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.
Paul Miller gave up the Internet for a year. Here’s his story:
I was wrong. One year ago I left the internet. I thought it was making me unproductive. I thought it lacked meaning. I thought it was “corrupting my soul.” It’s a been a year now since I “surfed the web” or “checked my email” or “liked” anything with a figurative rather than literal thumbs up. I’ve managed to stay disconnected, just like I planned. I’m internet free.
Jonathan Edwards may have called down fire and brimstone but he was one of the greatest intellectuals of his time:
When I was in college, and even earlier because my older brother introduced me to Modern Thought as he was introduced to it, I felt gloomily captive to the determinisms of Positivism, Behaviorism, Freudianism, Marxism, and the rest. I was troubled by all this for years. Then I was assigned by a philosophy professor to read Jonathan Edwards’s treatise The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Defended, Part Four, Chapter III. I found in it a glorious footnote on moonlight, and was liberated.
This guy doesn’t like blogger Matt Walsh:
Matt Walsh is a conservative blogger who recently moved to The Blaze after his personal blog, shared constantly by thousands of conservative Christians, became a viral phenomenon. Matt Walsh is a moron and a bad writer. He is proudly reactionary, sexist, anti-gay, and everything else you can imagine. He is the Platonic ideal of a douchebag as defined recently by Michael Mark Cohen.
Although charged for breaking the law, Chef Arnold continued to feed the homeless:
To Arnold Abbott, feeding the homeless in a public park in South Florida was an act of charity. To the city of Fort Lauderdale, the 90-year-old man in white chef’s apron serving up gourmet-styled meals was committing a crime. For more than two decades, the man many call “Chef Arnold” has proudly fired up his ovens to serve up four-course meals for the downtrodden who wander the palm tree-lined beaches and parks of this sunny tourist destination.
The king of counterfeiting and his story:
Years of running drugs and boosting cars left FRANK BOURASSA thinking: There’s got to be an easier way to earn a dishonest living. That’s when he nerved up the idea to make his fortune. (Literally.) Which is how Frank became the most prolific counterfeiter in American history—a guy with more than $200 million in nearly flawless fake twenties stuffed in a garage. How he got away with it all, well, that’s even crazier
Kindle data reveals the most beloved passages from books:
Whether in a crowded library or a dark bedroom, few experiences feel as personal as reading a book. Books are about eye and page, about one human brain in conversation with another. Yet the business of books is never quite about these airy virtues. And like any big business, publishing must always center on the mass: What do the most people want? What will the most people buy? What do people respond to?
How hiring Joe Maddon may make history for the Chicago Cubs:
In all of sports, is there any job more potentially rewarding than winning the World Series as manager of the Chicago Cubs? I would have thought maybe “manager of the Boston Red Sox who wins their first title in 90s years” would be up there, but then again, he was hit with ludicrous “pain medication dependency” stories on his way out the door, so that one apparently comes with some unpleasant side effects. What’s even in the ballpark of “Cubs manager who wins the World Series?” Maybe Buffalo Bills head coach who wins the Super Bowl? Toronto Maple Leafs coach who wins the Stanley Cup? Knicks coach to win the NBA title?
In case you’re living in a box and didn’t hear about Taylor Swift saying goodbye to Spotify:
Fans were furious last week when pop sensation Taylor Swift refused to upload her new album 1989 to Spotify. They are about to get angrier: all five Swift albums disappeared from Spotify’s catalogue on Monday morning.
Young folks in Japan aren’t having sex, and the government may have something to do with it:
Japan’s under-40s appear to be losing interest in conventional relationships. Millions aren’t even dating, and increasing numbers can’t be bothered with sex. For their government, “celibacy syndrome” is part of a looming national catastrophe. Japan already has one of the world’s lowest birth rates. Its population of 126 million, which has been shrinking for the past decade, is projected to plunge a further one-third by 2060. Aoyama believes the country is experiencing “a flight from human intimacy” – and it’s partly the government’s fault.
A review of the latest poetry from Aaron Belz:
I would like to commend myself for not beginning this review with “Aaron Belz is da bomb.” And I think you, reader, should commend yourself for reading this review that doesn’t begin that way, and me for writing it, because the probability that you will purchase Aaron Belz’s new book is now much higher than it would have been if you had continued in your ignorance of Aaron Belz and his new book, assuming that you were in fact ignorant of him and it before you started reading this review, which it is perhaps presumptuous of me to assume, in which case I apologize. But my larger thesis remains, and it is that Aaron Belz is da bomb, notwithstanding my reluctance to begin this review by saying so.