A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Technology

  • Digital simplicity

    It’s not news that a lot of us have a complicated relationship with technology. Many of us feel like we spend more time on our phones–particularly social media–than we think, in our more reflective moments, is probably good for us. Phone addiction is now discussed as a serious issue, and the ubiquity of mobile phones Read more

  • Technology, love, and paying attention

    I really enjoyed this post from Michael Sacasas at his blog “The Frailest Thing.” He argues that it’s not smartphones (or any other attention-grabbing gadget) per se that make it hard for us to pay attention to the people we encounter–it’s us. It is sometimes a battle even to be attentive to another person or Read more

  • Friday Links

    –Today is the Feast of the Annunciation; here are some thoughts on that. BLS also has one of her outstanding musical offerings for the day. –John Piper, theological nihilist? –Catholics are “more supportive of legal recognitions of same-sex relationships than members of any other Christian tradition and Americans overall.” –How to live without a mobile Read more

  • Attention must be paid

    There have been a couple of articles recently on the “slow reading” movement, one in Newsweek and one in the Guardain. Actually, “movement” may be a bit strong; it seems to be more of an impulse, or a reaction against our 24-7 ultra-connected, multitasking, information-saturated lives. (Where “we” are a relatively small minority of affluent Read more

  • Links for Friday

    – Derek on the church and (in)fallibility and communing the unbaptized – Animal advocacy and pragmatism – This is your brain on gadgets – BLS has been writing a fascinating series of posts on the church and A.A. – The thought of Paul Ramsey – The AV Club’s June round up of all things metal Read more

  • Jacques Ellul vs. the Kindle

    Well, sort of. John H. at “Confessing Evangelical” has a very interesting post using 76 questions Ellul suggested we ask about any new technology. Read more

  • Handful o’ links

    Britain’s Labour Party needs to reinvent itself as a new liberal party. Obama vs. McCain on climate and energy policy – not the same. Animals as gentically modified drug machines. Is Google re-wiring our brains? Obama: what kind of liberal? Read more

  • Meat in a vat

    It’s funny, from the standpoint of animal suffering I ought to be all for this, but something about it still gives me the heebie jeebies. I’ll have to think a bit more about why that is. Read more

  • Animal liberation?

    Reason‘s Ron Bailey has an interesting article about the moral implications of scientifically “uplifting” animals – i.e. making them more intelligent – through genetic manipulation: Some technoprogressive thinkers such as editor-in-chief of Betterhumans.com George Dvorsky argue that we have a moral obligation to uplift other species to sapiency. “It would be negligent of us to Read more

  • John Gray contra humanism

    Over the weekend I started reading John Gray’s Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals. Gray, a British political philosopher, has gone from being a free-market Thatcherite to a critic of global capitalism to a proponent of James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis. If there is a connecting thread here it’s Gray’s resolute opposition to utopianism Read more