Well said, Savage Chickens.
ESV Study Bibles: are our nation’s college students hollowing them out, turning them into bombs, and sneaking them on flights from Little Rock to Chicago and vice-versa?
Pretty good geo-economic lesson from SNL on US-Chinese relations.
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Amendment IV, United States Constitution
“If we accept all the Star Wars films as the same canon, then a lot that happens in the original films has to be reinterpreted in the light of the prequels. As we now know, the rebel Alliance was founded by Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Bail Organa. What can readily be deduced is that their first recruit, who soon became their top field agent, was R2-D2.”
A New Sith, or Revenge of the Hope, Reconsidering Star Wars IV in the light of I-III . I think I’ve posted this before, but if you have spent anytime really thinking about Star Wars, this is mind-blowing.
(via lukescommonplacebook)
My old teacher Luke shared this with his J-Term “Coffee & Culture” class in January 2008. It was, as he puts it, “mind-blowing.” I encourage any Star Wars fan to read this essay.
“Well, Jesus. I’m only trying to help. Mercy. I don’t want to go away with the impression that there’re any—you know—inconveniences involved in the religious life. I mean a lot of people don’t take it up just because the think it’s going to involve a certain amount of nasty application and perseverance—you know what I mean….As soon as we get out of this little chapel here, I hope you’ll accept from me a little volume I’ve always admired. I believe it touches on some of the fine points we’ve discussed this morning. ‘God Is My Hobby.’ By Dr. Homer Vincent Claude Pierson, Jr. In this little book, I think you’ll find, Dr. Pierson tells us very clearly how when he was twenty-one years of age he started putting aside a little time each day—two minutes in the morning and two minutes at night, if I remember correctly—and at the end of the first year, just by those little informal visits with God, he increased his annual income seventy-four per cent.”
—Zooey Glass, Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
The Decemberists’ Hazards of Love to be released as an animated film (see trailer above)!
The Hazards Of Love Visualized will be available December 1.
Oh man. This is gonna be a trip and a half. Can’t wait.
Student Body King
Organizations and clubs are in a rut, if you ask me, when it comes to what types of officers they have: President, Vice-President, Secretary, Treasurer, all chosen by popular vote. If there’s a need for any more government, throw in a senate or elected council, maybe a “supreme court,” and you’re good. So boring. So cliché. I mean, I guess democracy is pretty universally (at least in western civilization) hailed as the form of government, but I’m not so sure I buy it. Maybe democracy works well for your local chapter of Young Democrats or the Rotary Club, because everyone who’s there wants to be anyway and by participating is expressing an investment of interest in the organization and future, but take student government (Student Association at TU, “student council” at most high schools): tons of nominal “participants” in this system don’t care enough to be informed about the issues and the elections just turn into popularity/advertising gimmick contests. (I’m over-generalizing here, but bear with me: I want to get to a radical point.) Now, it sounds strange, but what if we took a leaf out of the pre-enlightenment political playbook and experimented with student government as constitutional monarchy? I’m not saying it would definitely be better, but I think it would be a hella interesting experiment.
So the last official act of the democratic student government is to ratify a new constitution and appoint a king or queen. This monarch’s term lasts until graduation (if the student is an undergrad at X University and goes on to be a grad/law/med student there, he keeps the office), but he can be forced to abdicate for various reasons. The king designates an heir (which he may change at any time, pending consent of the House of Commons/Senate/Campus Congress/what have you), appoints various ministers (a court historian as secretary, a minister of the treasury, perhaps ministers of various student government responsibilities: minister of tailgating, minister of springfest, minister of public relations, etc.), and basically runs the government. He may call a democratically-elected campus congress into session to hear the will of the people, pontificate on some new policy, or to announce his heir (constitutionally, this is the only official function of the congress—everything else is at the king’s discretion). There will be some constitutional rules limiting his powers; if he breaks these, he is forced to abdicate at the risk of expulsion, and his heir is removed from the line of succession; the president of the campus congress must call the congress into session to elect a new king.
Now, as I said, this might not be a better system. But if you get a good king right off the bat, the student government should stay pretty responsible and organized as long as each king’s successor is well-chosen. And it would be fascinating to see the way that public opinion molds even an undemocratic officer. After all, no king likes to be scowled at on his way to SPAN 2013, angrily mobbed in the cafeteria because of his last edict, or excoriated in the student newspaper for a poor choice of heir.
I think such a system would have worked well for Oxbridge Union (debate society) in my high school—in fact, the system almost functioned this way de facto at times. I wonder how it would pan out in a high school or college, or just for any club that would be run more effectively by a wise strongman than a demagogue (over-generalizing again!). Maybe a project for some AP Comparative Government teacher to launch to do research for his Political Science Ph.D.
