited by Joan Houston Hall, was published last month, and let me tell you, it’s a whoopensocker.

In celebration of slang, here’s a list of 19 delightful obscure words from around the U.S. that you’ll want to start working into conversation.” (via Mental Floss).

“A blind woman who did not realise the novel she was writing was blank after her pen ran out has been saved after a police force used forensic techniques to recover the words. Forensics experts agreed to use a special scientific process to recover what Trish Vickers had written by examining the dents she had made in the pages.

Mrs Vickers, 59, was left devastated when she learned that her pen had run out and there was nothing on the first 26 pages of the book. She lost her sight seven years ago through diabetes and decided to write a novel to pass the time and keep her mind active. She quickly penned the opening chapters while using a system of elastic bands to keep the lines separated on the pages of paper she was using. She waited for her son Simon to visit so he could read it back to her. But when he arrived he had to tell her that the pages were blank.

Incredibly, however, the manuscript was recovered after the family took it to their local police HQ and asked for help. Forensic experts worked in their spare time to read the indentations left on the A4 pages using a system of lights. It took five months of painstaking work, but the forensic team was able to recover the whole text – and they said how much they had enjoyed it and couldn’t wait for the rest. A Dorset police spokesman said a member of staff had completed the work during her lunch hours.” (via Telegraph.UK, with thanks to Steve)

“The wind map is a personal art project, not associated with any company. We’ve done our best to make this as accurate as possible, but can’t make any guarantees about the correctness of the data or our software. Please do not use the map or its data to fly a plane, sail a boat, or fight wildfires…” (via Wind Map)

Related:

• Wind and water current maps by van Gogh (kottke.org)
• Live, Interactive Wind Energy Map is a Thing of Beauty (ecogeek.org)
• This Undulating US Wind Map Is Utterly Hypnotic [Maps] (gizmodo.com)
• Beautiful Interactive Animated Wind Map of the U.S. (treehugger.com)
• QuickThing15: dazzling wind map (itsallonething.com)

Nietzsche, summer 1899

‘Henri is the anti-Hello Kitty, a morose French feline who spends his time dissecting the absurdity of his daily grooming rituals and the despair of his solitary existence. Oh, and sometimes he updates his Facebook page. “I suppose that’s my lot in life,” he sighs. “To be watched endlessly, but never understood.” After seeing this, you’ll either immediately click to get to Henri’s first video or spend the afternoon wondering whatever happened to your Nietzsche-reading sophomore year roommate.’ (via msnNOW).

Richard Metzger wishes Samuel Beckett a happy 106th birthday on Dangerous Minds.

Single-exposure shot from the photographer’s apartment window. Wow. (Laughing Squid)

“One hundred years after Alan Turing was born, his eponymous test remains an elusive benchmark for artificial intelligence. Now, for the first time in decades, it’s possible to imagine a machine making the grade…. There is reason to believe that code kernels for the first Turing-intelligent machine have already been written.” (via Wired.com).

“…The Map of the Dead from Doejo… overlays zombie danger zones and potential supply locations on a Google Map of your local haunts. Red areas denote population centers where zombies might graze, while dark gray zones cover parks and wilderness areas, which are most likely to be walker-free. Supply locations are annotated with helpful descriptions — liquor stores, hospitals, gun shops, military bases and cemeteries are just some of the locations highlighted.”  (via Wired.com).

“Connecticut is set to become the fifth American state in as many years to abolish capital punishment, in one of the less commented trends in recent years. It would mean that over a third of the Union’s states are free of capital punishment, but the real coup would be if abolition campaigners won the battle in California, which will decide in November.”  (via Telegraph.UK)

…a phenomenon attracting more attention in the European press than the US.

“We’re probably in a bubble in terms of the way we talk about reading longer pieces of writing. But where did #longreads and longform come from?” (via BuzzFeed).

‘In what is being touted as “the world’s largest dream experiment,” a psychologist from Britain’s University of Hertfordshire is inviting volunteers to try using an iPhone app to control their dreams.’ (via GizMag).

“

“A very happy birthday to the great Paul Krassner (left, with Tuli Kupferberg and unidentified party)! The father of the underground press (although he demanded a paternity test), editor of The Realist, Yippie co-founder and inspiration to two generations of rabble-rousers, turns 80 today.” (via Dangerous Minds)

Review of Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone by Eric Klinenberg, a sociologist at New York University:

“…[S]ingle living [is] not a social aberration but an inevitable outgrowth of mainstream liberal values. Women’s liberation, widespread urbanization, communications technology, and increased longevity—these four trends lend our era its cultural contours, and each gives rise to solo living. Women facing less pressure to stick to child care and housework can pursue careers, marry and conceive when they please, and divorce if they’re unhappy. The “communications revolution” that began with the telephone and continues with Facebook helps dissolve the boundary between social life and isolation. Urban culture caters heavily to autonomous singles, both in its social diversity and in its amenities: gyms, coffee shops, food deliveries, laundromats, and the like ease solo subsistence. Age, thanks to the uneven advances of modern medicine, makes loners of people who have not previously lived by themselves. By 2000, sixty-two per cent of the widowed elderly were living by themselves, a figure that’s unlikely to fall anytime soon.

What turns this shift from demographic accounting to a social question is the pursuit-of-happiness factor: as a rule, do people live alone because they want to or because they have to?”  (via The New Yorker).

Related:

• Why More Americans Are Living Alone | PBS NewsHour | March 27, 2012 | PBS (rajcairnsreport.wordpress.com)
• Is Living Alone the New Shacking Up? (theatlanticwire.com)
• 20-Something Solo Dwellers Are Actually Helping The Economy (businessinsider.com)
• The New Normal: Living Alone (brandtstandard.com)
• Going Solo (csmonitor.com)
• Are Single People Discriminated Against? (thedailybeast.com)
• Better single than married? New book suggests yes (ctv.ca)

“Tom Lehrer – mathematician, satirist, singer-songwriter and hero to geeks taking chemistry tests everywhere – was born on April 9, 1928, making today his 84th birthday! …Mr. Lehrer, from all of the geeks who loved (and were educated by) your songs as kids, and who now teach those songs to our own children – thank you, and a very happy birthday to you!” (via Wired.com).

Related:

• Tom Lehrer “The Masochism Tango” (pinkbananaworld.com)
• Presty the DJ for April 9 (steveprestegard.com)
• Happy Birthday, Tom Lehrer!!! (kidzrockinc.co)

“Across the country, more than 7,700 daily temperature records were broken last month, on the heels of the fourth warmest winter on record.

While it might be time to lie on a blanket in the park, climate scientists are worried. They say all these sunny days are actually an extreme weather event, one with local and global implications.” (via NPR).

Related:

• March Shatters Heat Records (myfoxphoenix.com)
• Weather Is ‘Stunning’ Evidence Of Global Warming (huffingtonpost.com)
• Start of 2012, March shatter U.S. heat records (washingtontimes.com)
• It’s already been a very record-breaking hot year (kansascity.com)

Thirty-four years after California’s Proposition 7 sailed through, making the state’s death penalty one of the toughest in the country, the two men who were the driving force behind its crafting are leading the charge to repeal the death penalty in that state. Their reasons are partly moral, but good politics as well. (via New York Times)

Death-penalty

Related:

• Connecticut may be latest state to repeal death penalty (claimyourinnocence.wordpress.com)
• Texas Prisoner Burials Are a Gentle Touch in a Punitive System – NYTimes.com (policyabcs.wordpress.com)

“There’s no easy way to say it. You’ve probably been playing Hangman wrong your entire life.” (via  Lifehacker). And, it turns out, I have.

Related:

• Help>>Hangman Project. I am a beginner to c++. (daniweb.com)
• Hangman online (str17.wordpress.com)
• Great blog post on optimal Hangman strategy. TL;DR our usual… (benjaminste.in)
• Hangman tips (andrewgelman.com)

Won’t make you look like Robocop: “The good news: Google has started testing those augmented reality glasses we heard about earlier in the year. The bad news: if the artsy shots of the test units are to be believed, they won’t make you look like some ’80s cinematic anti-hero. In fact, the things wouldn’t look too out of place in a New York Times style story. The software giant let it be known that, while it hasn’t quite got a sale date on the wearables, it’s ready to test ProjectGlass amongst the non-augmented public. The company is also looking for feedback on the project, writing in a post today, “we want to start a conversation and learn from your valuable input.” Want some idea of what ProjectGlass might offer the public? Sure, it’s not quite as good as strapping a pair on your own eyes, but interested parties can check out a video of Google’s vision…”  at the link (Engadget).

“Violence Transformed is an annual series of visual and performing arts events that celebrate the power of art, artists and art-making to confront, challenge and mediate violence.

Based primarily in the center and surrounding neighborhoods of Greater Boston and drawing upon the creative energies of artists throughout New England, Violence Transformed documents the ways in which our diverse communities harness art’s potential to effect social change and materially transform our environments.

Violence Transformed also represents a unique collaboration among artists, activists, museum professionals, academics, and community service providers from diverse segments of the greater Boston area. We share the conviction that art and art-making are essential to the well-being and vibrancy of our communities.”

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“I am the world crier, & this is my dangerous career… I am the one to call your bluff, & this is my climate.” —Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972).

“I wrote a program that takes any text and tries to find any accidental limericks that might be hiding within (based on syllable counts and rhyme, ignoring punctuation and intent).

Limericks have a fairly loose form. The rhyme scheme is always AABBA, but the syllable count can be anything along the lines of 7-or-8-or-9/7-or-8-or-9/5-or-6/5-or-6/7-or-8-or-9. And as if that weren’t loosey-goosey enough, they can have either anapaestic meter (duh-duh-DUM, duh-duh-DUM) or amphibrachic meter (duh-DUM-duh, duh-DUM-duh)!

…(So) Nantucket is set to look for limericks that are AABBA (rhyme scheme) and 8/8/5/5/9 (syllable count per line). It currently ignores meter, but I may add that requirement in later. It also only looks at words through an American English accent.” (Danielle Sucher, via Neal Stephenson)

“James McCartney Looking to Form Band with Sean Lennon, Dhani Harrison and Zak Starkey…” (via Cool Album of the Day). Do those names mean anything to you? Do you expect that the music would be very good?

Think Again : “Everybody knows that there’s just one moon orbiting the Earth. But a new study by an international team of astronomers concludes that everybody is dead wrong about that.” (via NPR).

21 of them, in the Telegraph.UK’s opinion. On the other hand, I don’t know much about architecture but about half of these inspire admiration and wonder, not revulsion or derision, in me.

‘

At Cult of Mac, John Brownlee writes about Girls Around Me, a creepy app that exploited geolocation APIs to make it easy to stalk women.

These are all girls with publicly visible Facebook profiles who have checked into these locations recently using Foursquare. Girls Around Me then shows you a map where all the girls in your area trackable by Foursquare area. If there’s more than one girl at a location, you see the number of girls there in a red bubble. Click on that, and you can see pictures of all the girls who are at that location at any given time. The pictures you are seeing are their social network profile pictures.

See also Charlie Sorrel’s guide to kill the Facebook and FourSquare features that enable apps like this.’ (via Boing Boing, with thanks to kerry).

Tell your daughters, wives, significant others, friends about this.

Exiles mourn latest in string of self-immolation suicide protests: “Dozens of Tibetans have self-immolated in the past year to protest Chinese oppression. In addition to dousing themselves with fuel, some drink kerosene, so that the flames will explode from within.” (via Boing Boing). Why is this phenomenon being largely ignored by the world press?

Related:

• Wave of Tibet Immolations Among History’s Biggest (abcnews.go.com)
• Opinon: Why Tibetans burn themselves (cnn.com)
• Tibet Protester Who Set Himself Alight Dies (news.sky.com)
• Thousands mourn at Jamphel Yeshi’s funeral (photoblog.msnbc.msn.com)
• Wave of Tibet immolations among history’s biggest (thehimalayantimes.com)
• Horrific‚ anti-China protests become Tibet’s norm (thehimalayantimes.com)
• Tibetan Monk, 20, Latest to Self-Immolate in China (abcnews.go.com)

“MIT researchers have shown, for the first time ever, that memories are stored in specific brain cells. By triggering a small cluster of neurons, the researchers were able to force the subject to recall a specific memory. By removing these neurons, the subject would lose that memory.As you can imagine, the trick here is activating individual neurons, which are incredibly small and not really the kind of thing you can attach electrodes to. To do this, the researchers used optogenetics, a bleeding edge sphere of science that involves the genetic manipulation of cells so that they’re sensitive to light. These modified cells are then triggered using lasers; you drill a hole through the subject’s skull and point the laser at a small cluster of neurons.” (via ExtremeTech).

‘Think of Jennifer, or as we like to call her, “Jen.” Jen of the dazzling smile, Jen of the gorgeous chin, Jen with her hair down, Jen tousled, Jen as Rachel, Jen with Brad; Jen without Brad, Jen with Vince, Jen at the Oscars, and, of course, Jen as a neuron in the medial part of the temporal lobe.

Maybe you missed that last Jen.’ (via Krulwich Wonders… : NPR).

A review of T. M. Luhrmann’s When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God: “Luhrmann is a well-qualified guide: an anthropologist specializing in esoteric faiths. Her dissertation was on witch-and-warlock cults in contemporary England. Later, she wrote a book on the Parsis, a Zoroastrian community in India. Her most recent book was the highly praised Of Two Minds, a study of psychiatric residents and their handling of patients who had visions, among other problems. Almost always, Luhrmann has written with sympathy, not scorn, for these convinced people.

Nevertheless, she is a scientist, and believes in evidence. She spent two years as a full-time member of an evangelical church in Chicago, and another two years in a congregation in Palo Alto. (Those are the cities where she was teaching during that period, first at the University of Chicago, then at Stanford.) Both churches were part of the Vineyard Christian Fellowship, which came together in California in the nineteen-sixties and seventies, and now has about fifteen hundred congregations around the world. Most of the members of the churches that Luhrmann attended were white, middle class, college-educated, and centrist. They weren’t Pentecostals (that is, most of them didn’t speak in tongues or heal the sick). But neither were they just conservative Christians. In Luhrmann’s words, they placed “a flamboyant emphasis on the direct experience of God.” If you made contact with him, they believed, he would become your intimate, someone “who loves and cuddles you.

How do you find this God?” (via The New Yorker)