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.
Although Santa may be problematic for Christians, it may not necessarily hurt the argument for faith:
The Santa wars exploded again this week, occasioned by a column Pascal Emmanuel Gobry wrote for The Week advocating that we stop lying to our kids about Santa. Gobry gives several reasons for why Santa needs to die, some of which I find convincing. But he also raises one I find very unconvincing: that Christians will hurt their ability to educate their kids in the faith by perpetuating the Santa lie…
The Atlanta Braves have designed a new stadium, but the graphic rendering shows them losing:
Yup, in the Braves’ idealized representation of their future stadium, where they had the opportunity to COMPLETELY MAKE UP AN IDEALIZED VERSION OF HOW EVERYTHING LOOKS SO IT’S AS GOOD AS IT CAN POSSIBLY BE, the Braves aren’t even winning on the scoreboard. Let’s zoom in…
How 2014 forced us to look at celebrities in a new way:
They don’t want me talking,” Bill Cosby finally said over the weekend. “You do that you have to go in with a neutral mind.” But we are never neutral with our idols, because we give them our faith. Here was the man who brought us Doctor Cliff Huxtable – and with him a new vision of the black nuclear family and the middle class. For years, it had been whispered about:“Cliff Huxtable drugs and assaults women”. But this year was the year of the fallen idol, when the whispers became shouts and we were forced to confront how sometimes, we place too much faith in the wrong people – how sometimes, we don’t want to be talking amongst ourselves but we must.
The history of the font Times New Roman:
If you open up your word processing software and start typing, chances are you’re looking atTimes New Roman. It’s so ubiquitous that we take it for granted, but just like Spider-Man orWolverine, this super-typeface has its own origin story.
Why everyone still loves Shakespeare:
Samuel Johnson knew why Shakespeare’s plays were so popular. The guiding principle was clear: “Nothing can please many, and please long, but just representations of general nature.” For Johnson, Shakespeare’s popularity rested on the fact that his writings embodied that principle more richly and more fully than did those of any other author…
Singer Lana Del Rey, whose new album Ultraviolence was one of the best of the year, is certainly one of the most controversial pop stars of the year. While her fans (which include Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, who had her perform at their wedding events at Versailles)love her hyper-stylized aesthetic, detractors have branded her a fraud. “She seems to be both trying too hard and not trying hard enough,” as Slant’s Paul Rice puts it, “stoking questions about whether she even means any of what she’s singing.”
How former Colorado Buffaloes’ coach Bill McCartney walked away from football because of his faith:
The old coach is watching football on television. Sometimes he goes to games in person, like the evening before, when he went to cheer on the nearby high school team that his son coaches. Sometimes he catches the games from his living room recliner, like on this brilliant fall morning, when he’s picking through a chef’s salad and marveling as the Kansas State Wildcats roll up the score on the Texas Longhorns.
An Ayn Rand conference in a “city of extremes”:
111-degree heat is confounding, a joke your phone is playing on you when you arrive at McCarran Airport and check the temperature on the Las Vegas Strip. On June 30, a year earlier, the city tied a record of 117 degrees—a small consolation to those shouldering their bags at the end of an impossible cab line. By the time I reached the front, I was defeated and dripping. “Thank God for air conditioning,” I told the driver. He smiled gently. “Some people don’t have it,” he said, a statement as obvious now as it seemed inexplicable then.
An interview with Amazon’s Jeff Bezos:
Jeff Bezos and I have a long history, dating from my days on Wall Street and the early years of Amazon.com. Today, he’s an investor in Business Insider, and I remain an Amazon shareholder. I tried not to let any of that be a factor when I interviewed him recently at our annual conference in New York City. Jeff rarely gives in-depth interviews, so I didn’t hold back on asking about issues both pressing and personal. (Even Amazon’s biggest investors, I learned, get only six hours of his time per year!) What follows, in text and video, are edited excerpts from my discussion with the man the Harvard Business Review called “The Best-Performing CEO in the World.”
The trailer for the new Terrence Malick film Knight of Cups: