“Is this really who the Republican Party wants to be one heartbeat away from the Presidency? Given Sarah Palin’s lack of experience on every front and on nearly every issue, this Vice Presidential pick doesn’t show judgment: it shows political panic.”
~ Rep. Rahm Emanuel
With its obvious pandering to disaffected Hillaryites, I should think our many clear-minded, intelligent Republican friends would find this profoundly embarrassing.
How awful for them!
The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has a good synopsis of Biden’s positions. http://pewforum.org/religion08/profile.php?CandidateID=9
Some years ago, I was a reasonably proficient martial artist. I say “was” because, while the knowledge is no doubt buried someplace on the premises, the reflexes and conditioning that are prime requisites of that pursuit are long gone.
The reason I mention it at all, is because I was thinking about defensiveness, and the compulsion to attack those “others” whose appearance, beliefs and/or ethos differ too much from our own. When I was young and physically unskilled, I felt that every threatening situation had to be dealt with by either retreat or an immediate attack: do unto others as they would do unto you, but do it first. As time passed, and I became more confident, I no longer had the compulsion to attack — in fact, became quite a pacifist. Confidence often confers a benignity, and removes the need to be superior.
I don’t claim to be some kind of saint. There are plenty of other areas of life where I still feel, from time to time, as though a good offense might be the best defense. Doubtless, in some cases, that is true. However, I’ve come to believe that defensiveness, along with the need always to be right (another of my character defects) is uniformly a sign of insecurity.
Which leads me to wonder, where are the heads of the folks who feel that they must force their religious views on others? Can it be that, in the final analysis, they are afraid — deep down inside — that they might be wrong, after all? Is that why so many brook no disagreement with their tenets — show such aggression, such an overpowering need to be right in the face even of common sense?
Surely God needs no help. Surely he, she, it or they is/are capable of converting folks who need it, chastising those who deserve it, and generally running the show without the assistance of our little monkey minds.
What, then, are believers afraid of? Really?
Then I discovered girls, and my religious ambitions — priesthood and all — vanished in a blinding burst of testosterone.
Over the years of searching (as we all must, to one degree or another) for a philosophical hat that fit, I found that dogmatic religious thinking fits me poorly indeed, simply because it involves too many compromises with my reality. I emphasize my reality because no two people have the same reality, and your mileage will certainly vary. That notwithstanding, as I learned more about belief systems and how they support us in our progress through life, I came to believe that one of the cruelest and most immoral things a person can do is set out with the purpose of destroying someone else’s faith. Continue reading
GULF COAST HURRICANE RECOVERY STUMBLES TO THIRD ANNIVERSARY
DENVER, Colorado, August 26, 2008 (ENS) – Three years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast and flooded 80 percent of New Orleans a new report from international relief organization Oxfam America launched at the Democratic National Convention reveals the slow pace of recovery in the region and urges the next administration to make recovery a national priority.
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2008/2008-08-26-02.asp
I strongly suggest — nay, I order you to read not only this article but the ones linked in the sidebar. So there.
The world’s oceans are being transformed, and not for the better.Around the world, unappetizing creatures are proliferating in the absence of big fish. Carpets of primitive sea squirts now cover continental shelves. The filter-feeding fish that once cleaned the oceans are being caught and ground into fertilizer, causing giant abundances of toxic plankton. Flotillas of jellyfish, some 10 miles square, are stinging sea cages full of salmon to death.
Scientists now know that the eating habits of a single species, Homo sapiens, are driving these changes. By knocking out the chain’s upper levels (which include predatory fish like tuna, swordfish, and shark) through violent overfishing, and skimming off the middle and bottom for industrial use, we are changing, perhaps permanently, the structure of an environment that nourishes us. Unless we adjust our attitude toward seafood, ours might be among the last generations able to enjoy the down-to-earth luxury of freshly caught wild fish.
The good news is that there is a way to eat that balances conservation and health—even when it comes to the complex, multispecies cuisine that is seafood. And it can be done without leaving the oceans, or our plates, empty.
ScienceDaily — Religious leaders have contended for millennia that burning incense is good for the soul. Now, biologists have learned that it is good for our brains too.
Burning Incense Is Psychoactive: New Class Of Antidepressants Might Be Right Under Our Noses
A recent article by Jacob Weisberg in Slate opines that the only reason Obama may not be elected is racial prejudice. I think he’s right. What do you think?
Many have discoursed on what an Obama victory could mean for America. We would finally be able to see our legacy of slavery, segregation, and racism in the rearview mirror. Our kids would grow up thinking of prejudice as a nonfactor in their lives. The rest of the world would embrace a less fearful and more open post-post-9/11 America. But does it not follow that an Obama defeat would signify the opposite? If Obama loses, our children will grow up thinking of equal opportunity as a myth. His defeat would say that when handed a perfect opportunity to put the worst part of our history behind us, we chose not to. In this event, the world’s judgment will be severe and inescapable: The United States had its day but, in the end, couldn’t put its own self-interest ahead of its crazy irrationality over race.
Read the whole article »
Dispatches from Somalia. – By Emily Meehan – Slate Magazine
NAIROBI, Kenya—That Somalia even has a government surprises people who know only of the country’s woes. But this is understandable, because it’s a transitional government. It wasn’t elected, it provides no social services, and the security minister has been accused of kidnapping civilians for ransom….
Ulster witch spellbound in Armagh – Life & Style – Belfasttelegraph.co.uk
I believe your spirituality evolves and you choose a vehicle for it which is right for you. I suppose I found several vehicles before I realised paganism was my true vehicle.
Barbara O’Brien writes about Huineng, the Sixth Patriarch of Zen Buddhism
The influence of the Chinese master Huineng (638-713), the Sixth Patriarch of Ch’an (Zen), resonates through Ch’an and Zen Buddhism to this day. Some consider Huineng, not Bodhidharma, to be the true father of Zen. His tenure, at the beginning of the T’ang Dynasty, marks the beginning of what is still called the “golden age” of Zen.Huineng stands at the juncture where Zen shed its vestigial Indian trappings and found its unique spirit — direct and unflinching. Through Huineng flow the several diverse currents of early Zen. From him flow all schools of Zen that exist today. …
About time people came to their senses. We need a consensus on how to run this country, and we will never get one based on religious beliefs. Too many people think their god wants them to do to many different things. Best to leave the shamans in their huts.
Some Americans are having a change of heart about mixing religion and politics. A new survey finds a narrow majority of the public saying that churches and other houses of worship should keep out of political matters and not express their views on day-to-day social and political matters.
Pew Forum: More Americans Question Religion’s Role in Politics
Well…oh, you know….
Facing water shortages and escalating fertilizer costs, farmers in developing countries are using raw sewage to irrigate and fertilize nearly 49 million acres (20 million hectares) of cropland, according to a new report—and it may not be a bad thing.
Human Waste Used by 200 Million Farmers, Study Says
Singapore — Homosexuality is the tendency to be sexually attracted to persons of the same rather than the opposite gender. According to the ancient Indian understanding, homosexuals were thought of simply as being ‘the third nature’ (tritiya prakti), rather than as perverted, deviant or sick.
With its emphasis on psychology and cause and effect, Buddhism judges acts, including sexual acts, primarily by the intention (cetana) behind them and the effect they have…..
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