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.
Is the “democratization” of the Bible actually a good thing? An interesting perspective on reading the Bible:
The story of how the text of the Bible was set down and transmitted is one we all know by heart. Once upon a time, ancient scribes set the sacred words down on papyrus, followed a few centuries later by monks in dimly lit scriptoria putting ink and gold leaf on richly illuminated pages of vellum. Then came the revolution of Gutenberg’s printed books and finally the digital age dawned, giving us the Bible in myriad forms, from searchable online versions to verses that we have texted daily to our smartphones.
Can baseball earn back its title as America’s pastime? Grantland has more:
I walked to the game, because that is how you get to an important game in Pittsburgh. You walk over one of the great yellow bridges and get swallowed up by the joy that has preceded you. The traditionalists may scoff, but these win-or-go-home, one-game wild-card deals have taken on a life of their own. There is a sharpness to the holiday atmosphere around them. There is an edge to the jollity. Because these are the playoffs, and yet they are not yet the playoffs. They are a strange, mortal kind of passage into the playoffs. You saw that on Tuesday, when Kansas City and Oakland combined for a hysterical performance art piece that ran for nearly five hours. And you saw that on Wednesday when, instead of performance art, we got a still life from a master.
A list of the secret service’s biggest blunders:
The elite agency charged with protecting the president and his family has come under fire after it was revealed that a White House trespasser managed to make it much deeper into the mansion than initially disclosed. But the US secret service’s history of blunders extends much further back than this week. Over the past five years, there have been a series of 16 cases of intruders scaling the White House fence, and a 2011 incident involving a White House shooting while President Obama’s daughter was home.
“The Sound So Loud That It Circled the Earth Four Times.” Read about it:
On 27 August 1883, the Earth let out a noise louder than any it has made since. It was 10:02 AM local time when the sound emerged from the island of Krakatoa, which sits between Java and Sumatra in Indonesia. It was heard 1,300 miles away in the Andaman and Nicobar islands (“extraordinary sounds were heard, as of guns firing”); 2,000 miles away in New Guinea and Western Australia (“a series of loud reports, resembling those of artillery in a north-westerly direction”); and even 3,000 miles away in the Indian Ocean island of Rodrigues, near Mauritius* (“coming from the eastward, like the distant roar of heavy guns.”1) In all, it was heard by people in over 50 different geographical locations, together spanning an area covering a thirteenth of the globe.
Want Bill Murray in your movie? Here’s how:
The trailer for Exodus: Gods and Kings: