Content & Context
The Books & Culture Weblog
2 of 5
Best of Digest
The Digest department—like this blog as a whole—exists to prove that not everything on the Web is ephemeral and shallow. Here are some of the best counterexamples linked here over the past year:
- The first two objections to considering Jane Austen as a public theologian are that "she does not seem much interested in things public, and she does not seem much interested in things theological," writes Peter Leithart in his forthcoming book Miniatures and Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen, excerpted in the current First Things. But an exploration of one of Austen's least popular novels, Mansfield Park, reveals Austen's efforts to trace "insidious individualism precisely to the marginalization of the Church in the life of England, the failure of clergy to be the makers of English manners, and the consequent intrusion of other forces as the makers of manners," Leithart says. Austen even hit some Augustinian notes while reflecting on memory and self-awareness. Full story While some of his suggested theological themes seem overextended, Leithart has something to reveal about Austen's work even to her avid readers. (2/16)
- What does the soul weigh? The recent film 21 Grams thinks it has the answer. So did the early 20th century doctor Duncan MacDougall, who established the weight of the soul as a scientific "fact" after elaborate but dubious measurements of how much weight human and canine bodies lose at death. Unfortunately, MacDougall's work is marred by "the poor accuracy of his scales, the huge variability in his data, the all-too-few people studied, [and] the tricky skill of pinpointing the exact time of death," says the Melbourne Age. That didn't stop MacDougall from publishing his findings in 1907, the same year Einstein put forth the more reliable E=mc2. While the body does indeed decrease in weight as it decomposes, MacDougall's belief that humans suddenly lose three fourths of an ounce with the departure of their soul does not, says the Age, carry any weight. Full story (2/23)
- The nation's breadbasket is emptying out, says The Week magazine. The Great Plains—one fifth of the country's land mass—are in a state of seemingly irreversible decline. The family farm, that irreplaceable ingredient of Americana, faces a hopeless situation: it can't afford the technology to become more efficient, so it can't sell as much food—but since corporations can do both, food prices (and thus profits) keep falling. And those same corporations get the bulk of government subsidies, further dooming the independent farmer. Younger generations are turning their backs on family farms passed down through generations, and are leaving for cities. Those who remain see a grim situation in which crime and drugs are running rampant. "Crystal meth has hit small-town America the way crack cocaine once hit the cities," says The Week. "Much of the Plains region is already well on the way to becoming a series of ghost towns." The Week doesn't say whether more equitable subsidies are a priority of any lawmakers—or whether they would be enough to reverse the Plains' decline. Full story (2/9)
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