Wittgenstein said you could write a whole philosophy of the human condition using only jokes. So what can we learn from the jokes told under Stalin? Man of Steel Puns
John Ruskin’s literary reputation is in tatters, but he offered some wisdom. For example: “The most beautiful things in the world are the most useless” Useful Ruskin
You sit in a plaza and it occurs to you that other people have been in your situation, whatever it is, and this knowledge is at the heart of civility” Civil Society
A re-telling of the Faust legend set in the world of professional tennis, it is not an attempt to surpass Goethe in length or tragic weightiness. But Simon, never losing sight of the goal of entertaining his readers, nonetheless manages to slip in some serious ideas and a few important precepts.
REVENGE IS A DISH BEST SERVED COLD: Shock: Monica Lewinsky’s autograph sells for twice Bill Clinton’s.
RECIPROCITY: Do Boys Lack Empathy? If So, Perhaps It’s Because They Give What They Get.“Society has too much trouble seeing harm to boys even when the harm is there for all to be seen. This pattern holds even in the context of sexual predation. The legal system appears to be significantly less willing to protect boys from sexual predation by adults than it is to protect girls. A study of a decade’s worth of cases in the New Jersey school system concluded that when teachers have sex with minor students, male teachers are more likely to go to jail for that transgression, and of those teachers who go to jail, male teachers are given longer sentences.”
MARTA KWASNICKA. Habits of the heart: the problems facing Polish Catholicism
“Really, there is nothing to talk about,” my mother said when I asked her about her conversion to Catholicism. When I did persuade her to tell her story, it had none of the tumult and drama of English nineteenth-century converts such as John Henry Newman or Gerard Manley Hopkins, who entered the Church in defiance of their roots and in the face of fierce disapproval.
ERIC HODGENS–The Fascinating Christian Story.
We all have our personal story. And it is just one part of the bigger story of our family, our tribe, our nation – the things that have shaped us. Institutions, too, have a life of their own – and their own story. Where did they come from? What made them as they are? Religions are such. We need storytellers with long memories. And, if we get really serious about understanding all this, we need good historians. Christianity has the story and the historians who, over the last couple of centuries, have become better at their game. Continue reading
Forbes – : “Computer science curriculums have long emphasized the power of data, encouraging its harvesting and hoarding, pioneering new ways of mining and manipulating users through it, reinforcing it as the path to riches in the modern economy and proselytizing the idea of data being able to solve all of society’s ills. In contrast, library and information science curriculums have historically emphasized privacy, civil liberties and community impact, blending discussion of public data management with private data minimization. Tomorrow’s future technology leaders could learn much from their library-minded colleagues. As a young computer science student at what was then the #4-ranked computer science program in the nation (today #5), my coursework was filled with all manner of practice and theory on how to acquire, manage and mine the world’s largest datasets. The focus was on capability, of what “could” be done with data, rather than what “should” be done with data.
JUDITH WHITE. Arts vandalised in NSW
Buoyed by the re-election of the NSW Berejiklian Government in March, Minister for the Arts Don Harwin is ploughing ahead with the controversial move of the Powerhouse Museum from Ultimo to Parramatta. He has at last responded to the painstaking, long-running Upper House Inquiry into Museums and Galleries, which focused on the affair. His response is to disregard the findings of the Inquiry and the highly experienced professionals who gave detailed evidence to it.
MASSIMO FAGGIOLI. Reform or Dismantle? Why We Need to Keep the Institutions that Keep Us.
One of the effects of the sex-abuse crisis is the current moment of institutional iconoclasm—the temptation to get rid of the institutional element of the Catholic Church. The failures of the church’s institutions are now on full display, even more so than after the revelations of the Spotlight investigation. It is hypocritical, however, to interpret the abuse crisis as a clerical abuse crisis rather than a Catholic abuse crisis. Obviously, the clergy had a unique role in the crisis, but the moral and legal responsibilities do not belong exclusively to those wearing a Roman collar. We are still reluctant to acknowledge the systemic nature of this crisis as something that affected the entire Catholic world and not just its ordained ministers. We would like to contain it neatly within the hierarchy so as to exempt ourselves from the burden of critical self-reflection.
