Volume 2.9 (February 25-March 3)

Pick of the Week–

Assembling the Billing Block (Ben Schott, NYT)– Definitely not the most important piece linked in this edition, but a really great example of something that I did not know (and did not know that I did not know) and had no idea even existed.

Politics

The Right and Marriage Equality: A Breakthrough (Andrew Sullivan, The Dish)– Personal and historical reflection from one who has been in this fight from the beginning. Another note by Sullivan based on the Obama Administration’s brief in the Prop 8 case here.

Labs for Testing Fiscal Policy Positions (Owen Zidar, NYT-Economix)– In what has been and will continue to be a running theme of this blog, evidence and research matter.

New document sheds light on government’s ability to search iPhones (Chris Soghoian, Naomi Gilens, Free Future)

We Aren’t the World (Ethan Watters, Pacific Standard)– subtitle: Why Americans are the Weirdest People in the World

Jeremiah Goulka’s series on cutting the military budget (Jeremiah Goulka, The American Prospect)– Here are parts 2 and 3.

The Roberts Court vs. Voting Rights (David Cole, NYRB)

The Sequestering of Barack Obama (Robert Kuttner, The American Prospect)

Economics

The coming R&D crash (Brad Plumer, Wonkblog)

How the recession turned middle-class jobs into low-wage jobs (Brad Plumer, Wonkblog)

Marissa Mayer has made a terrible mistake (Farhad Manjoo, Slate)– My firm is about to introduce a system that allows attorneys to work from home one or more days a week. Most of the time when I stay home now, it is because either I, my wife, or one of my children is sick, so of course I am less productive. However, if allowed to work from home, I could probably tack on another 2 hours to my work day (by subtracting the commute and the lunch hour) and still have time to spend a little time with my family during the day.

What Coke Contains (Kevin Ashton, Medium)– “The number of individuals who know how to make a can of Coke is zero. The number of individual nations that could produce a can of Coke is zero. This famously American product is not American at all. Invention and creation is something we are all in together. Modern tool chains are so long and complex that they bind us into one people and one planet. They are not only chains of tools, they are also chains of minds: local and foreign, ancient and modern, living and dead — the result of disparate invention and intelligence distributed over time and space. Coca-Cola did not teach the world to sing, no matter what its commercials suggest, yet every can of Coke contains humanity’s choir.”

Mormonism

How should I teach the tough aspects of Mormon history to my 14 year-old Sunday School class? (Joanna Brooks, Ask Mormon Girl)– Frankly, a 14 year-old is about as ready to hear about these topics as your average Mormon adult, which is to say not at all. That’s a dig at the adults, not the teenagers.

Activism and FMH: Can we change the church? (nat kelly, Feminist Mormon Housewives)

Mormon women and the priesthood of God (Emily Belanger, Peculiar People)

On Scripture Changes and Bible Dictionary(s) (Ben S., Times & Seasons)

‘If It Quacks Like a Duck?’: Apologetics versus Scholarship (David Bokovoy, Worlds Without End)

Neither Black Nor White: The Messiness of Racial Categorization and Black Mormon History (Amanda, Juvenile Instructor)

Bringing Jane Manning James into the 21st Century (Margaret Blair Young, Juvenile Instructor)

My Final (?) Mormon Moment Thoughts (Russell Arben Fox, By Common Consent)

The New Scriptural Headings and Historicizing the Revelations (Ben Park, By Common Consent)

The Papal Election

Give Up Your Pew for Lent (Paul Elie, NYT)

A Vatican Spring? (Hans Kung, NYT)

A Papal Surrender? (Paolo Flores d’Arcais, NYRB)