Weekend Reading from Utne Daily 5/29/09

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What if Sotomayor Were a Robot Programmed to Think She’s Human?
Hypotheticals are flying about judge Sonya Sotomayor, Barack Obama’s recent nomination for Supreme Court Justice.

Have Liberals Learned to Love War? 
With President Obama in office, some of the Bush era’s most vociferous antiwar organizations have become peculiarly complacent.

Meet the Soldier Graffiti Artists of the Civil War
Workers renovating a 270-year-old church in Bunker Hill, West Virginia have uncovered the work of Civil War-era graffiti artists. “It’s down low. It’s up high. It’s just everywhere,” says local bishop W. Michie Klusmyer.

Are Sex Studies Bad for Sex?
The vast array of sex science available since the 1950s has demystified sex. Today, that research has lost touch with its humanity, according to many researchers, promoting the “medicalization” of sex.

The Twisted Infographics of Lunchbreath
These infographics borrow from the visual vernacular of flow charts, bar graphs, how-to diagrams, and cross sections but inject a subversive and often hilarious viewpoint.

Where Do You Stand on Burning Pianos?
It’s a gut reaction thing. When confronted by a musical composition called “Burning Piano” that involves, yes, playing a piano as it burns, you’re probably going to be curious or dismissive: It sounds either brilliantly subversive or like a horrible waste.

Do You Like It Sitting or Standing?
When Gustave Flaubert declared “One cannot think and write except when seated”, it so inflamed Friedrich Nietzsche that he attacked Flaubert in his book Twilight of the Idols: “There I have caught you nihilist! The sedentary life is the very sin against the Holy Spirit. Only thoughts reached by walking have value.” Wow.

Image courtesy of Lunchbreath.

  • Published on May 29, 2009
Tagged with: Utne Reader
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