Monthly Archives: May 2007

Supremes find for employers in discrimination suits

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Under its longstanding interpretation of the statute, the commission actively supported the plaintiff, Lilly M. Ledbetter, in the lower courts. But after the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case last June, the Bush administration disavowed the agency’s position and filed a brief on the side of the employer. … http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/30/washington/30scotus.html?_r=1&th=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&emc=th&adxnnlx=1180519679-qqM/MlIfZAoyDYWCjLrDkA

Air Canada offers carbon offsets to travellers

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Customers booking travel on Air Canada, Air Canada Jazz or their regional partners through www.aircanada.com will have an option to purchase a carbon offset for their trip. They will find information about carbon offsets, a calculator to determine the amount of carbon dioxide their trip will generate and the cost to offset it, and an easy way to pay the cost of offsetting their trip either with their ticket purchase or at another time. For example, based on the specifications of Air Canada’s current aircraft, it will cost $19.20 for a customer to offset their share of carbon emissions on a return flight from Toronto to London and $12.80 for a return flight from Vancouver to Montreal.

Source: e-Travel Blackboard: Australia’s Number One Industry Newsletter

CONSIDER THIS:

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Over the past six and a half years, the United States has gone from a $4 trillion surplus to a $5 trillion deficit.

That’s $9 trillion in someone’s pockets.

Are you any better off for the spending of $30,000 in your name?

That’s right: $30,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States, including illegal immigrants.

What did you get out of it?

And who got the rest?

And who’s paying back your share of the $5 trillion we owe?

That’s $16,666.67, by the way.

Forget Ethics, Remember Politics – New York Times

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The Bush administration’s never-ending push to turn federal agencies into favor-filled partisan clubhouses has just been confirmed in red-handed detail at the General Services Administration, the government’s main housekeeping agency. Investigators found that Lurita Doan, the Bush appointee running the agency, violated the Hatch Act, which forbids federal workers from politicking on the job.

Last January, Ms. Doan summoned her assistants to a campaign strategy session run by Karl Rove’s White House political operation. Tax-paid employees were treated to a PowerPoint briefing and slide show identifying Democrats marked as “2008 House Targets: Top 20.” Witnesses recalled Ms. Doan asking the gathering how they could “help our candidates” with G.S.A. favors.

Source: Forget Ethics, Remember Politics – New York Times

No wonder the gummint wants Homeland Security to go after whistleblowers.  Bastards make it hard to get any bidness done. 

Silicon Valley Wide-Eyed Over a Bride

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Consider Anne Wojcicki, the 33-year-old former health care investment analyst who this month married a handsome young computer scientist, who just happens to be one of America’s richest men.

As if the swirl of excitement around the Silicon Valley pairing of Ms. Wojcicki and Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google, were not enough, Ms. Wojcicki has captured still more attention with a biotech company she recently co-founded, 23andMe … Silicon Valley Wide-Eyed Over a Bride – New York Times

Anyone besides me see more info for Google in the offing?

The Buddhist Card

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All the stories here are points of fracture or change that do not often register on our radar. Are the warnings for strife on the level of Sri Lanka possible if Buddhist nationalism mutates in Thailand? What are the mid to long-term effects of communal tensions in India amid these types of mass conversions? Are low-key Buddhist led social improvement platforms that emphasize germinating changing of attitudes and viewpoints sustainable in Burma, Vietnam and within China and elsewhere? Indeed, what forms of Buddhism will evolve with 21st century social and political challenges?

Source: The Buddhist Card « Hidden Unities

Buddhism in the ‘burbs

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On the last day of his visit, I surprised The Fireman by taking him to Hsi Lai Temple. I didn’t even know that Hsi Lai Temple existed, but The Fireman mentioned it wistfully as one of the places he missed most in Southern California so I did some quick Googling to find out more information.

When we arrived, I was completely unprepared for the 15-acre temple complex that springs up suddenly in the middle of residential Hacienda Heights.

[With photos]

Source: amandarin.net: Buddhism in the ‘burbs

zen_within: Newcomer comments on relationships among Buddhists on Life Journal

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I’m a Dutch woman, new on LJ and in this community. Some recent entries in this community immediately felt familiar to me. I realize however that Buddhists, like Christians or Muslims, don’t form one community. That shows on LJ, in different communities involving Buddhism. And after once visiting this community I already got the impression, that < what we have in common >, maybe is not even the core of Buddhism. The overlaps may be even more arbitrary and more detailed than I realized, at first. …

zen_within: commonality in community / quality of input / my connection to buddhism / intention

South Koreans go online to worship

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Online worship is thriving among South Koreans who are too busy to attend churches or temples, or who simply want to browse their preferred sermon, a news report said yesterday.

Chosun Ilbo newspaper said some 135,000 people a day heard sermons on the website of South Korea’s largest church, the Yoido Full Gospel Church, compared to 40,000 or 50,000 who attended its Sunday services. It said the number of religious websites on the country’s largest Internet portal Naver was rising, with non-Catholic Christian churches accounting for 5,394, Catholicism 815 and Buddhism 1,439.

“It saves time and also allows me to pick whatever sermon I like,” artist Lee Seong-Su, 32, who logs on to a church website at home on Sundays, told the paper. In lieu of a collection plate, he makes an online donation.

Some believers in Won Buddhism, a religion indigenous to S. Korea, observed Buddha’s birthday last week only through the Internet, Chosun added. It said priests were divided over the trend. …  The Peninsula On-line: Qatar’s leading English Daily

Sudbury Woman ‘Ordained’ Priest; Marie Bouclin Took Vows Not Sanctioned By Catholic Church

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Sudbury’s Marie Evans Bouclin has become the second woman in Canada to be ordained a Roman Catholic priest. Bouclin was one of three women called to the priesthood by Bishop Patricia Fresen at an ordination ceremony at West Hill United Church in Scarborough on Sunday afternoon.

The hierarchy of the Roman Catholic church does not recognize the validity of the positions Bouclin and Fresen hold in the church, but there was no mistaking where the congregation at Sunday’s service stood on the issue. The standing-room-only crowd of a couple of hundred people, many from Sudbury, burst into spontaneous applause on several occasions as it welcomed six ordinands to the church’s new order.

Source: CLERICAL WHISPERS: Sudbury Woman ‘Ordained’ Priest; Marie Bouclin Took Vows Not Sanctioned By Catholic Church

LA Chickens

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Last week we adopted two more chickens from Path to Freedom. We’ve had backyard chickens for almost three years now. It’s been a rewarding experience. They are easy, entertaining and inexpensive to keep. Like home-grown vegetables, home-raised chickens connect our family to the cycles of the earth, make us more self-sufficient, and provide delicious healthy eggs for the table.

Source: WorldChanging: Tools, Models and Ideas for Building a Bright Green Future: LA Chickens

True Ancestor: Christopher Hitchens reduces Buddhism to a phrase

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The feared and renowned atheist Christopher Hitchens is featured in an article by Anthony Gottlieb (no relation) in the most recent New Yorker — an article which reviews the surge in post-9/11 atheist literature and positions Hitchens as the poster-child of angry new-millenium atheism. To wit:

Hitchens is nothing if not provocative. Creationists are ‘yokels,’ Pascal’s theology is ‘not far short of sordid,’ the reasoning of Christian writer C.S. Lewis is ‘so pathetic as to defy description,’ Calvin was a ‘sadist and torturer and killer,’ Buddhist sayings are ‘almost too easy to parody,’ most Eastern spiritual discourse is ‘not even wrong,’ Islam is a ‘rather obvious and ill-arranged set of plagiarisms,’ Hanukkah is a ‘vapid and annoying holiday,’ and the psalmist King David was an ‘unscrupulous bandit.’

The excerpt above makes me wonder what Buddhist writings Hitchens has been reading. Since he refers to “sayings,” I can only imagine that he’s restricting himself to the Zen birthday cards in the Hallmark stores, or their equivalent. Turns out that, as he and his colleagues do with all other religions, he conflates all forms of Buddhism into one system

Source: True Ancestor: Christopher Hitchens reduces Buddhism to a phrase

The trouble with Hitchens and his ilk is not that they are atheists — I’m not so far from being one myself — but that they make pronouncements about belief systems that they clearly fail to understand. Such pitiful scholarship — it makes you wonder why their writing is so popular.

Oh. Wait. The average American watches 4-1/2 hours of TV a day…

Pioneering Western Buddhist monks forgotten in Sri Lanka

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Today (May 28) is the 50th death anniversary of the passing away of the pioneering German Theravada Buddhist monk, the Venerable Nyanatiloka Maha Thera (1878-1957). He was the first Continental European bhikku to take up residence in Sri Lanka.

His example was soon followed by other European monks of the caliber of the Ven. Nyanaponika, Ven. Nyanawimala and Ven. Nyanamoli among others. All of them deserve the Sri Lankan State’s highest recognition for the immense contribution they made to the dissemination of Theravada Buddhism worldwide by their scholarly research and writings which awakened the Western mind to the teachings of the Enlightened One.

Unlike the Westerners who came here to impose their `civilization’ on us and colonize this country, these European bhikkus made their countrymen appreciate Sri Lanka’s Buddhist culture and what it had to offer to them by way of spiritual emancipation. In this context these monks placed Sri Lanka on the world map. The island thus became a centre of attraction for spiritual seekers from Europe.

These white skinned bhikkus became part of Sri Lankan society. Our Buddhists welcomed them and looked after them with great fervor and solicitude. … Pioneering Western Buddhist monks forgotten | Asian Tribune