I might regret this but…it’s a combination Molly Award and Open Enrollment thread!

It’s that time of the month again, when we try to acknowledge the work of some commenter (or inanimate carbon rod) who has most delighted us by bestowing admission in the grand Order of the Molly. Just leave a comment here naming your favorite commenter or random object intended to mock the proceedings, and I’ll tally them up at the end of the week.

Also, I maintain this mega-blogroll, and I’m appallingly generous in putting blogs on it — of course, I’m also appallingly ruthless in expunging blogs that haven’t had an update in 30 days. All you have to do is:

  1. Check the current blogroll in case you’re already on it.
  2. Make sure you’ve got an RSS feed for your blog. I can’t put anyone on the blogroll without a syndication feed.
  3. Leave a comment with a link to your blog, perhaps with a little explanation about why you deserve to be read by anyone. If your RSS link is hard to find, tell me what that is, too. It’s also helpful if you tell me what category of my blogroll looks like a good home for you.
  4. This time around, since this is a Molly thread, you also have to vote for some great commenter. If you haven’t read the comments enough to know anyone, what the heck are you doing asking me to read your blog?

See? It’s easy! Do all that and I’ll put you on the blogroll. Let’s be realistic, though — it’s not the greatest honor in the world, and it’s also diluted by the fact that there are so darn many of you on the list right now. But hey, it’ll get you a link for at least a little while.

Oh, and note that leaving a comment in this thread will also put you in Seed’s 500,000th comment contest! You can’t lose!

Is religion rational?

Andrew Brown suggests that we shouldn’t suppose that religious belief is irrational, and I’m going to have to agree in part with him. I think theology is actually an exercise in reason — it is an activity that has engaged some of the greatest minds of the ages, and it is a sophisticated and elaborate logical edifice. It is a towering skyscraper constructed of finely honed girders of deductive logic, and I can appreciate how so many people respect it and admire it and want to protect it. I can also see how those who have dedicated much effort to working closely on the craftmanship of the structure are aghast at the idea that anyone should fail to see the work of the mind invested in it.

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Entartete Kirche

Perhaps it was just poor framing when Cardinal Joachim Meisner said:

“Wherever culture is separated from the worship of God, the cult atrophies in ritualism and culture becomes degenerate,” he said.

The word “degenerate” is hardly ever used in Germany today because of its known association with the Third Reich.

Well, yes, I can imagine that there is some sensitivity to the use of the word … but perhaps they should also consider the substance of his remarks. He has basically just said atheists are incapable of producing art: no music, no beauty, no poetry, none of the great works of the human mind.

He has made the usual disclaimer that his words were taken out of context — he didn’t mean to associate his position with a term used by Nazis. He has not, however, repudiated the sense of his words — the dehumanization of those who do not believe in his superstition.

Textbooks, again

Everyone in academia knows it: textbook publishers abuse the system. Jim Fiore decries the high cost of college textbooks, and I have to agree completely. Basic textbooks at the lower undergraduate levels do not need a new edition every year or two, not even in rapidly changing fields like biology.

Churning editions is just a way for the publisher to suck more money out of a captive audience. It makes it difficult for students to sell off their used textbooks, it gives faculty the headache of having to constantly update their assignments, and if you allow your students to use older editions, it means we have to maintain multiple assignments. It’s extraordinarily annoying, and to no good purpose at the university (to great purpose at the publisher, though).

Right now, I do tell my students that I allow them to use the current or the past two editions. I also tell them where they can pick up copies online, and I even encourage them to get them used. I am doing my best to subvert the publisher’s evil schemes.

On the plus side of their ledgers, though, I also urge the students to keep their textbooks once the course is over. These are valuable reference books that they may well find handy throughout their college careers and in their life afterwards. I’ve never quite understood the rush to dispose of those books the instant the semester ends — I kept my undergraduate biology and chemistry books until they fell apart (another gripe: the increasingly cheap bindings of these books), and I still have several of my old history texts on my shelves.

Call to action!

Everyone: get on your email or your phone, contact your representative, and tell them to support HR2826, the house bill to restore habeas corpus. You can find the text of the bill here (search by bill number for “HR 2826”). This is an opportunity to tell your congresspeople to support a positive action to restore a little bit of respect for the constitution, instead of the usual desperate call to oppose some odious scrap of legislative defilement coming out of the far right reaches of political hell.