Links for the weekend. As usual, linking definitely does not imply agreement.
1. 21. Procreation and Patriarchy; 22. The Economics of Genesis; 23. Plato Against Otherness; 24. The Future in God’s Good Word; 25. Toward Politics
2. From Heaven He Came And Sought Her Review
3. Answers in Deuteronomy – The significance of Jesus’ use of Deuteronomy in his temptations.
4. Biblical Criticism – A Jensonian critique.
5. Final Cause, Natural Supernaturalism, Modern World Picture – Leithart on David Bentley Hart’s latest.
6. The ‘Ordinance of God’ and the Right to Rebel
8. Royal Milk
10. The Invisible Anglicanism of C.S. Lewis
11. The Confidence of Jerry Coyne
12. Fighting Porn By F.A.I.T.H.
13. Getting Medieval on the History of Science
14. Why You Just Might Want a Penal Account of Just War
15. Drug-Fuelled Culture of Control: Thinking Theologically About the Legalization of Marijuana
16. Notes From a Brisbane Nightclub
17. Christianity, Violence, and the Rise of the Liberal State
18. Jesus, Lord of the 17th Century
20. An Oh-So Subtle Twist – On what many Christians blame Phil Robertson (of Duck Dynasty) for failing to say.
21. Belated Thoughts on the Duck Dynasty Kerfuffle
22. The Problem of Gay Friendship
25. Get Along to Get Along: Why Boundaries Matter
26. The Sacramental Side of Coronation
27. “The Bible Says” According to N.T. Wright (New-ish Book Coming in June)
28. Varia on NTW’s Paul and the Faithfulness of God #2
29. Where Did Earliest Christians Meet?
30. Marilynne Robinson Talks God and Science
31. Junk Bonds Raises Questions About Answers in Genesis’s Finances
32. After a Schism, a Question: Can Atheist Churches Last?
33. Cults: How to Separate Truth From Fiction
34. Reading a Novel Alters Your Brain Connectivity—So What?
35. 55 Canadianisms You May Not Know or Are Using Differently
36. Hesitate! Indecision is Sometimes the Best Way to Decide
38. The U.S. Economy Does Not Value Caregivers
39. How People in Muslim Countries Think Women Should Dress
40. What Do Historians Think About Power in Marriage in the Past?
41. Where Life Has Meaning: Poor, Religious Countries
42. Does Prince Charming Really Need to Be Reinvented?
43. Stop Calling Every Female Star a Feminist
44. The Easiest Possible Way to Increase Female Speakers at Conferences
45. 5 Ways White Feminists Can Address Our Own Racism
46. Men are Obsolete
47. Where’s the Power? Some Thoughts on Emer O’Toole’s Feminist Flowchart
48. The Geel Question: The Town Where the Mentally Ill Get a Warm Welcome
49. Occupational Hazards – On the near kidnapping of Alec Douglas-Home.
50. FBI No Longer Primarily a Crime-Fighting Agency
51. The Phenomenology of Temperature Perception
52. Top Ten Cities
53. Where Will We Live? – On the UK housing crisis.
54. The Paradox of Diverse Communities
56. Can TIME Predict Your Politics?
57. J.R.R. Tolkien’s Little Known, Gorgeous Art
58. Making Up Hollywood – The Story of Max Factor.
59. Glass, Darkly – On Google Glass
60. The Power of Ritual: Building Shared Worlds and Bonds That Transcend the Everyday
61. Supervolcano Eruption Mystery Solved
62. Animal Loses Head But Remembers Everything
63. Incredible Pictures of Sand Magnified 250 Times
64. Odours Expressible in Language, As Long As You Speak the Right Language
65. The Desolation of Peter Jackson
66. Genetic Differences Between ‘Identical’ Twins Discovered
67. Fearful Memories Haunt Mouse Descendants
68. This Woman Lost the Ability to Read, But She Can Still Write
69. How To Teach Kids To Be Grateful: Give Them Less
70. Google Scholar is Doing Just Fine, Says Google
71. Why We’re More Creative When We’re Tired and 9 Other Surprising Facts About How Our Brains Work
72. To Stop Procrastinating, Look to the Science of Mood Repair
73. Forgetful
74. Synonyms, Paraphrases, Equivalents, Restatements, Poecilonyms
75. Smart TVs, Smart Fridges, Smart Washing Machines? Disaster Waiting to Happen
76. Imagine Making $2,000 a Day From Something You Did[n’t Do] 30 Years Ago… That’s What Sting Did
77. The Simpsons House in LEGO is Now Official – Oh, and have you seen the Simpsons take on Miyazaki?
78. Heretical Coffee
79. 20 Things to Do With Urine Besides Flushing It
81. Most Popular Passive Aggressive Notes of 2013
82. The Adventures of Fallacy Man
84. G.K. Beale on New Testament Hermeneutics (more here)
85. The Simpsons Theme on Acoustic Guitar
86. 10 Amazing Ways to Stop Overeating
Alastair's Adversaria 
Wow! You’ve outdone yourself. It will be a while to get through all of this. The nightclub article, though, is a thing of beauty. Thanks for finding that.
Ben Myers has some incredibly beautiful reflections like that. I love his writing.
Only 86? 😉
I know. Not enough links to fill your weekend: you’ll have to make some other plans! 😉
We’re going skiing this morning. 🙂
Have fun! 🙂
I like the top 10 cities as well. My very favorite made it to #5, which is impressive given how few people know about it.
Interesting. Do you have connections with Lviv?
I visited L’viv twice and made a number of friends there. It’s really a beautiful city. I was helping a Ukrainian based mission organization called International Partnerships.
It seems strange that the issue of productivity is seen as an argument *against* the minimum wage, as productivity has continued to increase as wages have stagnated. I suppose people are actually talking about profit to the employer rather than work done, but this argument shouldn’t be taken on face value. Considering a company’s worth to be the sum of profits to shareholders will mean that very little consideration is given to providing a fair salary for lower level (and especially temporary) workers. It will also lead to more people being forced into temporary work, as this decreases profits lost to wages. Raising the minimum wage would only entail slight cost increases to employers while decreasing the burden of state sponsorship of underpaid workers:
>As part of this debate, we considered the potential impact of a proposal to raise the minimum wage to $10.50 put forth by Florida Congressman Alan Grayson in H.R. 1346. We concluded that such a minimum wage hike would meaningfully improve the living standards for low-wage workers and their households in part because the new minimum wage would impose only modest costs to businesses, including low-wage, fast-food restaurants. The $10.50 minimum wage would therefore boost earnings while avoiding the negative, unintended consequence of reducing employment.
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I find it disturbing (and not a little classist) that paying workers a reasonable salary is seen as such a contentious issue. The fact that the same people then often criticise people on lower incomes for needing welfare or claim that large multinationals could not afford to raise their basic rate is quite disingenuous, considering the transfer of wealth to the rich over the last few decades.
I suppose that, as processes become more automated, technicized, or computerized, the value of labour itself is driven down in many quarters. Labour is more interchangeable, dispensable, and plentiful. The productivity is often less dependent upon specialized skills of the workforce and, where it is, those skills can be plentiful in the labour marketplace. The value and productivity in such situations arises primarily from the capital and means of production, not from the labour, which is why I believe that minimum wage laws don’t really address the more systemic issues, not that they aren’t important.
I am in favour of some sort of minimum wage (although I think that it should be more reflective of local conditions: the minimum wage for London should be higher than that in Stoke-on-Trent, for instance). Ascertaining the price elasticity of demand for labour is important here, though, both for those opposed to the minimum wage and those in favour of it.
One of the main problems I have with depending on the market to structure wages is that like environmental and safety issues, there is often insufficient pressure on companies to change the way they act. Modern large corporations can often be very selfish and short-term in their thinking and will gladly rest on the state to provide welfare for their lower-income workers when they should really be providing for their own workforce. Thinking about business purely in terms of costs vs. profits places workers in an adversarial relationship with their managers, as they are draining potential profits. Lower wage earners barely have any bargaining power over a company, especially if they are temporary or part-time workers. Insisting on a higher minimum wage means that all employers must factor this cost into their budget, just as they need to factor in the costs of fire safety.
To a certain point, the fact that workers are not considered to be sufficiently profitable to pay a minimum wage is a problem created by the employer and society in general. An example of this is Amazon: many profitable businesses have gone under because of Amazon’s ability to cut costs. People may not be willing to pay as much as they would have paid before, but they do pay a large proportion of the former retail price for books and other goods to be shipped from a warehouse. In place of all of these jobs lost, we have a few people working very low incomes as warehouse operates and drivers, and even fewer working as supervisors and managers. The money that used to support a large number of people working in shops now makes a few people very rich, while providing most workers with harder jobs for lower salaries. The customer gets added convenience and some savings, but a more human system with a minimum wage and compulsory benefits would allow a larger group to benefit from the savings, possibly for a slightly higher cost to the end user (but still unnoticeable compared to the overall savings). Most people benefit (apart from those who used to work in bookshops that will have to evolve or die) and the profits actually do trickle down. If some companies still cannot become profitable after paying a reasonable salary they may go under, but in the longer term it will foster an economy where companies in that sector can be profitable and pay their workers well. As it stands, there is a lot of evidence that wealth is being shared increasingly unequally in countries like the UK and the US, which is a big problem for society in general.
I don’t think that the market is the solution. On the other hand, I am not sure that the state is really the solution either, although it may reduce the scale of the problem (I favour some sort of minimum wage).
“So Plato proposes that women and children are to be possessed in common, “so that no parent will know his own offspring or any child his parent””
There’s something very very odd about this. Does he mean “So that no father will know his offspring or any child his father” or does he conveniently forget that, though mothers may not know who the father is, they will still know who their child is.
(Or, I suppose, he could mean we should take the babies from the arms of the mother. But then, that works just as well for a father.)
My impression—it has been a while since I read Plato’s Republic—is that the children were to be taken from mothers and raised as wards of the state.
Yes, I think that’s true. But it’s still an odd statement.
Regarding head coverings: It’s perhaps noteworthy that Lebanon, which thought style 6 was best, s only barely majority Muslim (54%), and has a very significant minority Christian (40%).