Mindless Replicators

4 Comments Posted by on March 2, 2015
In thinking about my discussion last week based on the movie Selma, one question struck me later as obviously the natural question that I didn’t ask:

Why is activism dead?

In fact, the movie gives a striking example of activism working as it’s supposed to, and it isn’t far off from reality, insofar as the Selma marches did change the national consciousness and put political pressure on President Johnson.

And yet, as I wrote about last week, it doesn’t seem to be accomplishing as much today. This should be a bit puzzling: Surely it would be even more possible to organize protests with today’s social media. It’s easier than ever for great orators to put out content to attract others to their cause. In another part of the world, ISIS is literally taking over territory with recruits from all over the world. Take a moment to think about it, to notice your confusion (at least, if you’re as confused as I was): Why is protesting so ineffective?

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Philosophy, Weekly Post

Selma, protest tactics, and the false hope of moderation

7 Comments Posted by on February 23, 2015

I watched the Academy Awards (yes, the whole thing) with my church community group last night, and one of the most moving moments was when Common and John Legend performed the song Glory from Selma, right before they won the award for Best Original Song. As they pointed out in their acceptance speech, Selma is a timely movie, because its spirit exists today in movements from the US to France to Hong Kong.

I came across one of the best discussions of the movie on a website I normally peruse for its excellent sports analysis. Mark Harris of Grantland primarily responds to some of the criticism of the movie’s portrayal of President Lyndon B. Johnson, but has many interesting things to say along the way. His defense of the genre of historical fiction as providing value beyond mere recitations of facts is stirring, but I want to focus on another point of his.

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Movies, Philosophy, Weekly Post

Soylent, ~60 meals in

11 Comments Posted by on February 16, 2015

Growing up, we occasionally would have tacos for dinner. We would carefully assemble each taco with a layer of meat, possibly some beans, then top it with cheese, lettuce and tomato. And then after one bite it would all fall apart on me so I’d end up eating taco salad. Eventually, I ended up just getting a bowl and making the taco salad from the beginning.

I asked my mom, “Why don’t we go one step further? Why not just blend all of the ingredients into a smoothie? Then you could take it with you in the car to soccer practice and it wouldn’t make as much of a mess? Plus, then maybe we could open up a drive-thru restaurant where other busy people could buy our taco paste!”
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Lifehack, Weekly Post

Attempting to become a regular blogger

Leave a comment Posted by on February 16, 2015

Hello!

In case it isn’t obvious, it’s been over half a year since I posted anything here. That didn’t exactly match my original vision for the blog, and I’m now attempting to revive it.

“But wait,” you think, “is this just going to be one of those typical second-to-last blog posts promising a certain level of content, before the blog goes dormant forever? The internet is littered with those sorts of blogs!”

No, that’s not how this is going to go. In fact, to prepare for this return, I already have six posts drafted (to varying levels of completion), with a handful of other ideas on the table after those are used up. I’m aiming to spend more of my idle time thinking and writing and less of it on mindless activities.

I estimate that I can sustainably post about once a week, so I’m going to plan to do so every Monday morning from here on out. Come back tomorrow to hear what I think about Soylent, the meal replacement I’ve been trying out for the last few months!

Sam

PS While I’m pretty excited and confident that this will happen, if any of you has experience regularly blogging like this (writing on the order of a thousand words a week for a personal blog), I’d appreciate hearing what helped you keep going!

Meta

Weird Al and Things I Fundamentally Enjoy

1 Comment Posted by on July 22, 2014

This past week, Weird Al came out with his 14th album of his ridiculously long career, Mandatory Fun. In doing so, he released eight music videos from the album in eight days through eight different video distribution services (e.g. Youtube, VEVO, Yahoo! Screen, Funny or Die, and several more I hadn’t heard of.) He linked them all on his website, and they’re pretty good, so check them out! My favorites are Word Crimes, Handy, and Mission Statement, but Tacky and Foil have also grown on me. Inactive doesn’t have a music video, but it’s also pretty good.

 
On a different note, I’m looking forward to my family visiting Boston in August. I’ve started to think about what we’d like to do with which of my friends, like who to go see a Red Sox game or eat dim sum with. It’s a somewhat complicated problem to try to pair up all of the different combinations, since I want them to meet all my friends while doing fun Boston things together with them.
 
I also recently got back from a leadership retreat with the Graduate Christian Fellowship. As a small part of the retreat, I got plenty of feedback on how the large groups that I had organized had been. We had found the top 11 “Burning Questions” topics the fellowship was asking and found pastors and professors from a variety of backgrounds to cover those difficult issues.
How are these three things related?

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Lifehack, Personal Experience

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