d_rawk

Awesome

A certain amount, I imagine. Part of it has to do with the economics and logistics of the National Milk Board and the requisite milk pooling. I think that Health Canada is quite right to say that it is too dangerous to allow for sale of raw milk under the conditions of most production in this country. Pasteurization has been such a failsafe that most milk is not produced under nearly the sanitary conditions you would want if you are were to drink it raw, and if you allow people to opt out of the milk board and the milk pooling, you certainly do create a bit of a threat to the established big dairy producers and those who maintain control of the market. It doesn't seem to have been updated for awhile, but there were some negotiations happening with Health Canada documented over at Natural Milk. Sally Fallon from the Weston A. Price Foundation (an organization I'm pretty fond of) ended up becoming involved too, even though WAPF is usually more USA focused. Somewhere I remember reading a transcript of one of the meetings with Health Canada, but I can't seem to find it on the website.

It's crazy to the point that there is actually something of an underground milk market. Buying and selling (or even simply giving away) raw milk really does have a lot in common with buying and selling drugs what with the networks of trust that form around it. If you own a cow directly, you are entitled to drink it, but you can't even share it with your spouse (at penalty of something like a fine of 5 grand). I know of some groups that have tried to set up 'cowshares' to get around that, but I don't think that has panned out. The politics of milk! Who whoulda thunk.

You're feisty tonight! :laugh:

I rather liked the bit towards the end where he implored those in attendance to go to a "real university" instead :laugh: Yeah. Overall I'm partial to Dawkins. I do have reservations about some of the assumptions underpinning The God Delusion/The Root of All Evil, but they've already been discussed, so no real need to rehash them.

Thanks for the link Kanada Kev Agreed. I'm only about a third of the way through, but so far Dawkins is in fine form.

hep

synecdoche (not sure if I'm playing the game right. Do I need to wait until tommorow?)

^-- oops Oh no ... somehow I had managed to push the "war on christmas" bullshit out of my mind, and this brings it all crashing back in. Another holiday season with O'Reilly? Gawd that's lame.

I humbly rescind my 3rd ballot prediction in light of all the good points made by people who have actually thought this through

Hey thanks, I appreciate that. I do have the irksome little habit of overstating or exagerating my case (on all subjects, not just this one) in the interest of being provocative. It's an approach that pretty much demands pushback and contrary opinion

I'm with timouse on all three points above. (I'll be content enough with Dion instead of Iggy, too) Bob Rae, 3 ballots. Hey SugarMegs, shouldn't you give us your guess too?

Meh. "Universal human rights" or the intrisic worth of human life are as much a fabrication of the human mind (and having their origin in religious conviction, for that matter), but that alone doesn't make the concepts unvaluable, nor has it stopped the many worthwhile impassioned defenses to their cause. We live - all of us - within all manner of intersecting and overlapping narratives. The chauvinism that would seek to make all those but the ones that inform your own life worthy of pity is chauvinism of the same sort that we most often ascribe to the hard-headed religious evangelists and dogmatists or the political and cultural imperialists.

Well, I'll be up front that I don't care much for Ike, and that I doubt his sincerity. I say that not in the interest of persuasion (I have no illusion that I might be capable of persuading, on such matters) but just to be honest about where I stand. I don't see Jesus denouncing the Church in your quotes at all though. Jesus wasn't hiding from a church at all ... he was throwing down a gauntlet to the scribes and pharisees, certaintly. And he was attacking the temple system, definately (chasing out the money changers with a whip!). But "the church" comes through him and after him. Prior to the church? Well he doesn't hide from that, either. He enters it, engages it, challenges it, at the cost of his life. In Luke we have Jesus reading Isaiah in the temple! (The writer of Luke's whole shtick, in fact, seems to be to hammer home this connection of Jesus with prior prophesy, Isaiah especially, which is a rather clever approach, I think) This I don't disagree with at all. So much of scripture (by which I mean OT/Hebrew Bible) does this, and so much of of the NT references back to it directly. (Jesus being particularly clever in this regard, at least through the Gospel accounts). The creation story of Genesis, ie, being a retelling of the same creation story that was told and retold in so many variations through so many cultures, over such a vast expanse of time, but subverting it and taking *out* the war between competing gods, and taking *out* the need for constant renewal and saying instead "He made it, peacefully, through his will, said it was good, and rested". That is fucking radical. It isn't literal, I don't think. I don't suspect it is meant to be. But it takes an ancient story and says -- imagine it like this. More peaceful than you had ever imagined it. It borrows. Yes! Heavily. But it borrows in order to contrast. It wouldn't be new or interesting or subversive otherwise. [edit: glancing over your last link, you are really going to distrust me now, when I admit: I was *this close* to joining the Jesuit priesthood. Though I am not altogether certain what to make of them now. It was the Iran/Contra thing that made me partial to them]

I don't want to sound like a fanboy (and I'm not -- if pressed, I could come up with some hesitations I have about Wright), but if you haven't read or listened to him a lot yet, I think that you would enjoy doing so. Even if only to have something interesting to engage intellectually with.

Heh. I'm also on record as being ... I'm not sure if the right word would be 'cautious' or 'annoyed' ... about and by Paul. (And Luke 22:36 - quoted by M.O.B.E above - for that matter. I remember asking you, DEM, for your interpretation of it, once upon a time) I've softened on him a bit, though. Not least for reading some of the 'New Perspective on Paul' type scholars/writers and coming to the conclusion that a lot of what bugs me about Paul (being responsible for that dreadfully dull faith vs. works debate, for one!) might be more a result of my having let one certain type of reading of Paul dominate the discourse. I'm less and less convinced that the things that bug me so much about Paul really have to do with Paul so much at all, and that with the larger historical and cultural context in which he was writing taken into account, his arguments might be much more subtle than what we (or at least I) normally allow for. (Too optimistic?) What I'm really finding endearing about Paul now is his style. He will sometimes mix 3 or 4 metaphors in the process of trying to spit out one single thought. And he seems to not for a moment consider that doing so might hinder, in some way, the ability to come to any sort of understanding of what he's trying to say. That may be a regular stylistic feature of the times ... I'm not sure. But it certainly seems an eccentric way to write a letter! It's all (Paul's stylistic bent, I mean) rather comedic to me, really, and I'm finding my frowns at Paul's 'Paulishness' turning into wry smiles at his 'Paulishness', instead. Much to my delight. Sure his jumbled metaphors may be responsible for such strange interpretations - all these years later - as "the rapture" (shudder) or that life is just what we do on our way to a "heaven" or a "hell" (shudder again). But it is all kind of cute. Some of it is pure gold. (Speaking of rapture, Wright tackles the contemporary popular "Left Behind" reading of Paul's words from first Thessalonians in his very consise Farewell to the Rapture. It's brief, thankfully, but unfortunately not as playful as he can get once he's got a beer or two in him) An example of what I'm on about -- Paul says (1 Thessalonians 5): The thief is coming in the night, so the woman is going to go into labour, so you are the children of light, so you mustn't get drunk, but you must put on your armour. (Paraphrased, obviously). That's brilliantly entertaining. Which passages in Romans did you have in mind, I wonder? (One of these days Bouche's hand is going to be forced, and there will have to be a heady religion forum)

ollie said: I think Deeps is driving me to religion. bradm said: That's OK, as long as he drives you to the Beer Store first.

I want to take one of your classes. Hey, maybe the school would allow you to record and post your lectures. That'd be good times.

In a sense we are, and in a larger sense, that is sort of what the EU project is about. Philip Resnick gave this all a pretty good treatment in 2005's "The European Roots of Canadian Identity". There are probably better parts to quote from, but what the heck ... "The development of Canadian national identity has, therefore, proven to be an imperfect process. It sorely disappoints many English-speaking Canadians and a certain number of their francophone and aboriginal counterparts as well, who dream of a version of the American E pluribus unum. For the Canadian national project, if that is what it is to be called, seems doomed never to be fully consummated. Canadians seem to be cursed with the fate of Sisyphus, rolling the stone of the perfect constitutional agreement up the hill, only to see it come crashing down again; hoping to find in a common past -- over which we disagree endlessly, for we have multiple pasts and diverging collective memories -- the stuff of future resultion; looking for a great Canadian hero or lawgiver -- a Solon or Lycurgus or Romulus or Aeneas -- to bind us together for all time. Maybe we have been searching for the wrong model. Maybe it is Europe, both the Europe of today and of the past, that more closely mathes Canadian reality than the ever-present American model that many seek to emulate. For if we look across the Atlantic, we can find much that evokes the more complex national reality that is ours. A number of European countries - the United Kingdom, Belgium, Spain spring to mind - encompass some of the same linguistic or cultural divisions that we think of as uniquely Canadian. After all, the Scots and Welsh do not see themselves as British in the same way as the English; nor do the Flemish and the Walloons - not to speak of the Bruxellois! - always see eye to eye; nor do the peripheral nationalities of Spain (the Basques, the Catalans, the Galegos) see national identity in quite the same way as other Spaniards. There are lessons in all this that we need to ponder. [...] Canadians, when they are so inclined, much like Europeans, can dream of a more perfect union. For the moment, and I believe for generations to come, they will have to make do with an imperfect mixture of languages and national identities that makes them who they are."

I dunno, DEM. That's the definition of a nation-state alright, but I think that is the confusion. A nation state is a sovereign state dominated by a single nation. But it isn't the only model. A nation needn't have boundaries (or a military, or a currency) at all, and quite often does not. A clearer - but still imperfect - match for the political designation of "a nation" is "a people" rather than "a country". We do already recognize Canada as being multi-national on some level. ie. "First Nations Peoples". I'm personally comfortable with acknowledging "la nation Québécoise", but haven't been following closely enough to understand why the heck Harper pulled this out right now. Thanks for the insight, SugarMegs. [edit:] Interesting Canada-wide poll (forgive me linking to a CanWest site): 93% of Canadians agree that Canada is a nation, 65% agree that Aboriginals are a nation, 65% agree that Acadians are a nation, 48% agree that Quebec is a nation, 45% agree that the Metis are a nation, and 45% agree that Francophone Canadians (inside and outside Quebec) are a nation

Dawkins, I am becoming increasingly convinced, is out of his depth on his recent endeavours. There is a peculiar stubborness happening here, and for a man otherwise as clever as he, it's a bit disapointing. I rather like Marilynne Robinson's review of 'The God Delusion' (from which 'The Root of All Evil pulls). It's a hella long read, but she hits a few of the important points spot on. ... This last point is even more salient than I think even Robinson allows. Dawkin's argument so often devolves into a crude calculus of total sum of boots to total sum of faces, but in so doing, he bewilderingly - perhaps willfully, but one hopes not - miscounts the boots and values some faces over others. There has been a good discussion of The Root of All Evil going on over here. I've got a certain amount of respect for the man, and am dismayed to see him reducing himself to an evangelist for atheism rather than a dispassionate obvserver and commentator. Even more so because it would seem to me that he would prefer to continue to think himself the latter rather than the former. I can't wait to see Jesus Camp, though. Seems pretty disturbing and I'm happy as a clam in shit (erm ... maybe I got that wrong ...) to know that the camp has closed its doors.