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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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- 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: January 2010
Lancaster Councilwoman Sherry Marquez Finds a Vocal Local Ally: Audie Yancey, Pastor of First Baptist Church, Quartz Hill
Lancaster city councilwoman Sherry Marquez has dug in on her essentialist remarks on the true nature of Islam (it is a violent religion dominated by violent people who are properly exemplified by the recent beheading of a woman by her Muslim husband … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, atheist, audie yancey, California, Christianity, God, Islam, Jesus, Muslim, sherry marquez, the Bible
7 Comments
No Things but in Ideas: Elisa Gabbert, a Poetry Editor, Vents
William Carlos Williams’s famous poetic motto was “no ideas but in things,” but as someone who loves philosophy as well as poetry, I like what Elisa Gabbert recently wrote: Here’s what I’d like to see more of in submissions: IDEAS. … Continue reading
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Tagged art, elisa gabbert, I Corinthians, ideas, meaning, nonrepresentational art, philosophy, poems, poetry, Shakespeare, thomas hardy, william carlos williams
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21st Century Bohemian Hippie Joy
The liberated body and free-flowing consciousness. The hope of the world: When I watch this I think of John Keats’s famous lines from “Ode on a Grecian Urn”: Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged bohemian, Dionysus, exercise, hippies, hope, John Keats, joy, life, love, music, self help
2 Comments
Lancaster Councilwoman Sherry Marquez on a Muslim on Trial for Beheading His Wife: “We are told this is a small majority (sic) of Muslims in America, but it is truly what they are all about.”
The true nature of Islam is on display in the murder trial of a Muslim man in New York who beheaded his wife? That’s the essentialist conclusion of an elected Republican official in Southern California: Lancaster councilwoman Sherry Marquez. Here’s how … Continue reading
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Tagged atheism, atheist, Christianity, church and state separation, God, Islam, James Dobson, Jesus, Muslims, religion, Richard Dawkins, sherry marquez
37 Comments
Richard Rorty on Making Ethical Choices in a Godless Universe
I think that Richard Rorty is right about this, but it’s a bit jarring to read it stated so directly and matter-of-factly. The quote comes from Rorty’s essay, “Kant vs. Dewey” (in the last collection of his papers, Philosophy as Cultural … Continue reading
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Tagged agnostic, agnosticism, atheism, atheist, ethics, God, law, Moses, nihilism, philosophy, richard rorty, ten commandments
5 Comments
Doobie Doobie Do—in California?
Expanding liberty and consciousness—and traffic accidents—in California? Pot seems to be headed for the ballot this year. This today from Reason: It looks like a marijuana legalization initiative will be on the ballot in California this fall. Today the backers of the … Continue reading
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Tagged America, California, consciousness, freedom, herb bearing seeds, hippies, James Dobson, liberty, marijuana, pot, pot freedom, prohibition
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I Like This Howard Zinn Quote
From “The Optimism of Uncertainty,” The Nation, 2004: The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous … Continue reading
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Tagged american history, gandhi, history, howard zinn, imperialism, liberalism, life, the present, thoreau, yoga
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Author Mitch Horowitz Says Adolf Hitler was Not an Occultist
And an Alternet reviewer of Horowitz’s new book on occultism says that he’s persuasive on this score: He convincingly knocks down the trendy idea that the Third Reich was an occult phenomenon. “However tantalizing some may find it to conceive of … Continue reading
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Tagged Christianity, Darwin, evolution, Hitler, Nietzsche, occult, occultism, religion, the Holocaust, theosophy
5 Comments
Are There Angels in the Architecture of the Universe?
There appear to be ghostly minds in the architecture of the universe (that is, us). So why can’t there be angels? Just asking.
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Tagged angels, apologetics, atheism, atheist, Gabriel, ghosts, God, guardian angels, minds, philosophy, religion
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Of Cookie Crumbs and Religion’s True Nature
I have two questions. Here’s my first: if a crumb from a cookie falls to the kitchen table and breaks into four pieces, do you now have one cookie crumb divided by four, or four cookie crumbs? Here’s my second … Continue reading
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Tagged apologetics, atheism, critical thinking, God, Islam, Jesus, language, philosophy, psychology, religion, Richard Dawkins, skepticism
4 Comments
A Sentence by Sentence Guide to Making a Blog Post
A brilliant deconstruction. See the full post here. Here’s how it starts: This sentence contains a provocative statement that attracts the readers’ attention, but really only has very little to do with the topic of the blog post. This sentence claims … Continue reading
Richard Dawkins and Pat Robertson: The Essentialism That Binds?
After Pat Robertson said that Haiti’s earthquake had occurred because Haiti had made a pact with the devil, other Christians distanced themselves from his statement, and had a different reaction: don’t worry so much about the question of theodicy, but help those in … Continue reading
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Tagged agnosticism, atheism, atheist, Christianity, God, haiti, Jesus, Pat Robertson, religion, Richard Dawkins
1 Comment
Image of a Working Mother
Marc Chagall:
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Tagged art, children, equality, feminism, horses, life, marc chagall, mothers, Russia, women, women's rights, work
1 Comment
Pope John Paul II: He Buffeted His Body and Made It His Slave?
According to Yahoo News today, a new book by Monsignor Slawomir Oder claims that Pope John Paul II habitually abused himself: John Paul frequently denied himself food — especially during the holy season of Lent — and “frequently spent the … Continue reading
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Tagged abuse, belt, Catholicism, Christianity, God, Jesus, Paul, philosophy, Plato, pope john paul II, psychology, religion
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The Other 1950s
Hieroglyphs at Karnak (Thebes), circa 1950 BCE:
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Tagged 1950s, Egypt, history, karnak, perspective, the vatican, Thebes, writing
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The Haitian Earthquake: The Pagan Wheel of Fortune or God’s Will and Grace?
In a recent New York Times essay, literary critic James Wood made the following observation on President Barack Obama’s selection of the language of Christian theodicy over that of the pagan Wheel of Fortune (in response to the Haitian earthquake): [T]heological language has … Continue reading
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Tagged atheist, Christianity, death, earthquakes, God, haiti, Jesus, Job, Judaism, life, religion, the problem of suffering
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Tea-Partiers in America Take Note: Marcel Theroux’s Creepy Tea Party in Japan
Marcel Theroux is a novelist and documentary film makers for BBC 4. He does some really interesting work. Here’s a clip from his documentary on Japan (In Search of Wabi Sabi ). I suppose that the clip below depicts some Blakean … Continue reading
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Tagged Blake, documentaries, experience, innocence, Japan, marcel theroux, Michael Jackson, pedophiles, tea, tea partiers, tea party movement, teabaggers
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21st Century Russia: Early 1930s Germany Redux?
A sobering documentary on 21st century Russia. Worth watching in full. We live in dangerous times. Here’s part 1 of 6:
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Tagged capitalism, cossacks, death, economics, fascism, global economy, life, Putin, Russia, totalitarianism
7 Comments
