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.
The Post and Courier further personalizes last week’s tragedy in Charleston:
People talk and visit and sit in white fold-out chairs at round tables with white tablecloths set out across the room. The space is often used for church dinners and social functions.
The Rev. Pinckney, Simmons, Thompson, Doctor and Hurd join Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Ethel Lance, Polly Sheppard, Susie Jackson, Tywanza Sanders, his mother Felicia Sanders and her little granddaughter.
In an hour, tragedy will bond them forever.
The group launches into an opening hymn. Glee puts the bag of items in the treasurer’s office and heads out. About 40 others have left the meeting as well, leaving cars dotting the church’s parking lot.
One spot by the door sits empty.
The Atlantic explores the historic meaning of the Confederate flag:
The Confederate flag is directly tied to the Confederate cause, and the Confederate cause was white supremacy. This claim is not the result of revisionism. It does not require reading between the lines. It is the plain meaning of the words of those who bore the Confederate flag across history. These words must never be forgotten. Over the next few months the word “heritage” will be repeatedly invoked. It would be derelict to not examine the exact contents of that heritage.
Climate change may turn out to be a manageable menace, but the poor will still bear the worst of it:
To write as Ross does here is to take a government’s-eye view of the matter — or perhaps a still higher-level view. One example: Rising sea levels will be neither sustainable nor manageable for poor people whose homes are drowned, and who will have to move inland, perhaps in some cases into refugee camps. But it is unlikely that these people will be able to stage a successful rebellion against the very political order that has left them in poverty. Resources will need to be diverted to manage them; but in the developed world that will probably be possible.
The New Yorker breaks down Pope Francis’ newest encyclical, Laudato si’’:
“Laudato si’ ” is clearly aimed at influencing the international climate negotiations that are currently under way, intended to produce an agreement on curbing global emissions by the end of this year. Pope Francis declares the climate to be “a common good, belonging to all and meant for all,” and endorses the “very solid scientific consensus” that humans, by burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests, are responsible for “a disturbing warming.”
Rod Dreher’s new book asks readers to consider the life-saving powers of Dante Alighieri’s Commedia.
Towards the end of the book, writing about Dante’s exile from his hometown of Florence, Dreher writes “Each of us lives in exile from the life we would like to have, or that we think we deserve.” What finally allows Dreher freedom from exile is his embrace – not merely with intellect, but with a whole heart – of his Christian faith. Through Dante’s theological vision of “the Love that moves the sun and all the other stars,” Dreher finds the real road home – to a God and Father who both loves him unconditionally and gives him the strength to love. The man changes, and when his father falls deathly ill at the book’s end, Dreher is finally able to love him as he ought.
Debate continues on who to tap as a replacement for Andrew Hamilton on the $10 bill. Why not Jeanette Rankin?
For her vote against entering World War I in 1917, Rankin was slandered with the usual accusation lobbed at pacifists – sympathizing with the enemy – but also with the sexist charge that, as a woman, she was constitutionally unfit for making decisions about war and peace. As described in a biography by her friend Norma Smith, her vote – or rather the manner in which she cast it – became a public issue, as newspapers argued over whether or not she cried while saying, “I want to stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war.”
In 1983, the Supreme Court ruled that colleges would not qualify for tax-exempt status if they opposed interracial relationships. Now, conservative religious colleges worry that same-sex marriage is next.
The spreading anxiety among conservatives — including Senator Rand Paul, who mentioned the issue in an interview on “The Daily Show” last month — hints at the potential effect of a Supreme Court decision backing the right to same-sex marriage, especially for religious institutions that forbid sexual intimacy outside heterosexual marriage. It also highlights the political battles likely to follow.
Our current understanding of the origin of human language all started with the word “Father”:
In the 1700s it was clear to European scholars that certain languages were related to each other. French ciel, Spanish and Italian cielo, and Portuguese céu were clearly versions of the same thing, and had obviously descended from Latin caelum. It was also apparent that there were relationships between languages that hadn’t descended from Latin but were similar to each other: English earth, Dutch aarde, and German Erde were too close to be a product of mere coincidence. But it wasn’t until 1786 that people started to consider that all of these languages might be related to each other on a deeper level.
Taylor Swift explains why she’s opting out of releasing her new album on Apple Music:
This is not about me. Thankfully I am on my fifth album and can support myself, my band, crew, and entire management team by playing live shows. This is about the new artist or band that has just released their first single and will not be paid for its success. This is about the young songwriter who just got his or her first cut and thought that the royalties from that would get them out of debt. This is about the producer who works tirelessly to innovate and create, just like the innovators and creators at Apple are pioneering in their field…but will not get paid for a quarter of a year’s worth of plays on his or her songs.
A new mockumentary from HBO featuring Andy Samberg and Jon Snow: