Friday Links

• Yale UP chickens out.
  
• David Updike says good-bye to his famous father.
• So what's Gladwell's problem with Harper Lee, anyway?
  
• How Richard Dawkins poisoned his own well.
  
• Stop working on your "relationship with God."
  

Friday Links

Friday links triumphantly returns!

• Why can't people accept their own mortality?
• Return of the Promise Keepers.
• Malcolm Gladwell's reductionist reading of To Kill a Mockingbird.
• The death of the public intellectual.
• On judging the intellects of the past.
  
• James K.A. Smith doesn't like Mad Men. Yeah, me neither.
• And he doesn't like modern country music, either.
  

Friday Links

• Does Flannery O'Connor use her characters as an excuse for grandstanding?
• Trying to get to Thomas Pynchon.
• The dirty jokes in Twelfth Night.
• David Kessler on the Unholy Trinity.
• What kind of Christian was George Tiller?
  
• Dawkins can't quite chip it all away.
  
• Why sex is overrated.
  

Friday Links

• The last vestige of the Brontës.
  
• The seven types of bookstore patrons.
• Why Western culture is so morally outraged.
  
• Where the Academy went wrong.
  
• An interview with the man who's going to save 2-D animation.
  

Friday Links

• So he's not dead!
• Sherman Alexie defends himself.
  
• Plato warned about this.
• Terrifying--I agree with a Fox News editorial.
• Meanwhile, Salon reveals the sinister tactics of the pro-life crowd. I'd love to see a similar argument about pro-choicers.
  
• Take a trip through flavor country.
  
• I thought he did pretty well, even if he talked about L.A. too much.
  

Friday Links

• Let's not forget that "spare the rod" refers to guidance, not corporal punishment.
• The new Auden poems are not that great.
• QUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!!!!
  
• Need money? Humiliate yourself in front of a national audience!
  
• Rest in peace, Jay Bennett.
  
• On the most interesting man in the world.
• That's actually what I love about Mike Judge cartoons.
  

Friday Links

• I don't know; I still can't read a book online.
  
• Why's everybody talking about God?
• Folks, you're not going to stop it.
  
• What college professors know that your high-school teacher didn't.
• My mother certainly wouldn't have gotten that wagon for me.
  
• Is the funniest woman in the world a closet conservative?
  

Friday Links

In a new feature on Ladder on Wheels, each Friday I'll be sharing some links I found particularly interesting over the previous week. So here we go...

• The big buzz on the blogosphere this week is Mark C. Taylor's New York Times editorial calling for an end to "the university as we know it."
• Response to Taylor from the always-brilliant James K.A. Smith.
  
• Mark Edmundson calls for a moratorium on "readings."
• Does this make them not "pro-life"?
  
• The ugly evolution of plagiarism.
• Mike Galanos argues that the morning-after pill is dangerous for 17-year-olds.*
  
• Hunter Baker remembers Francis Schaeffer.
• A priest in Florida obeys Christ's command to forgive.
  
• Ayn Rand is gaining in popularity--a sure sign of the forthcoming Apocalypse.
  
• This is among the greatest things I've ever seen.

* I have a bone to pick with one of Galanos' points here, though--the reason Plan B is available without a prescription while the birth-control pill is not is the element of time. For the morning-after pill to be effective, it must be taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex, thus making the prescription requirement potentially nullifying to the pill's effect. What if, for example, the condom breaks the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving? You may not be able to get a prescription until the following Monday, thus making the whole thing useless. None of this disproves Galanos' assertions regarding the danger of the chemicals or the need for parental consent, however.