Be of good cheer, little pup, for thou too in resurrection shall have a little golden tail. ~Martin Luther @revdeaconb
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Another Advent Ends: Anxiety Baking, Swearing Santa, Authoritarian Sociology, Muscatine Friendship, Multitasking in Marriage, and a Gift of Dentures.
OF COURSE Advent isn’t over yet! But the intrepid team of writers and editors here at Mockingbird are taking a well-deserved break for the next couple of weeks. The blog and the office are transitioning into holiday mode, so expect things to be slow around here till January 3. If you’re interested in charitable giving […]
New Parties for the Age of Social Media
Who actually flies to Vegas for a bachelor party? I’m not being mean or judgmental here. I really want to know. Who has that kind of money to spend on a friend? I mean, if you’re living in LA and Vegas is only 4 car hours away, make like The Hangover and have a good (and […]
Another Week Ends: Silicon Valley #Seculosity, Airborne Absolution, Big Law Kills, Maslow’s Smartphone, Stan Lee’s Humor, and True Detective Pikachu
Wrapping up the latest from the week, we’d be remiss not to recap the biggest news, which is that DZ’s new book Seculosity is now available for your pre-ordering pleasure! For a preview of the content, go here, and to get in your pre-order, go here. (According to those ‘in the know,’ pre-orders are actually what make […]
Another Week Ends: Divine Dad Jokes, Social Media Dark Ages, Millennial Marriages, Cher’s SOS, and a Swimming Pool Full of Sprinkles
1. It’s the experience economy, in case you haven’t heard. In a previous vocation, that was the mantra by which we were expected to “pivot” our future plans. The new experience entrepreneurs have likely set up shop in your neighborhood too: we just got our first axe-throwing range to compliment our smashing-pottery-therapy studio and our […]
Another Week Ends: Taking Life for Granted, Eating Sin, Middle School Materialism, Death by Jaywalking, Moth Jokes, and the Joy of Things You’ll Never Master
1. Let’s start off at Digg, another web venture focused on curating the best of the web for a specialized audience. For the unfamiliar, Digg is to Reddit as Myspace is to Facebook, it was one of the web’s earliest “vote on the stories you like” style websites. Steve Rousseau, the senior editor at this rebooted […]
Can Jordan Peterson Walk Away from Omelas?
Full disclosure: the point of this article is to get clicks. Lots of clicks. Because, love him or hate him, the Canadian psychology professor and clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson gets clicks. And despite all our talk at Mockingbird about not keeping score, Google Analytics is real and we are sinners and clicks are the currency […]
Lance Armstrong’s Moving Finish Line
Where were you in 2012 when Lance Armstrong confessed his steroid sins to St. Oprah? Did you immediately take off your 2004 (!) Livestrong wristband and trash it, or did you simply let it fall behind the bedroom dresser? Was it the talk of your town, or did it just confirm your lack of interest […]
Another Week Ends: Forgiving Kings, Forgiving Narcissists, Polite Smart Speakers, Religious Parties, and the Saddest Croatian
1. They say never talk religion and politics, so let’s increase the trespass and start our time this week with a discussion of religion and politics. Michele Margolis is a U Penn political science professor who specializes in the link between faith and government. She makes the case that we’ve got the chicken and egg […]
Another Week Ends: Prophetic Marshmallows, Honest Obituaries, Psychopathic AI, A Game for Good Christians, and the Bruised Face of Forgiveness
1. This week, a social science story takes the lede. New research out of NYU and UC Irvine is casting real doubt on the hallowed Stanford Marshmallow experiment, a study long used to tout the virtues of delayed gratification, patience, and self-control: The marshmallow test is one of the most famous pieces of social-science research: […]
The Easter Effect, Dolly Parton, and a Specific Kind of Jesus
Happy Easter! By now, the ham leftovers should be about finished, the bonnets returned to their boxes, and the elusive eggs left unfound on Sunday are easily discovered by following the faint smell of sulfur. Clergy are just about recovered from the multiple services of Holy Week. And for those of us from liturgical traditions, […]
Mr. Rogers on the Root of Everything
It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood! The official trailer dropped this week for the Mr. Rogers documentary, Won’t You Be My Neighbor, due this June. “Love is at the root of everything—all learning, all relationships—love, or the lack of it,” says Fred into the camera, meaning we’d better bring a box of tissues to […]
Altered Carbon and Why We Hate Our Bodies
A quick note: Altered Carbon is a show with real theological insight, but the road to those insights is marked by lots of nudity and violence. It’s as bad or even worse than Game of Thrones or Westworld. Even though a hard-R rating applies, the sex and violence is a part of the show’s Flannery O’Connor style […]
