Coffee and Irony

Northwestern has a highly-regarded class on marriage teaching people “how to love well”. I think we desperately need more of these.  “At first glance this class may seem a tad too frivolous for a major research university. But the instructors say it’s not an easy A and its reputation as a meaningful, relevant, and enlightening course has grown steadily over the 14 years it’s been offered. In fact, teachers are forced to turn away eager prospective students every year. This spring, the enrollment will be capped at 100. The class is kept to a manageable size so that students can grapple at a deeply personal level with the material during their discussion sessions.” RT

The Guardian’s Jay Rayner has a hilarious and apropos takedown of the superfood culture: “The ludicrous thing is that the very people who blitz up kale and acai berry smoothies to cure themselves of all known diseases are the ones already eating a healthy diet. It’s not like they go from KFC three times a day to diving head first into the seaweed salads.” RT

And on that note, loved this line from a Fast article on food reformation in the Bay Area. “If only the food world were simpler, then perhaps we could end Americans’ addiction to cheap food laden with salt, sugar, and fat.” RT

Fascinating article from The Atlantic on how Facebook has become our news feed and how it reflects majority tastes – and guess what? They aren’t for world news. “But the vast majority of these stories aren’t really news, at all. They’re quizzes about your accent, lists of foods and photographs, funny reminders of what life feels like as you age. For lack of a better term: They’re entertainment.

If this feels like the wind-up before the Facebook-Has-Destroyed-the-News finale, you can relax. Entertainment was beating up on news long before Zuckerberg was born. People always outsold Time. Broadcast sitcom ratings always made mincemeat of PBS. The back sections of the newspaper have long cross-subsidized the foreign coverage of the A-section.” RT

The countries that excel at one sport – “If the Netherlands is set up for sprint skating, Jamaica is the place to be born if you want to become a sprinter. All but one of their 68 Olympic medals – David Weller’s bronze for cycling in 1980 – has been awarded in athletics. Weller cycled the 1km time trial, so managed to cover more ground than any other Jamaican medallist: two ran the 800m; one competed in the long jump and the other 65 have won in the sprints. When it comes to sport, Jamaicans stick to the track – and they only run around it once.” RT

Darren Aronnofsky had a battle with Paramount over which version of Noah to create. “[I wanted to create] this fantastical world a la Middle-earth that they wouldn’t expect from their grandmother’s Bible school. [But it would also work for audiences] who take this very, very seriously as gospel… I had no problem completely honoring and respecting everything in the Bible and accepting it as truth.Of course, my production designer [Mark Friedberg] had a million ideas of what it could look like, but I said, ‘No, the measurements are right there.’ [Re: Genesis describing the Ark as a giant box].” RT