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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
- Near Death Experience (NDE) Watch: Waiting for Dr. Sam Parnia
- Bearing Witness to the Holocaust: Children Lined up with Heads Shaved in a Croatian Concentration Camp
- Bearing Witness to the Holocaust: Stacked Corpses
- 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
- Bearing Witness to the Holocaust: Children Experimented upon at Auschwitz
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Recent Posts
Monthly Archives: May 2009
Mental Health Break: Neil Diamond Sings “Suzanne”
This song has all the disjunctures and ambiguities of a great poem: I always assumed that Neil Diamond had written the lyrics for the song, but Scarlet Letter tells me it is Leonard Cohen: Suzanne takes you down to her … Continue reading
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Tagged art, leonard cohen, literature, mental health break, music, neil diamond, poems, poetry, psychology, Santi Tafarella, suzanne
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“A Brief for the Defense”: Jack Gilbert’s Great Theodicy Poem
A Brief for the Defense Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies are not starving someplace, they are starving somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils. But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants. Otherwise the mornings before summer … Continue reading
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Tagged apologetics, God, jack gilbert, Job, literature, poems, poetry, religion, suffering, theodicy
5 Comments
Randall Terry for Beginners
What President Obama faces at Notre Dame today is embodied by Randall Terry, a leading figure in the protests. Salon.com describes Terry’s anti-abortion activism history this way: The Operation Rescue zealot turned off a lot of working-class people who were nervous about … Continue reading
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Tagged abortion, abortion rights, feminism, gandhi, Jesus, pacifism, pro-choice, pro-life, randall terry, women's rights, zealots
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British Scientist, Lord Robert Winston, Writes a Children’s Evolution Book
After explaining evolution to kids, Lord Winston ends his little talk here with a eugenics kicker about what might be in store for human evolution as we increase our ability to manipulate the genome. I actually found his tag-on last … Continue reading
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Tagged atheism, atheist, biology, children's books, creationism, eugenics, evolution, Genesis, life, lord winston, Richard Dawkins, science
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Quote of the Day: A Very Brief Parable by Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka’s “Give It Up”: “It was very early in the morning, the streets clean and deserted, and I was on my way to the railroad station. As I compared the tower clock with my watch I realized that it … Continue reading
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Tagged confusion, Franz Kafka, give it up, labyrinth, life, literature, minotaur, police, quote, travel
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Creation v. Evolution Watch: The “Archaeopteryx of Primate Evolution” Found, Says New York Times Today
Yet another primate “missing link” showing evidence of the types of evolved characteristics that ultimately led to the appearance of humans. The small mammal is, apparently, exquisitely preserved, looks like a cross between a lemur and a monkey, and lived 47 million … Continue reading
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Tagged archaeopteryx, biology, creation, evolution, Genesis, human evolution, Politics, religion, science, young earth creationism
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Quote of the Day: Letting Go of God
Saturday Night Live alumnus, and the Wolf’s girlfriend in Pulp Fiction, did a DVD stand-up performance of her life’s religious journey, and her turning at last, to unbelief: I thought, “Okay, calm down. Let’s just try on the not-believing-in-God glasses for a … Continue reading
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Tagged agnosticism, apologetics, atheism, atheist, Catholicism, Islam, Jesus, julia sweeney, letting go of god, philosophy, religion
1 Comment
Two Venuses
Venus of Hohle Fels, 35,000 years old: Venus of Willendorf, 24,ooo years ago:
“What serious thinker wants to support the party of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck?”: Do Republicans Have an Intellectual and Intelligence Gap to Make Up with the Democrats?
Conservative Andrew Sullivan today contemplates a Republican Party that is not being replenished and rejuvenated by enough young and serious intellectuals. Sullivan thinks that most smart public policy people are overwhelmingly moving into the Democratic camp, and that there’s a real and growing intellectual … Continue reading
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Tagged Andrew Sullivan, Ayn Rand, colin powell, conservatism, Dick Cheney, National Review, Politics, red state america, Republican, rush limbaugh
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At the Intersection of Pornography and Art: Big Boobs, Big Hips (Head Optional)
Boooom! Fertile, fecund, and ample. Humanity’s oldest art object (yet discovered). In southern Germany, at least 35,000 years ago, someone hung this headless alpha-female body pendant around his or her neck. No honoring of the mind here, just Earth Mother goddess … Continue reading
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Tagged art, body, breasts, feminism, hips, homage to my hips, life, lucille clifton, magic, neolithic art, spirit, the female body
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Our Daily Stanza: The First Six Lines of William Wordsworth’s “I wandered lonely as a Cloud” (1807)
Today’s lines of poetry come from William Wordworth’s “I wandered lonely as a Cloud” (1807), and they make up the poem’s first stanza: I wandered lonely as a Cloud That floats on high o’er Vales and Hills, When all at … Continue reading
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Tagged Apollo, clouds, daffodils, Dionysus, flowers, life, literature, our daily stanza, poems, poetry, William Wordsworth
8 Comments
Creation v. Evolution Watch: The New York Times Reports Today That RNA Nucleotides Can Form Spontaneously And Are Thus Not The Product of a “Miracle”
A major science story today (in the New York Times) reminds us to be cautious about what we might regard as “impossible” and capable of explanation only via a ”miracle.” Exhibit A: One of the great problems of evolution is how life’s RNA … Continue reading
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Tagged agnostic, apologetics, atheist, biology, chemistry, creationism, evolution, Genesis, life, miracles, science, skeptic magazine
7 Comments
Bearing Witness to the Holocaust: John Heartfield’s Art Depicted the Murderous Nature of Hitler’s Nazi State
A German born opponent of Nazi Germany, John Heartfield’s political art parodied the pretensions of Hitler’s regime and deconstructed its murderous nature. Below is a man set on a medieval wheel of torture turned into a swastika: More John Heartfield images here. … Continue reading
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Tagged art, Auschwitz, bearing witness to the holocaust, fascism, Hitler, Jesus, john heartfield, Nazi Germany, the Holocaust
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