Tag: Popular culture

…to despair for the future of Western civilization. Check out the Gucci baby carrier, a steal at $850.

Cinematical reports that the Documentary For the Bible Tells Me So is on the shortllist for an Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts

During the race’s first Detour challenge, Lewis and Hendrickson opted to search through a parking garage full of bikes. Looking back, Lewis and Hendrickson wished they would’ve chosen to hoist furniture up the side of the building.

A gift for the religious geek who has everything…

Sim City is known to many as a computer simulation game that allows players to build the cities of their dreams. While the game can be addicting, it is certainly true that the Sim City designers have assumed a particular set of largely materialistic values into the game. That will now change with the introduction of Sim City Societies that will allow the game players to choose from a wider assortment of value systems.

Some umbrage has been taken at the appropriateness of Rowling’s decision to uncork this news in front of children, a brand of sanctimony for which I have no patience. Having made their way through an epic series that includes multiple murders, demonic possession, and the psychic toll of having mentally ill parents, children will, I imagine, be able to handle the bulletin that some people are gay.

We borrowed Samhain from the Celts and kept it the night before All Saints’ Day. A number of our feast days, like Christmas and Easter, have their origins in pagan worship. For that matter, we borrowed Good Friday from Yom Kippur, and Advent from Rosh Hosannah. The early Christians had to choose what to do with the faiths that preceded them wherever they were. Most wound up grafting new traditions upon the old.

David Brooks has a provocative column this week on the effect of technology on human memory. Are we outsourcing our own thinking? Brooks seems to think so. According to Brooks, “the magic of the information age is that it allows us to know less. It provides us with external cognitive servants — silicon memory systems, collaborative online filters, consumer preference algorithms and networked knowledge. We can burden these servants and liberate ourselves.”

Baby boomers are changing everything–including death and funerals, apparently. The Wall Street Journal reports on an emerging trend of designer funerals. A stroll through the exhibit floor of the National Funeral Directors Association convention, in Las Vegas earlier this month, suggests that death options are indeed as plentiful as toothpaste brands.

It’s a romantic comedy. About death. And the romantic leads can’t actually touch one another, or else she dies. This cute–maybe too cute, whimsical–maybe too