Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
A new study reports that white Christians, long understood to be the primary shapers of American politics and culture, are rapidly losing their majority status across the country — even in traditionally conservative states. Earlier this week, Jonathan Merritt of the Religion News Service dug into data from the American Values Atlas, a website unveiled late…
I think that all these stats have a point, but I’m also a little uncomfortable with how heavily focused on parents and marital status this is. It’s very easy to look at this coverage and say ‘ah, this is the decline of traditional family values hitting economic opportunity.’ At least that is how this author…
Political scientist Bob Putnam is photographed at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Putnam recently wrote a book about the inequality of opportunity for children titled “Our Kids.” (Damian Strohmeyer for The Washington Post) SWARTHMORE, Penn. — Robert Putnam wants a show of hands of everyone in the room with a parent who graduated from…
SHARING BUTTONS CONTENT OF THE POST Unindexed is an online community that anyone can contribute to; it runs a back-end process that continuously scours Google for signs that it has been indexed, and securely erases itself once it discovers evidence of same. It’s a cute art project (as opposed to a cute engineering project, which…
The New York Times reported last week that 10 states are currently considering measures to allow people to carry firearms on college campuses. In Nevada, the Republican assemblywoman who sponsored the bill has argued that arming students amounts to a kind of rape prevention. “If these young, hot little girls on campus have a firearm, I…
Secretary of the Navy John Lehman (right) promotes Grace Hopper to the rank of commodore in a ceremony at the White House with President Ronald Reagan. Pete Souza/Courtesy of ESPN Films hide caption itoggle caption Pete Souza/Courtesy of ESPN Films Secretary of the Navy John Lehman (right) promotes Grace Hopper to the rank of commodore…
Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau vowed to disrupt Nigeria’s general election in a new video released Tuesday, after two suicide attacks in the northeast blamed on the Islamists killed 38 people. Video provided by AFP Newslook Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau makes a statement at an undisclosed location in this screengrab taken from video on…
Let’s see what happens when we shrink the filter bubble. Every person you follow or block, every app you use, you’re making a trade-off, the hope that this new stream of information will give you exactly what you need in exchange for closing yourself off a little more from the rest of the world. There…
‘Five very different kids, struggling to define themselves against the stereotypes projected onto them by parents and peers, spend Saturday detention together in the school library.’ Photograph: c.MCA/Everett / Rex Features/c.MCA/Everett / Rex Features The year was 1985. I was drinking a shandy, a lukewarm mocktail of beer and lemonade that proclaimed to the world,…
The MP3, the file type of most songs you listen to on a computer, is compressed. Part of the reason people love vinyl records so much (even though they don’t necessarily sound “better” than digital formats), is that they are closer in format to the way you would actually hear a song if you were standing…