Things will be significantly slower than usual around here this week...I am on vacation. Aside from some sporadic updates, I'll see you next week.
Tags: kottke.org
From Joseph Clarke in Triple Canopy, a comparison of the histories of the American megachurch and corporation.
Lakewood and America's twelve hundred other megachurches -- congregations that draw between two thousand and fifty thousand people per weekend -- are not simply vast machines for passive spectatorship. Sunday services are convergences of worshipers who spend their weeknights at prayer groups, Bible studies, ministries, and missionary training sessions. Successful megachurches are like well-run companies, with intricate corporate structures devised to keep each member personally engaged; their pastors are like chief executives, maximizing the productivity of laborers in the evangelism enterprise. Jumbotron notwithstanding, the architectural and organizational tropes of the megachurch are best compared to those of the modern white-collar workplace.
Tags: Joseph Clarke religion
New father Paul Drielsma thinks that the language around fatherhood needs to change.
Scour the parenting forums on the Internet and you'll find the common lament that "DH" (darling husband) expects a medal whenever he "babysits" junior for a few hours. I have little sympathy for DH in these cases, but maybe a step in the right direction would be to stop using language that suggests hired help -- to stop referring to DH's job in the same terms as somebody who could legitimately stick his hand out at the end of his shift and demand a tip. DH isn't babysitting, he's parenting, and just changing that one word changes, for me at least, all sorts of connotations.
Tags: language parenting Paul Drielsma
A short appreciation of the SR-71 Blackbird, an airplane that was literally faster than a speeding bullet.
"It wasn't like any other airplane," he told me. "It was terrifying, exciting, intense and humbling every time you flew. Each mission was designed to fly at a certain speed; you always knew the airplane had more. It was like driving to work in a double-A fuel dragster."
The skin of the plane's fuselage was a whopping 85% titanium, which was purchased, during the Cold War, from the Soviet Union.
Tags: airplanes SR-71
David Galbraith calculates that if buildings by famous architects were priced like paintings, a Le Corbusier building would be worth more than the entire US GDP.
The top floor of Corbusier's Villa Stein (one of perhaps the top 500 most important houses of the late 19th/early 20th centuries - i.e. a Van Gogh of houses) is for sale for the same price per sq.ft. (approx $1400) as buildings in the same area of suburban Paris, designed by nobody in particular. Meanwhile, Van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet sold for an inflation adjusted price of $136 million yet a poster of similar square footage and style costs around $10.
In terms of
signaling, it's difficult to hang a house on one's parlor wall...buying a Corbusier means living in it wherever it happens to be located, at least part of the year.
Tags: architecture art David Galbraith economics lecorbusier
CNNMoney tells us about seven great companies to work for. For instance, a Colorado brewing company gives their employees free beer and company ownership.
After one year of work, each employee receives an ownership stake in the company and a free custom bicycle. After five years every employee enjoys an all-expenses-paid trip to Belgium -- the country whose centuries-old beer tradition serves as a model for the Fort Collins, Colo., brewery. Oh yeah, and employees get two free six-packs of beer a week.
Tags: business lists working
Over on BLDGBLOG, Geoff Manaugh shares his idea for a Ghostbusters III screenplay based on NYNEX, the telephone company that served New York and New England from 1984 through 1997.
Pay phones ring for no reason, and they don't stop. Dead relatives call their families in the middle of the night. People, horrifically, even call themselves-- but it's the person they used to be, phoning out of the blue, warning them about future misdirection.
Every once in a while, though, something genuinely bad happens: someone answers the phone... and they go a little crazy.
Thing is -- spoiler alert -- halfway through the film, the Ghostbusters realize that NYNEX isn't a phone system at all: it's the embedded nervous system of an angel -- a fallen angel -- and all those phone calls and dial-up modems in college dorm rooms and public pay phones are actually connected into the fiber-optic anatomy of a vast, ethereal organism that preceded the architectural build-up of Manhattan.
Manhattan came afterwards, that is: NYNEX was here first.
Tags: geoffmanaugh Ghostbusters III movies
From the NY Times:
L.A. Times Reports Jackson Is Dead | 6:24 p.m. The newspaper cited "city and law enforcement sources." The networks and CNN are also broadcasting the news, citing the Times story.
The LA Times story is here but isn't loading right now. Twitter is melting down a little. RIP, King of Pop.
Update: The LA Times story is loading now. Here's what it says:
Pop star Michael Jackson was pronounced dead by doctors this afternoon after arriving at a hospital in a deep coma, city and law enforcement sources told The Times.
Tags: Michael Jackson
Tyler Cowen previews a portion of his upcoming book, Create Your Own Economy, for Fast Company.
More and more, "production" -- that word my fellow economists have worked over for generations -- has become interior to the human mind rather than set on a factory floor. A tweet may not look like much, but its value lies in the mental dimension. You use Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and other Web services to construct a complex meld of stories, images, and feelings in your mind. No single bit seems weighty on its own, but the resulting blend is rich in joy, emotion, and suspense. This is a new form of drama, and it plays out inside us -- with technological assistance -- rather than on a public stage.
Tags: books Create Your Own Economy economics Tyler Cowen
Sage advice from Alec Baldwin about the Mark Sanford affair: Don't Take the Bait.
Now is a wonderful opportunity to show the country what Democrats/liberals/progressives/unaligned learned from the Clinton era. Whatever personal problems that public officials deal with privately, leave them alone. This could happen to anyone, in any state, regardless of party. Why make the voters of South Carolina suffer while Sanford is skewered? If he wants to resign, so be it. If not, let him deal with it in private.
And Baldwin didn't say this but I will: lefty political sites like HuffPo and
TPM have and are devoting a lot of time and attention to these Republican sex scandals. Hey, they're good for pageviews, right? That's part of the problem too. Aren't there more important political things going on in the world than this gossip?
Tags: alecbaldwin Mark Sanford politics sex
From The Onion: 95 Percent Of Opinions Withheld On Visit To Family.
"There was a time when my sister would mention how much she wants an SUV, and I'd be unable to resist launching into a whole thing about how irresponsible and wasteful they are. But after receiving my thousandth blank, confused stare from everybody at the table, I realized it was futile," Wilmot said. "Now, I don't even flinch when my dad mentions he's reading 'this amazing book called The Celestine Prophecy.' That's how bad it is."
(via 
