Dr_Evil_Mouse

C'mon, I look to you for something nonobvious. What, just how old and lazy are you getting?

Hmmm... maybe. It's got to be really specific, though, for these conferences - or, better still, idiosyncratic. What's the weirdest thing you can associate with religion?

Pravda! First thing to come to mind is that Marx would have shot himself in the head twice before he hit the ground had he seen this.

I see I just crossed 5000 posts. Sorry about that.

Awesome . There's my day's reading material right there.

Us too, but Connecticut is a bit of a haul....

!

I'm just mulling over ideas for a paper to give next May at the annual regional meeting of one of the societies I belong to, the American Academy of Religion, in part because I want to stay in the academic fray, in part part because it's in Waterloo this year, and in part because these conferences are among the rare times I get to see my friends and colleagues from around NA that I haven't seen in ages. So, if you were to have to sit through a paper on the topic of a) religion and popular culture, religion and international affairs, c) religion and public policy, or d) religious diversity in North America, ... what could you tolerate someone going on about, or, better, what would you want to hear? And, better still, if anyone's interested in getting in on this too, PT me and I can look into getting you hooked up. It's a great experience.

Yay Holly! And yay mom and dad!

Thanks, Meggo - well put. TLLOM, in the spirit of Marcel's passion for sincere dialogue, I'd suggest you take that discussion to another forum (Politics has turned into a good one), where I expect you can find all sorts of engagement. Please understand, though, that neither I nor anyone I can think of on this board would find any hint of disrespect in this thread - as anywhere else, for that matter - acceptable.

I don't know if this is much at all. If it is the case that you really don't know much, please keep these kinds of projections to yourself.

Phooie for missing it. God bless the Archive.

. A propos to everything. I do wish this book - still resonated as loudly in the evangelical world as it did when it came out, about ten years ago. The point Noll makes from the first page, about "the evangelical mind", is "there isn't much of one." Coming from an evangelical himself, you'd think that was a pretty hefty indictment, but they seem to have contented themselves with staying turned in on themselves and exercising their logic no further (unless you count yelling louder and voting in bigger numbers as something somehow intrinsically more logical). I think evangelicals work along the same lines as SUV drivers, in that for the most part, you can't really get their attention unless you appeal to their craven self-interest. That said, I can't wait to get through the Field Guide - thanks for the ref. . d_rawk - what's the gist of the other?

Oh no, please don't say that! Thatcher was a scary piece of work. She made John Major look like a hippie in comparison.

I couldn't agree more. There now, that's the spirit .

Bonne fête!

One of my favourite melancholic albums ever. Maybe it's the Gilmour playing pedal steel on each track that does it, but the harmonies on some of the pieces just wrench the heart.

Does the order have to come with a SASE #10 envelope, a 3x5 card, and an eye-catching little picture on the envelope?

That's where Chretien failed. How so? I think it's because his English and his French were equally atrocious.

Some of the tipping point in the homophobic vote might have come from this area down south. Kilrea was getting tons and tons of hype in our local papers, which fits in well with the crimson cervical hue of much of the constituency. Then again, I don't think you can now go two pages in either of those papers without seeing a picture of Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre doing some banal thing for a gratuitous photo op. There's one writer in one of those papers that I can actually read without the requisite irony; I always wonder if his job gives him a good daily laugh or drives him crazy (probably a bit of both).

I can deal with this. There's nothing like rock bottom to get you moving back up again (geez, I sound like Bill W. with stuff like that ).

Yay Paisley! Keep those toads a-hoppin' . Hope to see you again soon - never comes around often enough.

Will have to mull over those points.... I just ran across this piece from the LA Times, which I think puts things well. Opinion: Op-Ed

I had a moment there at one point right before the service; a friend of Marcel from BC had brought his guitar and songbook, among other things, from his house there, and I saw among the stickers on it one that I hadn't seen before - "God was my copilot, but we crashed in the mountains and I had to eat him ". That really brought a smile and tear to the face.