Dr_Evil_Mouse

No doubt - though "love" means so many different things, too - including maybe the same kinds of insecurity that make people want to hide under piles of money.

[quote name=ThorgnortheMarxist ]To suggest that money is really the root of all evil is a simplification imo, and hides that people are responsible for the actions that they may take both individually and socially, and that money is only paper with a social value Since the phrase popped up, I'll just jump in with the old chestnut - the original line (1 Tim. 6:10) is that the love of money is the root of all evil. (I'm not much of a fan of Paul, but I do like where that redirection goes.)

Well, I'd meant political fluffer, but I suppose it's all good.

Word has it she might be more content being a fluffer. Too many legal distractions from her aborted tenure, apparently.

I do think there is this problem of what to do with the "we". In any given family there is going to be a range of differences of attitude, let alone within a community, a town, a city, country, etc. etc. That's kind of where I was going with the idea of a "complexity barrier" - like Gregory Bateson used to say, trying to control larger systems from smaller ones is like trying to back up, in a straight line, a series of tractor trailers linked together - the slightest variations are going to produce the most unpredictable results at the end of the line. You were right earlier saying that math and civilisation weren't entirely coequivalent; I should have said "taxation". There is no civilisation without taxation (for which you need money, and math). How else are the non-labouring classes (priests, politicians, teachers , etc.) going to earn their crust?

Ouch - reminds me of the BS I used to hear so much during my tender formative years (especially being sucked into the charismatic movement in the Anglican CC ) . Steven Pinker's got a great chapter in his last book, The Stuff of Thought, on the syntax, semantics, and neurochemistry of swearing. One of his more persuasive points, imo, is that we're hard-wired to swear in the same kind of way as a cat is to wail if you step on its tail, but with a language circuit that the signal passes through - in other words, it's got this coded, communicative side to it as well, geared to specific communities of speakers. They're words, in other words, that tweak the attention of an audience to pay (unwilling) attention to them. I don't suppose this guy's that interested in anything but himself, though, and whoever he can intimidate and keep on the hook.

Whoa. Welcome back. - thanks - I think I might just be an impersonator, though.

Northern Irish, Serbs, Hutus Granted Homeland in West Bank (Yeah, ok, recycled story, but a good one.)

I dunno. When these kinds of abstract questions or proposals come up, I find the idea of "complexity barrier" to be a nice splash of cold water on the face. People live their lives with different purposes for different reasons, across all socioeconomic strata. Trying to tease out patterns in any of all that is just an attempt to reduce that complexity, but at this stage in the game, I'm not convinced it's of very much use. Maybe in small communities it's worth kicking around, but not when you get to talking about The World. The axiom "try to be nicer to one another" seems to be challenging enough to the most sincere of people, and is right off the radar for lots of others. World without money? Seems money is so fundamental to civilisation itself, it would be like suggesting a world without math.

Ruiiiners? (I'd embed, but it's taking me forever to remember how to friggin' do stuff here )

Doesn't help that elected politicians play the same tune. Oklahoma Republicans Ready to Blame the Recession on "Debauchery" (Best use of the word "wingnuttery" yet.)

I sometimes think about the perfect response. It would involve fewer than 200 people - that would be the outer limits of the Westboro congregation numbers, as I understand them - and one person would be paired up with one person in that group of people, and would not let go. It would be, ideally, a Gandhian, non-violent kind of thing, where each interlocutor refused to let go of the conversation, but insisted on conversation per se, but it would call on the ability of each human being in that group to start thinking for him/herself rather than defaulting to the authoritarian shite that would otherwise pass for "reason". Less persistence has passed for love. But maybe this is the failure of the countervailing perspective, not to be able to cough up the 200 people with more or less the same point of view, procedural or otherwise.

What's antm? It did get me thinking about the Cockburn tune, though -

I think I'd get a kick out of it, if only because I used to be excited about them twenty years ago when I was discovering music, and always appreciated the fact that they didn't take themselves too seriously (and maybe that's the DLR charm). I can't imagine enjoying more than one show, though; I pulled my one mixed Van Halen cd off the shelf a couple of weeks back for a listen, and don't think I'll need to revisit it for a while.

318. Songs about India 1. Bob Wiseman - Bhopal (Driftnet Plan) 2. John Coltrane - India 3. Fareed Haque Group - Singh Song 4. M.I.A. - Jimmy 5. Big Star - The India Song 6. John Prine - Sabu Visits The Twin Cities Alone 7. Led Zeppelin - Kashmir 8.Ananda Shankar - Streets Of Calcutta 9. Ry Cooder and V.M. Bhatt - Ganges Delta Blues 10. 11. 12.

Beautiful . Congratulations!

Dufferin & Bloor - awesome south Indian food. Plus Dufferin Grove Park, and Dufferin Mall. [former resident] Good luck

:D :D :D :D :D :D This thread is just getting better and better . This planet needs more dinner time, imo.

I probably shouldn't mention here that CJ and I were once pulled over in Perth for an expired sticker, but then let off... (must have been the baby in the back seat). Maybe a special "please throw a loonie in the hat" moment at a Spades gig would help this out a bit, because truth be told, I think the energy those guys share with the world needs special repayment.

Don't forget the Charles/Diana screwup - maybe that shit don't end up right. Conversely, I've got the hopelessly generic name "John" right next the the hopelessly generic name "David", which means both of mine are pretty, well, generic. I go by my middle name, which on some level has always felt ok, though there was one occasion at a party in Kingston when I found myself in a room of fourteen people, twelve of whom were named "Dave". Handily, there appeared soon afterwards the Kids in the Hall tune, along with the Rheostatics tune, so Dave has been good with me ever since . I dunno, thinking back to the premise for this thread - if ever I hear so much as the word "velvet" in a sentence, I can't help but make the association back here. Maybe that's what it's all about.

I'm kicking myself for missing Sarahbelle at Diesel Dog this last weekend. And yes, I agree with you - I love these people. Right now, I'm especially fond of Jaydawg's new avatar .

I'm finding this whole business really curious for a bunch of reasons. As far as the focus on Jewish schools goes, my guess is that the simplest explanation comes from the fact that it had been a Jewish parent who'd brought the matter to the UN in 1999, and that was the case that became the main talking point. The UNHCR submission from that parent can be found here . I'm more puzzled how it is that the election came on the heels of the scandal that broke at an evangelical Anglican private school (Grenville Christian Academy) involving all sorts of abuse, but nobody made anything of that (apparently only the Globe and Mail picked up on it). My best guess is that so many high-profile people were connected to the school (Ottawa Mayor Larry O'Brien, e.g.) that they managed to keep it under wraps. That I find pretty disturbing. What appalled me about the last time this got in in Ontario, under the Harris government (as one of Jim Flaherty's tax measures, to keep it away from debate) was realising that "private schools" could consist of as few as five students; if that were the case, how in the hell could any government like Ontario's, already strapped for funds, ensure adequate supervision of these schools, if a collective nightmare could have unfolded at as high profile a place as Grenville Christian Academy? The last thing that I keep wondering is why nobody talks about the Muslim schools. I mean, I don't have to wonder very far, and this discourages me, but still, I wonder. All that said, I wouldn't mind having the funds to set up a school for children of Deadheads, but then, I think, I'd really rather have them out in the general population, doing what they need to do .

I suppose because I'm calling them to account, rationally, and with logical consistency, within the possibilities offered within the tradition from which they draw their authority, as far as I'm familiar with it. Let's keep in mind some handy bits of trivia, such as the fact that Southern Baptists only apologised for their support of slavery in 1995; since then, though, they've made formal declarations around the necessity of subordinating women. Now, if I run into a Southern Baptist, if he/she comes out swinging in favour of that kind of position, I'm not going to go all intolerant on him/her, but I won't sit put and say, "Well, that's just your worldview, so I suppose I have to accept that." (That would be, among other things, way too postmodern for my tastes.) I have a friend, now teaching at U Manitoba, who has his students, when they write essays, go through with the Find/Replace feature on Word to replace "I believe that..." with "I argue that...," and see if the claims in the paper hold up as well. People use faith like a trump card in argument; that doesn't fly in a pluralistic society, where we're supposed to be using our powers of reasons (God-given, or naturally-endowed, who's to say) to sort through the difficult questions. It's also reassuring to know that there's no homogeneity within any religious community, but there's always tension, as people try to figure out the norms. Evangelicals, e.g., can't agree across the board what constitutes "evangelical", and you find people - socially-conscious folks like Tony Campolo and Ron Sider - challenging that self-definition very effectively. I couldn't imagine calling them intolerant, though they might say that of themselves - that they love their community so much that they can't tolerate the abuses within it any longer and have to speak out.

I just defaulted to evangelicalism because that's the biggest religious "noise" in our piece of the world. Truth be told, we have more religious tolerance here than most places around the globe, and that's something to treasure and cultivate. I think that part of cultivating that tolerance involved calling to task people, religious or otherwise, who demonstrate intolerance. I wouldn't say, though, that that kind of criticism is intolerance - frustration, yes, but the sort I can put up with myself. The idea of "excommunication" works for me to sum up how intolerance works - no longer being open to dialogue.

30 Years of Maximum R&B (vol. 4)