Links for the weekend. Perhaps it is also time to remind my readers that linking does not imply agreement. I typically disagree sharply with many of my links, but believe that they are nonetheless worth reading, reflecting upon, or engaging with.
1. 17. The Mother of All Living; 18. Justice and Helplessness; 19. Knowing the Other; 20. Sex After Sin
3. Truncating the Politics of Jesus
5. Innocence that Grows: Christianity and the Fantastic Imagination
6. Thought Leaders: Coleridge, the Clerisy, and Catalyst Live
8. I Should Get the ‘Spiritual Friendship’ Blog (et al) But I Don’t
9. “All the Lonely People”: On Hospitality, Again
10. The Search for Authority and the Fear of Difference
11. R. Scott Clark the Theologian
12. Westminster and Common Land
13. A Calvinist Revival for Evangelicals
14. Why Aren’t Natural Law Arguments More Persuasive?
15. Why Do Christians Disagree?
16. 2014—The Anglicans to Watch
17. Have Atheists Hijacked the Word “Humanist”?
18. Search Term Friday: Calvin and Hobbes Let’s Go Exploring
19. Working For All You Are Worth: Some More Thoughts on the Minimum Wage Debate
20. More on Thinking
21. Children’s Tsar Wastes Breath About Smacking
22. Corporal Punishment: Thoughts?
23. Patriarchy’s Magic Trick: How Anything Perceived as Women’s Work Immediately Sheds its Value – For a predictably highly provocative counter-perspective see parts II and III of this. Both sides here are missing some very important parts of the big picture, it seems to me.
24. Camille Paglia: A Feminist Defence of Masculine Virtues
25. Camille Paglia Doesn’t Understand How Civilizations Commit Suicide
26. Sorry, Camille Paglia: Feminism is the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Men
27. London’s Cathedral of Sewage
28. Tweet Police
29. 12 Maps That Changed the World
30. How Sleep Deprivation Decays the Mind and Body
31. The Most Fascinating Science GIFs of 2013
32. A Blind Pirate – On cryptomnesia
34. How to Properly Pronounce ‘Ghibli’ and Other Fun Trivia About the Legendary Animation Studio
35. Cocaine is Evil
36. Misterioso
37. Who Rules the Roost? The On-Going Battle of the Sexes
38. How to Break the Stranglehold of Academics on Critical Thinking
39. The Dark Side of Emotional Intelligence
40. Why Procrastinators Procrastinate, How to Beat Procrastination
43. What Counts as Provenance Evidence?
44. Ten Things: North Korea’s Film Industry
45. 100 Things We Didn’t Know Last Year
46. 20 of 2013’s Most Overused Words
47. Parts of New York City are Built on the Ruins of English Cathedrals
48. Lol My Thesis – Summing up PhD theses in a single sentence
49. Mapping How Emotions Manifest in the Body
50. XKCD’s Notes from the Past
51. Lego Batman and Robin, Joker’s Funhouse
52. The Problem With Time and Timezones
Alastair's Adversaria 
RE: Leithart on Yoder
Yoder’s Politics of Jesus is one of the worst books I’ve ever read. There is a plausible pacifist reading of the gospels, but Yoder’s attempt to strong arm you into believing that it is not only a plausible but indeed the only possible reading of the gospels is not just not just disengenous, but indeed bullying. What a nasty little man.
Now perhaps Yoder will be seen as historically important as one of the people who brought back the recognition that the gospel transforms everything, including politics. But that particular idea can be communicated in a few sentences. You certainly don’t need to read the whole of TPOJ to get that. I would never call it a classic.
I haven’t read any of Yoder’s other work, so perhaps he is better elsewhere.
I have more time for Yoder’s work than you do, I think. Although I firmly disagree with his pacifism and am appalled by the stories that have been surfaced about his personal life, I have found his work stimulating to engage with and also a key influence upon someone such as Stanley Hauerwas, which whose work I have a deeper acquaintance. Yoder has some good stuff in some of his other works and, for my part, I found Yoder’s Politics a useful foil against which to develop my non-pacifist reading of the gospels.
Hauerwas is a powerful thinker who is well worth engaging with, though I find that his pacifism is without moral content. Yoder’s readings of the New Testament in TPOJ simply travesty the text, much like his reading of Augustine. From all I have read about the man, and from my own experience reading TPOJ, I get the sense of a fundamental shiftiness at his core, one that is not merely limited to his personal life.
That time article on feminism was utterly clueless. Maybe there have been benefits to the upper middle class, but the disaster that is working class male life is not even on the writer’s radar. I also have to wonder about how much sex the average man is actually getting.
(BTW I know you don’t include articles because you agree with them.)
As you point out, her focus is on middle class fathers in stable marriages (and their playing of the field beforehand). What is missing from her analysis is appreciation of the fact that feminism is one reason why stable marriage and valued fatherhood is less of a cultural reality today than it was in the past. Even were the state of the father in a stable marriage improved by feminism (something that I am not prepared to grant), it has become much less accessible. Also, the fact that sex is more accessible for men outside of marriage is hardly a benefit: it decreases the cultural value of a good man.
Oh my goodness, I made it onto your links list! *beams*
Of course, that might mean you completely disagree with me . . . 😀
Turns out I’m ok with it!
*screenshots this page and sends it to all friends*
Lol! I actually left a comment beneath your post in agreement, but something went wrong, it didn’t send properly, and I couldn’t recover it.
I often feel like I have a fairly good idea which items you fall in general agreement with and those you don’t, but this one has me stymied: “58. Women who fear being forced to marry abroad are advised to hide a spoon in their underwear.”
I thought this list was even more interesting than your others. Nice to see you interacting on the corporal punishment discussion. That’s an area where I’ve seen far too little intelligent discussion.
The explanation for the spoon in the underwear is here.
I suspect that most people who have followed my blog for a while will have a relatively good idea of where I fall on many of the issues raised in the articles that I link. Of course, if people don’t know and would be interested to find out, I would usually be more than happy to share some of my thoughts in the comments.
If there are particular types of links that you would like me to post more of, please tell me: I may be able to include more along those lines in the future.
Have you ever considered creating an e-book or guest authoring on other websites?
I have a blog based upon on the same information you discuss and
would really like to have you share some stories/information.
I know my viewers would appreciate your work.
If you’re even remotely interested, feel free to send me an e mail.