Praise be to Allah

The woman was punished under Sharia law for wearing trousers under her Islamic clothing.

Beirut - Elephant Gun

North Shore Locals Day from MSW Six Weeks North Shore on Vimeo.

All the lonely people

By Roger Ebert Lonely people have a natural affinity for the internet. It's always there waiting, patient, flexible, suitable for every mood. But there are times when the net reminds me of the definition of a bore by Meyer the hairy economist, best friend of Travis McGee: "You know what a bore is, Travis. Someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with companionship." What do lonely people desire? Companionship. Love. Recognition. Entertainment. Camaraderie. Distraction. Encouragement. Change. Feedback. Someone once said the fundamental reason we get married is because have a universal human need for a witness. All of these are possibilities. But what all lonely people share is a desire not to be -- or at least not to feel -- alone. You are there in the interstices of the web. I sense you. I know some of you. I have read more than 78,000 comments on this blog, and many of them have been from you. I know two readers who if possible would never leave their homes. I know more who cannot easily leave, because of illness or responsibilities. I don't know of any agoraphobics, but there probably are some. Just because you're afraid to go outside doesn't mean you're happy being inside. On a blog people confess and reveal. Some don't sign their names, but what does a name mean on the internet anyway? They write to me, they write to each other, they link to blogs, and I read. They feel stranded within themselves. Some can't find romantic partners to interest them. Some have lost a great love and feel they will never love again. Others say they have a lot of sex but still feel empty. Some fear no one will ever be interested in them. Reading these comments, looking through these blogs, I sometimes feel like Miss Lonelyhearts. That's the hero of Nathanael West's novel about a man who is given the job of writing a newspaper advice column under a pseudonym. Every day he receives messages from those in need, and has no help to offer them. He feels he would have to be Jesus to perform his job. He is powerless over the pain and loneliness in his own life. I'm not setting myself above the fray. I'm right here in the middle, reading comments as if listening in on a national party line (I experience a slight dislocation when I realize how few of you have ever listened in on a party line, or even know what one is). There are comments here are on all sorts of things: Politics, literature, movies, art, health, God, the universe. Most of the comments are useful and literate, and many are elegantly written. "The best comments you are likely to find anywhere on the web," I've heard it said. But why are you writing them? Don't you have anything else to do? Every day there are untold millions of comments, texts, and online interactions. Millions. And each one says, I am here and I extend my consciousness to there. There might have been a time when humans were content to sit and simply be, like the goat I saw yesterday sitting contently in a patch of sunshine at the Lincoln Park Zoo. That time was long ago. We want the news. We want to chatter and gossip. We want to say "I am alive" in a billion billion different ways. And now here is internet, providing such an easy, easy way to do that. When I was a child the mailman came once a day. Now the mail arrives every moment. I used to believe it was preposterous that people could fall in love online. Now I see that all relationships are virtual, even those that take place in person. Whether we use our bodies or a keyboard, it all comes down to two minds crying out from their solitude. The biological reason we fall in love may be to encourage reproduction. Yet why did nature provide homosexuality if that is the only purpose? Why do people marry with no prospects of children? Babies are not the only thing two people can create together. They can create a safe private world. They can create a reality that affirms their values. They can stand for something. They can find someone to laugh with, and confide in. Someone to hold them when they need to be held. A danger of the internet would be if we begin to meet those needs without feeling there has to be another person in the room. I speak now about those who have a choice. Some people reading this don't have a choice. One woman who posted wonderful comments later revealed she was almost completely paralyzed. I think of her often, and think of her as reading. Others have disabling diseases. You already know how I'm screwed up. So, you get on with it, and you do what you can. The internet is a godsend. But that doesn't describe most of you, who are lonely for what might be a matrix of psychological, social and situational reasons. I don't know you and can't explain you. I have no advice to offer. I'm assuming you are indeed lonely, but not medically depressed. Depression can be treated with medications and therapy. It also might help to find something -- anything -- to do that you can feel is useful. But back to loneliness. I have to reveal a truth about myself: I've never felt particularly lonely. I was an only child. I came from a happy, stable home. The school bus dropped me off at 3, and my parents weren't home until after 5, but those two hours alone were treasure to me. I was a curious little boy. I always had something going. If I yearned for something in those early years, it was a delicious yearning by proxy. I listened to the radio. I found how nostalgic I was for Old Cape Cod, how much I missed Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa, oh my darling. The notes of "Twilight Time" to this moment make it late dusk on a chilly autumn afternoon, and I am on the floor caressing my dog and feeling we are together...at last...at twilight time. But it must be the instrumental version by The Three Suns. When I spent a year in Cape Town, half a world away from everyone and everything I knew, I wasn't lonely for a moment. I was enveloped in the pleasure of exile. I've always enjoyed fiction about exile; give me a novel that starts with someone alone in a room in a strange city, and I perk up. I identify with the meaning given to "nostalgia" by Tarkovsky, which in one Russian sense means a longing for one's home so sweet and sharp one might almost leave home in order to feel it. I've never understood this bittersweet narcissism within myself. I love to wander lonely streets in unknown cities. To find a cafe and order a coffee and think to myself -- here I am, known to no one, drinking my coffee and reading my paper. To sit somewhere just barely out of the rain, and declare that my fortress. I think of myself in the third person: Who is he? What is his mystery? I have explained before how I'm attracted to anonymous formica restaurants where I can read my book and look forward to rice pudding for desert. To leave that warm place and enter the dark city is a strange pleasure. Nostalgia perhaps. For many years I was an alcoholic, and I never felt lonely then. I could feel sick, I could feel despair, but I could never feel lonely. A drink would lift me up. I was never a morose drunk. Alcohol makes you feel better and then makes you feel worse and then remorselessly very bad indeed, but then alcohol will make you feel better again. It is the cure for the dog that bit you, and how easily you forget it is also the dog. Good Doctor Schlichter told me, "It is the one relationship you have learned to count on, with the bottle." Thank God I found sobriety. I could sustain myself with my work, my reading, the movies, my friends. And walking, walking, walking. Of all the purposes of education, I think the most useful is this: It prepares you to keep yourself entertained. It gives you a better chance of an interesting job. Those who stare at the TV for hours might as well be sitting on a stone under a tree in a primeval village; indeed, that might offer more interest and variety. I can't remember the last time I felt bored. I can't eat, drink or talk, and yet I have so many other resources to keep myself entertained. I think I must be a case study. For nearly 20 years I have been happily married to Chaz, and before that there were other kind women in my life. But I don't believe I ever dated to fight off loneliness. I thought of myself as self-contained. I was one-stop shopping. I was happy one summer to rent a car and drive alone from the Lake District up through Scotland, finding my way from one bed and breakfast to another. I always had a good book going, I sketched, I talked to strangers, I wandered, but not lonely as a cloud. A few weeks ago, something happened. Chaz needed emergency surgery. There were two nights when I was alone and she was in the hospital, just as there were months when she was alone and I was in the hospital. And in the middle of the night a great fear enveloped me. If "anything happened" (as they say), I would be so terribly, terribly alone, and sad. I would miss her so much. This feeling came over me in a wave. I pulled the covers tighter around me. Then I would know what loneliness was. An illumination came into my mind, and with it the words of a song that has haunted me: Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got, till it's gone? Perhaps I wasn't lonely before because I didn't have it, so it couldn't be gone. http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/11/all_the_lonely_people.html

Walking away from church

By Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell

The most rapidly growing religious category today is composed of those Americans who say they have no religious affiliation. While middle-aged and older Americans continue to embrace organized religion, rapidly increasing numbers of young people are rejecting it.

So, why this sudden jump in youthful disaffection from organized religion? The surprising answer, according to a mounting body of evidence, is politics. Very few of these new "nones" actually call themselves atheists, and many have rather conventional beliefs about God and theology. But they have been alienated from organized religion by its increasingly conservative politics.

Evangelical Protestantism, which saw dramatic growth in the 1970s and 1980s, has been hit hard by this more recent development. From the early 1970s to the late 1980s the fraction of Americans age 18 to 29 who identified with evangelical Protestantism rose to 25% from 20%, but since 1990, that fraction has fallen back to about 17%. Meanwhile, the proportion of young Americans who have no religious affiliation at all rose from just over 10% as late as 1990 to its current proportion of about 27%.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-1017-putnam-religion-20101017,0,6283320.story

Father and Son Send iPhone Into Space

Homemade Spacecraft from Luke Geissbuhler on Vimeo.

Sebastian Seung: I am my connectome

In the brain, neurons are connected into a complex network. Sebastian Seung and his lab at MIT are inventing technologies for identifying and describing the connectome, the totality of connections between the brain's neurons -- think of it as the wiring diagram of the brain. We possess our entire genome at birth, but things like memories are not "stored" in the genome; they are acquired through life and accumulated in the brain. Seung's hypothesis is that "we are our connectome," that the connections among neurons is where memories and experiences get stored. Seung and his collaborators, including Winfried Denk at the Max Planck Institute and Jeff Lichtman at Harvard University, are working on a plan to thin-slice a brain (probably starting with a mouse brain) and trace, from slice to slice, each neural pathway, exposing the wiring diagram of the brain and creating a powerful new way to visualize the workings of the mind. They're not the first to attempt something like this -- Sydney Brenner won a Nobel for mapping all the 7,000 connections in the nervous system of a tiny worm, C. elegans. But that took his team a dozen years, and the worm only had 302 nerve cells. One of Seung's breakthroughs is in using advanced imagining and AI to handle the crushing amount of data that a mouse brain will yield and turn it into richly visual maps that show the passageways of thought and sensation.

Atheists, agnostics most knowledgeable about religion, survey says

By Mitchell Landsberg, Los Angeles Times So why would an atheist know more about religion than a Christian? American atheists and agnostics tend to be people who grew up in a religious tradition and consciously gave it up, often after a great deal of reflection and study, said Alan Cooperman, associate director for research at the Pew Forum. "These are people who thought a lot about religion," he said. "They're not indifferent. They care about it." Atheists and agnostics also tend to be relatively well educated, and the survey found, not surprisingly, that the most knowledgeable people were also the best educated. However, it said that atheists and agnostics also outperformed believers who had a similar level of education. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-religion-survey-20100928,0,3225238.story

NASA | Dust Simulations Paint Alien's View of the Solar System

서시(序詩)

죽는 날까지 하늘을 우르러 한점 부끄럼이 없기를, 잎새에 이는 바람에도 나는 괴로워했다. 별을 노래하는 마음으로 모든 죽어가는것을 사랑해야지 그리고 나한테 주어진 길을 걸어가야겠다. 오늘밤에도 별이 바람에 스치운다. Yun Dong-ju (December 30, 1917 - February 16, 1945) was a Korean poet active during the period of Japanese rule. He was known for his writing of lyric poetry as well as resistance poetry against Japanese.

Real Americans, Please Stand Up

By Dick Cavett Our goal in at least one of our Middle East wars is to rebuild a government in our own image — with democracy for all. Instead, we are rebuilding ourselves in the image of those who detest us. I hate to see my country — and it’s a hell of a good one — endorse what we purport to hate, besmirching what distinguishes us from countries where persecution rules. Too bad that legions oppose this. A woman tells the news guy on the street, “I have absolutely no prejudice against the Muslim people. My cousin is married to one. I just don’t see why they have to be here.” A man complains that his opposition to the mosque is “painting me like I hate the whole Arab world.” (Perhaps he dislikes them all as individuals?) I remain amazed and really, sincerely, want to understand this. What can it be that is faulty in so many people’s thought processes, their ethics, their education, their experience of life, their understanding of their country, their what-have-you that blinds them to the fact that you can’t simultaneously maintain that you have nothing against members of any religion but are willing to penalize members of this one? Can you help me with this? Read the rest at http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/real-americans-please-stand-up/?hp

You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.

-Anne Lamott

In general, when you ask for a majority rules vote on minority rights, you get results like what we've seen on the gay marriage issue. 31 out of 31 times, in 31 out of 31 states, voters voted it down. But here's the thing about rights: they're not actually supposed to be voted on. That's why they're called rights.

- Rachel Maddow

For the win

Christopher Hitchens vs John Lennox
Uploaded by blindwatcher. - News videos hot off the press.

David Foster Wallace on Life and Work

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things -- if they are where you tap real meaning in life -- then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already -- it's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power -- you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart -- you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on. Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default-settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing. And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default-settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the "rat race" -- the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing. read the rest at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122178211966454607.html#printMode

단순한 삶이 마음을 평온하게 하고 근원적인 눈을 뜨게 한다. 단순한 삶을 이루려면 투철한 자기 억제와 자기 질서를 가져야 한다. 보지 않아도 좋을 것은 보지 말고, 듣지 않아도 좋을 것은 듣지 말고, 읽지 않아도 좋을 것은 읽지 말며, 먹지 않아도 좋을 음심은 먹지 말아야 한다. 그래서 될 수 있는 한 가려 가면서 적게 보고, 적게 듣고, 적게 입고, 적게 먹어야 한다. 그래야 인간이 성숙해지고 승화될 수 있다. -법정 스님

Horace Silver - Senor Blues

Bridezilla

A bridezilla (a neologistic portmanteau of bride and Godzilla) is a difficult, unpleasant, perfectionist bride who leaves irritated family, friends and bridal vendors in her wake. She is often called greedy, selfish and spoiled; not caring about the people that she hurts to get exactly what she wants on her perfect day.

Every living creature on Earth dies alone.

Best of Christopher Hitchens

Get well soon, Christopher...

3D Atlas of the Universe

"What the world needs now is a sense of being able to look at ourself in this much larger condition now, and a much larger sense of what home is. Because our home is the universe and we are the universe essentially. We carry that in us. To be able to see our context in this larger sense at all scales helps us all, I think, in understanding where we are and who we are in the universe." This is why I cannot believe in a god.

Lindy Hop - Hellzapoppin (1941)

Developed in Harlem ballrooms in the mid-1920's, the Lindy Hop was named after Charles Lindbergh's celebrated "hop" across the Atlantic in 1927. At the Savoy Ballroom, an especially important location for this dance, Lindy Hoppers created a flowing, athletic style that perfectly suited the swing music of the 1930s. They developed two impressive virtuosic elements: the so-called breakaway, in which dancers would drop hands and improvise solo steps (often during improvised solos in the band); and aerials, high-flying movements in which the boy would toss the girl into the air. Soon hordes of young white kids began learning the Lindy Hop. To facilitate dancing, girls wore bobby socks and saddle shoes; to accentuate their flowing movements, they sported billowing skirts. In white circles, the Lindy Hop was typically called the Jitterbug.

All in this world is heavy with the promise of greater things, and a day will come, one day in the unending succession of days, when beings, beings who are now latent in our thoughts and hidden in our loins, shall stand upon this earth as one stands upon a footstool, and shall laugh and reach their hands amidst the stars. H.G. Well, 1902

One of the highest forms of pleasure

Seattle Nashville Lincoln Portland Las Vegas New York

The human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference, are exercised only in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice. He gains no practice either in discerning or in desiring what is best. The mental and moral, like the muscular powers, are improved only by being used . . . He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty that the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties.
 -John Stuart Mill, On Liberty 1859

Centennial Oration

By Robert Ingersoll One hundred years ago, our fathers retired the gods from politics. The Declaration of Independence is the grandest, the bravest, and the profoundest political document that was ever signed by the representatives of a people. It is the embodiment of physical and moral courage and of political wisdom. I say of physical courage, because it was a declaration of war against the most powerful nation then on the globe; a declaration of war by thirteen weak, unorganized colonies; a declaration of war by a few people, without military stores, without wealth, without strength, against the most powerful kingdom on the earth; a declaration of war made when the British navy, at that day the mistress of every sea, was hovering along the coast of America, looking after defenseless towns and villages to ravage and destroy. It was made when thousands of English soldiers were upon our soil, and when the principal cities of America were in the substantial possession of the enemy. And so, I say, all things considered, it was the bravest political document ever signed by man. And if it was physically brave, the moral courage of the document is almost infinitely beyond the physical. They had the courage not only, but they had the almost infinite wisdom, to declare that all men are created equal. With one blow, with one stroke of the pen, they struck down all the cruel, heartless barriers that aristocracy, that priestcraft, that king-craft had raised between man and man. They struck down with one immortal blow that infamous spirit of caste that makes a God almost a beast, and a beast almost a god. With one word, with one blow, they wiped away and utterly destroyed, all that had been done by centuries of war -- centuries of hypocrisy -- centuries of injustice. Our fathers founded the first secular government that was ever founded in this world. Recollect that. The first secular government; the first government that said every church has exactly the same rights and no more; every religion has the same rights, and no more. In other words, our fathers were the first men who had the sense, had the genius, to know that no church should be allowed to have a sword; thai it should be allowed only to exert its moral influence. You might as well have a government united by force with Art, or with Poetry, or with Oratory, as with Religion. Religion should have the influence upon mankind that its goodness, that its morality, its justice, its charity, its reason, and its argument give it, and no more. Religion should have the effect upon mankind that it necessarily has, and no more. The religion that has to be supported by law is. without value, not only, but a fraud and curse. The religious argument that has to be supported by a musket, is hardly worth making. A prayer that must have a cannon behind it, better never be uttered. Forgiveness ought not to go in partnership with shot and shell. Love need not carry knives and revolvers. They signed that Declaration of Independence, although they knew that it would produce a long, terrible, and bloody war. They looked forward and saw poverty, deprivation, gloom, and death. But they also saw, on the wrecked clouds of war, the beautiful bow of freedom. I will not name any of the grand men who fought for liberty. All should be named, or none. I feel that the unknown soldier who was shot down without even his name being remembered -- who was included only in a report of "a hundred killed," or "a hundred missing," nobody knowing even the number that attached to his august corpse -- is entitled to as deep and heartfelt thanks as the titled leader who fell at the head of the host. Our country is founded upon the dignity of labor -- upon the equality of man. Ours is the first real Republic in the history of the world. Beneath our flag the people are free. We have retired the gods from politics. We have found that man is the only source of political power, and that the governed should govern. We have disfranchised the aristocrats of the air and have given one country to mankind.

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of the Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinaries, that are here. -Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow

Our Cousins

Christopher Hitchens vs William Lane Craig

Another one bites the dust. William Lane Craig was plain pathetic. I can only imagine the Biola students feeling a sense of shame that Craig had to represent the theistic view. So far the only commendable theist to debate Christopher Hitchens was Douglas Wilson. A clip from the debate.

How do they get to be that way?

By Roger Ebert http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/06/how_would_i_feel_if.html How would I feel if I were a brown student at Miller Valley Elementary School in Prescott, Arizona? A mural was created to depict some of the actual students in the school. Let's say I was one of the lucky ones. The mural took shape, and as my face became recognizable, I took some kidding from my classmates and a smile from a pretty girl I liked. My parents even came over one day to have a look and take some photos to e-mail to the family. The mural was shown on TV, and everybody could see that it was me. Then a City Councilman named Steve Blair went on his local radio talk show and made some comments about the mural. I didn't hear him, but I can guess what he said. My dad says it's open season on brown people in this state. Anyway, for two months white people drove past in their cars and screamed angry words out the window before hurrying away. And the artists got back up on their scaffold and started making my face whiter. We went over to my grandparent's house, and my grandmother cried and told me, "I prayed that was ending in my lifetime." Then there was more news: The City Councilman was fired from his radio show, the Superintendent of Schools climbed up on the scaffold with a bullhorn and apologized for the bad decision, and I guess the artists went back up and started making my skin darker again, but I didn't go to see, because I never wanted to go near that bullshit mural again. I am not that American child. I am an American who was born before the schools were integrated in the South. I am an Midwesterner who went with his mother on a trip to Washington, D.C., and my cousin's company driver showed us the sights, but when we stopped for lunch at Howard Johnson's he explained he couldn't go inside because they didn't serve colored people. "But you're with us!" I said. "I know," he said, smiling over my head at my mother, "but they don't know who you are." Inside, I asked my mother why they wouldn't serve him. "They have their own nice places to eat," she said. I don't believe she was particularly upset on his behalf. The first time I noticed that people had different colors of skin I was a very small boy. Our family laundry was done by a colored women on Champaign's North Side. She was our "warsher woman." Downstate you pronounced an invisible "R," so we lived on Warshington Street. I sat down on the floor to play with her son, who was about my age, and he showed me his palm and said it was as white as my palm. I noticed for the first time that the rest of him wasn't. In Catholic grade school, there was a colored boy in my class--that was the word we used, "colored," although Negro was more formal. I remember the class being informed by a nun that he was "just as precious as the rest of you in the eyes of God." I believed most of what the nuns told us, and I believed that. It made sense. Some years later it occurred to me to wonder how he felt felt when he was singled out. There were Negro students at Urbana High School, and I knew the athletes because I covered sports for the local newspaper. I didn't know them, you understand, in the sense of going to their homes or hanging out at the Steak n Shake, and I don't recall any of them at the Tigers' Den, the city's teen hangout in downtown Urbana. They did attend our school dances. There was a kid who wasn't an athlete, who I liked, and we talked and kidded around, but in those days, well, that was about that. Strangely, during this time the "idea" of Negroes was on a wholly different track in my mind. I read incessantly during high school, and I met them in the novels of Thomas Wolfe and William Faulkner. I read Richard Wright's Black Boy and Native Son and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. So I had this concept shaping in my mind that bore no relationship to what was going on in my life. It was theoretical. This is not a record of my reading but of my understanding. I don't know if you can understand what it was like in those days. Racism was ingrained in daily life. It wasn't the overt racism of the South, but more like the pervading background against which which we lived. We were here and they were there and, well, we wished them well, but that was how it was. At this time it was becoming clear to me that I was not merely a Democrat, as I had been raised, but a liberal. When Eisenhower sent the National Guard to Arkansas, I defended him against some who said the federal government had no right interfering. So that was my political position. But where were my feelings centered? Theory will only take you so far. In college, my understanding shifted. I attended the National Student Congress every summer, and during the one held at Ohio State, two things happened. I gave a dollar to Tom Hayden and he handed me my membership card in Students for a Democratic Society. And one night during a party at Rosa Luxembourg House, I met a Negro girl and we went outside and sat in the back seat of a car and we talked and kissed and she was sweet and gentle and she smelled of Ivory Soap. We feel asleep in each other's arms. We met again in maybe 10 years later in New York City, recognizing each other on the street, and had a drink and talked about how young we had been. In my inner development, I had been younger than she knew. Those were the days of the Civil Rights Movement. We linked hands and sang "We Shall Overcome." We protested. We demonstrated. Among the students I met at those Student Congresses were Stokely Carmichael, Julian Bond--and, for that matter, Barney Frank. They were born to be who they became. I was still in a process of change. My emotional life was catching up to my intellectual or political life. Later in the 1960s Negros became Blacks. As a movie critic, I sort of watched that happening. The new usage first appears in my reviews around 1967 or 1968. Afros. Angela Davis. Black exploitation movies. Black is beautiful. Long interviews with Ossie Davis, Brock Peters, Sidney Poitier, Abbey Lincoln, Yaphet Kotto. What point am I making? None. It's not as if I sat at their feet and learned about race. It's more that the whole climate was changing, growing more free and open, and the movies were changing, too. At some time during the years after the day I sat on the floor and looked at that little boy's palm, something happened inside me and I saw black people differently--and brown people and Asians as well. I made friends, I dated, I worked with them, I drank with them, we cooked, we partied, we laughed, sometimes we loved. This is as it should have been from the start of my life, but I was born into a different America and was a child of my times until I learned enough to grow up. I do not propose myself as an example, because I was carried along with my society as it awkwardly felt and fought its way out of racism. When I proposed marriage to Chaz, it was because of the best possible reason: I wanted to be married to this woman. Howard Stern asked me on the radio one day if I thought of Chaz as being black every time I looked at her. I didn't resent the question. Howard Stern's gift is the nerve to ask personal questions. I told him, honestly, that when I looked at her I saw Chaz. Chaz. A fact. A person of enormous importance to me. Chaz. A history. Memories. Love. Passion. Laughter. Her Chaz-ness filled my field of vision. Yes, I see that she is black, and she sees that I am white, but how sad it would be if that were in the foreground. Now, with so many of my own family dead, her family gives me a family, an emotional home I need. Before our first trip out of town, she took me home to meet her mother. I believe at some point in the development of healthy people there must come a time when we instinctively try to understand how others feel. We may not succeed. There are many people in this world today who remain enigmas to me, and some who are offensive. But that is not because of their race. It is usually because of their beliefs. That brings me back around to the story of the school mural. I began up above by imagining I was a student in Prescott, Arizona, with my face being painted over. That was easy for me. What I cannot imagine is what it would be like to be one of those people driving past in their cars day after day and screaming hateful things out of the window. How do you get to that place in your life? Were you raised as a racist, or become one on your own? Yes, there was racism involved as my mother let the driver wait outside in the car, but my mother had not evolved past that point at that time. The hard-won social struggles of the 1960s and before have fundamentally altered the feelings most of us breathe, and we have evolved, and that is how America will survive. We are all in this together. But what about the people in those cars? They don't breathe that air. They don't think of the feelings of the kids on the mural. They don't like those kids in the school. It's not as if they have reasons. They simply hate. Why would they do that? What have they shut down inside? Why do they resent the rights of others? Our rights must come first before our fears. And our rights are their rights, whoever "they" are. Not along ago I read this observation by Clint Eastwood: "The less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudice." Do the drive-by haters feel insecure? How are they threatened? What have they talked themselves into? Who benefits by feeding off their fear? We have a black man in the White House, and I suspect they don't like that very much. They don't want to accept the reality that other races live here right along with them, and are doing just fine and making a contribution and the same sun rises and sets on us all. Do they fear their own adequacy? Do they grasp for assurance that they're "better"--which means, not worse? Those poor people. It must be agony to live with such hate, and to seek the company of others so damaged. One day in high school study hall, a Negro girl walked in who had dyed her hair a lighter brown. Laughter spread through the room. We had never, ever, seen that done before. It was unexpected, a surprise, and our laughter was partly an expression of nervousness and uncertainty. I don't think we wanted to be cruel. But we had our ideas about Negroes, and her hair didn't fit. Think of her. She wanted to try her hair a lighter brown, and perhaps her mother and sisters helped her, and she was told she looked pretty, and then she went to school and we laughed at her. I wonder if she has ever forgotten that day. God damn it, how did we make her feel? We have to make this country a place where no one needs to feel that way.

The Stats on Internet Pornography

Pornography has been traded online since the 1980’s, even in the form of ASCII art, and then, with the rise of the world wide web in the 1990’s, adult webistes began springing up everywhere. Here are the figures for the enormous world of internet pornography.
Via: Online MBA

Of course, they were asking for it

By Mark Steel http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/mark-steel/mark-steel-of-course-they-were-asking-for-it-1988684.html It's time the Israeli government's PR team made the most of its talents, and became available for hire. Then whenever a nutcase marched into a shopping mall in somewhere like Wisconsin and gunned down a selection of passers-by, they could be on hand to tell the world's press "The gunman regrets the loss of life but did all he could to avoid violence." Then various governments would issue statements saying "All we know is a man went berserk with an AK 47, and next to him there's a pile of corpses, so until we know the facts we can't pass judgement on what took place." To strengthen their case the Israelis have released a photo of the weapons they found on board, (which amount to some knives and tools and wooden sticks) that the naive might think you'd expect to find on any ship, but the more astute will recognise as exactly what you'd carry if you were planning to defeat the Israeli army. It's an armoury smaller than you'd find in the average toolshed in a garden in Cirencester, which goes to show the Israelis had better destroy Cirencester quickly as an essential act of self-defence. It's a shame they weren't more imaginative, as they could have said "We also discovered a deadly barometer, a ship's compass, which could not only be frisbeed at someone's head but even had markings to help the assailant know which direction he was throwing it, and a set of binoculars that could easily be converted into a ray-gun." That would be as logical as the statement from the Israeli PM's spokesman – "We made every possible effort to avoid this incident." Because the one tiny thing they forgot to do to avoid this incident was not send in armed militia from helicopters in the middle of the night and shoot people. I must be a natural at this sort of technique because I often go all day without climbing off a helicopter and shooting people, and I'm not even making every possible effort. Politicians and commentators worldwide repeat a version of this line. They're aware a nation has sent its militia to confront people carrying provisions for the desperate, in the process shooting several of them dead, and yet they angrily blame the dead ones. One typical headline yesterday read "Activists got what they wanted – confrontation." It's an attitude so deranged it deserves to be registered as a psychosis, something like "Reverse Slaughter Victim Confusion Syndrome". Israel and its supporters claim that Viva Palestina, made up of people who collect the donated food, cement and items for providing basic amenities such as toilets, and transport them to Gaza, wanted the violence all along. Because presumably they must have been thinking "Hezbollah couldn't beat them, but that's because unlike us they didn't have a ballcock and several boxes of plum tomatoes". One article told us the flotilla was full of "Thugs spoiling for a confrontation", and then accused them of being "Less about aid and more about PR. Indeed, on board was Swedish novelist Henning Mankell." So were they thugs or about PR? Did they have a thugs' section and a PR quarter, or did they all muck in, the novelist diverting the soldiers with his characterisation while the thugs attacked them with a lethal spirit level? But some defenders of Israel are so blind to what happens in front of them there's nothing at all they wouldn't jump to defend. Israel could blow up a cats home and within five minutes they'd be yelling "How do we know the cats weren't smuggling semtex in their fur for Hamas?" If this incident had been carried about by Iran, or anyone we were trying to portray as an enemy, so much condemnation would have been spewed out it would have created a vast cloud of outrage that airlines would be unable to fly through. But as it's Israel, most governments offer a few diplomatic words that blame no one, but accept the deaths are "regrettable". They might as well have picked any random word from the dictionary, so the news would tell us "William Hague described the deaths as 'hexagonal'", and a statement from the US senate said "It's all very confusing. In future let's hope they make every effort to avoid a similar incident."

Sharia Law

She's buried chest high Her arms can't stop the stones that fly or wipe the tears that have already dried for a crime she so persistently denied She's buried chest deep The moderates asleep No matter how hard she weeps Worth half of a man, her testimony's cheap Allah subhana wa ta'ala has come up with such a fair rule Dictators of history couldn't be so cruel Told by Mohammed sallahu alhe wa salam Teaching us Allah's divine referendum What becomes of those who have a sip of rum Drinks to forget or wants to be numb or those who play the game of chance Poker buddies escaping the religious trance Allah's prescribed in his merciful script Their flesh be ripped their blood be dripped at the tip of a muslims whip She's buried chest high Her arms can't stop the stones that fly or wipe the tears that have already dried for a crime she so persistently denied and this is allah's eternal reply 1400 years of backwards law A tragic flaw of the primitive claw The tribe of homosexuals Koum lot as they say Sharia is clear on how they should pay The price for their gay display Life doesn't matter which way Abu baker got them with a tumbling wall Ali muhammad's cousin and son in law Had people burned for their sexual call An entire village children and all She's buried chest deep The moderates asleep No matter how hard she weeps Worth half of a manher testimony's cheap Apostates remember those who have bled To speak the word Muslims leave unsaid Killed for the sake of those mislead Submit now or be left dead allah subhana wa ta'ala has come up with such a fair rule The devil himself couldn't be so cruel She's buried chest high half way deep While the moderates are still fast asleep While the world stands silent Her testimony's cheap. Stones thrown by religious sheep. Witches were burned long ago til the flame of freedom began to glow and we learned to say the word 'no' No know that your laws are unjust not worthy of respect only disgust Beheading those with a knifes thrust Oh but in Allah we blindly trust She's buried head high in a heap of stones. No more crying no more moans All that's left is skin and bones Allah has come up with such a fair call The true justice of sharia law

길위에서

The Internet: Where religions come to die

Sweden, Canada outrank U.S. on healthcare

People living in countries with government-run healthcare systems like Sweden and Canada are far more confident than Americans that their families can get good, affordable care, according to a 22-nation survey released on Thursday. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63E2TO20100415

당신의 조각들

어머니 아버지... 낳아주시고 길러주신 부모님 감사합니다 사랑합니다
당신의 눈동자, 내 생의 첫 거울. 그속에 맑았던 내 모습 다시 닮아주고파. 거대한 은하수조차 무색하게 만들던 당신의 쌍둥이 별. 내 슬픔조차 대신 흘려줬던 여울. 그속에 많았던 그 눈물 다시 담아주고파. 그 두눈속에 숨고자했어. 당신이 세상이던 작은 시절. 당신의 두 손, 내 생의 첫 저울. 세상이 준 거짓과 진실의 무계를 재주곤했던 내 삶의 지구본. 그 가르침은 뼈더미 날개에 다는 깃털. 기억해. 두손과 시간도 얼었던 겨울. 당신 과 만든 눈사람. 찬 바람속에 그 종소리가 난 다시 듣고파. 따뜻하게 당신의 두손을 잡은 시절. 당신의 눈, 당신의 손. 영원히 당신의 눈을 바라보며 손을쥐고싶어. 벌써 시간을 되돌리고 싶어. 때로는 시간을 다스려 손에 가지고파. 그대가 내가 될 수 있게 보내 날리고파. 난 그대 청춘에 그 봄의 노래 잠기고파. 나 역시 어리던 당신의 볼을 만지고파. 그대 인생의 절반을 잘라 날 위해 살았고, 남은 인생의 전부를 또 나를 위해 살아도 하찮은 내가 줄 수 있는 거라곤, 한 평생 그대가 바라고 비는 성한 몸. 언제까지나 받고 받아 이제는 건네고 싶은데, 받은 건 모두 날 위해 쌓아 멋내고 쉬는게 그리고 어려워서 모두 거절할까? 아직도 일에 지쳐 사는 건 또 병되고싫은데. 그대 옷자락의 묵은 때보다 더 검은 내 죄로 그대 머리에는 눈이 내려. 가슴 을 시리게 만들어 내 숨이 죄여. 오늘도 이별의 하루가 지나 꿈이 되면 그대를 찾아갈래요.그댈 따라갈래요. 당 신의 발자국에 발을 맞춰 내가 살아 갈래요. 얼마남지도 않은 우리 둘의 모래 시계 행복의 사막 그 안에서 우리 오래 쉬게. every piece, every little piece of you is peace. 당신의 많은 조각들, 난 당신의 조각 조각들. 
-written by 이선웅

Palin: America is a Christian Nation

Jesus Come to Life

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Why the tears?

Obama Michigan Graduation Speech

It is great to be here in the Big House, and may I say "Go Blue!" I thought I'd go for the cheap applause line to start things off. Good afternoon President Coleman, the Board of Trustees, faculty, parents, family, friends, and the class of 2010. Congratulations on your graduation, and thank you for allowing me the honor to be a part of it. And let me acknowledge your wonderful governor, Jennifer Granholm, your mayor, John Hieftje, and all the Members of Congress who are here with us today. I am happy to join you all today, and even happier to spend a little time away from Washington. Don't get me wrong - it's a beautiful city. And it sure is nice living above the store; can't beat the commute. It's just that sometimes, all you hear in Washington is the clamor of politics - a noise that can drown out the voices of the people who sent you there. So when I took office, I decided that each night, I would read ten letters out of the thousands sent to us every day by ordinary Americans - a modest effort to remind myself of why I ran in the first place. Some of these letters tell stories of heartache and struggle. Some express gratitude, and some express anger. Some call me an idiot, which is how you know I'm getting a good sample. And some of the letters make you think, like the one I received last month from a kindergarten class in Virginia. The teacher of this class instructed the students to ask me any question they wanted. One asked, "How do you do your job?" Another asked, "Do you work a lot?" Somebody wanted to know if I wear a black jacket or if I have a beard - clearly getting me mixed up with that other guy from Illinois. And then there was my favorite: "Do you live next to a volcano?" But it was the last question in the letter that gave me pause. The student asked, "Are people being nice?" Well, if you turn on the news today - particularly one of the cable channels - you can see why even a kindergartener would ask this question. We've got politicians calling each other all sorts of unflattering names. Pundits and talking heads shout at each other. The media tends to play up every hint of conflict, because it makes for a sexier story - which means anyone interested in getting coverage feels compelled to make the most outrageous comments. Now, some of this can be attributed to the incredibly difficult moment in which we find ourselves as a nation. When you leave here today, you will search for work in an economy that is still emerging from the worst crisis since the Great Depression. You live in a century where the speed with which jobs and industries move across the globe is forcing America to compete like never before. You will raise your children at a time when threats like terrorism and climate change aren't confined within the borders of any one country. And as our world grows smaller and more connected, you will live and work with more people who don't look like you or think like you or come from where you do. These kinds of changes and challenges cause tension. They make people worry about the future and sometimes they get folks riled up. In fact, this isn't a new phenomenon. Since the days of our founding, American politics has never been a particularly nice business - and it's always been a little less gentle during times of great change. A newspaper of the opposing party once editorialized that if Thomas Jefferson were elected, "Murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will be openly taught and practiced." Not subtle. Opponents of Andrew Jackson often referred to his mother as a "common prostitute," which seems a bit over the top. Presidents from Teddy Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson have been accused of promoting socialism, or worse. And we've had arguments between politicians that have been settled with actual duels. There was even a caning once on the floor of the United States Senate - which I'm happy to say didn't happen while I was there. The point is, politics has never been for the thin-skinned or the faint-of-heart, and if you enter the arena, you should expect to get roughed up. Moreover, democracy in a nation of more than three hundred million people is inherently difficult. It has always been noisy and messy; contentious and complicated. We have been fighting about the proper size and role of government since the day the Framers gathered in Philadelphia. We have battled over the meaning of individual freedom and equality since the Bill of Rights was drafted. As our economy has shifted emphasis from agriculture to industry to information and technology, we have argued and struggled at each and every juncture over the best way to ensure that all of our citizens have a shot at opportunity. So before we get too down on the current state of our politics, we need to remember our history. The great debates of the past all stirred great passion. They all made some angry. What is amazing is that despite all the conflict; despite all its flaws and frustrations, our experiment in democracy has worked better than any other form of government on Earth. On the last day of the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was famously asked, "Well, Doctor, what have we got - a Republic or a Monarchy?" And Franklin gave an answer that's been quoted for ages: "A Republic, if you can keep it." Well, for more than two hundred years, we have kept it. Through revolution and civil war, our democracy has survived. Through depression and world war, it has prevailed. Through periods of great social and economic unrest, from civil rights to women's rights, it has allowed us slowly, and sometimes painfully, to move towards a more perfect union. And now the question for your generation is this: how will you keep our democracy going? At a moment when our challenges seem so big and our politics seem so small, how will you keep our democracy alive and well in this century? I'm not here to offer some grand theory or detailed policy prescription. But let me offer a few brief reflections based on my own experiences and the experiences of our country over the last two centuries. First, American democracy has thrived because we have recognized the need for a government that, while limited, can still help us adapt to a changing world. On the fourth panel of the Jefferson Memorial is a quote I remember reading to Sasha during our first visit there. It says, "I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but...with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times." The democracy designed by Jefferson and the other founders was never intended to solve every problem with a new law or a new program. Having thrown off the tyranny of the British Empire, the first Americans were understandably skeptical of government. Ever since, we have held fast to the belief that government doesn't have all the answers, and we have cherished and fiercely defended our individual freedom. That is a strand of our nation's DNA. But the other strand is the belief that there are some things we can only do together, as one nation - and that our government must keep pace with the times. When America expanded from a few colonies to an entire continent, and we needed a way to reach the Pacific, our government helped build the railroads. When we transitioned from an economy based on farms to one based in factories, and workers needed new skills and training, our nation set up a system of public high schools. When the markets crashed during the Depression and people lost their life savings, our government put in place a set of rules and safeguards to make sure that such a crisis never happened again. And because our markets and financial system have evolved since then, we're now putting in place new rules and safeguards to protect the American people. This notion hasn't always been partisan. It was the first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, who said that the role of government is to do for the people what they cannot do better for themselves. He would go on to begin that first intercontinental railroad and set up the first land-grant colleges. It was another Republican, Teddy Roosevelt, who said that "the object of government is the welfare of the people." He is remembered for using the power of government to break up monopolies, and establishing our National Park system. Democrat Lyndon Johnson announced the Great Society during a commencement here at Michigan, but it was the Republican president before him, Dwight Eisenhower, who launched the massive government undertaking known as the Interstate Highway System. Of course, there have always been those who've opposed such efforts. They argue that government intervention is usually inefficient; that it restricts individual freedom and dampens individual initiative. And in certain instances, that's been true. For many years, we had a welfare system that too often discouraged people from taking responsibility for their own upward mobility. At times, we've neglected the role that parents, rather than government, can play in cultivating a child's education. Sometimes regulation fails, and sometimes its benefits do not justify its costs. But what troubles me is when I hear people say that all of government is inherently bad. One of my favorite signs from the health care debate was one that read "Keep Government Out Of My Medicare," which is essentially like saying "Keep Government Out Of My Government-Run Health Care." For when our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening foreign entity, it conveniently ignores the fact in our democracy, government is us. We, the people, hold in our hands the power to choose our leaders, change our laws, and shape our own destiny. Government is the police officers who are here protecting us and the service men and women who are defending us abroad. Government is the roads you drove in on and the speed limits that kept you safe. Government is what ensures that mines adhere to safety standards and that oil spills are cleaned up by the companies that caused them. Government is this extraordinary public university - a place that is doing life-saving research, catalyzing economic growth, and graduating students who will change the world around them in ways big and small. The truth is, the debate we've had for decades between more government and less government doesn't really fit the times in which we live. We know that too much government can stifle competition, deprive us of choice, and burden us with debt. But we've also seen clearly the dangers of too little government - like when a lack of accountability on Wall Street nearly led to the collapse of our entire economy. So what we should be asking is not whether we need a "big government" or a "small government," but how we can create a smarter, better government. In an era of iPods and Tivo, where we have more choices than ever before, government shouldn't try to dictate your lives. But it should give you the tools you need to succeed. Our government shouldn't try to guarantee results, but it should guarantee a shot at opportunity for every American who's willing to work hard. The point is, we can and should debate the role of government in our lives, but remember, as you are asked to meet the challenges of our time, that the ability for us to adapt our government to the needs of the age has helped make our democracy work since its inception. The second way to keep our democracy healthy is to maintain a basic level of civility in our public debate. These arguments we're having over government and health care and war and taxes are serious arguments. They should arouse people's passions, and it's important for everyone to join in the debate, with all the rigor that a free people require. But we cannot expect to solve our problems if all we do is tear each other down. You can disagree with a certain policy without demonizing the person who espouses it. You can question someone's views and their judgment without questioning their motives or their patriotism. Throwing around phrases like "socialist" and "Soviet-style takeover;" "fascist" and "right-wing nut" may grab headlines, but it also has the effect of comparing our government, or our political opponents, to authoritarian, and even murderous regimes. Again, we have seen this kind of politics in the past. It's been practiced by both fringes of the ideological spectrum, by the left and the right, since our nation's birth. The problem with it is not the hurt feelings or the bruised egos of the public officials who are criticized. The problem is that this kind of vilification and over-the-top rhetoric closes the door to the possibility of compromise. It undermines democratic deliberation. It prevents learning - since after all, why should we listen to a "fascist" or "socialist" or "right wing nut?" It makes it nearly impossible for people who have legitimate but bridgeable differences to sit down at the same table and hash things out. It robs us of a rational and serious debate that we need to have about the very real and very big challenges facing this nation. It coarsens our culture, and at its worst, it can send signals to the most extreme elements of our society that perhaps violence is a justifiable response. So what can we do about this? As I've found out after a year in the White House, changing this type of slash and burn politics isn't easy. And part of what civility requires is that we recall the simple lesson most of us learned from our parents: treat others as you would like to be treated, with courtesy and respect. But civility in this age also requires something more. Today's twenty-four seven echo chamber amplifies the most inflammatory soundbites louder and faster than ever before. It has also, however, given us unprecedented choice. Whereas most of America used to get their news from the same three networks over dinner or a few influential papers on Sunday morning, we now have the option to get our information from any number of blogs or websites or cable news shows. This development can be both good and bad for democracy. For if we choose only to expose ourselves to opinions and viewpoints that are in line with our own, studies suggest that we will become more polarized and set in our ways. And that will only reinforce and even deepen the political divides in this country. But if we choose to actively seek out information that challenges our assumptions and our beliefs, perhaps we can begin to understand where the people who disagree with us are coming from. This of course requires that we all agree on a certain set of facts to debate from, and that is why we need a vibrant and thriving news business that is separate from opinion makers and talking heads. As Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." Still, if you're someone who only reads the editorial page of The New York Times, try glancing at the page of The Wall Street Journal once in awhile. If you're a fan of Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh, try reading a few columns on the Huffington Post website. It may make your blood boil; your mind may not often be changed. But the practice of listening to opposing views is essential for effective citizenship. So too is the practice of engaging in different experiences with different kinds of people. For four years at Michigan, you have been exposed to diverse thinkers and scholars; professors and students. Do not narrow that broad intellectual exposure just because you're leaving here. Instead, seek to expand it. If you grew up in a big city, spend some time with some who grew up in a rural town. If you find yourself only hanging around with people of your race or your ethnicity or your religion, broaden your circle to include people who've had different backgrounds and life experiences. You'll learn what it's like to walk in someone else's shoes, and in the process, you'll help make this democracy work. The last ingredient in a functioning democracy is perhaps the most basic: participation. I understand that one effect of today's poisonous political climate is to push people away from participation in public life. If all you see when you turn on the television is name-calling; if all you hear about is how special interest lobbying and partisanship prevented Washington from getting something done, you might think to yourself, "What's the point of getting involved?" The point is, when we don't pay close attention to the decisions made by our leaders; when we fail to educate ourselves about the major issues of the day; when we choose not to make our voices and opinions heard, that's when democracy breaks down. That's when power is abused. That's when the most extreme voices in our society fill the void that we leave. That's when powerful interests and their lobbyists are most able to buy access and influence in the corridors of Washington - because none of us are there to speak up and stop them. Participation in public life doesn't mean that you all have to run for public office - though we could certainly use some fresh faces in Washington. But it does mean that you should pay attention and contribute in any way that you can. Stay informed. Write letters, or make phone calls on behalf of an issue you care about. If electoral politics isn't your thing, continue the tradition so many of you started here at Michigan and find a way to serve your community and your country - an act that will help you stay connected to your fellow citizens and improve the lives of those around you. It was fifty years ago that a young candidate for president came here to Michigan and delivered a speech that inspired one of the most successful service projects in American history. And as John F. Kennedy described the ideals behind what would become the Peace Corps, he issued a challenge to the students who had assembled in Ann Arbor on that October night: "...[O]n your willingness to contribute part of your life to this country...will depend the answer whether a free society can compete. I think it can." This democracy we have is a precious thing. For all the arguments and all the doubts and all the cynicism that's out there today, we should never forget that as Americans, we enjoy more freedoms and opportunities than citizens in any other nation on Earth. We are free to speak our mind and worship as we please; to choose our leaders and criticize them if they let us down. We have the chance to get an education, work hard, and give our children a better life. None of this came easy. None of it was preordained. The men and women who sat in your chairs ten years ago and fifty years ago and one hundred years ago - they made America possible. And there is no guarantee that the graduates who will sit here in ten or fifty or one hundred years from now will enjoy the same freedoms and opportunities that we do. America's success has never been a given. Our nation's destiny has never been certain. What is certain - what has always been certain - is our ability to shape that destiny. That is what makes us different. That is what makes us American - our ability at the end of the day to look past all of our differences and all of our disagreements and still forge a common future. That task is now in your hands, as is the answer to the question posed at this university half a century ago about whether a free society can still compete. If you are as willing, as past generations were willing, to contribute part of your life to the life of this country, then I, like President Kennedy, still believe we can. Congratulations on your graduation. May God Bless You, and may God Bless the United States of America.

Why Religion is Dangerous to Children

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Speechlessness

Perhaps in the back of our minds we already understand, without all the science I've discussed, that something terribly wrong is happening. Our sustenance now comes from misery. We know that if someone offers to show us a film on how our meat is produced, it will be a horror film. We perhaps know more than we care to admit, keeping it down in the dark places of our memory -- disavowed. When we eat factory-farmed meat we live, literally, on tortured flesh. Increasingly, that tortured flesh is becoming our own. - From Eating Animals I challenge you to watch all the videos.

Courage

Euripides said, 'A coward turns away but a brave man's choice is danger.' What the ancient Greeks learned, as the first truly intellectual and philosophical people, is that there is more danger to one's hopes, one's mettle, one's pride, in venturing into the battle of ideas, than in murdering a man who disagrees with you - and that doing so therefore takes proportionally more courage. Most people tend to think of courage as a warrior virtue, as belonging typically to battle; and therefore, by analogy, to endeavour on the upper slopes of Everest, in the deeps of the sea, and even on the sports field - in other words, wherever endurance, grit and determination in the face of physical challenges are required. That is true enough. But courage is often demonstrated, beacause it is often needed, in greater quantities in daily life; and there are even times when 'merely to live', as Seneca put it in a letter to Lucilius, 'is itself an act of courage'. Ordinary life evokes more extraordinary courage than combat or adventure because both the chances and inevitabilities of life - grief, illness, disappointment, pain, struggle, poverty, loss, terror, heartache: all of them common features of the human condition, and all of them experienced by hundreds of thousands of people every day - demand kinds of endurance and bravery that make clambering up Everest seem an easier alternative. Whereas mountaineering and deep-sea diving are self-contained activities that last a certain length of time with - if all goes well - return to a status quo ante when they are over, facing (say) grief or disappointment is quite different. They are open-ended, new, different dispensations with unforseeables deeply embedded in them, promising only that much will have to be borne before relief comes. To lie sleepless with pain at night, or to wake every morning and feel the return of grief, yet to get up and carry on as best one can, is courage itself. Moreover, courage can only be felt by those who are afraid. If a man is truly fearless as he leaps over the enemy parapet or hurls himself into a rugby tackle, he is not courageous. Because most people fail to recognise this simple fact, the true quantum of heroism in the world goes unrecognised and therefore unrewarded. The quaking public speaker, the trembling amateur actor, the nervous hospital patient submitting himself to needles and scalpels, are all manifesting courage. 'This is courage in a man,' Euripides further said, 'to bear what heaven sends.' Actually he said 'to bear unflinchingly,' but by this addition he spoils the sentiment, because if courage requires fear, then flinching is perfectly in order. Although ordinary life demands courage, sometimes in exceptional amounts, there is yet another kind of courage required for the task of being human: the courage to meet the new and to accept the different in the chances of experience. Rilke gave luminous expression to this idea in his Letters to a Young Poet, by saying that we need 'courage for the most strange, the most singular and the most inexplicable that we may encounter'. He meant the courage to accept love when it offers, to face death when it comes, to bear the burdens that life imposes in return for its gifts; and above all the courage to create something to mark our own individual responses to the world, however modest, for even when the courage to do this is unostentatious and private, it can make a crucial difference to the content or the quality of our lives. - A. C. Grayling

Eating Animals

Just last night, I looked up from my reading to find George staring at me from across the room. "When did you come in here?" I asked. She lowered her eyes and lumbered away from me, down the hall -- not a silhouette so much as a kind of negative space, a form cut out of the domesticity. Despite our patterns, which are more regular than anything I share with another person, she still feels unpredictable to me. And despite our closeness, I am occasionally thrilled, and even a bit scared, by the foreignness of her. Having a child greatly exacerbated this, as there was absolutely no guarantee -- beyond the one I felt absolutely -- that she wouldn't maul the baby. The list of our difference could fill a book, but like me, George fears pain, seeks pleasure, and craves not just food and play, but companionship. I don't need to know the details of her moods and preferences to know that she has them. Our psychologies are not the same or similar, but each of us has a perspective, a way of processing and experiencing the world that is intrinsic and unique. I wouldn't eat George, because she's mine. But why wouldn't I eat a dog I'd never met? Or more to the point, what justification might I have for sparing dogs but eating other animals? - Jonathan Safran Foer

All great truths begin as blasphemies. - George Bernard Shaw

Advice for the Church

"The cleric or monk who molests youths or boys or is caught kissing or committing some turpitude, let him be whipped in public, deprived of his crown [tonsure] and, after having his head shaved, let his face be covered with spittle; and [let him be] bound in iron chains, condemned to six months in prison, reduced to eating rye bread once a day in the evening three times per week. After six months living in a separate cell under the custody of a wise elder with great spiritual experience, let him be subjected to prayers, vigils and manual work, always under the guard of two spiritual brothers, without being allowed to have any relationship . . . with young people." - St. Basil of Caesarea (330 - 379 C.E.)

My Creed

To love justice, to long for the right, to love mercy, to pity the suffering, to assist the weak, to forget wrongs and remember benefits, to love the truth, to be sincere, to utter honest words, to love liberty, to wage relentless war against slavery in all its forms, to love wife and child and friend, to make a happy home, to love the beautiful in art, in nature, to cultivate the mind, to be familiar with the mighty thought that genius has expressed, the noble deeds of all the world, to cultivate courage and cheerfulness, to make others happy, to fill life with the splendor of generous acts, the warmth of loving words, to discard error, to destroy prejudice, to receive new truth with gladness, to cultivate hope, to see the calm beyond the storm, the dawn beyond the night, to do the best that can be done and then be resigned. This is the religion of reason, the creed of science. This satisfies the brain and heart. -Robert G. Ingersoll

The Values We All Stand For