Each Friday we compile a list of interesting links and articles our editors find from across the web. Here’s what’s catching our eye this week.
Grantland explains what’s at stake behind the Northwestern football unionizing:
Last week, the Chicago office of the National Labor Relations Board ruled that Northwestern football players are employees of the school with the right, if they choose, to form a union. This has been portrayed as a potentially revolutionary moment for college sports and as a major setback for the NCAA’s longtime commitment to not paying people. But what’s the real background here, and what does the ruling mean? Here’s a quick rundown.
Paste magazine hosts an interesting take on @CancelColbert:
Back to the original question, though: Can reasonable people disagree? Can reasonable people understand the other position? I think the answer is yes, but I also think it depends on the tone. And my real problem with last night, on both sides, was the tone, which was awful and reactionary from the start. I mean, look at the hash tag that defined the debate on twitter: #CancelColbert
TOJ contributor, Wesley Hill, considering some recent works on St. Paul:
It is precisely because of the particular shape of the Christ-event as Paul understands it—as a gift (1:6, 15) given without regard for its recipients’ worth, status, honor, or cultural capital, whether Jewish or pagan (1:14-15; 6:15), delivering them from enslavement to cosmic powers (4:1-7)—that Paul deems circumcision unnecessary and, in the Galatians’ case, at least, positively forbidden (5:4). It is precisely because of his Christology—one that sees the Christ-event arising from no prior conditions and plotted against no prior coordinates (2:20; 6:14)—that Paul develops his peculiar understanding of Gentiles’ freedom from the requirement of becoming Jewish proselytes. Trying to tweeze apart Christology and the Gentile mission, as if Paul only marginally reworked the former and maximally developed the latter, misses their fundamental interconnectedness.
The New Criterion asks about the role of art in our secular age:
The Goldfinch is a novel well-suited to our modern age. Theo is alienated from those things that make life worth living for most people. He does not have a family. He does not have a home or a community. He has no religion, no belief, it seems, in God. But he has art. “Whatever teaches us to talk to ourselves is important,” he says, “whatever teaches us to sing ourselves out of despair.”
CNET uncovers the story behind the iconic Windows XP desktop photo:
Although it will forever be associated with Windows XP, Bliss was actually the by-product of a love story. It was a regular Friday afternoon in 1996 when photographer Charles O’Rear took the drive through California’s wine country to see his then-girlfriend Daphne. Chuck, as he introduces himself in conversation, has since married Daphne. Bliss, meanwhile, has gone on to become one of the world’s most iconic photographs, chosen as the default wallpaper of Microsoft’s operating system.
Popular Science maps the hidden universe in your kitchen:
Microorganisms surround us. In the relatively desolate atmosphere at 1,000 feet, every cubic meter of air contains about a thousand microbes. Closer to the ground, that number skyrockets to 100,000, and on every square centimeter of human skin, it jumps to 10 million. A teaspoon of dirt contains 50 billion microbes, more than seven times the number of people on Earth. Yet despite such abundance, scientists know little about the microbial ecosystem. We understand less about the bugs in our home, for example, than the animals in the deepest ocean trenches. We know even less about their impact on us. How do microbes shape our daily lives—and how do we shape theirs? Do they trigger asthma and allergies—or help prevent them? It’s as if we’re living in an invisible world, and like the Victorian naturalists before him, Fierer is charting it.
Ross Douthat says a little religion is bad for you:
HERE is a seeming paradox of American life. One the one hand, there is a broad social-science correlation between religious faith and various social goods — health and happiness, upward mobility, social trust, charitable work and civic participation. Yet at the same time, some of the most religious areas of the country — the Bible Belt, the deepest South — struggle mightily with poverty, poor health, political corruption and social disarray.
The rough life of an NFL cheerleader:
Long before Lacy’s boots ever hit the gridiron grass, “I was just hustling,” she says. “Very early on, I was spending money like crazy.” The salon visits, the makeup, the eyelashes, the tights were almost exclusively paid out of her own pocket. The finishing touch of the Raiderettes’ onboarding process was a contract requiring Lacy to attend thrice-weekly practices, dozens of public appearances, photo shoots, fittings and nine-hour shifts at Raiders home games, all in return for a lump sum of $1,250 at the conclusion of the season. (A few days before she filed suit, the team increased her pay to $2,780.) All rights to Lacy’s image were surrendered to the Raiders. With fines for everything from forgetting pompoms to gaining weight, the handbook warned that it was entirely possible to “find yourself with no salary at all at the end of the season.”
Remember this the next time you’re asked to watch someone’s laptop:
A few last housekeeping items. I hate to call them rules because that sounds so formal, but to be clear, as part of this understanding you’re agreeing to stay seated at all times while I’m gone. Let’s make sure you don’t have to go the bathroom, too, or are thinking about heading up to the counter for a second scone any time soon. Of course, feel free to make phone calls if you need to, just not the wandering kind.
How George Lucas ‘invented’ lightsaber’s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YdBvWauNwA
If you’re tuning into MLB you’ll likely notice the new replay system:
This endeavor — which will be a subplot at every single game played this year and spotlighted even more in the postseason — has come at an almost infathomable cost, in both dollars and man-hours. MLBAM showed us the command center, and the plethora of fail-safes to make sure that every play is viewed and viewed again and viewed again until those poor umpires are all Clockwork Orange‘d. The rules for replay challenges are scrupulously specific and have been agonized over by tons of intelligent people who have made this their life’s work. Major League Baseball is about to have the best, most thorough instant replay system that humankind can come up with.
Finally, for the first full weekend of MLB check out this WSJ map of baseball allegiance by county:
Facebook Mapped Which Baseball Teams Are Most Popular in Each U.S. County. Turns Out, Yankees Fans Are Everywhere.