(Courtesy of Brainwise)
Their Own Version of a Big Bang
By Stephanie Simon,
Los Angeles Times
WAYNE, N.J. — Evangelist Ken Ham smiled at the 2,300 elementary students packed into pews, their faces rapt. With dinosaur puppets and silly cartoons, he was training them to reject much of geology, paleontology and evolutionary biology as a sinister tangle of lies.
"Boys and girls," Ham said. If a teacher so much as mentions evolution, or the Big Bang, or an era when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, "you put your hand up and you say, 'Excuse me, were you there?' Can you remember that?"
The children roared their assent.
"Sometimes people will answer, 'No, but you weren't there either,' " Ham told them. "Then you say, 'No, I wasn't, but I know someone who was, and I have his book about the history of the world.' " He waved his Bible in the air.
"Who's the only one who's always been there?" Ham asked.
"God!" the boys and girls shouted.
"Who's the only one who knows everything?"
"God!"
"So who should you always trust, God or the scientists?"
The children answered with a thundering: "God!"
Check Out the Entire Article and Brainwise's Comments Here
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Thinking
(repost of this from november--I've been thinking a lot lately and it is getting out of control...)
Thinking
It started out innocently enough.
I began to think at parties now and then -- to loosen up.
Inevitably, though, one thought led to another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker.
I began to think alone -- "to relax," I told myself -- but I knew it wasn't true. Thinking became more and more important to me, and finally I was thinking all the time. That was when things began to sour at home.
One evening I had turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of
life. She spent that night at her mother's.
I began to think on the job. I knew that thinking and employment don't mix, but I couldn't stop myself. I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so I could read Thoreau and Kafka. I would return to the office dizzied and confused, asking, "What is it exactly we are doing here? " One day the boss called me in. He said, "Listen, I like you, and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don't stop thinking on the job, you'll have to find another job." This gave me a lot to think about.
I came home early after my conversation with the boss.
"Honey," I confessed, "I've been thinking..."
"I know you've been thinking," she said, "and I want a divorce!"
"But Honey, surely it's not that serious."
"It is serious," she said, lower lip aquiver. "You think as much as college
professors, and college professors don't make any money, so if you keep on
thinking, we won't have any money!"
"That's a faulty syllogism," I said impatiently.
She exploded in tears of rage and frustration, but I was in no mood to deal with the emotional drama.
"I'm going to the library," I snarled as I stomped out the door.
I headed for the library, in the mood for some Nietzsche.
I roared into the parking lot with NPR on the radio and ran up to the big glass doors...They didn't open. The library was closed.
To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was looking out for me that night.
Leaning on the unfeeling glass, whimpering for Zarathustra, a poster caught my eye. "Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?" it asked. You probably recognize that line. It comes from the standard Thinker's Anonymous poster.
Which is why I am what I am today: a recovering thinker.
I never miss a TA meeting. At each meeting we watch a non-educational video; last week it was "Porky's."
Then we share experiences about how we avoided thinking since the last meeting. I still have my job, and things are a lot better at home.
Life just seemed...easier, somehow, as soon as I stopped thinking.
I think the road to recovery is nearly complete for me.
Today, I registered to vote as a Republican.
Thinking
It started out innocently enough.
I began to think at parties now and then -- to loosen up.
Inevitably, though, one thought led to another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker.
I began to think alone -- "to relax," I told myself -- but I knew it wasn't true. Thinking became more and more important to me, and finally I was thinking all the time. That was when things began to sour at home.
One evening I had turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of
life. She spent that night at her mother's.
I began to think on the job. I knew that thinking and employment don't mix, but I couldn't stop myself. I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so I could read Thoreau and Kafka. I would return to the office dizzied and confused, asking, "What is it exactly we are doing here? " One day the boss called me in. He said, "Listen, I like you, and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don't stop thinking on the job, you'll have to find another job." This gave me a lot to think about.
I came home early after my conversation with the boss.
"Honey," I confessed, "I've been thinking..."
"I know you've been thinking," she said, "and I want a divorce!"
"But Honey, surely it's not that serious."
"It is serious," she said, lower lip aquiver. "You think as much as college
professors, and college professors don't make any money, so if you keep on
thinking, we won't have any money!"
"That's a faulty syllogism," I said impatiently.
She exploded in tears of rage and frustration, but I was in no mood to deal with the emotional drama.
"I'm going to the library," I snarled as I stomped out the door.
I headed for the library, in the mood for some Nietzsche.
I roared into the parking lot with NPR on the radio and ran up to the big glass doors...They didn't open. The library was closed.
To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was looking out for me that night.
Leaning on the unfeeling glass, whimpering for Zarathustra, a poster caught my eye. "Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?" it asked. You probably recognize that line. It comes from the standard Thinker's Anonymous poster.
Which is why I am what I am today: a recovering thinker.
I never miss a TA meeting. At each meeting we watch a non-educational video; last week it was "Porky's."
Then we share experiences about how we avoided thinking since the last meeting. I still have my job, and things are a lot better at home.
Life just seemed...easier, somehow, as soon as I stopped thinking.
I think the road to recovery is nearly complete for me.
Today, I registered to vote as a Republican.
Charles Bukowski:To the Whore Who Took My Poems
(Thanks JH for telling me about this poem ;)
some say we should keep personal remorse from the
poem,
stay abstract, and there is some reason in this,
but jezus;
twelve poems gone and I don't keep carbons and you have
my
paintings too, my best ones; its stifling:
are you trying to crush me out like the rest of them?
why didn't you take my money? they usually do
from the sleeping drunken pants sick in the corner.
next time take my left arm or a fifty
but not my poems:
I'm not Shakespeare
but sometime simply
there won't be any more, abstract or otherwise;
there'll always be mony and whores and drunkards
down to the last bomb,
but as God said,
crossing his legs,
I see where I have made plenty of poets
but not so very much
poetry.
some say we should keep personal remorse from the
poem,
stay abstract, and there is some reason in this,
but jezus;
twelve poems gone and I don't keep carbons and you have
my
paintings too, my best ones; its stifling:
are you trying to crush me out like the rest of them?
why didn't you take my money? they usually do
from the sleeping drunken pants sick in the corner.
next time take my left arm or a fifty
but not my poems:
I'm not Shakespeare
but sometime simply
there won't be any more, abstract or otherwise;
there'll always be mony and whores and drunkards
down to the last bomb,
but as God said,
crossing his legs,
I see where I have made plenty of poets
but not so very much
poetry.
Peter Rothberg and Union of Concerned Scientists: On the New Federal Budget
(How do you suppress a population, over time, that asks for civil rights, fair wages, and equal treatment under the law--defund education...)
"The outrageous $2.77 trillion budget the President proposed to Congress on Monday [Feb. 6th] was a good snapshot of this president's priorities. It vastly favors the rich with more tax cuts and abatements while cutting Department of Education funding by $2.1 billion and freezing Pell grants for the fifth straight year, among myriad other outrages."
--Peter Rothberg, The Nation
From the Union of Concerned Scientists, an analysis of the new budget:
Bush Administration FY07 Budget—Highlights and Lowlights
"The outrageous $2.77 trillion budget the President proposed to Congress on Monday [Feb. 6th] was a good snapshot of this president's priorities. It vastly favors the rich with more tax cuts and abatements while cutting Department of Education funding by $2.1 billion and freezing Pell grants for the fifth straight year, among myriad other outrages."
--Peter Rothberg, The Nation
From the Union of Concerned Scientists, an analysis of the new budget:
Bush Administration FY07 Budget—Highlights and Lowlights
Kari Lydersen: Resisting Mountaintop Removal in Tennessee
Resisting Mountaintop Removal in Tennessee
by Keri Lydersen
The New Standard; AlterNet: Envirohealth
A revival of the controversial strip-mining practice is stirring ire and protest from locals in the North Cumberland Mountains.
Paloma Galindo's chihuahua skittered ahead of her, jumping back in surprise when a small cascade of loose rocks and dirt at the Egan Mountain mine in Tennessee tumbled down a jagged cliff created by the type of mountaintop removal mining that has left the mountains of Appalachia increasingly scarred, pocked and leveled.
Galindo, an environmental activist with the group United Mountain Defense who has come to know the mines of Tennessee like the back of her hand, gestured toward a scrub-covered hillock at the end of a gently sloping meadow, a "reclaimed" strip mine that was once home to lush forest.
"It looks like it's back to its original shape, but it acts like a big sponge," she said of the hillside, which was reconstructed out of rubble after part of the mountain was blasted away to get at coal seams. "It's all broken rock slapped on there and compacted with no hydrological system, so it will soak up water, and five years down the line you'll get massive landslides. Then the mining company will have already bonded out so the cost will fall on the taxpayers."
During a flyover of Egan and other mines in eastern Tennessee and Kentucky the next day, landslides of the type Galindo was describing were visible: gashes of jumbled gray boulders, upended trees and debris cutting through the autumn colors.
From the air, the North Cumberland Mountains in Tennessee look like the coat of a once-beautiful animal with a debilitating case of mange. Mountaintops are laced with strangely shaped bald spots, where trees give way to brushy undergrowth. Giant hunks have been bitten out of the mountainsides, revealing sores of crumbling sand, broken rock and black tar. Once-neat layers of sediment are visibly torn asunder, cascading down hillsides. Strange top-hat-shaped protrusions of land rise up sharply. For miles and miles, it looks as if someone took a giant potato peeler to the side of the range.
And six days a week, fleets of enormous dump trucks and bulldozers crawl along the open wounds of the earth, drilling, blasting and extracting truckloads of shiny black coal.
To Read the Rest of the Article
by Keri Lydersen
The New Standard; AlterNet: Envirohealth
A revival of the controversial strip-mining practice is stirring ire and protest from locals in the North Cumberland Mountains.
Paloma Galindo's chihuahua skittered ahead of her, jumping back in surprise when a small cascade of loose rocks and dirt at the Egan Mountain mine in Tennessee tumbled down a jagged cliff created by the type of mountaintop removal mining that has left the mountains of Appalachia increasingly scarred, pocked and leveled.
Galindo, an environmental activist with the group United Mountain Defense who has come to know the mines of Tennessee like the back of her hand, gestured toward a scrub-covered hillock at the end of a gently sloping meadow, a "reclaimed" strip mine that was once home to lush forest.
"It looks like it's back to its original shape, but it acts like a big sponge," she said of the hillside, which was reconstructed out of rubble after part of the mountain was blasted away to get at coal seams. "It's all broken rock slapped on there and compacted with no hydrological system, so it will soak up water, and five years down the line you'll get massive landslides. Then the mining company will have already bonded out so the cost will fall on the taxpayers."
During a flyover of Egan and other mines in eastern Tennessee and Kentucky the next day, landslides of the type Galindo was describing were visible: gashes of jumbled gray boulders, upended trees and debris cutting through the autumn colors.
From the air, the North Cumberland Mountains in Tennessee look like the coat of a once-beautiful animal with a debilitating case of mange. Mountaintops are laced with strangely shaped bald spots, where trees give way to brushy undergrowth. Giant hunks have been bitten out of the mountainsides, revealing sores of crumbling sand, broken rock and black tar. Once-neat layers of sediment are visibly torn asunder, cascading down hillsides. Strange top-hat-shaped protrusions of land rise up sharply. For miles and miles, it looks as if someone took a giant potato peeler to the side of the range.
And six days a week, fleets of enormous dump trucks and bulldozers crawl along the open wounds of the earth, drilling, blasting and extracting truckloads of shiny black coal.
To Read the Rest of the Article
Democracy Now: Murray Waas on How Cheney "Authorized" Libby to Leak Classified Information
Murray Waas on How Cheney "Authorized" Libby to Leak Classified Information
by Amy Goodman
Democracy Now
We speak with investigative journalist Murray Waas who reports that Lewis "Scooter" Libby - Cheney's indicted former chief of staff - testified he had been "authorized" by Cheney and other White House "superiors" to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case to invade Iraq.
Listen/Watch/Read the Report
by Amy Goodman
Democracy Now
We speak with investigative journalist Murray Waas who reports that Lewis "Scooter" Libby - Cheney's indicted former chief of staff - testified he had been "authorized" by Cheney and other White House "superiors" to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case to invade Iraq.
Listen/Watch/Read the Report
Welcome to the United States of Amnesia, Pt. 1
Author Michael Crichton received a journalism award from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists for his novel *State of Fear*, which criticizes the theory
of global warming. "It is fiction," said a spokesman for the petroleum geologists, "but it has the absolute ring of truth."
Harper's Weekly Review
of global warming. "It is fiction," said a spokesman for the petroleum geologists, "but it has the absolute ring of truth."
Harper's Weekly Review
Monday, February 13, 2006
How Single People People Deal With Valentine's Day
(This is intended as the pure literate exercise of adult fantasies--absolutely do not click on this link if sexual language is offensive to you, or, if you are not an adult. I'm serious, I am recently single and I'm attempting to be an enlightened person who doesn't rely on an economy of images (porn)--I reject the idea of businesses supplying our fantasies. I want my mind to eroticize itself, of course, it will probably work through generations of socially interperllated symbolic constructions of sexual relations (for instance my first post)--our minds should be our own and we need to exercise all aspects of imagination. I need to sift what has been programmed into me and to recognize why I think/feel/lust the way I do... will it help? Who knows? But how else can one seperate the sexual fantasies that have been programmed and those that would come naturally?))
Erotic Fantasies (delinked)
---------------------------------------------------------
I delinked the website I created and removed it from blogger. It was that great romantic holiday, I'm single, being susceptible to the social messages being broadcast all around me, I was wondering how much my sexual fantasies were informed by mediatized constructions of human sexuality. I practiced writing what came to mind and, not suprisingly, it was a blend of hollywood films, penthouse forum letters, and Vallejo pulp novel covers... it was interesting to think about where these images come from and I wrote a bit afterwards--I'm going to think about it more ... but I felt it was something I should remove from circulation.
Erotic Fantasies (delinked)
---------------------------------------------------------
I delinked the website I created and removed it from blogger. It was that great romantic holiday, I'm single, being susceptible to the social messages being broadcast all around me, I was wondering how much my sexual fantasies were informed by mediatized constructions of human sexuality. I practiced writing what came to mind and, not suprisingly, it was a blend of hollywood films, penthouse forum letters, and Vallejo pulp novel covers... it was interesting to think about where these images come from and I wrote a bit afterwards--I'm going to think about it more ... but I felt it was something I should remove from circulation.
The Dame Wednesday Feb 15th: The Elephants and the Capes
(I saw The Elephants play at the album release party mentioned below--they are talented and should go far--reminded me of Television. I would also recommend you beg, borrow, or steal the compilation--if there are any copies left--if not contact me)
The ELEPHANTS and the CAPES - Wednesday Feb. 15 - 9 p.m. - $5
The Elephants are unstoppable. You can catch them on the brand new compilation Know Your Own Vol. 2 (a comp. of local music published and distributed by the Lexington Actions Arts Collective, CD Central, and WRFL - plug, plug), and brought the pain at the album release party last week, which the Apparitions/Scourge/Fanged Robot's Robbie Cosenza said described as "the type of show that makes me want to pick up a guitar." The Elephants, now veterans of Lexington garage rock, have performed alongside Second Story Man, Ill Ease, at the CMJ '05 Festival in New York, and probably with one of your favorite local bands. Though their sound is constantly refined, they stick to their formula - melodic bass, jangly guitars, and the room-permeating David Bowie meets Isaac Brock vocals of Jason Zavala, which meets to form the gritty, simple but oh-so-satisfying Velvet Underground, Go-Betweens, and Kinks pop that stampedes the crowd.
The Capes come to us all the way from South London and, with the current direction of the British underground, South London means quality. Their self-titled record was pretty much wore out all last fall on WRFL 88.1 and the national indie go-to guy WOXY.com - with good reason, too. Playing last October with Big Fresh, The Capes stormed in with their Clash meets Bloc Party dance-meets-mod new wave, throwing Lexington a bombastic live performance that demands more than mere attention. Plus, these guys are super nice and, as Zavala put it, "are very attractive guys with British accents." Not to mention that CMJ, the London Sunday Times, Guild, and others have had very positive remarks about the Capes. Catch them before they hit this year's South By Southwest in Austin.
After the show, Mark Murray and Terminal Dusk conquer the DJ decks with downtempo electronic.
The Cape.... Nice bouncy pop all the way from the United Kingdom. They
probably will make out with you.
The Cape
The Capes: my space
and
Elephants....rockandrolling
The Elephants: my space
comingsoon:
Elephants Music
Shit, everyone but me has a my space site these days!
at The Dame Feb.15 9pm
The ELEPHANTS and the CAPES - Wednesday Feb. 15 - 9 p.m. - $5
The Elephants are unstoppable. You can catch them on the brand new compilation Know Your Own Vol. 2 (a comp. of local music published and distributed by the Lexington Actions Arts Collective, CD Central, and WRFL - plug, plug), and brought the pain at the album release party last week, which the Apparitions/Scourge/Fanged Robot's Robbie Cosenza said described as "the type of show that makes me want to pick up a guitar." The Elephants, now veterans of Lexington garage rock, have performed alongside Second Story Man, Ill Ease, at the CMJ '05 Festival in New York, and probably with one of your favorite local bands. Though their sound is constantly refined, they stick to their formula - melodic bass, jangly guitars, and the room-permeating David Bowie meets Isaac Brock vocals of Jason Zavala, which meets to form the gritty, simple but oh-so-satisfying Velvet Underground, Go-Betweens, and Kinks pop that stampedes the crowd.
The Capes come to us all the way from South London and, with the current direction of the British underground, South London means quality. Their self-titled record was pretty much wore out all last fall on WRFL 88.1 and the national indie go-to guy WOXY.com - with good reason, too. Playing last October with Big Fresh, The Capes stormed in with their Clash meets Bloc Party dance-meets-mod new wave, throwing Lexington a bombastic live performance that demands more than mere attention. Plus, these guys are super nice and, as Zavala put it, "are very attractive guys with British accents." Not to mention that CMJ, the London Sunday Times, Guild, and others have had very positive remarks about the Capes. Catch them before they hit this year's South By Southwest in Austin.
After the show, Mark Murray and Terminal Dusk conquer the DJ decks with downtempo electronic.
The Cape.... Nice bouncy pop all the way from the United Kingdom. They
probably will make out with you.
The Cape
The Capes: my space
and
Elephants....rockandrolling
The Elephants: my space
comingsoon:
Elephants Music
Shit, everyone but me has a my space site these days!
at The Dame Feb.15 9pm
Paul Virilio: "Weapons are tools not just of destruction but also of perception..."
From Machiavelli to Vauban, from von Moltke to Churchill, at every decisive episode in the history of war, military theorists have underlined this truth: 'The force of arms is not brute force but spiritual force.' There is no war, then, without representation, no sophisticated weaponry without psychological mystification. Weapons are tools not just of destruction but also of perception... (5)
--Paul Virilio, War and Cinema
Douglas Kellner: Virilio, War, and Technology
John Armitage: Paul Virilio's Hypermodern Cultural Theory
C-Theory Interview with Paul Virilio: Cyberwar, God And Television
--Paul Virilio, War and Cinema
Douglas Kellner: Virilio, War, and Technology
John Armitage: Paul Virilio's Hypermodern Cultural Theory
C-Theory Interview with Paul Virilio: Cyberwar, God And Television
Why We Fight: New Film Takes a Hard Look at the American War Machine From World War II to Iraq
(Won the 2005 Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival)
Why We Fight: New Film Takes a Hard Look at the American War Machine From World War II to Iraq
by Amy Goodman
Democracy Now
Introduction:
A new film opening in theaters nationwide Friday takes a look at the American war machine over the past half century. "Why We Fight" looks at conflicts from World War II right up to the current war in Iraq to examine the political, economic and ideological reasons that drive American war policy. We play excerpts from the film and speak with award-winning director Eugene Jarecki.
To Watch, Listen, or Read the Report
Also:
BBC 4 Profile of Director Eugene Jarecki
Sony Site for the Film That Includes Previews/Trailers
Why We Fight: New Film Takes a Hard Look at the American War Machine From World War II to Iraq
by Amy Goodman
Democracy Now
Introduction:
A new film opening in theaters nationwide Friday takes a look at the American war machine over the past half century. "Why We Fight" looks at conflicts from World War II right up to the current war in Iraq to examine the political, economic and ideological reasons that drive American war policy. We play excerpts from the film and speak with award-winning director Eugene Jarecki.
To Watch, Listen, or Read the Report
Also:
BBC 4 Profile of Director Eugene Jarecki
Sony Site for the Film That Includes Previews/Trailers
Martin Luther King: When Silence is Betrayal
(Courtesy of Rethinking Schools)
Excerpt from a speech on April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his murder:
...
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. …
True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.
With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. …
Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain." …
We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate... .
Now let us begin. Now let us re-dedicate ourselves to the long and bitter - but beautiful - struggle for a new world.
Excerpt from a speech on April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his murder:
...
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. …
True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.
With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. …
Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain." …
We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate... .
Now let us begin. Now let us re-dedicate ourselves to the long and bitter - but beautiful - struggle for a new world.
Albert Camus: "The Monologue Precedes Death"
"On the stage as in reality, the monologue precedes death." (284)
--Albert Camus, The Rebel
Camus' Hero of the Absurd
--Albert Camus, The Rebel
Camus' Hero of the Absurd
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Choice Between Truth and Repose"
(Courtesy of The Happy Feminist)
Every human being has a choice between truth and repose. Take which you please, you cannot have both. Between these, as a pendulum, man oscillates. He in whom the love of repose predominates will accept the first creed, the first philosophy, the first political party he meets-- most likely his father's. He gets rest, commodity, and reputation; but he shuts the door on truth. He in whom a love of truth predominates will keep himself aloof from all moorings and afloat. He will abstain from dogmatism and recognize all the opposite negations between which, as walls, his being is swung. He submits to the inconvenience of suspense and imperfect opinion but he is a candidate for truth, as the other is not, and respects the highest law of being.
---Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every human being has a choice between truth and repose. Take which you please, you cannot have both. Between these, as a pendulum, man oscillates. He in whom the love of repose predominates will accept the first creed, the first philosophy, the first political party he meets-- most likely his father's. He gets rest, commodity, and reputation; but he shuts the door on truth. He in whom a love of truth predominates will keep himself aloof from all moorings and afloat. He will abstain from dogmatism and recognize all the opposite negations between which, as walls, his being is swung. He submits to the inconvenience of suspense and imperfect opinion but he is a candidate for truth, as the other is not, and respects the highest law of being.
---Ralph Waldo Emerson
Frontline: A Class Divided
(Hysterical Blackness reminded me of this documentary. I've used it in my courses and it always provokes interesting discussions.)
This is one of the most requested programs in FRONTLINE's history. It is about an Iowa schoolteacher who, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in 1968, gave her third-grade students a first-hand experience in the meaning of discrimination. This is the story of what she taught the children, and the impact that lesson had on their lives.
A Class Divided
This is one of the most requested programs in FRONTLINE's history. It is about an Iowa schoolteacher who, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in 1968, gave her third-grade students a first-hand experience in the meaning of discrimination. This is the story of what she taught the children, and the impact that lesson had on their lives.
A Class Divided
Christopher Hitchens: The Cartoon Debate
Cartoon Debate : The case for mocking religion
by Christopher Hitchens
Slate; Reposted at Guerilla News Network
Christopher Hitchens analyzes the cartoon crisis and the government's response.
As well as being a small masterpiece of inarticulacy and self-abnegation, the statement from the State Department about this week’s international Muslim pogrom against the free press was also accidentally accurate.
“Anti-Muslim images are as unacceptable as anti-Semitic images, as anti-Christian images, or any other religious belief.”
Thus the hapless Sean McCormack, reading painfully slowly from what was reported as a prepared government statement. How appalling for the country of the First Amendment to be represented by such an administration. What does he mean “unacceptable”? That it should be forbidden? And how abysmal that a “spokesman” cannot distinguish between criticism of a belief system and slander against a people. However, the illiterate McCormack is right in unintentionally comparing racist libels to religious faith. Many people have pointed out that the Arab and Muslim press is replete with anti-Jewish caricature, often of the most lurid and hateful kind. In one way the comparison is hopelessly inexact. These foul items mostly appear in countries where the state decides what is published or broadcast. However, when Muslims republish the Protocols of the Elders of Zion or perpetuate the story of Jewish blood-sacrifice at Passover, they are recycling the fantasies of the Russian Orthodox Christian secret police (in the first instance) and of centuries of Roman Catholic and Lutheran propaganda (in the second). And, when an Israeli politician refers to Palestinians as snakes or pigs or monkeys, it is near to a certainty that he will be a rabbi (most usually Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the leader of the disgraceful Shas party) and will cite Talmudic authority for his racism. For most of human history, religion and bigotry have been two sides of the same coin, and it still shows.
Therefore there is a strong case for saying that the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, and those who have reprinted its efforts out of solidarity, are affirming the right to criticize not merely Islam but religion in general. And the Bush administration has no business at all expressing an opinion on that. If it is to say anything, it is constitutionally obliged to uphold the right and no more. You can be sure that the relevant European newspapers have also printed their share of cartoons making fun of nuns and popes and messianic Israeli settlers, and taunting child-raping priests. There was a time when this would not have been possible. But those taboos have been broken.
Which is what taboos are for. Islam makes very large claims for itself. In its art, there is a prejudice against representing the human form at all. The prohibition on picturing the prophet—who was only another male mammal—is apparently absolute. So is the prohibition on pork or alcohol or, in some Muslim societies, music or dancing. Very well then, let a good Muslim abstain rigorously from all these. But if he claims the right to make me abstain as well, he offers the clearest possible warning and proof of an aggressive intent. This current uneasy coexistence is only an interlude, he seems to say. For the moment, all I can do is claim to possess absolute truth and demand absolute immunity from criticism. But in the future, you will do what I say and you will do it on pain of death.
I refuse to be spoken to in that tone of voice, which as it happens I chance to find “offensive.” ( By the way, hasn’t the word “offensive” become really offensive lately?) The innate human revulsion against desecration is much older than any monotheism: Its most powerful expression is in the Antigone of Sophocles. It belongs to civilization. I am not asking for the right to slaughter a pig in a synagogue or mosque or to relieve myself on a “holy” book. But I will not be told I can’t eat pork, and I will not respect those who burn books on a regular basis. I, too, have strong convictions and beliefs and value the Enlightenment above any priesthood or any sacred fetish-object. It is revolting to me to breathe the same air as wafts from the exhalations of the madrasahs, or the reeking fumes of the suicide-murderers, or the sermons of Billy Graham and Joseph Ratzinger. But these same principles of mine also prevent me from wreaking random violence on the nearest church, or kidnapping a Muslim at random and holding him hostage, or violating diplomatic immunity by attacking the embassy or the envoys of even the most despotic Islamic state, or making a moronic spectacle of myself threatening blood and fire to faraway individuals who may have hurt my feelings. The babyish rumor-fueled tantrums that erupt all the time, especially in the Islamic world, show yet again that faith belongs to the spoiled and selfish childhood of our species.
To Read the Entire Article
Also check out Ricia's post on this subject:
Argument for Change in Discourse
by Christopher Hitchens
Slate; Reposted at Guerilla News Network
Christopher Hitchens analyzes the cartoon crisis and the government's response.
As well as being a small masterpiece of inarticulacy and self-abnegation, the statement from the State Department about this week’s international Muslim pogrom against the free press was also accidentally accurate.
“Anti-Muslim images are as unacceptable as anti-Semitic images, as anti-Christian images, or any other religious belief.”
Thus the hapless Sean McCormack, reading painfully slowly from what was reported as a prepared government statement. How appalling for the country of the First Amendment to be represented by such an administration. What does he mean “unacceptable”? That it should be forbidden? And how abysmal that a “spokesman” cannot distinguish between criticism of a belief system and slander against a people. However, the illiterate McCormack is right in unintentionally comparing racist libels to religious faith. Many people have pointed out that the Arab and Muslim press is replete with anti-Jewish caricature, often of the most lurid and hateful kind. In one way the comparison is hopelessly inexact. These foul items mostly appear in countries where the state decides what is published or broadcast. However, when Muslims republish the Protocols of the Elders of Zion or perpetuate the story of Jewish blood-sacrifice at Passover, they are recycling the fantasies of the Russian Orthodox Christian secret police (in the first instance) and of centuries of Roman Catholic and Lutheran propaganda (in the second). And, when an Israeli politician refers to Palestinians as snakes or pigs or monkeys, it is near to a certainty that he will be a rabbi (most usually Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the leader of the disgraceful Shas party) and will cite Talmudic authority for his racism. For most of human history, religion and bigotry have been two sides of the same coin, and it still shows.
Therefore there is a strong case for saying that the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, and those who have reprinted its efforts out of solidarity, are affirming the right to criticize not merely Islam but religion in general. And the Bush administration has no business at all expressing an opinion on that. If it is to say anything, it is constitutionally obliged to uphold the right and no more. You can be sure that the relevant European newspapers have also printed their share of cartoons making fun of nuns and popes and messianic Israeli settlers, and taunting child-raping priests. There was a time when this would not have been possible. But those taboos have been broken.
Which is what taboos are for. Islam makes very large claims for itself. In its art, there is a prejudice against representing the human form at all. The prohibition on picturing the prophet—who was only another male mammal—is apparently absolute. So is the prohibition on pork or alcohol or, in some Muslim societies, music or dancing. Very well then, let a good Muslim abstain rigorously from all these. But if he claims the right to make me abstain as well, he offers the clearest possible warning and proof of an aggressive intent. This current uneasy coexistence is only an interlude, he seems to say. For the moment, all I can do is claim to possess absolute truth and demand absolute immunity from criticism. But in the future, you will do what I say and you will do it on pain of death.
I refuse to be spoken to in that tone of voice, which as it happens I chance to find “offensive.” ( By the way, hasn’t the word “offensive” become really offensive lately?) The innate human revulsion against desecration is much older than any monotheism: Its most powerful expression is in the Antigone of Sophocles. It belongs to civilization. I am not asking for the right to slaughter a pig in a synagogue or mosque or to relieve myself on a “holy” book. But I will not be told I can’t eat pork, and I will not respect those who burn books on a regular basis. I, too, have strong convictions and beliefs and value the Enlightenment above any priesthood or any sacred fetish-object. It is revolting to me to breathe the same air as wafts from the exhalations of the madrasahs, or the reeking fumes of the suicide-murderers, or the sermons of Billy Graham and Joseph Ratzinger. But these same principles of mine also prevent me from wreaking random violence on the nearest church, or kidnapping a Muslim at random and holding him hostage, or violating diplomatic immunity by attacking the embassy or the envoys of even the most despotic Islamic state, or making a moronic spectacle of myself threatening blood and fire to faraway individuals who may have hurt my feelings. The babyish rumor-fueled tantrums that erupt all the time, especially in the Islamic world, show yet again that faith belongs to the spoiled and selfish childhood of our species.
To Read the Entire Article
Also check out Ricia's post on this subject:
Argument for Change in Discourse
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