d_rawk

The 'sources' are the organizations in question themselves. Ie: straight from the horse's mouth.

happy valentines day!

Waiting-for-marriage was a good and stable technology that was superseded by the development of consistently effective and readily available birth control. I'm not sure about the relevance of "wanting fun but expecting a sweetie for a bride". Virgin marriages were about ensuring that one mans resources wouldn't unknowingly be spent on the raising of another man's offspring. That is no longer relevant, for all sorts of reasons, and where it is still relevant, we have more reliable and less humiliating ways of testing for these types of things then crassly manually probing for the integrity of a hymen on a wedding day. We call it Maury Povich. 'Tis progress, baby.

Popo, will you be my valentine? So listen sweet Lord, forgive me my sin ‘Cos I can't stand this life without all of these things Know I done wrong, but I've Heaven on Earth Know I done wrong, but I could have done me worse Well, here it comes Here comes the sound The sound of confusion Well, here it comes Here comes the sound The sound of love

I got the impression that he was drawing on the tendency for the logic of natural selection/Darwinism to be extended to other areas (social Darwinism and all the perverse behaviour justified with a flippant "it's the survival of the fittest"). Of course, if so, he's guilty of making that same mistake and giving it currency. (ie. Darwinism might not be applicable to social behaviour at all, and it might be a great abuse of Darwin's theories to pretend that it does - but Yahya is only adding to that confusion) The fact that he refers to Darwinism as a "philosophy" is telling. And kinda troubling, really.

I'm put together beautifully Big wet bottle in my fist, big wet rose in my teeth I'm a perfect piece of ass Like every Californian So tall I take over the street, with highbeams shining on my back A wingspan unbelievable I'm a festival, I'm a parade And all the wine is all for me I'm a birthday candle in a circle of black girls God is on my side Cuz I'm the child bride I'm so sorry but the motorcade will have to go around me this time Cuz God is on my side And I'm the child bride And all the wine is all for me I carry the dollhouse, safe on my shoulders Through the black city, night lights are on in the corners And everyone's sleeping upstairs All safe and sound All safe and sound, I won't the let psychos around I'm in a state, I'm in a state Nothing can touch us my love I'm in a state, I'm in a state Nothing can touch us my love

Reuters - of all companies - has an office in second life. Sweden is planning to establish an official embasy. Suzanne Vega, Duran Duran, and others have done concerts there. Totally off the wall. Get A First Life. Love the pirates! Mind you, one woman at least seems to have made approx. a million dollars (USD!) through second life land speculation, so maybe it's all the rest of us who are out to lunch.

Awesome. :laugh:

No way! Time flies when you're ...

Krishna! Totally off topic, but dude, you and Hal should come up to Ottawa sometime.

Putting this here just because I thought it was funny, and the other appropriate threads have some discussion going on at the moment that I didn't want to hijack. May as well revive a dying one for the purpose. You'll probably have to click on it in order to be able to get it large enough to read.

I think that's absolutely true. It seems to me though that we need to start with a clean slate because of the very real experiences most people have had of having one particular kind of faith pushed at them or the perception of having it shoved down their throats. A clean break for a generation or so just seems necessary before most people are going to be able to address this issue without jaundiced eyes and without bringing a whole lot of baggage to the table. Otherwise I fear we'll keep going around these same circles, and get the next lot caught up in all the same old kinds of debates with all the same old kinds of pre-assumptions informing them ... [edit to address Kanada Kev's thoughts] That was a great post, Kev. One thing that is important for me is to draw a distinction between a state sanctioned and endorsed religion, which is absolutely dangerous, and allowing enough room for independent faith to interact with official institutions without being squeezed out due to the fear of the former. IMO, that runs the risk of insulating government from criticism and dissent from without. We're in a precarious spot right now where it is really difficult to tell where one stops and the other begins, because we do have this long history of the latter creeping into the former. But the most powerful and changing dissent usually does originate in traditions of faith (think underground railroad, or the freeing of one's own slaves long before there was any legal obligation to do so, or who were the first people performing same sex marriages in defiance of the state, or conscientious objection, or the civil rights movement under Martin Luther King Jr., or agitation on behalf of the impoverished, or all the way back to imperial Rome -- and that's just within one tradition). It's crucial not to lose all of that powerful dissent that speaks truth to authority, but crucial also to not allow it be taken over by that authority itself. Again, I'm not sure that we, collectively, are in a position to navigate all of that because our reactions to these things tend to be more emotional than reasoned owing to all sorts of factors. Just felt the need to express it

I dunno dude - I was tracking you, right up until the end. As you say, even mainstream evangelicals have no time for that sort of thing, certainly mainline denominations find that sort of thing abhorrent, and the bulk of the "Western world", at least, finds it so ridiculous that there seems to be no appropriate response but befuddled laughter. It wasn't so long ago that a conversation like this would have started with a shrugging off and chuckle at the "these bands might make you gay bit", but would have just as quickly turned into a debate about the merit of "fixing" or "reforming" homosexuals. There would have been reminders of the "unnaturalness" of it all, and of a vague and ill-defined "immorality" -- even within secular circles. This is a cool group of a people, granted. But the fact that none of that has come up, and that the only appropriate reaction seems to be a snide sneer and immediate dismissal is evident, I think, of a deeper shift. The world our kids inherit might not be ideal - granted - but in the way of understanding and tolerance, it is still a fair shot better than the world that we inherited ourselves. It just isn't as dire as all of that, I don't think. Short of over-romanticising the past, I don't see how it can look like anything but progress. Fred Phelps and co. are marginalized and the beliefs they hold now reside squarely on the fringes in contemporary society. They feel extreme and out of touch. It wasn't so very long ago that this wasn't the case. Isn't that cause for some celebration? Isn't that a better world to hand to the next generation?

Yep. Good call

I think it's the sensationalist title (Nazi in the title of anything that isn't about - well ... y'know ... nazis - is something of a red flag) and the USE OF ALL CAPS FOR EMPHASIS that make it seem less than credible, or at least not likely to be dispassionate and impartial, at a glance. That doesn't mean that there's nothing of substance in the article of course, or that he doesn't raise points worth discussing. Haven't read through it yet myself. It could just be that it looks long and we're a lazy lot!

I feel sick.

Heh, yeah. It's one of those statements that while not completely inaccurate, is pretty meaningless. Like saying -- "Dogs are universally recognized and accepted as mammals and embraced by dog owners and many others". Ok. Sure. That's true. But that doesn't mean that everybody wants one.

This bit really got me: Unopposed? There was not a single person in attendance who desired that their municipal government act in accordance with the principals of democracy and in accordance with the law? Not one? That alone is appalling, the rest of it compounds it. It says a whole lot about the character of council members and of those in attendence to council meetings. Reasonable individuals with some respect for democratic process need to involve themselves -- otherwise I'm not sure how one goes about marginalizing the only people willing to participate.

It's an odd message for government at any level to send -- that if you happen to find the law inconvenient, you should just go ahead and break it. (I wonder too what the woman who brought her bible makes of, say, Matthew 6:5-6 when she comes across it ...) Nobody is telling these people that they can't pray whatever prayer they want, or that they can't pray it in the building they've been praying it in, or that they can't continue to pray it as a group all together. I simply don't understand why that isn't sufficient. Why push it so far as to make it illegally part of the official civil proceedings such that it's imposed on everyone?

confused? bushkill. ('though i may be confused too) my bush is my bush it can be bush, period. and where is this king, promised me? i grow tired of sitting on this throne -- alone on this, bush period. [speaker knocks both mic and stand over violently, to much shrieking feedback, before storming off stage with a look of frustrated disgust evident on face] first pass, and meant to be spoken, not read ... can someone pick up this ball and run with it? I agree William about the comma as apostrophe, if we are working towards a written version. popo weenie -- we love you, sincerely. all in good fun, no?

This only needs minor tweaking to become the sort of thing people are still reading 200 years from now. I'm entirely serious.

That's a comforting way of looking at it, and I think there is something positive in that approach. I'm reminded of the rift that happened amongst NDP supporters over the faith caucus and the flap that Tarek Fatah and cohorts raised over the same, and how more than once I caught myself typing things like "the answer to the religious right isn't secularism, it is the religious left" -- a position I don't actually endorse, if I tease out all the implications of that, but a position that sometimes seems helpful to adopt, in the interest of provocatively reminding others that the religious right does not ultimately have a monopoly on these things. Even if they continue to get the only press coverage which can so easily make it seem so. If we need those reminders here, then indeed, America needs those reminders more. If a split that leads invariably towards partisanship ultimately can bring those camps back towards a non-partisan reconciliation, it may well be worth the half decade or so of discomfort and frustration. And at least heretofore squelched voices might have the opportunity to rise above the fray in the interim.

That's very clever! :laugh:

I wasn't giving the interview my full attention, but from what I got from it, I thought the same thing, YATS. Sometimes Colbert does that thing where he just interrupts and talks over his guest the whole time ... I guess it makes some sense since that is the approach that the people he is parodying take, too, but it's a big turn-off and I just wish he would let his guest make their point. Did enjoy the Oshawa bit, though.