Weekend Reads

Rick Perry made a jaw-dropping attempt to get in on the sexual assault debate

Basically: Expanding fossil fuels in Africa could help prevent sexual assault, presumably because fossil fuels produce light.

Jell-O salads and Catholic hospitals

Human water use is draining the world’s saline lakes

The Supreme Court Is Allergic To Math

Four of the eight justices who regularly speak during oral arguments1 voiced anxiety about using calculations to answer questions about bias and partisanship. Some said the math was unwieldy, complicated, and newfangled. One justice called it “baloney” and argued that the difficulty the public would have in understanding the test would ultimately erode the legitimacy of the court.

What Happens If the Honeybees Disappear?

Most honeybees in the U.S. today are of Italian heritage and vulnerable to a pest called the varroa mite. But Russian bees are more resistant to it, and backyard beekeepers have had success with them. The problem, says Tarpy, is that Russian honeybees don’t make as much honey as their Italian counterparts and “aren’t as amenable” to the migratory nature of pollinating large-scale farms.

A New History of the First Peoples in the Americas

Today, the emerging theory is that the people up in the Bluefish Caves some 24,000 years ago were the founders, and that they represent a culture that was isolated for thousands of years up in the cold north, incubating a population that would eventually seed everywhere else.

You were a fool to let me go

As in the disgraceful Shelby County ruling gutting the Voting Rights Act, and in Citizens United, and in every other such decision, it always just happens to turn out that it’s the “pro-life” justices who decide against voting rights for nonwhite citizens and who seek to strike down any limits on corporate power.

Gamergate is never going away

“So, there's a lot of people saying I'm not qualified to do my job, and then it escalates to ‘I should go fuck myself,’ ‘you're shit,’ ‘how can you be paid to play games,’ and ‘you should go kill yourself,’” Takahasi told The Outline. “Fortunately, it's never gotten worse than that.”

Why I’m Still Trying to Get a Book Deal After 10 Years 

As my third child kicked from inside my pregnant belly, I fantasized about what would come next: a request from the agent to see my book proposal, followed by a dream phone call offering me representation. If all went well, I’d be on my way to becoming a published author by the time my oldest child started first grade.

(Leans forward, whispers) ‘Sola scriptura’ is not a thing

What this poll shows, instead, is that the pretense of sola scriptura hasn’t really held up very well over the past five centuries. Maybe Luther was able to sustain the illusion that this was what he was doing when he read the Bible, but most Protestants today know better.

Should we read the Bible literally?

This is particularly evident in reading the Book of Revelation, which some interpret as a prediction of ‘end-times’ political and military conflict—which is an allegorical, not literal interpretation. The literal meaning of the crowned scorpions with women’s hair and breastplates of iron is…crowned scorpions with women’s hair and breastplates of iron. To interpret these as armoured attack helicopters (as some do) is allegorical.