Links

My grand plan for Lent this year was to post a poem a day using the Church of England’s #LiveLent reflections as a jumping-off point, but life happened (we lost G and then went into a full COVID-19 related shutdown) and I ended up stuck on 17 days. Poetry as prayer seemed like a good idea given the difficult season of faith I was in, in which prayer felt alien. It is not an entirely novel idea as I found out with more than a few essays reflecting on the subject, two examples being these excellent pieces at Talking Writing and The Millions. There is a rich history of the poetic form in various religious writing and in their associated rites; some might even argue that the enduring allure of the King James Version of the Bible has more to do with the cadence of its words than anything else. Come to think of it, the Psalms sometimes read like the brain dumps of a conflicted person, like transcripts of therapy sessions. ...

Photo by Thanun Buranapong on Unsplash \\\* Bar a few days here and there it has been, as we say out here, dingin doon; read wet, cold and windy, emphasis on the wet part. That is is mid-June adds to the slight sense of gloominess that comes with it, a mood which I see replicated in the faces of the people I run into about town, in my view at least. All of that has left me with quite a lot more time on my hands than usual, which for better or for worse has ended up exploring various reddit rabbit holes, chief of which have been the Thinkpad, ChromeOS and SurfaceLinux ones. They have provided the welcome of distraction of providing the inspiration for me trying to replace Windows on my old Thinkpad Tablet 10 with either Linux or ChromeOS. Both have been qualified fails - a debloated version of windows currently serves me passably on the device -but the ultimate goal would be to replace it with something zipper and functional, à la this attempt. I suspect the search will continue, albeit at a hopefully less time intensive pace. In between all of this, I managed to fit in some time out with the guys from work, a decent enough evening the only black mark against it being the aforementioned bucket loads of rain. ...

Heather Lanier reflects on motherhood and the life altering changes a child with a disability brings. Super babies don’t cry; wrestling pain makes us human.

A few of the more interesting pieces I stumbled on on the web during March… Enjoy On Spock- Gukira: Leonard Nimoy died, and amidst the outpouring of grief and the eulogies, I found I related most with this piece by Gukira who said it better than I ever could I do not have a single Spock moment—an image or narrative that stays with me. Unlike those who know how to write about TV and movies, I cannot recall a single episode, at least not by name. When I was younger, when I first encountered Spock in Nairobi, in reruns from the 80s, I encountered him as gesture: as the arched eyebrow, as the grip that caused others to faint, as the Vulcan mind meld. ...

A few of the interesting bits and bobs I’ve stumbled on over the last few days Hope for a cleaner, cheaper, oil less future just became a wee stronger. Nigeria beware? @forakin on why we should all blog. For a more in depth analysis, Andrew Sullivan’s seminal piece from 2008 offers a longer read. The £11bn conundrum. The scale of the problem or an opportunity? Khoi on the design of the iPhone 6. Unimpressed is the word Education as a tool for disrupting and challenge paradigms - the NY Times weighs in. Ebola contained.. Phew - Elon Musk, on Mars On lightning, and being struck by it. On Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the Modern Novel. Pay and gender gaps, closing?

Joshua Gans on The True Cost of Parenting, and why $180,000 may not necessarily be as outlandish as it sounds especially when the opportunity cost of stay at home parenting is factored in: Parents know their children, have their interests at heart, are on call all the time and mean you don’t have to worry about child care. This is precisely the utilitarian services that the high priced nannies are being valued for. Once you include stay-at-home parents, you’ll find that we are all paying much more for nannies than we think. ...

Are emotions prophetic? The short answer is No, but Jonah Lehrer at The Frontal Cortex offers a good summary of the long answer [pdf]: Every feeling is like a summary of data, a quick encapsulation of all the information processing that we don’t have access to. (As Pham puts it, emotions are like a “privileged window” into the subterranean mind.) When it comes to making predictions about complex events, this extra information is often essential. It represents the difference between an informed guess and random chance. ...

A few days late but an interesting read nonetheless. Denise Morris explores inter-racial dating and marriage from a biblical worldview over at Boundless.org. Parts One, Two and Three explore her experiences in growing up as a child from a mixed marriage, the pseudo-biblical objections people may have and offers a useful summation: Will choosing to date someone outside of your race make your life more difficult? Hopefully not, but it could. If it does, remember that the father of lies still has a grip on humanity. He will until the day Christ returns to put him in his place. Are the potential difficulties of an interracial relationship worth it? Of course they are if it’s the person God has prepared for you. Most importantly, all of us are precious in his sight — red, yellow, black and white — and every shade in between. ...

Jonah Lehrer (The Frontal Cortex) reviews a paper by Bahns, Pickett and Crandall on the relationship between social ecology (the make up of a community and its characteristics) and how people initiate and maintain relationships. They surmise that a bigger pool only makes us more picky, and keener to gravitate to people similar to us (the so called Similarity-Attraction effect). The cliff notes version? When opportunity abounds, people are free to pursue more narrow selection criteria, but when fewer choices are available, they must find satisfaction using broader criteria. ...

Will this father be prosecuted for defending his family against burglars? Reclaiming the Gentleman - The SBM approach. Even nature tears down first, before attempting to rebuild. The plus side to the Australian fires. A dastardly act, and using social media to hunt the bastards down: Sugarbelly’s blog post, an e-Petition and numerous Twitter mentions. How About We on the types of women to avoid. Eugene Cho muses on Troy Davis, the death penalty and what is an appropriate Christian response. An essay on travelling. Navigating the “You’re a great guy, but…..” talk. Looking for the perfect dating age gap? Six is it. The case for doodling.