Alan Jacobs

[gallery] momalibrary:

A wrapped $50 stack of ARTCASH, comprised of two “ones” by Andy Warhol, and two $24 bills by Tom Gormley.  ARTCASH was a benefit party held by Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) in 1971.  E.A.T asked artists to design currency to be purchased and used by attendees during the casino style event.  The bills were printed by the American Banknote Company on the same stock used for U.S. currency (though without the anti-counterfeit threads).  From the Steven Leiber Extra Art Archive. -ar

movieposteroftheday:

Japanese speed for PLAYTIME (Jacques Tati, France, 1967)

Size: 14.5" x 20", folded to 14.5" x 10"

Designer: unknown

Poster source: Heritage Auctions

(via Frank Chimero on Twitter)

[gallery] movieposteroftheday:

Japanese speed for PLAYTIME (Jacques Tati, France, 1967)

Size: 14.5" x 20", folded to 14.5" x 10"

Designer: unknown

Poster source: Heritage Auctions

(via Frank Chimero on Twitter)

Neil Gaiman: Why I love Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell:

Lovely tribute by Neil Gaiman to one of my very favorite books. I have mixed feelings about a television adaptation: it’s a highly filmable story, to be sure, but the most distinctive element of the book will be lost: the narrtor’s wry, Austenian voice, with its added element of pedantry manifested in the great horde of explanatory and historical footnotes. Please don’t watch the series without reading the book first!

(And pray that Susanna Clarke will publish another novel.)

Neil Gaiman: Why I love Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell:

Lovely tribute by Neil Gaiman to one of my very favorite books. I have mixed feelings about a television adaptation: it’s a highly filmable story, to be sure, but the most distinctive element of the book will be lost: the narrtor’s wry, Austenian voice, with its added element of pedantry manifested in the great horde of explanatory and historical footnotes. Please don’t watch the series without reading the book first!

(And pray that Susanna Clarke will publish another novel.)

Neil Gaiman: Why I love Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Charlie Hebdo’s murdered editorial director, Stéphane Charbonnier, said he aimed to “banalize” all areas of discourse that were too fraught to discuss. He maintained that generations of satire of Catholicism had made the lampooning of it — and thereby, the legitimate discussion of it — unobjectionable, and he felt that the same could be achieved with Islam and other topics.  

That the cartoons were not intentionally racist does not preclude their being experienced as racist. Cartoons can and do offend. Yet Christiane Taubira, the black French justice minister who was parodied as a monkey in a cringe-worthy cartoon, delivered a poignant elegy at the funeral of one of her supposed tormentors, Bernard Verlhac, known as Tignous, saying that “Tignous and his companions were sentinels, lookouts, those who watched over democracy,” preventing it from being lulled into complacency.  

The leading French anti-racism organization, SOS Racisme, has called Charlie Hebdo “the greatest anti-racist weekly in this country.” Its current editor, Gérard Biard, says it deplores all forms of racism. According to Le Monde, of 523 Charlie Hebdo covers published from 2005 to 2015, only seven singled out Islam for ridicule (ten were cited as mocking multiple religions); many more mocked Christianity and the racism of the French right.

I thought this business about “Wisconsin Republicans denying beans to the poor” was a partisan distortion, but apparently not. I haven’t voted for a major-party candidate in twenty-three years, and that’s not likely to change in the near future. Given Republican attitudes towards the poor and black people, and Democratic attitudes towards the unborn and (more recently) towards Christians, and the military adventurism and erosion of civil liberties enthusiastically endorsed by both parties, I can’t possibly vote for any of them. It’s way past time for an alternative to emerge.

[gallery] I thought this business about “Wisconsin Republicans denying beans to the poor” was a partisan distortion, but apparently not. I haven’t voted for a major-party candidate in twenty-three years, and that’s not likely to change in the near future. Given Republican attitudes towards the poor and black people, and Democratic attitudes towards the unborn and (more recently) towards Christians, and the military adventurism and erosion of civil liberties enthusiastically endorsed by both parties, I can’t possibly vote for any of them. It’s way past time for an alternative to emerge.

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My students are often Christians who are old enough to mock mercilessly the people that gave of their time sacrificially to disciple them when they were young but who are not yet mature enough to be able to disciple others. I often find them quick-off-the-draw-ready with a forceful and sophisticated critique of most any traditional religious belief or practice.  

They can be sadly flummoxed, however, by a simple request to explain what is true. If I wonder, “What are some problems with the doctrine of the atonement?” hands fly up all over the room, but if I straightforwardly ask, “What is the gospel?” the room falls strangely silent, and I find myself staring at rows of students quietly avoiding making eye contact.  

To sketch what the gospel is would be to risk a rough draft that someone else would get the joy of critiquing; it would be to express a childlike faith; it would be to do the work of parenting.  

I have therefore increasingly made it my self-imposed task to help my students find their way to their mature identities in a manner that does not make their parents and childhood teachers and pastors the foil in the process. Of course, this does not necessarily mean that they should simply accept what they have inherited unaltered. More and more I have come to value those who model how to no longer hold to the exact version of faith they grew up with while still finding ways to be grateful for and affirming of the community of faith that raised them.