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- Bearing Witness to the Holocaust: Anne Frank and Margo Frank in a Purim Holiday Photo with Other Jewish Children, February, 1934, and an Image from Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, Where Anne and Margo Died
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- Negative Capability Defined: Walking in Mysteries---and the Shoes of Others---with Keats, Shakespeare, Whitman---and Barack Obama!
- In Evolution We Trust?: England Puts Charles Darwin on the Back of Its Ten Pound Bank Note
- Bearing Witness to the Holocaust: Image from the Concentration Camp at Mauthausen-Gusen in Austria, 1945
- Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
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Recent Posts
Monthly Archives: March 2009
Help!
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged beatles, friendship, help, life, love, philosophy, social animals, social psychology, utilitarianism
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Don’t Question or Mock Authority? Jeff Zucker Responds to Jon Stewart by Sounding Like the Pope
Speak truth to power. NBC’s Chief Executive, Jeff Zucker, is pissed at Jon Stewart for mocking CNBC “authority” on matters of business. So reports Reuters: “Just because someone who mocks authority says something doesn’t make it so,” Zucker said, describing the … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged America, business, economics, economy, Great Depression 2.0, jim cramer, Jon Stewart, recession, rich, wall street
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Who Made the First Agnostic Statement in Recorded History?
Probably the 5th century BCE pre-socratic Greek philosopher, Protagorus, who said (at the beginning of his treatise on the gods): Regarding the gods, I am not capable of knowing whether they exist or whether they do not exist, or what … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged agnostic, agnosticism, apologetics, atheist, Chris Hedges, Christianity, Jesus, philosophy, protagorus, relativism, religion, Richard Dawkins
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Ticket to Ride
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Tagged 1960s, beatles, beauty, life, poetry, relationships, truth
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Sad Little Nowhere Man
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Tagged Albert Camus, beatles, existentialism, music, nowhere man, philosophy, poetry
3 Comments
Lest We Forget: In 2004 a Birmingham Theater Closed a Play Written by a WOMAN Because It Offended a Religious Community (the Sikhs)
See the original BBC report on playwright Gurpreet Bhatti’s censorship here, as well as the craven response of a Catholic archbishop (who supported the Sikh clergy in shutting her play down): Mohan Singh, a local Sikh community leader, said: “When … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged birmingham, Catholic, censorship, Christianity, England, free speech, gurpreet bhatti, plays, religion, Sikh, the Enlightenment, theater
1 Comment
Umberto Eco’s “Ur Fascism”—or Eternal Fascism
Umberto Eco suggests that there are fourteen signs that a contemporary social movement is veering in the direction of “Ur Fascism.” Here are his first four (Glenn Beck, are you listening?): 1. The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Christianity, eternal fascism, fascism, glenn beck, James Dobson, John Macarthur, rush limbaugh, Sean Hannity, umberto eco, ur-fascism
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Glenn Beck Friday: Creepy, Maudlin, Hysterical Populism on Display
The clip below is illustrative of how religious emotionalism is easily translated, by a charlatan like Glenn Beck, into political emotionalism. And notice the Nazi-like volkish essentialism at work here. Implied by Beck is the notion that all true Americans can tap their inner … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Christianity, evangelicalism, fascism, father caughlin, glenn beck, Jesus, populism, religion, Sean Hannity, social psychology
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Conservative David Frum Calls Out Glenn Beck of Fox News for Passing Out Conspiracy Literature to His In-Studio Audience
Conservative David Frum, of New Majority, notes that Glenn Beck (of Fox News) has been promoting ONE WORLD ILLUMINATI conspiracy theories: The audience for Beck’s Friday night special were each given copies of two books. One of them was Cleon Skousen’s Five Thousand … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged authoritarianism, conservatism, conspiracies, David Frum, fascism, Fox News, glenn beck, Great Depression 2.0, Illuminati, Politics, religion
5 Comments
A Raw and Whole Foods Diet from Before World War II
In the 1920s and 1930s Berrnarr Macfadden was a health guru, selling millions of books on fitness training and diet. Mark Adams, of the Daily Beast, tried Macfadden’s raw and whole foods diet and reports on the experience: I purchased … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged bernarr Macfadden, diet, exercise, fitness, guru, health food, health food guru, Mark Adams, raw foods, whole foods, yoga
1 Comment
Brief Film Review: “Indoctrinate U: Our Education, Their Politics”
The film, Indoctrinate U: Our Education, Their Politics, has low production values, and appears to have been created entirely by two conservative university students visiting numerous college and university campuses around the United States (one holding a boom mike and speaking, the … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged 1st amendment, conservative, documentaries, film, free speech, freedom of speech, indoctrinate u, liberal, Politics, religion
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Historian David Littman Clashes with Islamists at the United Nations
Thou shalt not speak one’s mind directly or use certain words at the UN. And please don’t quote Spinoza. It will upset certain delegations:
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged censorship, Christianity, david littman, Egypt, free speech, Islam, Muslim, Politics, religion, Richard Dawkins, United Nations
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What Would Voltaire Say? A Christian Minister in LONDON is Assaulted by a Group of Muslim Men
A Christian minister who has a gospel television show, and has publicly contradicted Muslims who have called into his show, has been assaulted by three Muslim men. The Christian minister is Pakistani, so Muslims may perceive him as an apostate from Islam. … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Christianity, England, intolerance, Islam, Jesus, Muslim, Pakistan, Politics, religion, the Enlightenment, Voltaire
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Authorial Purpose and Textual Conflation: When Evangelicals and Jehovah Witnesses Argue Over Jesus’s Divinity, are They Both Missing Something?
It’s a curious thing to see Evangelicals argue with Jehovah Witnesses, for they cannot seem to agree on a crucial question: Was Jesus, ultimately, just the “Son of God” or was he also “God incarnate”? Invariably, Jehovah Witnesses appeal to … Continue reading
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Tagged Christianity, evangelicals, God, jehovah witness, Jesus, John, literature, Mark, religion, the Bible, the gospel of john, the gospel of mark
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Apostate Stalking with Hammers, Knives, and Axes: This Happened Not in Afghanistan—but in Northern England—in the Middle of a British City!
The Times of London reports today on a grotesque and horrific stalking of a young woman in Northern England who changed her religion from Muslim to Christian—and found her imam father stalking her, accompanied by a mob wielding hammers, knives and … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged agnostic, atheist, Christianity, England, Hannah Shah, Islam, Judaism, Politics, religion, the Englightenment, The Imam's Daughter, Voltaire
2 Comments
Corrective Lesbian Rape in South Africa
The Guardian today reports on a truly horrific phenomenon in South Africa: Gangs of men who target lesbians for rape and humiliation (so as to “correct” their “unnatural” behavior and learn how to enjoy men and be “normal girls”). If you can … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Christianity, feminism, gay, gay marriage, gay rights, homosexuality, James Dobson, lesbian, lesbianism, rape, Sean Hannity, South Africa
3 Comments
The Dumbing Down of Christianity: Where are Christianity’s Contemporary Flannery O’Connors? And Why Hasn’t Christianity Been Able to Assimilate Modernism, Particularly the Implications of Evolution, Auschwitz, and Contemporary Biblical Archeology?
In the Times of London today, Andrew Sullivan has an interesting essay on “the broader crises facing established religion in the West”: the serious dumbing down of Protestant and Catholic religion and its failure to absorb the implications of Modernism. Sullivan … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Andrew Sullivan, Christianity, creationism, evolution, Flannery O'Connor, fundamentalism, Genesis, James Dobson, Jesus, John Macarthur, modernism, religion
1 Comment
“God’s Funeral”: A Poem by Thomas Hardy
Christopher Hitchens has often said he’s glad to see the Old Nobodaddy go—but Thomas Hardy was more sanguine. There’s no Schadenfreude in this poem of Hardy’s, and a fair amount of regret. Stanzas VI-IX are especially apt and sad and … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged agnostic, atheist, God, Islam, Jesus, Judaism, philosophy, poems, poetry, psychology, religion, thomas hardy
1 Comment
Fareed Zakaria’s GPS is the Best Political Talk Show on Television
I’m blown away by the consistently high quality of Fareed Zakaria’s CNN Sunday show, “Fareed Zakaria’s GPS.” He always seems to find, for his show, the super smart among the super smart, and they always seem to have a thought provoking, … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged economics, economy, fareed zakaria, foreign policy, Great Depression 2.0, nobel prize, Politics, recession, wall street
1 Comment
Embracing the Blonde Hay
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged art, countryside, farming, France, Freud, hay, masturbation, poetry, psychology, Sigmund Freud, Van Gogh, Vincent Van Gogh
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