December 2011
91 posts
“There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.”
– Vincent van Gogh (via rachelalex)
“Last year, Americans spent $450 billion on Christmas. Clean water for the whole...”
– The Bait and Switch of Contemporary Christianity | Richard Beck
Can these figures be real?
“I don’t think the NYPD will ever offer me official credentials, but I won’t be...”
– My 37 hours with the NYPD - Salon.com
“In Christianity, there is no service to God outside of service to others, there...”
– Peter Rollins and Experiencing God | Micah Redding
“I’m thrilled when I see kids’ mouths drop open and they say,...”
– Orang-utans want iPads for Christmas - New Scientist
“The reason has to do with Paul’s non-interventionist foreign policy and his...”
– The excommunication of Ron Paul - Salon.com
“Indeed, when it comes to the foreign policy and civil liberties values Democrats...”
– Vote Obama – Glenn Greenwald | The Guardian
“A staple of GOP politics has long been to accuse Democratic presidents of...”
– Vote Obama – Glenn Greenwald | The Guardian
“In fairness to the much-maligned GOP field, they face a formidable hurdle: how...”
– Vote Obama – Glenn Greenwald | The Guardian
“Trans fats found in fast foods were linked to lower scores in tests and more...”
– BBC News - Alzheimer’s: Diet ‘can stop brain shrinking’
“Independently, one of our supporters in Milwaukee was at the zoo showing the...”
– Orangutans ‘could video chat’ between zoos via iPads
“Everyone has their bullshit. You can simply decide whose you’re willing to...”
– Bullshit – Marco.org
Republican Fatwas
Nowadays, a candidate must believe not just some but all of the following things: that abortion should be illegal in all cases; that gay marriage must be banned even in states that want it; that the 12m illegal immigrants, even those who have lived in America for decades, must all be sent home; that the 46m people who lack health insurance have only themselves to blame; that global warming is a...
“No one was arrested because all those involved were men of God”
– Priests brawl in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity
“Ordinary people having the technology to watch the watcher is not something...”
– OWS Fights Back Against Police Surveillance by Launching “Occucopter”
“Obama has accommodated himself to the politics of fear far more than he’s...”
– How to Beat Terrorism: Refuse to Be Terrorized | Danger Room | Wired.com
“The US maintains a naval presence in the Gulf, largely to ensure the transport...”
– BBC News - Iran threatens to block Strait of Hormuz oil route
“the “overview effect” - the blissful sense of connection so many...”
– We have drift off - New Scientist
Original Language
But some traditionalist Christians say the patois Bible dilutes the word of God, and insist that creole is no substitute for English.
BBC News - Jamaica’s patois Bible: The word of God in creole
If the King James English was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me.
Israelis rally against gender segregation →
Spitting on 8 year old girls: The Taliban and Bob Jones differ in the degree of their response, but agree on intent.
Crappy people are everywhere. The worst use religion to be crappy.
Two observations:
1) What are these insecure little boys afraid of? I’ll offer a suggestion: girls who are smarter than they are. Same reason girls are still largely kept out of the pulpit in Christendom.
My...
“Science reports yet another cognitive area where birds are on par with primates:...”
– Pigeons match primates in number sense
“It became clear to me that racism was above all an intellectual construction....”
– BBC News - Human zoos: When real people were exhibits
List of Documentaries Everyone must see! →
dotannegrin:
A great list of Documentaries that Everyone must see. Food, Inc. changed my life. It changed my entire perspective on the Food Industry and how I eat and purchase groceries. LEARN. GROW. SPREAD KNOWLEDGE!
occupyonline:
Documentaries:
Affluenza Inside Job Capitalism: A Love Story Zeitgeist: Moving Forward Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room Food, Inc. The One Percent Gashole...
CairObserver: A new beginning for Egyptian... →
cairobserver:
Note: This op-ed first appeared in Al Masry Al Youm on June 1, 2011.
In the recent flurry of reports about Egypt’s impending economic challenges, many have highlighted the damage done to the tourism sector in the wake of the 25 January revolution. The number of tourists who’ve come to Egypt…
"superficial glitter" of Christmas
Dressed only in a simple drab robe and without any fanfare, a humble religious figure declares:
“Today Christmas has become a commercial celebration, whose bright lights hide the mystery of God’s humility, which in turn calls us to humility and simplicity,”
Just kidding - the Pope was totally wearing a gold embroidered hat, and carrying a diamond and ruby encrusted solid gold...
“Just arrived at Jesus’s birthday party. Already out of queso. :(”
– (via theclearlydope)
1 tag
“…the authority cited for this menacing trend is that ubiquitous sham...”
– Can the U.S. Government close social media accounts? - Salon.com
If all you have to sell is fear, I’m not bying. And I’ve got zero tolerance for that shit.
doing it right
…they did right exactly what the Obama administration told everybody else to do wrong. They didn’t show up in riot gear and helmets, they showed up in shirt sleeves with their faces showing. They not only didn’t show up with SWAT gear, they showed up with no unusual weapons at all, and what weapons they had all securely holstered. They politely woke everybody up…
How To Break Up a...
Religion as Justification
My experience is, people are people. They’re all equally capable of the same good and evil, across religions and culture…
Jenkins: Bible Far More Violent than Qur’an
My beam
All you have to do is look at the fate of the conquered Canaanites under Joshua (who were to be wiped out in a biblical genocide) and the fate of the Meccans when the Muslims overcame them (almost none were killed and they went on to flourish in the Islamic empire despite their earlier attempt at mass murder aimed at the prophet and his followers), to see the difference between the two.
...
“What makes people furious is that they have stopped being citizens.”
– Rolling Stone: A Christmas Message From America’s Rich
Change of rules
From an airplane-hijacking point of view, Schneier said, al-Qaeda had used up its luck. Passengers on the first three 9/11 flights didn’t resist their captors, because in the past the typical consequence of a plane seizure had been “a week in Havana.” When the people on the fourth hijacked plane learned by cell phone that the previous flights had been turned into airborne bombs, they attacked...
"Worth it"
By our estimates, more than 115,000 Iraqi civilians died in violence associated with war, though this number is approximate and the correct figure could well be tens of thousands higher. At the peak of the civil war — characterized by sectarian violence and spurred on by outside influences like al Qaeda — during much of 2006 and the first half of 2007, monthly death tolls of 3,000 or...
Intelligence
they had an alarm call for dangerous reptiles, but what I learned was that in that call there were specific inflexions that would identify a species of snake. Eventually when I heard a certain vocalisation I knew without question they had found a rattlesnake.
I lived as a turkey for a year - New Scientist
“Dec 29th is move your domain away from GoDaddy day”
– GoDaddy supports SOPA, REDDIT
Arab Democracy
Return to Tahrir - Al Jazeera English
“Of course it was worth it for freedom,” he insists. “I know there were a lot of deaths and injuries but all this was done for Egypt. We would do anything for Egypt. We brought down the Mubarak regime; a lot were killed or injured and this was for a good cause. We are prepared to fight even more and more and more for our freedom, to achieve...
“transparency is the new objectivity. My version of that: it’s easier to trust in...”
– The View from Nowhere: Questions and Answers » Pressthink
Love this.
1 tag
“Here you have a Muslim Iranian who goes out of his way, risks his life,...”
– The ‘Iranian Schindler’ who saved Jews from the Nazis
Tahrir
The US must clearly speak out against the Egyptian Military’s treatment of Egyptian citizens, Field Marshal Tantawi must step down, and US money (and tear gas) supporting the SCAF must immediately end.
Urgent Appeal →
Urgent Appeal to Occupy and All Social Justice Movements: Mobilize to Defend the Egyptian Revolution | Ad-Hoc Coalition to Defend the Egyptian Revolution
As a United States Citizen I ask the US to
1) Be a “city on the hill” and set the example with how freedom-loving democracies respond to peaceful protesters, and
2) cancel all US aid and shipment of military and police materiel to...
“About $525,000 per congressional sponsor, it turns out.”
– SOPA: So how much does it cost to buy off America’s Internet freedom? | ZDNet
Mohamed Bouazizi →
Bouazizi is, of course, not the only hero of the Arab Spring. There are thousands of them, if not millions. Neither is economics the only root of the revolution. But it is clear that the undercurrents of popular unrest — what led the economic martyrs of the revolution to such desperate acts — have yet to be resolved. Governments have been toppled, but the underlying economies still...