Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Unequally Yoked

Home
Catholic
7 Quick Takes (4/19/13)

7 Quick Takes (4/19/13)

Last updated on: April 19, 2013 at 1:45 am by Leah Libresco

7 Quick Takes (4/19/13) 2013-04-19T01:45:57-04:00 Leah Libresco

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

— 1 —

Dove has another clever ad campaign that does a nice attack on some of the terrible images of women in most other ad campaigns in their niche:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iswiKQbtwXQ

I’ve seen some complaints that the ad is still subtly reinforcing that beauty is one of a woman’s most important characteristics, but the video does include people’s non-physical impressions of beauty (akin to Darcy’s comment about ‘fine eyes’).

— 2 —

And speaking of unexpectedly beautiful things, scientists have found a better way to attach skin grafts by aping the way parasitic worms latch on to their hosts! I would include pictures, but I suspect many of you prefer they be left behind the link.

— 3 —

Want more unsettling beauty? Try this animation of Schubert’s setting of Goethe’s “Der Erlkönig,” in which a father flees with his sick child with Death in close pursuit, and all of them, plus a narrator get to sing. (h/t to my gentleman caller).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYL7KIh3JJw

— 4 —

Sometimes, of course, our love of strange beauty can lead us astray:

— 5 —

Oh the heck with it. Let’s succumb and watch this video about what happens if you cry in zero gravity:

— 6 —

Oh, and meanwhile, at the CFAR blog, I’ve got a post up on the virtues of betting.

Sometimes hilarity ensues (as when one participant wanted to set up a hedge against the bad bets he was afraid he’d make and asked me to create a market on whether the majority of his bets would have been wrong). But we include bet-making because we think it helps promote good rationality habits (the amusing stories are a positive externality)…

[I]n order to find out who’s right, you need to come up with a way to test your prediction, which forces you to think a little more concretely about the consequences of your predictions. More than once, two participants at a workshop have started setting up a bet but have had to scuttle the whole thing as it became clear they were anticipating the same result but framing it differently.

Since I’m the arbiter of what bets can be created during a workshop, people frequently try to come up with sneaky paradoxical bets or markets where the first person to bet will have a tremendous advantage. But, as I warn all the participants, although I am bribable, the only currency I accept is whimsy.

— 7 —

And while you appreciate all these created things, you may be interested in the way Kenneth Goldsmith (MoMA’s poet laureate) tries to train a curatorial impulse in his writing students:

You teach a course called “Uncreative Writing” at University of Pennsylvania, where you encourage students to turn off their creative instincts, retype phone books and menus, and plagiarize other writer’s work as their own content. Some students call your class brilliant; some faculty at the school have publicly denounced your pro-plagiarism stance as irresponsible. How is all this helping the next generations of writers and journalists?

The students that take my class know how to write. I can hone their skills further but instead I choose to challenge them to think in new and different ways. Many of them know how to plagiarize but they always do it on the sly, hoping not to get caught. In my class, they must plagiarize or they will be penalized. They are not allowed to be original or creative. So it becomes a very different game, one in which they’re forced to defend choices that they are making about what they’re plagiarizing and why. And when you start to dig down, you’ll find that those choices are as original and as unique as when they express themselves in more traditional types of writing, but they’ve never been trained to think about it in this way.

You see, we are faced with a situation in which the managing of information has become more important than creating new and original information. Take Boing Boing, for instance. They’re one of the most powerful blogs on the web, but they don’t create anything, rather they filter the morass of information and pull up the best stuff. The fact of Boing Boing linking to something far outweighs the thing that they’re linking to. The new creativity is pointing, not making. Likewise, in the future, the best writers will be the best information managers.

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

7 Quick Takes

Previous Post

April 18, 2013

Doing the Math on 'Our'

Next Post

April 20, 2013 What Good is Sitting Alone at Your Desk?

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 7 Quick Takes Apologetics Atheism Book Conversion Debate Tactics Debates Epistemology/Philosophy Housekeeping Ideological Turing Test Marriage Morality in Practice Parsing Catholicism Possibly Heretical Radio Reviews/Recommendations Sequence Index Spiritual Practice Uncategorized

Select a Month April 2017 March 2017 January 2017 December 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who was the ruler of Egypt during Joseph's time?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Nebuchadnezzar Pharaoh Cyrus Caesar