FROM JEFF GUHIN

Check it out:

An NPR discussion on young people finding religion.   A lot has been written about the increased religiosity of this generation, at least in America. Is it true?  I don’t know.  I’d like to see more data instead of anecdotes.  If anyone has any, send it my way.

More on this!

FROM JEFF GUHIN

Senator Brownback is offended.  It just goes to show, only Catholics can make anti-Catholic jokes.

Speaking of which, a woman’s first-born child is young and a bit precocious.  What will he be, she wonders?  So, she does what any sensible person would do and calls in a Magical woman with, er, magical powers (not permitted in the Catechism, I must add).   The Magical Woman has her put the kid in the closet with a Bible, some playing cards, and a bottle of gin.  She says, if your baby comes out with the cards, he’ll be a dishonest gambler.  If he comes out with the gin, he’ll be an irresponsible drunk.  And if he comes out with the Bible, he’ll be a holy man of God who will do good for all the world.  So the baby goes in the closet, and they wait a few minutes.  Suddenly, they hear a loud noise from inside, and the mother opens the door right away.  Lo and behold: the baby is holding the cards, reading the Bible, and drinking the gin–all at the same time!  The magical woman takes a deep breath.  This is worse than I thought, she says.  He’s going to be a Catholic.

FROM JEFF GUHIN

This is a truly wonderful essay by Joseph Bottum in First Things about how death is nowhere to be found in our world.

In the midst of life, we are in death—that line, from the ninth-century poet Notker Balbulus, incorporated into the Mass for the Dead, expresses a truth of human experience we should expect to resonate at every moment of public and private life: a constant touchstone for political theory, a defining circumstance for thought about the human condition. And what the dead had no speech for, when living, as T.S. Eliot saw, They can tell you, being dead: the communication / Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.

The practical consequences of such claims are always difficult to predict, and I have a suspicion that something in death and politics prohibits a complete account of their relation. Still, those graveless streets in San Francisco are a problem—a ragged edge that scrapes at the bonds of the social order. If the deepest roots of a culture are in its funerals and memorials, and if political society derives from the fact that people die, then we have a badly injured culture and a severely weakened politics.

FROM JEFF GUHIN

So it turns out that if you are more of a myspace person or a facebook person, it indicates your socioeconomic status:

“The goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes and other ‘good’ kids are now going to Facebook. These kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college.” MySpace is still home for “kids whose parents didn’t go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school.”

It’s also, she says, the preferred digital hangout for outsiders—burnouts, punks, emos, Goths and gangstas. In addition, she says, Hispanic and immigrant teens are more likely to choose MySpace.

Boyd does concede that a lot of this may have to do with the fact that Facebook began at Harvard and spread out from the Ivies. But she believes that there’s conscious self-identification involved in the choice.

Facebookers are strivers; MySpacers are there in part because they’re rejecting the values of preppies, jocks and tools.

FROM JEFF GUHIN

So, a lot of you might have heard, a great movie, Once, came out about a month ago that features the lead singer of The Frames, a fantastic Irish rock band.  That singer, Glen Hansard, pairs with Markéta Irglová, a Czech woman trained classically in voice.  Here’s an NPR concert.

FROM JEFF GUHIN

It looks like this was the year that cycling finally woke up to doping.  Baseball seems to be doing something similar, and the Barry Bonds fiasco will keep that debate going strong.

It’s fascinating, really, because as anyone who knows anything about sports will tell you, the line is really not that clear: if you train in elevated areas, is that an unfair advantage?  What about elements of your body, like pain endurance or metabolism?  Of course, putting something foreign in your system, even if that foreign item is your own blood that you froze a few weeks back, should be illegal.  And it would do no good to over-intellectualize this in the context of sports.  Rules should and will be worked out as to what’s legal and what’s not.

But it’s kind of cool when you realize it’s all a lot more arbitrary than it seems.

FROM JEFF GUHIN

A great article in the New York Times about how people in Afghanistan, despite the violence, wars, and work of creating a country, like to watch a lot of TV.  As an interviewee, said, there’s not a lot else to do…

It’s interesting though, because I would argue that the need to watch a lot of TV, surf the Internet, and constantly be on the cell phone is because of the need for community.  Humans aren’t used to living fragmented lives, and so we create community in whatever way we can, even if that means “fake” communities of television or long-distance relationships.

I searched for the name and I can’t find it, but I heard someone on NPR talking about how fascinating it is that we overhear people at coffeeshops talking about the machinations of celebrities in the same breath as the doings of good friends.  Community is interchangeable.  At least, that’s how it looks in our heads.  There’s actually been a lot of research done on community, and particularly how gossip facilitates it.

FROM JEFF GUHIN

Hi everyone!

My name is Jeff Guhin, and I’ve been an editor at BustedHalo.com for over three years now.  I was an Associate Editor while I lived in New York City, and I’ve since moved to New Haven, CT  to begin a PhD at Yale University.  However, I’ll be blogging everyday (except the Lord’s Day) for the forseeable future.  I look forward to creating a conversation with all of you, and and of you have any suggestions, questions, or comments about the blog or how it could be better, please let me know at jeff@bustedhalo.com, or just write to my boss, Mike Hayes, at mike@bustedhalo.com

Be on the lookout for more of the blog’s mission, my goals, and what we’re trying to do here at Bustedblog, but enough of all that stuff for now.  Let’s talk blog.

From Jeff Guhin

Steve Jobs is at it again. He’s an amazing man. What’s great about the new phone, apparently, is the screen technology.

So here’s the deal: We need the rich to drive technology–at least in capitalism.

And I love technology, and things like the iphone have implications that will eventually trickle down into even the poorest people’s lives (at least in our country).

There are two tricks: how do we extend tech to the poorest of the poor around the world? And how do we drive tech (particularly in medicine) in such a way that it trickles down quickly?

I recognize the trickle down effect is painful, but inequality will always be among us. The challenge is accepting inequality but rejecting injustice.

And what the hell does that mean? Ah–that’s for another post.

From Jeff Guhin

FBI tries to fight zombie hordes!

Actually, it’s about how a bunch of computers are zombies for other computers. Why isn’t the private market doing this? You’d think that making computers run faster would be profitable…

The problem, however, is that one computer might not run that slow because of zombies, so the individual user is fine–however, the aggregate society is screwed by all the spam, junk mail, etc. It’s like firefighters–thank God I’ve never needed them, but I’m glad my taxes go to them.