Today’s extra four hours of sleep brought to me by: the American Sociological Association, Air France (“please keep your eye cover, with our compliments”), and… the Quadratus Lumborum.
Managing to sleep past dawn is reason to celebrate, but there’s a large chink in my equanimity. It’s going on five weeks without the endorphin-levels I’ve come to take for granted: 15 or so deep backbends a day make a big difference when they go away. Practice is the province of a different body, which today has me in a strop. Anyway, a few Saturday links, as usual:
? Christianity catches The Secret.
This is truly amazing: conservative Christians were unlikely to buy into the “law of attraction,” both because it signals the dreaded “new age” thinking, and because it directly contradicts the “God is in control” cosmology. But I guess there is no limit to how far a self-serving idea will travel. And, if it brings on some gratitude practice, so much the better.
? Speaking of syncretism: punk rock yoga. More punk than yoga.
? Vanity Fair has a spread of airbrushed photos of “leading lights” of yoga. A few of them are very nice, but overall: Godhelpus. Not linking it, so google at will. Apparently this is part of their championing of ethical consumerism, which culminated in last month’s “Green Issue.” Commodify your good intentions!
? Are you wise? A sociologist’s scorecard.
? TLS review of the new book Inequality.com, which critically examines the potential for the web to foster news kinds of democracy and social equality.
In a clever reading of McLuhan, the authors suggest that his famous term the “global village” should be read less as a metaphor for the interconnectedness of far-flung places than as a forecast of the 360-degree surveillance.