Monthly Archives: June 2013

Race and the Republican Party

According to the most recent census figures, the percentage of Americans who identify themselves as “white, not Hispanic” is 63.4% of the population. The United States has about 314 million citizens, and therefore about 199 million white citizens. Why do … Continue reading

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What Goes Around Comes Around

Everything’s interconnected. The following is from G. Legman’s Rationale of the Dirty Joke Vol 2 (1973) p. 371: In a nice example of psychological displacement, Sir Walter Raleigh is said to have hit his son at the dinner table, whereupon his son in turn … Continue reading

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Does God Love Uganda?

American evangelicals certainly think so, and a new documentary, God Loves Uganda, tells the story of their interaction with the country, and how that interaction is impacting cultural politics there (most especially in relation to a new death penalty law … Continue reading

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Bill Nye on the Age of the Earth

Speaking at Iowa State University recently, Bill Nye was asked about the theory of evolution vs. the theory of special creation. Here’s how The New York Times this week reported his response (and the response he received from the audience): During … Continue reading

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What Gay Marriage Is Really About

If we zoom out to a perspective of one hundred years from now, what has the gay marriage debate of the early 21st century really been about? I think that historians of the future will see an underlying issue that … Continue reading

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“You Know Him Not, Sir”: Shakespeare And Limitations On Self-Shaping

How much can you change your life and those of others, really? That’s a question I’ve been gnawing on a bit after seeing this past weekend an outdoor staging of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. Shakespeare, famously, was obsessed … Continue reading

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James Gandolfini (Tony Soprano) Died Today

Apparently of a heart attack while in Italy. He was 51. Here’s a bit from The New York Times’ obituary: James Joseph Gandolfini Jr. was born in Westwood, N.J., on Sept. 18, 1961. His father was an Italian immigrant who … Continue reading

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Does the Bible Advocate Book Burning?

It appears so. After Paul preached the gospel in Ephesus, and won numerous converts, the Book of Acts says, with approval, that there was a book burning (19:19-20 KJV): Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books … Continue reading

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Rape in the Military

__________ The recent appalling spectacle of male obtuseness and excuse-making concerning rape in the military prompted this from Frank Bruni in the NYT yesterday: I can’t get past that widely noted image from a week ago, of the Senate hearing into the … Continue reading

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Guitarist in Blue

__________ Your country is vast, But no thing pure. Nothing is. I kiss You, playing both Parts. Off time, A little. Fingers underbug The strings attached. The hole is out front. Wood is at the back. I’m not here, here. … Continue reading

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What’s Coming (A Prediction)

A century from now, were you and I to see it, I think we would exclaim, like Miranda in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, “O brave new world that has such men in it!” And I worry that those men will not be religious … Continue reading

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Feminism is not “Anti-Science”

Some amusing and idiotic hand-wringing from an all-male panel over the fact that 4 in ten households in the United States now have a woman as the primary breadwinner. You would never know, based on this conversation, that nothing is … Continue reading

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Lee Smolin’s Time Reborn: Physics, Evolution, Atheism, and Buddhism

Theoretical physicist Lee Smolin’s new book, Time Reborn (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2013), is mind-blowing–I assume it will still be talked about fifty years from now–and I’ll do my best in this post, having read the book through with great pleasure … Continue reading

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Citi Bike. What Is It?

This YouTube on NYC’s new Citi Bike bike-share transportation option is helpful:

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An Incarnation of Shiva

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