Saturday Night Awkward: Christians on the Street
Is Christianity incompatible with the Street? It was easy to think as much during my underclassman years, when the only evidence of religion on Prospect Avenue consisted of awkward Jesus-guy encounters, when the majority of students in my fellowship seemed to end up independent or in co‑ops, and when I cringed every time I ran into a small group or worship leader on the dance floor.
Christians at Princeton tend to fall into two categories: judging the Street from afar and condemning those who go out, or going out but neglecting to seriously pray about it. Either we surround ourselves with other Christians and pretend the Street doesn’t exist, or we go to our pregames and club nights, laugh sheepishly when we run into other Christians with beers in hand, and try not to talk about it in church the next morning.
Awkward.
Christians on Princeton’s campus often choose to avoid the awkwardness of faith on the Street either by withdrawing from the eating clubs altogether, or by joining them but drawing a mental separation between our club identities and our faiths. Is this withdrawal in line with the Gospel? Is Christianity inherently incompatible with the Street? Can we integrate our social and spiritual lives without experiencing discomfort?
(Source: webscript.princeton.edu)
12:25 am • 12 November 2012 • 1 note
explore-blog:
Litographs – gorgeous typographic prints made of the entire texts of literary classics, benefiting global literacy.
(via wordpainting)
8:59 am • 11 November 2012 • 716 notes
“
Clinton stared for a few seconds. “I choose my cards,” she said firmly. “I choose them. I play them to the best of my ability. Move on to the next hand.”
—
“I am so looking forward to next year,” she said. “I just want to sleep and exercise and travel for fun. And relax. It sounds so ordinary, but I haven’t done it for 20 years. I would like to see whether I can get untired. I work out and stuff, but I don’t do it enough and I don’t do it hard enough because I can’t expend that much energy on it.”
Notice that we are less than a minute into her paean to not doing anything, and already she is planning her workouts.
—
At State, she’s dug deep into the bureaucracy, trying to ensure that American diplomacy will be promoting women’s empowerment many secretaries down the line. “We’ve created some positions,” Clinton said, making a list. “We have embedded it in the quadrennial diplomacy and development review process…”
That’s the thing about Hillary Clinton. Most famous woman in the world, but still a sucker for the quadrennial diplomacy and development review process.
”
— haha! such an endearing gail collins column on clinton’s post-2012 plans
8:42 am • 11 November 2012 • 1 note
“But by 2006 the Bush administration already had picked its third public diplomacy czar, the White House confidante Karen Hughes. The first two public diplomacy czars, the advertising executive Charlotte Beers and the longtime diplomat Margaret Tutwiler, quit after short tenures. Once in place, Hughes embarked on “listening tours,” primarily in the Muslim world, in which she preached about America but did strikingly little listening. When confronted with difficult situations amid skeptical foreigners, Hughes just resorted to platitudes, informing a Turkish audience, “I am a mom, and I love kids. I love all kids.”
—
Joshua Kurlantzick, Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power is Transforming the World, p. 195.
tracking the highs & lows of American vs Chinese public diplomacy efforts and can only smh at how familiar this sounds (“Um… I love teachers!”) haaa…
4:19 pm • 7 November 2012
mcnallyjackson:
Both Flesh and Not, the latest and presumably last collection of essays by David Foster Wallace, is on the shelf as of this morning. Unpacking the boxes, we agreed that we both desperately want to and really don’t want to read this immediately; this is it; what’s the rush, etc. What we want to read asap though: each chapter is separated by a double-page spread of American Heritage Dictionary definitions lifted from the vocabulary lists Wallace famously kept. They are organized alphabetically, from abattoir to ylang-ylang (which, really, didn’t Wallace ever see an Herbal Essences commercial?). Asian tree oils aside, many are words we don’t and want to know because we think they’ll reveal all sorts of truths about the great man.
dfw!! gahhhhhh
will read this… after making some sort of landmark progress on my thesis. okay. buckle down. it’s november, election day has passed, no more excuses for being unfaithful to my work. #firestonelifeee #goooo
(via wordpainting)
10:30 am • 7 November 2012 • 161 notes
Chinese vote in mock U.S. “election”
relevant to these pieces from last night, when i spent an hour browsing the “美国大选“ hashtag feed on weibo:
tea leaf nation on Weibo commentary
LA Times on Chinese (media users’) pref for Obama
one of many Chinese blogs commenting on the US election (search “美国大选” here for the most recent Weibo views)
next i want to see Morsi & the MB’s reaction! mm full day ahead.
(Source: The Wall Street Journal)
8:58 am • 7 November 2012 • 1 note
![theatlantic:
The Sad Faces of Fox News on Election Night
[Image: Fox News]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_md3mjj1xp21qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
