Category Archives: Culture
Manufactured Authenticity
Faded jeans, relic guitars, fake antiques. Everyone likes the idea of old things, but no one wants to do the work required to get them. We don’t need to anymore. We can manufacture authenticity!
We’re not far away from seeing pre-worn Bibles in the local Christian bookstore. Just like your grandfather’s, only $99. A worn Bible [...]
Clifford’s Principle, pt. 2
At the last Grab a Brew, someone asked a question: “Would you rather be right with no evidence to back you up, or wrong, but with good evidence for it?”
I had never heard or considered this question before. My own answer was immediately obvious, but as he continued, it became clear that this is not [...]
Clifford’s Principle, pt. 1
For the last two years, my church has co-sponsored Grab a Brew, Share Your View along with UNIFI, the freethinkers group at the University of Northern Iowa. GABSYV an open-mic event that we hold on the second Tuesday of every month. We choose a topic for the night, generally related to faith or philosophy, and [...]
Church Advertising
One of the big churches in the area hands out stickers for its members to put on the rear windows of their vehicles. What message does this broadcast to the community? I have seen dozens of these stickers around Cedar Falls, but only on late-model SUVs and new sedans. If I was part of the [...]
Three Stages of Passion
The three stages of passion:
Ignorant and excited
Knowledge, accompanied by disillusionment
Greater knowledge, resulting in renewed and lasting excitement
Each of them has its exclusive wisdom. There is a uniqueness in the optimistic curiosity that believes and hopes for the best; there is a uniqueness in the skepticism that causes a person to seek the truth and reject [...]
Consequences, pt. 2: Postmodern Legos
I remember the day I became disillusioned with advertising. I was eight years old and Mom had taken me to the 1/2 Price Store in Crossroads Mall (now Gordman’s). We had a long-standing shopping protocol: I am well-behaved and patient while she shops, and she lets me go by the toy department before we leave.
I [...]
Consequences. pt. 1: The Great Sparrow Campaign
Fifty years ago, China was in the midst of a cultural revolution. Called the Great Leap Forward, it was a massive series of plans set in motion by the government with the intention that China would catch up with the rest of the civilized world. Before that time, China had been a mostly agrarian society; [...]
Fifteen Minutes
Just one more killing spree to add to the list of shootings in the past twelve months. The mass-murder-suicide thing was a big deal back in 1999 with the Columbine incident, but in the past couple of years it’s happened so often that we don’t even care anymore. We can’t. It’s just a statistic.
In our [...]
On Creativity
Central to our universe is the concept of limits: that our creativity is restricted to that which already exists.
As an example, try to imagine what a sixth sense would look like. Science and movies offer their conjectures, but all descriptions of a proposed sixth sense are nothing but combinations of the other five senses. In [...]
I Don’t Believe in Global Warming
It is blasphemy to say this on Earth Day, isn’t it? The one day of the year that we’re supposed to all rally together and resolve to fix all the environmental problems that we cause during the other 364 days. In reality, though, it plays out almost like a New Year’s resolution or a kid [...]
