Posted by Lisa Simeone at 05:14 PM in Books, Current Affairs, Film, Food and Drink, Games, Music, Religion, Science, Sports, Television, Travel, Web/Tech, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (21)
Technorati Tags: 4th amendment, assault, dhs, security, travel, tsa
Muslims standing together with Christians to protect the latter during worship at a Coptic church. Can you imagine a similar scenario in the U.S., with, say, Christians defending the right of Muslims to build a non-mosque Not-at-Ground-Zero? If only it were so.
These Egyptians are demonstrating the true meaning of religious -- and political -- tolerance. The fact that this show of solidarity is coming so soon after a brutal attack on another Coptic church speaks volumes not only about their enlightened minds, but also their courage. The Egyptian government doesn't take kindly to demonstrations in general, no matter the sentiments its citizens are demonstrating. Here's another article that shows the risks Egyptians take by speaking out.
Posted by Lisa Simeone at 10:08 AM in Current Affairs, Religion | Permalink | Comments (6)
Well, the world is a wild and wacky place. Above is one of the more artful photos in this story from Truthdig, called The Land of a Thousand Penises. Click through to read the fascinating story and see the best and brightest of phallic exemplars.
Posted by Lisa Simeone at 09:39 AM in Current Affairs, Religion, Travel | Permalink | Comments (1)
In a perfect melding of the Keystone Kops Meet O'Brien, Janet Napolitano is coming to a Walmart near you. Her video, urging "If You See Something, Say Something," is rolling out at W emporia all across the country:
The message will be continuously looped on TV monitors at the 588 Walmarts in the U.S. One can only imagine the hilarity that will ensue when one gun-buying customer doesn't like the looks of another. But then maybe Napolitano doesn't really know the People of Walmart that well, after all.
"Report suspicious activity to your local police or sheriff. If you need help, ask a Walmart manager for assistance.” Ah, yes, ask a manager for assistance! Next time you get in a tug-of-war with another customer over the last Game Boy in the store, just report that sucker to management for "suspicious activity."
Continue reading "DHS and Walmart: A Match Made in Heaven" »
Posted by Lisa Simeone at 09:47 AM in Books, Current Affairs, Film, Food and Drink, Games, Music, Religion, Science, Sports, Television, Travel, Web/Tech, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (7)
Technorati Tags: 4th amendment, bullshit, dhs, napolitano, patriot act, security, terror, tsa
Ballgame just brought this column by Naomi Wolf to our attention in another thread, but I think it deserves its own post. Excerpt (bolds mine):
. . . These two Senators, and the rest of the Congressional and White House leadership who are coming forward in support of this appalling development, are cynically counting on Americans' ignorance of their own history -- an ignorance that is stoked and manipulated by those who wish to strip rights and freedoms from the American people. They are manipulatively counting on Americans to have no knowledge or memory of the dark history of the Espionage Act -- a history that should alert us all at once to the fact that this Act has only ever been used -- was designed deliberately to be used -- specifically and viciously to silence people like you and me.
The Espionage Act was crafted in 1917 -- because President Woodrow Wilson wanted a war and, faced with the troublesome First Amendment, wished to criminalize speech critical of his war. In the run-up to World War One, there were many ordinary citizens -- educators, journalists, publishers, civil rights leaders, union activists -- who were speaking out against US involvement in the war. The Espionage Act was used to round these citizens by the thousands for the newly minted 'crime' of their exercising their First Amendment Rights. A movie producer who showed British cruelty in a film about the Revolutionary War (since the British were our allies in World War I) got a ten-year sentence under the Espionage act in 1917, and the film was seized; poet E.E. Cummings spent three and a half months in a military detention camp under the Espionage Act for the 'crime' of saying that he did not hate Germans. Esteemed Judge Learned Hand wrote that the wording of the Espionage Act was so vague that it would threaten the American tradition of freedom itself. Many were held in prison for weeks in brutal conditions without due process; some, in Connecticut -- Lieberman's home state -- were severely beaten while they were held in prison. The arrests and beatings were widely publicized and had a profound effect, terrorizing those who would otherwise speak out.
. . . I call on all American citizens to rise up and insist on repeal of the Espionage Act immediately. We have little time to waste. The Assange assault is theater of a particularly deadly kind, and America will not recover from the use of the Espionage Act as a cudgel to threaten journalists, editors and news outlets with. I call on major funders of Feinstein's and Lieberman's campaigns to put their donations in escrow accounts and notify the staffers of those Senators that the funds willonly be released if they drop their traitorous invocation of the Espionage Act. I call on all Americans to understand once for all: this is not about Julian Assange. This, my fellow citizens, is about you . . . .
Posted by Lisa Simeone at 02:52 PM in Books, Current Affairs, Film, Food and Drink, Games, Music, Religion, Science, Sports, Television, Travel, Web/Tech, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (2)
Uh. Does anyone know why the TSA is performing random bag searches at the Grand Central Terminal subway hub?
posted by @metalia from Twitter for iPhone 23 hours 38 mins ago
Posted by Lisa Simeone at 04:59 PM in Books, Current Affairs, Film, Food and Drink, Games, Music, Religion, Science, Sports, Television, Travel, Web/Tech, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (3)
Periodically I've suggested that readers wander on over to Crispin Sartwell's blog, Eye of the Storm, for thoughtful, provocative, sometimes infuriating posts. Crispin teaches philosophy at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa. He's an anarchist, though of which variety I can't say as I can't keep all the nuances straight; you can ask him if you want to go there. Crispin has also (rarely) commented here at the Cogblog. In my opinion, he can be quite contrarian, whether out of genuine principle or just plain cussedness. In any case, he writes thought-provoking, even poetic, stuff, such as this op-ed style piece on environmentalism.
Posted by Lisa Simeone at 04:03 PM in Books, Current Affairs, Religion, Science, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (2)
Oh, MHB is gonna love this! Representative Todd Akin, Republican of Missouri, takes to the House floor to regale us with stories of how the Pilgrims were so adventurous and free-spirited and such a "great bunch of Americans; there were knife fights in cabins -- I haven't had time to cover all that with you, but the basics are there."
And they "came here with the idea that, after trying socialism, that it wasn't going to work. They realized that it was un-Biblical and it was a form of theft. So they pitched socialism out; they learned that in the early 1620s."
Golly gee! Those Pilgrims were so far ahead of their time, they went Back to the Future!
Watch this master of history in action:
Posted by Lisa Simeone at 07:30 PM in Current Affairs, Games, Religion | Permalink | Comments (11)
Well, I've been saying it from the beginning. But what the hell.
Posted by Lisa Simeone at 09:18 AM in Books, Current Affairs, Film, Food and Drink, Games, Music, Religion, Science, Sports, Television, Travel, Web/Tech, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (2)
Longtime consumer advocate Christopher Elliott reports a turning of the tide: a weekend poll by the Consumer Travel Alliance indicates that 70% of air travelers now support National Opt-Out Day.
Yes, I know that doesn't mean that 70% of travelers are actually going to opt-out. When push comes to shove, I understand that many will not. But it's the support, for now, that's impressive.
Posted by Lisa Simeone at 11:30 AM in Current Affairs, Religion, Science, Travel | Permalink | Comments (4)
Posted by Lisa Simeone at 08:27 AM in Books, Current Affairs, Film, Food and Drink, Games, Music, Religion, Science, Sports, Television, Travel, Web/Tech, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (14)
Technorati Tags: 4th Amendment, abuse, molestation, sexual assault, travel, tsa
Finally, some people with guts. Media cowards, don't watch; you'll only upset yourselves.
Posted by Lisa Simeone at 05:29 PM in Current Affairs, Religion, Science, Travel | Permalink | Comments (20)
This beautiful article in the New York Times is eliciting, as you can imagine, dozens of comments. So far, only a few are castigating the paper for the headline or for the mere idea of discussing death in such a personal way. But most people get it.
In a world where so much talk of death is abstract -- statistics, percentages, euphemisms like "casualties" and the shameful "collateral damage" -- it's moving to read an article where people face death head on, where they try to bring comfort to loved ones and maintain dignity for themselves. My father was lucky enough to die at home, with his family around him, and lots of laughter and partying up to the very end. (The fact that this was made possible by health insurance, Medicare, and hospice help is perhaps a discussion for another time.)
Here's a comment by a reader that I think gets to the heart of the matter:
I hope hospital physicians read this article. I am fully onboard with medical science and the great work doctors do each day. I am too aware, though, of cases such as where an 84-year-old person with a terminal disease is intubated, made completely miserable, and spending their last precious days in a horrible clinical environment by thoughtless physicians influencing grief-stricken family members, instead of respecting their preference to pass on in the comfort of their own home or chosen environment.
Posted by Lisa Simeone at 07:28 AM in Current Affairs, Religion, Science | Permalink | Comments (13)
Thanks to the American Institute of Physics, for this beautiful essay by Albert Einstein. Some excerpts (bolds mine):
How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people -- first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving . . .
The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political state, but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling.
This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor... This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!
If he were around today, he'd probably be accused of being un-American (or not American enough, at any rate) and elitist.
H/T to Bill in Baltimore.
Posted by Lisa Simeone at 04:22 PM in Current Affairs, Religion, Science | Permalink | Comments (3)
Thanks to Ed Foster of The Gripe Line Weblog, I bring you this missive from Mark Mailloux (and here's the definition of EULA):
With the holidays fast approaching and EULAs pretty much a fact of life, please accept -- with no obligation, implied or implicit, on behalf of the wisher or wishee -- my best wishes for an environmentally-conscious, socially-responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice, practiced within the traditions and/or within the religious or secular belief(s) of your choice and with respect for the traditions and/or religious or secular beliefs of others or for their choice to not practice traditions and/or religious or secular beliefs at all; and for a fiscally-successful, personally-fulfilling, medically-uncomplicated recognition of the onset of what is generally accepted as the new Gregorian calendar year, but with due respect for calendars of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great*, and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, sexual orientation, political affiliation, or choice of computer operating system of the wisher.
Posted by Lisa Simeone at 05:02 PM in Current Affairs, Food and Drink, Games, Religion, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0)
Technorati Tags: Christmas, holidays, law, legal, Mark Mailloux, season's greetings
In addition to Papa Bear O'Reilly's inane "War on Christmas," there are other seasonal idiocies afoot. One is the taking-offense by certain wet blankets when someone wishes them a Merry Christmas. So if I may:
As an atheist, I decorate my house to the hilt, with a tree, lights, ornaments, wreaths, and live greens; I send Christmas cards that are unparalleled -- handmade "Hon" cards by Glen Hibline of Baltimore -- that are treasured by friends all over the country; I make an annual pilgrimage to a kitschy neighborhood called Hampden to see the over-the-top decorations on 34th Street, which cause traffic jams for blocks around; I revel in the brightly lit Washington Monument (built years before the national one), the street decorations, the window displays, and the smell of pine; I immerse myself in both traditional Christmas carols as well as classical Christmas music, some of the finest music ever composed in the history of Western art; I never miss "A Charlie Brown Christmas" on TV; I look forward to the re-telling of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" on the radio; I listen to Dylan Thomas himself reading his "A Child's Christmas in Wales" on CD; and I say "Merry Christmas" to all and sundry.
Posted by Lisa Simeone at 07:51 AM in Current Affairs, Religion | Permalink | Comments (30)
Technorati Tags: African, Christian, Christmas, Dylan Thomas, Jewish, political correctness
As a lifelong atheist who's somehow managed to get through her life without murdering, raping and torturing, I of course was miffed by Mitt Romney's speech about his faith. Instead of using the opportunity to denounce bigotry and invoke the nobility of a Constitution that treats all Americans equally, he encouraged the faulty reasoning that bigotry thrives on, and directed it at an easy target.
Religion describes what a person believes, not what they are. This isn't a surprising thing to hear an atheist assert, but you would think that a member of a religion that puts such a strong emphasis on evangelism would be likely to agree.
Posted by Sara E Anderson at 09:37 PM in Current Affairs, Religion | Permalink | Comments (17)
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