The central institution of segmentary tribes is the feud. Security depends on the willingness of every adult male in a given tribal segment to take up arms in its defense. An attack on a lineage-mate must be avenged by the entire group. Likewise, any lineage member is liable to be attacked in revenge for an offense committed by one of his relatives. One result of this system of collective responsibility is that members of Middle Eastern kin groups have a strong interest in policing the behavior of their lineage-mates, since the actions of any one person directly affect the reputation and safety of the entire group.
Universal male militarization, surprise attacks on apparent innocents based on a principle of collective guilt, and the careful group monitoring and control of personal behavior are just a few implications of a system that accounts for many aspects of Middle Eastern society without requiring any explanatory recourse to Islam. The religion itself is an overlay in partial tension with, and deeply stamped by, the dynamics of tribal life. In other words--and this is Salz-man's central argument--the template of tribal life, with its violent and shifting balance of power between fusing and fissioning lineage segments, is the dominant theme of cultural life in the Arab Middle East (and shapes even many non-Arab Muslim populations). At its cultural core, says Salzman, even where tribal structures are attenuated, Middle Eastern society is tribal society.
We have children because love overflows. I believe as a Christian that I am created in the image of a God who is Love, a God whose love so desired an object that it brought us into being. Although the wisdom and power of love within us is clouded and twisted by sin, still the image of Love is there. We have children because love is essentially creative, and because our souls long for other souls we can love lavishly and forever.Read the whole thing.
Love precedes the beloved. That is why it is unconditional. In bearing children we participate in God's continuing creative act, and in sustaining and guiding and sacrificing for our children we reflect God's redemptive act. Theologically, then, we have children because we are made after the image of a God who had children, a God who is irreducibly relational and endlessly creative.
Thirdly, Thomas Aquinas was a deep humanist, precisely because he was a Christian. He saw that since God became human in Christ, the destiny of the human being is divinization, participation in the inner life of God. No other religion or philosophy or social theory has ever held out so exalted a sense of human dignity and purpose. And this is why, Aquinas intuited, there is something inviolable about the human person. How indispensably important that teaching is in our era of stem-cell research, euthanasia, legalized abortion, and pre-emptive war, practices that turn persons into means.
Thomas’s bones lie in that golden casket in Toulouse, but his mind and his spirit, thank God, still inform the counter-cultural voice of the church.
Researchers have discovered that contrary to popular belief half of the ice flows in the Karakoram range of the mountains are actually growing rather than shrinking.Well, maybe the coming glacial age is still a ways off in human time:
The discovery adds a new twist to the row over whether global warming is causing the world's highest mountain range to lose its ice cover.
It further challenges claims made in a 2007 report by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that the glaciers would be gone by 2035.
Although the head of the panel Dr Rajendra Pachauri later admitted the claim was an error gleaned from unchecked research, he maintained that global warming was melting the glaciers at "a rapid rate", threatening floods throughout north India.
The new study by scientists at the Universities of California and Potsdam has found that half of the glaciers in the Karakoram range, in the northwestern Himlaya, are in fact advancing and that global warming is not the deciding factor in whether a glacier survives or melts.
Dr Bodo Bookhagen, Dirk Scherler and Manfred Strecker studied 286 glaciers between the Hindu Kush on the Afghan-Pakistan border to Bhutan, taking in six areas.
Their report, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, found the key factor affecting their advance or retreat is the amount of debris – rocks and mud – strewn on their surface, not the general nature of climate change.
Glaciers surrounded by high mountains and covered with more than two centimetres of debris are protected from melting.
Debris-covered glaciers are common in the rugged central Himalaya, but they are almost absent in subdued landscapes on the Tibetan Plateau, where retreat rates are higher.
In contrast, more than 50 per cent of observed glaciers in the Karakoram region in the northwestern Himalaya are advancing or stable.
"Our study shows that there is no uniform response of Himalayan glaciers to climate change and highlights the importance of debris cover for understanding glacier retreat, an effect that has so far been neglected in predictions of future water availability or global sea level," the authors concluded.
Dr Bookhagen said their report had shown "there is no stereotypical Himalayan glacier" in contrast to the UN's climate change report which, he said, "lumps all Himalayan glaciers together
And let's hear it for the bang up job Laurie Goodstein and the NY Times are doing tracking those pervert prison officials with their customary prosecuting zeal. That's why this story is *all over* the news, like the huge story of public school abusers. The NY Times cares *so* much about justice and not about sensationalism in the service of ad space.From the article:
The list of such stories goes on and on. After each of them was made public, it was possible for officials to contend that they reflected anomalous failings of a particular facility or system. But a report just issued on January 7 by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) should change that. Mandated by the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (PREA), and easily the largest and most authoritative study of the issue ever conducted, it makes clear that the crisis of sexual abuse in juvenile detention is nationwide.The Irish Catholic scandal had a lower rate, but got more coverage, for what it's worth.
Across the country, 12.1 percent of kids questioned in the BJS survey said that they’d been sexually abused at their current facility during the preceding year. That’s nearly one in eight, or approximately 3,220, out of the 26,550 who were eligible to participate. The survey, however, was only given at large facilities that held young people who had been “adjudicated”—i.e., found by a court to have committed an offense—for at least ninety days, which is more restrictive than it may sound. In total, according to the most recent data, there are nearly 93,000 kids in juvenile detention on any given day.19 Although we can’t assume that 12.1 percent of the larger number were sexually abused—many kids not covered by the survey are held for short periods of time, or in small facilities where rates of abuse are somewhat lower—we can say confidently that the BJS’s 3,220 figure represents only a small fraction of the children sexually abused in detention every year.
KROFT: (Voiceover) And you watched lots of people get shipped off to the death camps.Soros' mature reflection is that taking property from Jewish victims of the Nazis is like "the markets", i.e., if he didn't take it someone else would?
Mr. SOROS: Right. I was 14 years old. And I would say that that’s when my character was made.
KROFT: In what way?
Mr. SOROS: That one should think ahead. One should understand and–and anticipate events and when–when one is threatened. It was a tremendous threat of evil. I mean, it was a–a very personal experience of evil.
KROFT: My understanding is that you went out with this protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson.
Mr. SOROS: Yes. Yes.
KROFT: Went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews.
Mr. SOROS: Yes. That’s right. Yes.
KROFT: I mean, that’s–that sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many years. Was it difficult?
Mr. SOROS: Not–not at all. Not at all. Maybe as a child you don’t–you don’t see the connection. But it was–it created no–no problem at all.
KROFT: No feeling of guilt?
Mr. SOROS: No.
KROFT: For example that, ‘I’m Jewish and here I am, watching these people go. I could just as easily be there. I should be there.’ None of that?
Mr. SOROS: Well, of course I c–I could be on the other side or I could be the one from whom the thing is being taken away. But there was no sense that I shouldn’t be there, because that was–well, actually, in a funny way, it’s just like in markets–that if I weren’t there–of course, I wasn’t doing it, but somebody else would–would–would be taking it away anyhow. And it was the–whether I was there or not, I was only a spectator, the property was being taken away. So the–I had no role in taking away that property. So I had no sense of guilt.
In the world’s collective consciousness, the word “Nazi” is synonymous with evil. It is widely understood that the Nazis’ ideology—nationalism, anti-Semitism, the autarkic ethnic state, the Führer principle—led directly to the furnaces of Auschwitz. It is not nearly as well understood that Communism led just as inexorably, everywhere on the globe where it was applied, to starvation, torture, and slave-labor camps. Nor is it widely acknowledged that Communism was responsible for the deaths of some 150 million human beings during the twentieth century. The world remains inexplicably indifferent and uncurious about the deadliest ideology in history.
For "The Way Back" is a unique and groundbreaking film: It represents Hollywood's first attempt to portray the Soviet Gulag, in meticulously researched detail. I know this to be true because I was a historical consultant to Weir. He asked me for advice because I wrote a book about the Gulag, but he did plenty of research on his own, as his questions reflected. Once, he called to ask whether the guards leading the prisoners off the train would have been wearing the same uniforms as the guards receiving them at the camp (answer: no).And:
"The Way Back" is based on a book called "The Long Walk" by Slavomir Rawicz, a Gulag survivor who "borrowed" his escape story: Three Poles crossed the Himalayas from Siberia into India in the 1940s; the Polish consulate recorded their arrival; one of them told his story to Rawicz. But the film is "true" in every way that matters. Many of the camp scenes are taken directly from Soviet archives and memoirs. The starving men scrambling for garbage; the tattooed criminals, playing cards for the clothes of other prisoners; the narrow barracks; the logging camp; the vicious Siberian storms. Among the very plausible characters are an American who went to work on the Moscow subway and fell victim to the Great Terror of 1937, a Polish officer arrested after the Soviet Union's 1939 invasion of Poland and a Latvian priest whose church was destroyed by the Bolsheviks.
I haven't found any reviews, so far, that hail this as Hollywood's first Gulag movie, perhaps because hardly anyone noticed that there weren't any before. Weir told me that many in Hollywood were surprised by the story: They'd never heard of Soviet concentration camps, only German ones. "If you need to explain what a film is about," the film is in trouble - and this one almost was. Weir had difficulties getting it distributed and some problems explaining the final scene to his financial backers.It's about time that the public got really acquainted with the legacy of Communism.
Yet that final scene is exactly what makes this movie "real": Instead of returning home at the end of his harrowing journey, the hero is shown "walking" across time - across the Soviet occupation of Central Europe, across the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the Prague Spring of 1968 - finally returning home to Poland only after communism collapses. The absence of an instant happy ending also bothered some of the film's reviewers, even though, in "real life," there were no happy endings for anyone who lived in the eastern half of Europe after the end of the Second World War. People who escaped from the Gulag, survived the war or evaded the Holocaust didn't necessarily live happily ever after. Perhaps that's a truth too difficult to learn from a movie.
He said it in the prepared text and in the speech itself:So, "governmental spending" includes the money that our besuited masters in the government graciously allow us to keep because, obviously, it's all their's to begin with.
The bipartisan Fiscal Commission I created last year made this crystal clear. I don’t agree with all their proposals, but they made important progress. And their conclusion is that the only way to tackle our deficit is to cut excessive spending wherever we find it – in domestic spending, defense spending, health care spending, and spending through tax breaks and loopholes.
Oh, just come out and say it, you want to discriminate against a certain class of people even though there is no real objective logical reason to do so. You get an ick factor. Which is eminently stupid. Competence is by definition the ability to get the job done in a satisfactory or better than satisfactory manner. If the person is competent, but somehow throws you off personally because of cultural predilections, that's frankly a problem and a weakness of your comfort level. Imagine a world where you could hire and fire based on that. I would certainly like to see what you'd have to say when someone refuses to hire an Atheist, because "it tells you something about him."
I used the Gaskell case only as a prompt to get into the more general issue. But I very clearly stated that, precisely because Gaskell himself denies being a YEC, I was not going to talk about his case. Nowhere in my article did I say that Gaskell himself should not have got the job.Well, sure, as long as you can control the assumptions of the argument, then you can control the outcome of the argument, i.e., if a tail is a leg, a horse has five legs.
I deliberately discussed extreme hypothetical cases, because they raise the general issue starkly, in a way that the Gaskell case does not. The Gaskell case is complicated by the fact that he is not a YEC, so it does not bring out the general principle of whether private beliefs should be ignored. Gaskell's private beliefs are not obviously silly, so the issue of principle is not seen in sharp focus.
So, that is why I chose to discuss preposterous examples like the eye doctor who believes in the stork theory, the astronomer who thinks the universe is less than 10,000 years old, and the YEC geologist. The demonstration that it was worthwhile raising these hypothetical extremes is precisely the fact that a substantial number of commenters on Boing Boing have come out and stated that they would STILL hire somebody even if his private beliefs were as ridiculous as these hypothetical cases.
And as far as I can tell, Dawkins is going out of his way to suggest — without quite saying — that a man who writes about the Big Bang as possibly divinely inspired is nonetheless some sort of Young Earth Creationist. But here’s what Gaskell says in the very passage truncated by Dawkins: “I have a lot of respect for people who hold this view because they are strongly committed to the Bible, but I don’t believe it is the interpretation the Bible requires of itself, and it certainly clashes head-on with science.”It isn't even the first time that Dawkins has engaged in this kind of ad hominem/poison the well/appeal to the masses/strawman argumentation. In fact, if you took straw away from Dawkins he wouldn't be able to fashion an argument.
Dawkins seems to have completely misrepresented Gaskell to buttress his argument. Really, one would expect better from someone devoted to reason above all.
UPDATE: Down in the comments, where I had missed it before, Dawkins backs off somewhat. Nonetheless, I think his post is quite unfair. Nor is he the first to do this. I think creationism is unscientific — but so, of course, is scoring points by trashing those with whom one disagrees. Sadly, however, it is often effective.
As officers of the American Sociological Association, we express outrage at the attacks made on Professor Frances Fox Piven by Glenn Beck in his political opinion show on Fox News.Except, you idiots, that Holmes was talking about immediate call for an immediate violent response, such as, "let's go lynch this person now." Beck's language is no more - and far less - a call for immediate violent action than was the call of leftist demagogues for an violent overthrow of the government. Or for that matter, it's no more - and far less - a call for immediate violence than Frances Fox Piven's call for Greek-style riots.
Dr. Piven, Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the City University of New York Graduate Center who holds a PhD from the University of Chicago, is “widely recognized as one of America’s most thoughtful and provocative commentators of America’ social welfare system…equally known for her contributions to social theory and for her social activism.” [Smith College, Sophia Smith Collection] She has been recognized by her colleagues around the country, who have elected her President of the American Sociological Association, as well as Vice President of the American Political Science Association, and President of the Society for the Study of Social Problems.
Scholars of her caliber, intellectuals of her stature, and especially those who tackle social conflicts and contradictions, mass movements and political action, should stimulate equal levels of serious challenge and creative dialogue. Being called by Glenn Beck one of the “nine most dangerous people in the world,” and an “enemy of the Constitution” is not a credible challenge; it is plain demagoguery.
Despite its lack of substance, Beck’s attacks have resulted in a flood of hate mail and internet postings attacking Professor Piven, including a series of death threats. While it is true that death threats are generally only a form of extremist rhetoric, they indicate an overheated emotional atmosphere that researchers on collective violence call “the hysteria zone.” It is a zone in which deranged individuals can be motivated to real violence against those targeted by demagoguery. History tells us that such things as the attempted assassination of Representative Giffords that resulted in six deaths in Tucson, Arizona can be examples of how abundant, polarizing rhetoric by political leaders and commentators can spur mass murder.
We call on Fox News to take steps to control the encouragement of violence that has run rampant in recent months. Serious and honest, undistorted disagreement and public debate on unemployment, economic crisis, the rights and tactics of welfare recipients, government intervention and the erosion of the American way of life should be supported. We in no way advocate restricting the freedom of speech of political commentators. They in turn should recognize the right of social science researchers to gather and analyze evidence related to controversial topics and to reach conclusions based on evidence, even if such conclusions disagree with widely held beliefs. Where we all should draw the line is at name-calling and invective rising to the level of inciting others to violence.
As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes declared, "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.” Thus, the right to free speech does not ever include rhetoric that encourages violence against one’s opponents, especially in the current atmosphere of heated political mobilization. We call on Fox News and other responsible media to set the appropriate standards of accurate and honest debate.
So vigorous debate about Piven's ideas is really important, but it better be the right kind of debate by the right kind of people and most certainly not that terrible, terrible man Glenn Beck. She's very lofty and serious, so, while she should be challenged, she must be challenged only by lofty and serious individuals, and of course, Glenn Beck is not one.Exactly. The job of the intellectual class is to lead the unwashed masses into the progressive utopia. The job of demagogic members of the unwashed is to shut up and listen to their intellectual betters.
Olbermann was reckless and had little regard for reporting, fact-checking or facts.Olbermann will be back. Matthews is a moron. Keeping track of their idiocy is the most effective way of living with these idiots.
Remember when he made Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox News, a worst person for allegedly saying there was no room for "facts" in his businesses? Only Murdoch never said that. What he did say is that was there was no room for "fat."
Olbermann grabbed the quote off a sketchy transcript and never bothered to check it -- even though a freshman reporter on a college newspaper would know there is something wrong with the owner of one of the biggest news empires in the world saying his businesses have no room for "facts."
But the incorrect word matched the narrative in Olbermann's head, and so he ran with it instead of doing what any entry-level reporter would do. I tried to mention that Sunday when Shuster said Olbermann will do more "reporting" in whatever new job he ultimately takes up. My thought: He couldn't do less.
I have wriitten extensively anbout Olbermann's behavior on election night in November. He led the MSNBC crew of clowns in heckling, mocking and laughing in the face of conservative victors who were foolish enough to come on MSNBC. Journalistic institutions should not debase the political process and revile the will of the electorate that way.
Olbermann smeared countless people over the years, and MSNBC let him get away with it. If the arrival of Comcast has contributed to getting this reckless figure off the airwaves until his no-compete clause ends, then I have at least one reason to celebrate the takeover of NBC-Universal.
Chairman Hu Jintao recognized it as soon as he heard it. Patriotic Chinese Internet users were delighted as soon as they saw the videos online. Early morning TV viewers in China knew it would be played an hour or two beforehand. At the White House State dinner on Jan. 19, about six minutes into his set, Lang Lang began tapping out a famous anti-American propaganda melody from the Korean War: the theme song to the movie “Battle on Shangganling Mountain."...Yea, this is so very reassuring.
The movie and the tune are widely known among Chinese, and the song has been a leading piece of anti-American propaganda by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for decades....
The song Lang Lang played describes how beautiful China is and then near the end has this verse, “When friends are here, there is fine wine /But if the jackal comes /What greets it is the hunting rifle.” The “jackal” in the song is the United States....
“In the eyes of all Chinese, this will not be seen as anything other than a big insult to the U.S.,” says Yang Jingduan, a Chinese psychiatrist now living in Philadelphia who had in China been a doctor in the Chinese military. “It’s like insulting you in your face and you don’t know it, it’s humiliating...
We have to sit through lectures by our incomparable elected officials and our distinguished administrators telling us how many people the state needs by such and such a year with college degrees. We know how to give degrees. We’re good at that. But an education? Even God could not compensate for the lack of skills, the lack of interest, and the lack of raw talent your son brought to us. Social promotion is not restricted to high schools any more. After all, somehow we have to pay for all those buildings, athletic facilities, and shopping malls that so impressed you.This graph in this article showing that 50% of a college student's time is spent socializing confirms this insight.
Now your son is carrying a load of debt that he can’t pay off, and he can’t find a meaningful job because he really has no skills that translate into the marketplace. He never committed himself to the discipline, rigor, and fortitude it takes to get a meaningful education. He didn’t know what to do with himself; you didn’t know what to do with him, and you thought he should have a college experience. He did, in the sense that four years of recreational sex, hard drugs, and bars that are open late into the night provided him with a college experience.
You would have been better off giving him the cash to invest and sending him to the Caribbean or Vegas for several weeks every year where he could have indulged his sexual appetites and legally smoked ganja. Financially you would have both been ahead. So too would we.
If you're angry at your doctor, your boss, your relative or your spouse, you can probably sit down and have a productive conversation about it. God, on the other hand, is probably not available to chat.First Things' Joe Carter observes:
And yet people get angry at God all the time, especially about everyday disappointments, finds a new set of studies in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
It's not just religious folks, either. People unaffiliated with organized religion, atheists and agnostics also report anger toward God either in the past, or anger focused on a hypothetical image - that is, what they imagined God might be like - said lead study author Julie Exline, Case Western Reserve University psychologist.
In studies on college students, atheists and agnostics reported more anger at God during their lifetimes than believers. A separate study also found this pattern among bereaved individuals.
A new set of studies in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology finds that atheists and agnostics report anger toward God either in the past or anger focused on a hypothetical image of what they imagine God must be like. Julie Exline, a psychologist at Case Western Reserve University and the lead author of this recent study, has examined other data on this subject with identical results. Exline explains that her interest was first piqued when an early study of anger toward God revealed a counterintuitive finding: Those who reported no belief in God reported more grudges toward him than believers.
At first glance, this finding seemed to reflect an error. How could people be angry with God if they did not believe in God? Reanalyses of a second dataset revealed similar patterns: Those who endorsed their religious beliefs as “atheist/agnostic” or “none/unsure” reported more anger toward God than those who reported a religious affiliation.
Exline notes that the findings raised questions of whether anger might actually affect belief in God’s existence, an idea consistent with social science’s previous clinical findings on “emotional atheism.”
Studies in traumatic events suggest a possible link between suffering, anger toward God, and doubts about God’s existence. According to Cook and Wimberly (1983), 33% of parents who suffered the death of a child reported doubts about God in the first year of bereavement. In another study, 90% of mothers who had given birth to a profoundly retarded child voiced doubts about the existence of God (Childs, 1985). Our survey research with undergraduates has focused directly on the association between anger at God and self-reported drops in belief (Exline et al., 2004). In the wake of a negative life event, anger toward God predicted decreased belief in God’s existence.
The most striking finding was that when Exline looked only at subjects who reported a drop in religious belief, their faith was least likely to recover if anger toward God was the cause of their loss of belief. In other words, anger toward God may not only lead people to atheism but give them a reason to cling to their disbelief.
I've argued elsewhere that, according to the Christian tradition, atheism is a form of self-imposed intellectual dysfunction, a lack of epistemic virtue, or—to borrow a term from my Catholic friends—a case of vincible ignorance.
In Tennessee, reports recently surfaced of a gigantic crayfish that no one had ever seen before. Much to their surprise, researchers found one hiding under a rock.So, how does something like that hide out in Tennessee?
This crayfish is twice as big as its relatives, and there's only one other previously known species that's even remotely similar. This other species, Barbicambarus cornutus, was discovered in 1884 about 130 miles away in Kentucky, and can get as big as a lobster. This new crayfish has been named Barbicambarus simmonsi, with its species named for the scientist who discovered it. The Barbicambarus genus is unusual outside just its size, with tiny-hair like bristles on its antennae that look like tiny beards.
Considering how unusual such a creature is, aquatic biologist and co-discoverer Chris Taylor is convinced no one had ever seen this species before:
"This isn't a crayfish that someone would have picked up and just said, 'Oh, it's another crayfish,' and put it back. If you were an aquatic biologist and you had seen this thing, because of the size and the setae on the antennae, you would have recognized it as something really, really different and you would have saved it."
It's very rare to find a completely new species that's this big and distinctive, particularly in a well-studied part of the United States that has been under pretty much constant academic investigation for the last fifty years. Cryptozoologists might want to savor this moment - this is probably the closest real scientific equivalent to finding mythical creatures like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster that they're ever going to get.
The last Christian man in town goes to church each morning to clean the building and to remember the past. Romel Hawal, 48, was born in this town in Anbar Province back when most of the population was Christian. Now, he said, his 11-year-old son knows no other Christians and has no memory of attending a church service.And:
The Christian population began to drop in the 1970s and 1980s for economic reasons, the archdeacon and current residents said.And:
Mr. Hawal, who is Assyrian, switched to Mary Queen of Peace, which is Roman Catholic, after his brother became the caretaker, and remained after his brother moved to Baghdad and then to the Kurdistan region in northern Iraq. About half of Iraq’s Christians have left the country since the invasion.
Mr. Hawal said that his life had become culturally identical to those of his neighbors. At his construction materials shop he hangs a sign that says Allahu Akbar, or God is great, and the customers know him as Abu Yousif (father of Yousif) the Christian. The family prays at home, he said, but the rituals are incomplete without a priest.
A doctor who gave abortions to minorities, immigrants and poor women in a "house of horrors" clinic was charged with eight counts of murder in the deaths of a patient and seven babies who were born alive and then killed with scissors, prosecutors said Wednesday.And:
Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 69, made millions of dollars over 30 years, performing as many illegal, late-term abortions as he could, prosecutors said. State regulators ignored complaints about him and failed to inspect his clinic since 1993, but no charges were warranted against them given time limits and existing law, District Attorney Seth Williams said. Nine of Gosnell's employees also were charged.
Gosnell "induced labor, forced the live birth of viable babies in the sixth, seventh, eighth month of pregnancy and then killed those babies by cutting into the back of the neck with scissors and severing their spinal cord," Williams said.
Bags and bottles holding aborted fetuses "were scattered throughout the building," Williams said. "There were jars, lining shelves, with severed feet that he kept for no medical purpose."And:
Gosnell charged $325 for first-trimester abortions and $1,600 to $3,000 for abortions up to 30 weeks. Abortions are legal up to 24 weeks gestation in Pennsylvania, although most doctors won't perform them after 20 weeks, prosecutors said.And:
Gosnell is facing Murder in the 3rd Degree for the death of 41-year-old Karnamaya Mongar. Mrs. Mongar died on November 20, 2009 when she was allegedly overdosed with anesthetics prescribed by Gosnell. He is also facing seven Murder charges for the deaths of infants who were killed after being born viable and alive during the 6th, 7th and 8th month of pregnancy. Along with the Murder charges the District Attorney has charged Gosnell with Infanticide, Conspiracy, Abortion at 24 or more weeks, Abuse of Corpse, Theft, Corruption of Minors, Solicitation and other related offenses.
In a speech billed as a discussion of the Bush and Obama eras, New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh delivered a rambling, conspiracy-laden diatribe here Monday expressing his disappointment with President Barack Obama and his dissatisfaction with the direction of U.S. foreign policy.And:
"Just when we needed an angry black man," he began, his arm perched jauntily on the podium, "we didn't get one."
It quickly went downhill from there.
Hersh, whose exposés of gross abuses by members of the U.S. military in Vietnam and Iraq have earned him worldwide fame and high journalistic honors, said he was writing a book on what he called the "Cheney-Bush years" and saw little difference between that period and the Obama administration.
He then alleged that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who headed JSOC before briefly becoming the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and his successor, Vice Adm. William McRaven, as well as many within JSOC, "are all members of, or at least supporters of, Knights of Malta."The disturbing thing is that a number of commenters to the Foreign Policy post seem willing to swallow Hersh's crazy "the Knights of Malta control the American military" story.
Hersh may have been referring to the Sovereign Order of Malta, a Roman Catholic organization commited to "defence of the Faith and assistance to the poor and the suffering," according to its website.
"Many of them are members of Opus Dei," Hersh continued. "They do see what they're doing -- and this is not an atypical attitude among some military -- it's a crusade, literally. They see themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They're protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function."
"They have little insignias, these coins they pass among each other, which are crusader coins," he continued. "They have insignia that reflect the whole notion that this is a culture war. … Right now, there’s a tremendous, tremendous amount of anti-Muslim feeling in the military community.”"
Now, most of the passages above would violate modern norms about civil discourse. Are they sinful? They are God’s word! And yet, they seem rather shocking to modern ears. Imagine getting into your time machine and going to hear Jesus denounce the crowds and calling them children of the devil. It really blows a 21 Century mindAs for the latter, we have to remember that the use of the term "ass" comes from "asinine" which has nothing to do with the body part [or, in light of the way that "asinine" is spelled, the animal, although some etymological sources do make that connection.]
I want to suggest to you that these sorts of quotes go a long way to illustrate the cultural dimension of what it means to be civil. The bottom line is that there is a great deal of variability in what people consider civil discourse. In some cultures there is a greater tolerance for anger. I remember dating an Italian girl for a brief time back in college. I remember being at her house and how she and her mother could really go at it with a heated debate (usually in Italian – Mama Mia!). But no sooner had they very intensely argued over some particular point, say of preparing the meal, than they were just fine, as if nothing had happened. Angry discourse was more “normal” for them.Even in this country there are regional differences about civility. In New York and Boston, edgy comments and passionate interruptive debate are common. But in the upper Midwest and parts of the Deep South conversation is more gentle and reserved.
At the time of Jesus angry discourse was apparently quite “normal” for, as we see, Jesus himself engages in a lot of it, even calling them names like, “Hypocrites.” “Brood of Vipers,” “Liars,” “Wicked” etc. Yet, the same scriptures that record these facts about Jesus also teach that he never sinned. Hence, at that time such terms were not considered sinful to utter.
Jesus also engaged in prophetic actions like overturning the tables in the temple courts. No one said he’d done wrong, they just wondered where he got the authority to do this (cf Mark 11:28). In that culture prophets did things like this. No one liked it, but just like our culture tolerates some degree of civil disobedience, even reveres it, Jesus’ culture expected things like this from prophets.
Careful -Now be careful here. I am not saying it is OK for us to talk like this because Jesus did. We do not live then, we live now, and in our culture such dialogue is almost never acceptable. There ARE cultural norms we have to respect to remain in the realm of Charity. Exactly how to define civility in every instance is not always clear. An old answer to these hard to define things is “I know when I see it.” So perhaps it is more art than science to define civility. But clearly, we tend today, to prefer a gentler discourse.
On the other hand we also tend to be a little thin-skinned and hyper-sensitive. And the paradoxical result of insisting on greater civility is that we are so easily “outraged” (one of the more overused words in English today). We take offense where none is intended and we easily presume that the very act of disagreeing is somehow arrogant, intentionally hurtful or even hateful. We seem so easily provoked and quick to be offended. All of this escalates anger further and charges of hate and intolerance go back and forth where there is simply sincere disagreement.
Balance - The Scriptures give us two balanced reminders. First that we should speak the truth in love, and with compassion and understanding. But it also portrays to us a time when people had thicker skin and were less hyper-sensitive and anxious in the presence of disagreement. We can learn from both biblical traditions. The biblical formula seems to be “clarity” with “charity,” the truth with a balance of toughness and tenderness. Perhaps an old saying comes to mind: Say what you mean, mean what you say, but don’t say it mean.
3. Because Jesus was a failure and Muhammad a success, Christians from the start learned how to be a minority religion and survived Jesus’ failure only by the fact that he didn’t stay dead. Christians don’t know how to behave when they are in power (and, of course, have sometimes abused their power). But Islam was, from its start, majority-minded; and Muslims don’t know how to behave when they are not in power: it enrages them, makes them thin-skinned to “blasphemy,” drives them to achieve power and impose sharia, even motivates some of them to martyr-suicide in killing any they consider enemies of Allah.
4. Muslims are now more aggressive blasphemers against Christianity. In Muslim lands more than a half century ago, I heard no tour-guide blaspheme my religion. Not so my latest experience: the tour-guides went out of their way to insert the statement, “God has no son.” Since we Christians believe in the Holy Trinity, the One God as Father/Son/Holy Spirit, to attack the Holy Trinity is the height of blasphemy.
5. Americans don’t have to go to Muslim lands to hear our religion blasphemed by Muslims. In a Christian church in Portland, OR, I heard an imam (an immigrant from Yemen) say to the post-worship assemblage, “God has no son.” (Not, “We Muslims believe that God has no son.”) When I yelled, “Blasphemy!” the assemblage was shocked to silence and he was so unnerved that he initiated a handshake with me seven times before he left the church.
. Teaching Islam among “The World’s Great Religions” in the University of Hawaii, I learned how profoundly ignorant of one another’s religion those Christians and Muslims were. And worse than ignorant: misinformed. Growing up to the realities of our shrinking globe is painful, and obscuring differences stunts this growth. I taught the similarities and differences, and rejoice in the increasing efforts toward interfaith understanding. But we can make no essential progress, religious or political, unless we honestly and courageously confront the reality that our two religions are essential enemies, antagonists each to the other’s essence, mutual blasphemers. Only with that realism can the mutual blasphemers begin to learn to get along with each other without violence.
7. Wouldn’t it help if Christians and Muslims stopped trying to convert each other? This understandable question is ignorant of the fact that among the world’s religions, these two are the most essentially missionary: sharing one’s world-view, one’s way of seeing and living in the world, is optional to neither. Muslims will continue to strive (jihad) for dar es salam (a peaceful world under Allah) in dar es harb (the “war” world, all the world not yet under Allah — especially where non-Muslim governments such as the state of Israel are in control of any part of the world that was once under Allah). And “the West” (with rootage in Christianity) will not cease pressing for religious freedom everywhere.
"We are under strict orders from President Clinton to seal this place up. While I might not like him, or his mouthy wife, those are the orders.”And:
“Because the only thing I hate more than hippie and neo-liberal fascists and anarchists are the hypocrite, fat-cat suits they eventually grow up to become.”He's speaking for my generation.
“Is Hollywood a difficult atmosphere to be in as a Christian?”
“Absolutely. The atmosphere in Hollywood in general is very anti-conservative, very anti-Christian. The liberal segment of Hollywood, which is 80 percent of it if not more, they look at Christians as hypocrites that are false and fake. The tough part is that in many cases I can’t argue with them. My job on my set, I believe, is to first just love people and gain that trust with people where they know that I really do love them and care about their well-being, so that when they are running into problems, they will hopefully, at some point, come to me and ask me, ‘What is your peace all about? What is your comfort all about? Where do you get your love? Where do you get your talents?’ And I can turn to them and say without blinking, ‘Jesus Christ.’ You can’t just come out there and say ‘Hey, I’m a Christian, and I’m gonna beat you into thinking the way that I do.’ You can’t do that. It’s not about manipulation so much as it’s about getting in on someone’s life on the ground floor. So more than anything, that’s what I’m trying to do now. Just build relationships with everyone that I work with.”
Egypt had described as “unacceptable” the Pope’s remarks about recent attacks against Christians in Egypt.
In an address to diplomats Pope Benedict recalled the December 31 bomb attack on a Coptic Orthodox church in Alexandria that left 23 people dead.
He said the Alexandria bombing and attacks on Christians in Iraq were “yet another sign of the urgent need for the governments of the region to adopt, in spite of difficulties and dangers, effective measures for the protection of religious minorities. Need we repeat it? In the Middle East, Christians are original and authentic citizens who are loyal to their fatherland and assume their duties toward their country.”
Hossam Zaki, Egypt’s foreign ministry spokesman, said the Pope’s statement represented “an unacceptable interference in its internal affairs” and announced it was recalling its ambassador to the Vatican “for consultation”.
Skins is filled with graphic content involving high-school children, including depictions of teens drinking, smoking marijuana, and using massive quantities of drugs, engaging in violent acts, and having irresponsible sex with each other, with their schoolteachers, and with other adults. Other TV shows, like Gossip Girl, have included some of these activities; but Skins’ depiction of such activities is on a scale never before seen on TV. Skins is so extreme that MTV is rating the program TV-MA – a rating cable has previously reserved for programs like FX’s ultra-violent and quasi-pornographic series Nip/Tuck, which was wholly unsuitable for all but those who crave explicit material.But political speech - of Conservatives - we can talk about censoring.
· Skins is about high-school children. Mixed in with the graphic drug use and sex scenes are storylines about falling in love and problems at school – elements sure to generate interest from teens. The show is being written, in part, by teens. And the Skins cast is actually made up of teenagers, not adult actors playing teens. One cast member is only 15 years old.
· Skins has been extensively marketed to high-school children. Internet sites like Teen.com have carried dozens of promos and stories about the new show. Many of the Internet ad campaigns have shown how Skins blatantly urges children to lie to and defy their parents, and engage in risky and dangerous behavior. MTV may try to claim that this show is intended for adults – but the way the show has been peddled to kids reveals the truth. MTV WANTS your kids to see – and be influenced by -- this program!
The author, Andrew Thornton-Norris, bases his argument on T.S Eliot’s premise that saw the “culture of a people as an incarnation of its religion”. According to this line of thought, if belief, unified and grounded in the Christian tradition, is undermined and diluted, then so is our literature.The villains show up in the 16th Century:
In its place, Thornton-Norris argues, we have a literature that is the result of liberalism in politics – that advances the self-determination of the individual – and relativism in belief. This secular religion, which has also come, the author argues, to dominate all the arts, is hostile to the moral objective truth presented by Christianity, a faith rejected by the liberal intelligentsia because it “attempts to establish a hierarchy [of artistic values] which is elitist, patriarchal, or otherwise an affront to the dignity of free-thinking or feeling individuals”.
However, Thornton-Norris claims that this Christian tradition has, in previous ages, prevented art or the individual from becoming a religion in themselves and which has therefore kept literature free from the “corrupting” taint of subjective art that reflects only the ego of its creator.
He describes modern literature as follows: “Now almost every word that is written is a manifesto, a statement, a theology or anti-theology, rather than an unselfconscious work of art, a contribution to the tradition or communal enterprise, as it was in the Latin Classical tradition.”
Then came the Reformation, and with it the theology of Luther and Calvin, espousing the supremacy of the individual conscience and of rationalism, especially with the rise of Puritanism. The result – the rise of the novel, with its “Protestant” emphasis on the thought and feelings of the individual, occupying an egocentric universe split off from Catholic concepts of art contributing to a communal, collective enterprise.
And so the author concludes that literature in England died with “our faith and its culture of tradition and continuity”. He therefore commends his book as “a manifesto for the revival of literature in England – orthodox ecclesiastical Christianity is the precondition for this revival, as our historic literary tradition depends upon it – and its cultural incarnation in the Latin Classical Tradition”.
Thornton-Norris, himself a poet, has put his theory into practice. In the course of writing this book he converted to Roman Catholicism.
His hypothesis is bold and sweeping. Some will no doubt think that it shackles English literature into a narrow thematic framework. As they read this book they may delight in citing the literary exceptions to disprove his rule.
It was No. 1 in 1985, but it's unacceptable for Canadian eyes and ears today.
The Dire Straits song "Money for Nothing" was ruled by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council to be "extremely offensive" and thus inappropriate for airing on radio or television because it uses an anti-gay slur.
You know what’s an even more insulting slur? “Canadian.” Where I come from, buddy, them’s fightin’ words. Any faggot in Alabama would kick your ass if you called him a “Canadian.”Heh.
California's Central Valley is a 450 mile long stretch of flat and fertile land that produces much of the food that we enjoy every day. But the people in small towns like Mendota (the cantaloupe capital of the world) are suffering these days, in part due to two federal policies.I have traditionally been an "open borders" libertarian, but that is changing as I look at the concentrated poverty of the Valley. Billions of dollars are syphoned out of the Valley in order to support the kleptocracy in Mexico. That makes the Valley poorer and doesn't help the Mexicans.
In order to protect a threatened fish species called the Delta Smelt, much of the water that used to be pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to farms on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley is now allowed to flow into the ocean. The result is predictable: hundreds of thousands of acres of farm land lies fallow and tens of thousands of jobs have been lost. In Mendota, the unemployment rate is over 40% and food lines are the norm.
But people going hungry in a region dominated by agriculture is only one of the contradictions in the Central Valley.
Nearly all the valley's farm workers are immigrants from Mexico and Central America, and many of them are undocumented. These people are crucial to the valley's economy, but they're breaking the law according to the federal government.
Walter Jon Williams' "Implied Spaces" is kind of a "throw-back" science fiction novel. The overall story is big - the risk that the protaganist faces is nothing less than the enslavement or death of every human being. Moreover, the story is studded with the kind of "big idea" projections of science and technology that made the "Golden Age" golden.
The story follows Aristide, a swordsman, who runs into a mystery in a land of wizards, giants and trolls. The land is a strange one with a melange of fantasy tropes and a sun that apparently doesn't move, requiring that time be kept with hourglasses. Adventures happen and Aristide, it turns out, has a magic sword that makes people disappear, which seems to surprise the trollish and other weird denizens of this fantastic land. Aristide also has a talking cat, which seems to be as much of a surprise as the magic sword. There is a battle between Aristide and his companions and a cult of evil wizards who can also make people disappear, a talent that seems to puzzle Aristide.
After the reader gets used to the idea that Williams is actually writing a fantasy story, Aristide returns to civilization via a wormhole, and we find that the fantasy land is one of many universes created by humanity and their eleven great matrioshka array super-computers. We then are introduced to a super-science fiction world of nanotechnology, wormholes and a technology that records memories that can be reloaded into nanotechnologically designed replacement bodies in the event of death.
But Aristide has a mystery to solve. Where did the wizards get the ability to make people disappear?
The story then takes off as we are treated to visions of world building - the fantasy land was actually a Dyson sphere, which is why the sun never moved, and Aristide gets his body modified into an amphibian form so he can follow-up on the mystery by visiting a designed ocean "world" that is shaped as a tube with the living space on the inside and a wormhole channeling the sun's energy at one end, with the result that a person on this world can look up and see the ocean, islands, and storms "hanging" overhead.
We also see the dark side of this future. "Viruses" that can reprogram the mind, battles involving 40 million men, all of whom die, and possibly the ultimate endpoint of all weapon development. As Aristide observes, "you mean we've gotten to the point where we are hurling hostile universes at each other?" You will understand that reference when you read the book, and you will see that it isn't a metaphor.
So, the book definitely has a "gosh-wow" sense of wonder going for it.
The plot of the book progresses in a fashion that keeps the reader engaged. The "Deus ex" of chance is kept fairly well hidden, although why Aristide should run into a particular minor character on three different worlds in three different contexts is one bit where the "willing suspension of disbelief" was challenged.
As other reviewers have noted, "Implied Spaces" has a resemblance to Williams' "Aristoi" novel, at least with respect to presenting the dark side of technological progress. I didn't find that to be a negative; in fact, it makes me want to re-read "Aristoi."
I also liked the coinage of the term "Sword and Singularity" to describe the sub-genre of this book.
All in all, I felt that I got my money's worth of entertainment value, and I have no hesitation in recommending it. In fact, I did recommend it to my 13 year old daughter, who particularly like the talking "cat," "Bitsy."
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