BP investors want dividends rather than paying to clean up oil spill

BP puts containment cap on gushing Gulf well pipe
Anna Driver
Jun 4, 2010
Reuters

BP began capturing some oil spewing from a 46-day gusher on Friday after installing a containment cap atop a ruptured Gulf of Mexico well as President Barack Obama was set to make his third trip to the area since the disaster.

BP Plc executives sought to reassure jittery investors with a conference call but put off a decision on whether to suspend paying its next quarterly dividend as some U.S. politicians had demanded.

BP shares had been up 4 percent but the gains were pared back in Friday's session after company CEO Tony Hayward issued the statement.

The U.S. Coast Guard said the containment cap placed atop the gusher a mile deep beneath the Gulf's surface was now collecting about 1,000 barrels a day.

The collection rate is a small portion of 19,000 barrels per day that the U.S. government has estimated could be gushing from the well.

The captured amount should increase as BP closes vents to trap more oil, Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen told reporters in a conference call.

A Battle Over Who Speaks for Latinos in Vista Schools

A Battle Over Who Speaks for Latinos in Vista Schools
May 31, 2010
Voice of San Diego
By EMILY ALPERT

Before Eduardo Preciado took over, it was a placid committee where parents gave their input on programs for English learners in Vista schools.

Now the group is embroiled in Vista's struggle to find a voice for a Latino community that has grown in numbers but not in political posts over the last decade.

Preciado has changed the committee on English learners into a platform for a small but passionate group of Latino parents who say it's their only place to speak out on all kinds of issues. Though Latino children are now much more common than white students in Vista schools, the school board is largely white and other Latino groups are scarce. One fan calls his group "the voice of the Latino people."

But not everyone wants him to be that voice. His group has split Latino parents -- and some want the outspoken and impassioned Preciado out. Some take issue with his injection of politics into the committee. Others call him too aggressive and confrontational.

There is fierce disagreement over whether the English learners committee should even play the role Preciado has pushed it to. Such committees are supposed to advise their districts on programs for English learners. Preciado has pushed the group to voice its opinions and seek change on much broader, more controversial debates.

He rails against the teachers union and the school board. He argues that the school district has failed Latino kids, pointing to the sobering dropout rates for Latino teens and decrying cuts to busing and programs...

Glenn Beck Apologizes for Mocking Obama's Daughter

Glenn Beck Apologizes for Mocking Obama's Daughter
Lauren Frayer
AOL News
May 29, 2010

Conservative talk show host Glenn Beck has apologized for a segment on his radio program in which he made fun of President Barack Obama's 11-year-old daughter, imitating her in a childish high-pitched voice and criticizing her intelligence.

Beck issued an apology on his website Friday after bloggers and parents objected to the tirade from Beck, who in the past has argued that the media should "leave families alone."

In his radio show, "The Glenn Program" on Premiere Radio Networks, Beck mocked Malia Obama for asking her father if he'd managed to stop oil from continuing to spill out into the Gulf of Mexico. At a news conference Thursday, the president recounted how his daughter had asked him, "Did you plug the hole yet, Daddy?" -- in an effort to illustrate how all Americans are anxious about the BP oil rig that's now become America's worst oil spill in history.

Afterward Beck made fun of the anecdote, imitating Malia in a squeaky voice.

"Daddy? Daddy? Daddy, did you plug the hole yet? Daddy?" he said. Then Beck's co-host Pat Gray responded as if he were the president.

"Honey, not yet... Not time yet, honey. Hasn't done enough damage," Gray said.

Then Beck took his argument a step further, saying the exchange reveals something about Malia's education. The 11-year-old and her 9-year-old sister Sasha go to Sidwell Friends, and exclusive and high-performing academy that's sometimes called "the Harvard of Washington's private schools."

"'Did you plug the hole yet, daddy?' Is that's their -- that's the level of their education, that they're coming to -- they're coming to daddy and saying 'Daddy, did you plug the hole yet?'" Plug the hole!" Beck said on his Friday morning radio show.

[Maura Larkins' comment: What's wrong with that question? It sounds like an excellent description of the problem. What would your kids say, Glenn? Joseph Romm reports about his kid's questions in Salon: "When I was shaving this morning, my daughter came up to me and asked, 'Daddy, when is President Obama going to develop a coherent narrative for his administration?' OK, maybe not."]

Later in the 4-minute segment, Beck turned the routine toward Obama's race. "Why do you hate black people so much?" he said, still imitating Malia in a baby voice.

"I'm part white, honey," Gray responded in the voice of the president.

Friday's segment ran just two days after another piece on Beck's radio program in which he decried critics of Sarah Palin's family. "Leave people's families alone. I don't think I've ever... We've never done anything but protect families... Leave families alone," he said at the time...

Toddler killed by San Bernardino family's pit bull

Why didn't the other dog protect the boy? Shouldn't she have disciplined the younger dog when he attacked the boy? I just don't see the evidence that pit bulls make good pets. Why do people love them so much? I believe that the precise reason that people like these dogs is their reputation for fierceness and for having powerful jaws that won't let go. People think the dogs will protect them. The evidence is mounting, however, that the dogs are prone to attacking children.

Toddler killed by San Bernardino family's pit bull
May 28, 2010
By LAURIE LUCAS and RICHARD BROOKS
The Press-Enterprise

A family pet has killed a 2-year-old San Bernardino boy whose parents briefly left him alone as he rode his tricycle in their enclosed side yard.

Nathan Aguirre died Friday at Loma Linda University Medical Center from severe head and neck injuries after one of the family's two pit bulls attacked him the night before, said Sgt. Gary Robertson.

Nathan was the second toddler to die in the last four months in San Bernardino County from a pit bull attack. In January, 3-year-old Omar Martinez died from injuries from being mauled by his family's pit bull at his Apple Valley home, about 40 miles north of San Bernardino.

In February, a pack of five dogs escaped from their yard in Fontana, attacking three children who were walking by. Five-year-old Destiny Colon had a punctured lung and was put on life support for a while; 6-year-old Hector Perez needed 235 stitches in his legs; and 7-year-old Princess Colon needed 18In April, in neighboring Riverside County, a 6-month-old boy was mauled in his carrier by two dogs at the home of a family friend. The pit bull and pit bull mix tore the infant's diaper off and bit off his testicles...

The blinds were drawn Friday and no one answered the door at Nathan's house. Jim Keller said the family was with relatives. The driveway, smeared with dried blood where the mauling occurred, painted the grim story. A Red Flyer wagon and Little Tikes tricycle languished a few feet away. Nearby lay a torn, blood-stained T-shirt that said: "You can move a mountain. You can't budge a dog."

Pasted in a front window is a sticker for Atomic Dog, a magazine dedicated to the "bully breed" -- pit bulls. Only one of the dogs attacked Nathan, but city animal control has impounded both for 10-day quarantine before deciding their fates, Robertson said.

At the San Bernardino City Animal Shelter at Chandler Way, the pit bulls, housed in kennel 9, wagged their tails and barked occasionally as visitors peered into their cage. Police said the family owned the attacker for three months -- the 1½-year-old black male. The older and bigger dog, a blue female, wasn't involved, Robertson said...

Nine dead as Israel storms aid ship

See update at bottom of this post.

Nine dead as Israel storms aid ship
Jeffrey Heller and Alastair Macdonald
May 31, 2010
Reuters

Israeli marines stormed a Turkish aid ship bound for Gaza on Monday and at least nine pro-Palestinian activists were killed, triggering a diplomatic crisis and an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council.

European nations, as well as the United Nations and Turkey, voiced shock and outrage at the bloody end to the international campaigners' bid to break Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Boarding from dinghies and rappelling from helicopters, naval commandos stopped six ships, 700 people and 10,000 tons of supplies from reaching the Islamist-run Palestinian enclave -- but bloody miscalculation left Israel isolated and condemned.

Once-close Muslim ally Turkey accused it of "terrorism" in international waters. The U.N. Security Council met in emergency session. The European Union, a key aid donor to Palestinians, demanded an independent inquiry and an end to the Gaza embargo...



Turkey calls for punishment of Israel for killings
Jeffrey Heller and Ibon Villelabeitia
Reuters
Jun 1, 2010

Turkey called on Tuesday for Israel to be punished for storming a Turkish aid ship bound for Gaza in an attack that left nine dead and Israel increasingly isolated in the face of international outrage.

...Big questions were unanswered: how far Israel could continue to blockade 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip after condemnation from allies, and how it misjudged the situation and dropped marines onto a Turkish ship where they felt they had to open fire to save their lives.

As the first pictures emerged of a handful of Israeli marines being beaten and clubbed by dozens of activists, it was clear there would be anger in Israel over the mishandling.

HELD INCOMMUNICADO

Activists were held incommunicado by Israel but their accounts began to emerge after some were deported.

"We did not resist at all, we couldn't even if we had wanted to. What could we have done against the commandos who climbed aboard?" said Mihalis Grigoropoulos, who was aboard a vessel behind the Mavi Marmara, the cruise ship on which most of the violence occurred.

"The only thing some people tried was to delay them from getting to the bridge, forming a human shield. They were fired upon with plastic bullets and were stunned with electric devices," Grigoropoulos told NET TV at Athens airport.

Netanyahu was to convene his security cabinet to discuss the fallout from what Israeli newspapers termed a blundered raid.

Government sources said the ministers would consider whether to allow detained Turkish activists to return home on two planes that Turkey dispatched to Israel.

Obama, who has succeeded in reviving Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations through U.S.-mediated indirect talks, said he wanted the full facts soon and regretted the loss of life.

After more than 10 hours of closed-door talks that gave rise to conflicting interpretations, the U.N. Security Council called for "a prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation conforming to international standards."

It also condemned "those acts which resulted in the loss of ... civilians and many wounded."...

Amnesty: U.S. and Europe shielding Israel from accountability for Gaza war crimes

Amnesty: U.S. and Europe shielding Israel from accountability for Gaza war crimes
In its annual report, the rights group accuses Israel of continually violating human rights in Gaza with its ongoing economic siege.
By Haaretz Service and News Agencies
May 27, 2010

Amnesty International complained in its annual report released Wednesday that the U.S. and members of the European Union had obstructed international justice by using their positions on the UN Security Council to shield Israel from accountability for war crimes allegedly committed during last year's Gaza war.

The rights group also accused Israel of continually violating human rights in the Gaza Strip. It cited Israel's ongoing economic blockade as violating international law, leaving Gaza residents without adequate food or water supplies

In the 2009 report, Amnesty lauded a United Nations commissioned report released last year by South African justice Richard Goldstone for highlighting Israeli violations during the war in Gaza. Goldstone's findings found both Israel and Hamas guilty of war crimes during the conflict.

"Israeli forces committed war crimes and other serious breaches of international law in the Gaza Strip during a 22-day military offensive codenamed Operation 'Cast Lead' that ended on 18 January (2009)," the rights group said.

"Among other things, they carried out indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks against civilians, targeted and killed medical staff, used Palestinian civilians as 'human shields', and indiscriminately fired white phosphorus over densely populated residential areas," it added. "More than 1,380 Palestinians, including over 330 children and hundreds of other civilians, were killed." ...

For 99 Years, Oxford English Dictionary Got It Wrong

For 99 Years, Oxford English Dictionary Got It Wrong
May 11, 2010
Terence Neilan
AOL News

The Oxford English Dictionary got it wrong, and it took 99 years before anyone noticed.

Siphons don't work, it turns out, because of atmospheric pressure, as the OED has been saying since 1911. It's all down to that law Isaac Newton figured out when an apple hit his head: g-r-a-v-i-t-y.

Siphons work by drawing fluids from a higher location to a lower one, not always an easy thing to do, as anyone who's tried to empty a car's gas tank would confirm.

"It is gravity that moves the fluid in a siphon," said Stephen Hughes, a physics lecturer at the University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia.

So he was stunned when he noticed the OED had made a mistake, telling The Daily Telegraph of London, "We would all have an issue if the dictionary defined a koala as a species of bear, or a rose as a tulip."

Hughes said he discovered the error when he visited a huge siphon that transfers enormous amounts of water from a river system to a depleted lake in South Australia.

Hoping to use the project as part of an education paper, he researched the word and found "that almost every dictionary contained the same misconception" about atmospheric pressure being what pushed liquids through a siphon...

"I want my country back " slogan rejects democracy: Let's share our country

May 7, 2010
For Tea Party, a slogan that would make Don Draper proud
Its implications are troubling, but you've got to hand it to them: "I want my country back!" sure is catchy
By David Sirota
Salon

For most of us, conjuring concise and cogent catchphrases is nearly impossible. In fact, the skill can seem like the black magic of mystical madmen.

During the 1960s, the most influential of these Svengalis were the executives working in Madison Avenue advertising firms. By contrast, 2010's most effective madmen come from Main Street and are literally angry men — specifically, the Tea Party crowd that is, according to new polls, more wealthy, more white, more male, more Republican and more motivated by racial resentment than the general population. And though their jeans and baseball caps are less stylish than Don Draper's suits and fedoras, these anti-government activists deserve recognition: They have crafted a motto as succinctly expressive and manipulative as the best Sterling Cooper innovation.

"I Want My Country Back" — this ubiquitous Tea Party mantra belongs next to Nike's "Just Do It" on Ad Age's list of the most transcendent idioms. In just five words, it perfectly captures the era’s conservative backlash. Take a moment to ponder the slogan's phrase-by-phrase etymology:

"I Want" — Humanity's most atavistic exclamation of selfishness — and thus the appropriate introduction for a Tea Party motto — this caveman grunt may end up being the epitaph on the nation's tombstone. America once flourished by valuing what "we" — as in We the People — need (food, shelter, infrastructure, etc.). Conversely, today's America teeters, thanks to a Reagan-infused zeitgeist that reoriented us to worshiping whatever I the Person wants. High-income tax breaks, smog-belching SUVs, cavernous McMansions carved into pristine wilderness — it doesn't matter how frivolous the individual craving or how detached it is from necessity. What matters is that the "I" now assumes an entitled right to any desire irrespective of its affront to the allegedly Marxist "we."

"My Country" — In his quintessentially American ditty, Woody Guthrie said, "This land was made for you and me." It made sense. In a democracy, the country is We the People's — that is, everybody's. If, over time, our diversifying complexion and changing attitudes create political shifts, that's OK — because it's not "my country" or "your country"; it's all of ours. Apparently, though, this principle is no longer sacred. Following two elections that saw conservative ideology rejected, Tea Party activists have resorted to declaring that there can only be one kind of country — theirs.

"Back" — To underscore feelings of grievance and nostalgia, the slogan ends with a word deliberately implying both theft and resurrection. In Tea Party mythology, "back" means taking back a political system that was supposedly pilfered (even though it was taken via legitimate elections) and then going back to a time that seems ideal. As one Tea Party leader told the New York Times: "Things we had in the '50s were better."

We need immigration reform

We need immigration reform--and Mexico needs to stop oppressing its poor. The richest man in the world, Carlos Slim (left), achieved his wealth on the backs of the poor of Mexico.










We need immigration reform
By John C. Wester (at left in photo)
Catholic Bishop, Salt Lake City
Washington Post

Upon signing into law SB 1070, the Arizona immigration bill which would make enforcement targets of anyone looking foreign-born in that state, Gov. Jan Brewer complained: "We in Arizona have waited patiently for Washington to act. But decades of federal inaction and misguided policy have created a dangerous and unacceptable situation. "

I would agree, but with an amendment. I would say that all Americans have waited for the federal government to find a solution to the problem of illegal immigration. They have acted, for sure, but not in the right way and not for the right reasons. I would also agree that the situation is dangerous and unacceptable, but that Arizona's SB 1070 makes it worse, not better.

The federal government since 2002 has spent over $100 billion on immigration enforcement initiatives. This amounts to a doubling of Border Patrol agents to almost 20,000, nearly 700 miles of border fencing, a failed "virtual" fence costing billions, and a tripling of detention beds.

This is not to mention the manpower, weaponry, and other resources spent on immigration enforcement raids over the past several years, used to whisk away powerless mothers and fathers from their even more powerless children.

Yet, despite this strategy, along with its tragic human consequences, there has been no sustainable progress. In fact, the number of undocumented has risen over 50 percent in the past ten years, from 7 million in the 2000 Census to 11 million today.

To borrow from a nursery rhyme, all of the King's horses and all of the King's men have not put our immigration system back together again.

Arizona's SB 1070 is not an affirmation that enforcement measures alone are the right approach to illegal immigration, but a confirmation that enforcement-only tactics have not worked. It should be a wake-up call--a cry from the desert, if you will--to our national leaders that another approach is needed.

Despite its controversy, comprehensive immigration reform is the best way to secure the border and make us a safer nation...

Blind faith: American Jews and Israel's far right/Jewish settlers blamed for West Bank mosque fire

Israel and its policies toward Palestinians are in the news in the educational community in San Diego these days. I thought this article seemed pertinent.

Wikipedia: Peter Beinart in 2007
Blind faith: American Jews and Israel's far right
Former New Republic editor Peter Beinart warns American Jewish leaders that they must face reality in Israel
By Joe Conason
May 17, 2010

Not too many years ago, the Washington establishment welcomed Peter Beinart as one of those journalists who could be relied upon to fashion liberal arguments for conservative policy -- notably the invasion of Iraq, a fiasco that forced him to think again. That personal history, however regrettable, clearly equipped the former New Republic columnist, who now writes for the Daily Beast, with an acute ability to detect bad faith among those with whom he once made common cause.

Now he has published a courageous and carefully reported essay for the New York Review of Books on the relationship between American Jews and the state of Israel, questioning the mythology that now sustains those ties as the Jewish state veers further and further rightward. As an Orthodox Jew and a committed democrat, Beinart asks how long the American Jewish leadership will continue to deceive itself about the nature of the Netanyahu government, the ideology of the settler movement, and above all, the alienation of young American Jews from the Zionist project. He sharply identifies the contradictions between the traditional liberal rhetoric of Israel’s friends and supporters in the United States and the actual policies and platforms of the Israelis in power.

He musters the evidence that the Jewish leadership here is tacitly encouraging the likes of Knesset member Effi Eitam, who said in 2008 that "we'll have to expel the overwhelming majority of West Bank Arabs from here and remove Israeli Arabs from political system," and Avigdor Lieberman, Netanyahu’s extremist foreign minister...



Jewish settlers blamed for West Bank mosque fire
Mohammed Assadi
LIBBAN AL-SHARQIA, West Bank
May 4, 2010

LIBBAN AL-SHARQIA, West Bank (Reuters) - Palestinians accused Jewish settlers of setting fire to a mosque in the occupied West Bank Tuesday, an incident that raised tensions as a U.S. envoy began a mission to get peace talks going.

Israeli security officers were at the scene investigating the fire but have not determined its cause. Evidence was taken for forensic examination, an Israeli police spokesman said.

The mosque in the village of Libban al-Sharqia, near the Palestinian city of Nablus, was gutted overnight by the blaze that also burned holy books.

There were no witnesses to what Palestinian locals and officials assumed was another attack by Jewish settlers in the Nablus area. Settlers have also been suspected of vandalizing two other mosques and a cemetery in the last six months...

ACLU's David Blair-Loy says Donald Rumsfeld must obey the constitution

ACLU Represents Jewish War Veterans and San Diego Residents in Effort to Relocate Mt. Soledad Memorial
August 24, 2006

SAN DIEGO – The American Civil Liberties Union, the Jewish War Veterans and local residents announced today that they are suing the U.S. government and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, charging that the continued display of the Mt. Soledad Latin cross on federally owned land unlawfully entangles government with religion.

“The ACLU believes that religious symbols, even prominently displayed, are an important and constitutionally protected form of religious expression in the public sphere,” said David Blair-Loy, Legal Director of the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties. “There is a huge difference between families and religious communities expressing their religious beliefs and the U.S. government—using all of its power, authority, financing, and property—to promote the beliefs of one faith over all others.”

The ACLU filed the lawsuit, Jewish War Veterans et al. v. Rumsfeld, after the federal government, through an Act of Congress, recently obtained title to the Mt. Soledad memorial and its surrounding property by eminent domain. The ACLU asserts that this is part of a transparent effort to evade a long series of unfavorable state and federal court decisions declaring the placement of the cross on government property unconstitutional...

EPA Scientist Says East Coast Beaches Threatened by Sea Level, But Nobody’s Listening

EPA Scientist Says East Coast Beaches Threatened by Sea Level, But Nobody’s Listening
Wired Science
by Josh Harkinson
April 27, 2010

For most of the 20th century, Chesapeake Beach, Maryland, was known for its boardwalk, amusement park and wide, sandy beaches, popular with daytrippers from Washington, D.C. “The bathing beach has a frontage of three miles,” boasted a tourist brochure from about 1900, “and is equal, if not superior, to any beach on the Atlantic Coast.”

Today, on a cloudless spring afternoon, the resort town’s sweeping view of Chesapeake Bay is no less stunning. But there’s no longer any beach in Chesapeake Beach. Where there once was sand, water now laps against a seven-foot-high wall of boulders protecting a strip of pricey homes marked with “No Trespassing” signs.

Surveying the armored shoreline, Jim Titus explains how the natural sinking of the shoreline and slow but steady sea-level rise, mostly due to climate change, have driven the bay’s water more than a foot higher over the past century. Reinforcing the eroding shore with a sea wall held the water back, but it also choked off the natural supply of sand that had replenished the beach. What sand remained gradually sank beneath the rising water.

Titus, the Environmental Protection Agency’s resident expert on sea-level rise, first happened upon Maryland’s disappearing beaches 15 years ago while looking for a place to windsurf. “Having the name beach,” he discovered, “is not a very good predictor of having a beach.” Since then, he’s kept an eye out for other beach towns that have lost their namesakes—Maryland’s Masons Beach and Tolchester Beach, North Carolina’s Pamlico Beach, and many more. (See a map of Maryland’s phantom beach towns here.)

A 54-year old with a thick shock of hair and sturdy build, Titus could pass for a vacationer in his Panama hat, khakis and polo shirt. But as he picks his way over the rocky shore, he’s anything but relaxed.

For nearly 30 years, Titus has been sounding the alarm about our rising oceans. Global warming is melting polar ice, adding to the volume of the oceans, as well as warming up seawater, causing it to expand. Most climatologists expect oceans around the world to rise between 1.5 and 5 feet this century.

Some of the hardest-hit areas could be in our own backyard: Erosion and a shift in ocean currents could cause water to rise 4 feet or more along much of the East Coast. Titus, who contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Nobel Prize-winning 2007 report, has done more than anyone to determine how those rising seas will affect us and what can be done about them.

Like his occasional collaborator, NASA climatologist James Hansen, Titus has decided to speak out. He’s crisscrossed the country to meet with state and local officials in coastal areas, urging them to start planning now for the slow-motion flood. Yet his warnings have mostly fallen on deaf ears. “We were often told by midlevel officials that their bosses did not want to plan for anything past the next election,” he says...

Happy 4/20? Stoners don’t trust reporters in skinny jeans

Peña: Stoners don’t trust reporters in skinny jeans
By Joseph Peña, SDNN
Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Considering the Republican District Attorney will prosecute a chimney, I didn’t think it’d be easy to find smoke shop workers or stoners to talk with me Tuesday (4/20), a day marijuana enthusiasts worldwide celebrate. I sure as hell didn’t think it’d be as hard as it was, though.
San Diego:

Happy 4-20! Or not, depending who you talk with; smoke shop workers and stoners were not eager to shoot the breeze with me Tuesday. The whole day totally cashed me out.

I only wanted to know whether the pot smoker’s holiday is a boon to local smoke shops; or — the way dedicated drinkers regard New Year’s Eve as a junior varsity scrimmage — pot users leave 4/20 to college freshmen, thus having no significant economic impact on businesses...

It doesn't matter what you do, just so you believe

Earning Hope
Chalice Notes
by Kent Doss
April 19, 2010

...In our world view, it’s your actions that make the difference, not just what you believe. We have forsaken original sin and salvation by faith alone...

Most of us have some notion of original sin in the Christian church. That’s the fallen or sinful state of human beings that is passed down generation to generation because of the “Fall” in the Garden of Eden when Eve ate fruit from the tree of knowledge. Just be being descendents, all of humanity is likewise sinful. It’s a pretty core piece of Christian theology, but it wasn’t so until the early 400s. Augustine of Hippo was the champion of this doctrine and he was one of the most powerful and influential theologians of Christian history.

But at the same time, one of our very important theological predecessors was arguing the opposite. He argued that salvation can be earned and humanity’s natural state is not original sin. Rather than the sin of a mythical predecessor, he focused on free will, and the importance of right action, not just having the right theological faith. His ideas quickly spread, which is one reason the opponents acted so promptly and firmly. In fact they acted so forcefully and so completely that nearly all of his written works have been destroyed. Most of what is known about Pelagius today is recorded in the letters and books of Orthodox theologians who argue against him...

How I learned to stop being a lazy American and pay my part for what matters

Apr 15, 2010 06:01 EDT
Suck it, Tea Party: I love Tax Day
How I learned to stop being a lazy American and pay my part for what matters
By Steve Almond
Salon

Like a lot of Americans, I've spent a small but deeply unfortunate fraction of my recent life puzzling over the Tea Party's Tax Day Extravaganza of Irrational Grievance, or whatever they're calling it.

As a longtime resident of the Boston area, it's especially galling to see a bunch of angry old white people -- many of whom, we learned recently, are on the federal dole -- behave as if their democratically elected officials are foreign despots. It would probably behoove the Fourth Estate to draw a thick line between genuine victims of colonialism and sore losers.

Is the Star of David being misused by Jewish extremists?

I recently was surprised to learn (even though it makes perfect sense, doesn't it?) that Palestinians are descended from Jewish farmers and herders of the biblical era. So the story below is not just about religion. It's about that pesky brother versus brother problem that humans everywhere seem to be burdened by.


Apr 15, 2010
Is the Star of David the new swastika?
In a disturbing reversal of symbolism, Israeli extremists are defacing Palestinian property with the Jewish symbol
By Judy Mandelbaum

Time was when Nazis used to slather swastikas on synagogues and Jewish businesses to prepare the local population for expulsion or much worse. It's sad that this sort of behavior persists around the world, as a new study by Tel Aviv University shows. But it's even sadder to see Israelis regularly defacing Palestinian property with Stars of David with equal glee and with what appears to be the same brain-dead mindset.

Your local paper might not have covered it, but in the wee hours of Wednesday morning a gang of Israeli settlers attacked the West Bank village of Hawara. "Palestinians reported two torched cars on the village’s central road early yesterday," Haaretz writes. "A small village mosque, used only on the weekend, had the word 'Muhammad' sprayed in Hebrew and a Star of David. Haaretz also found graffiti with the Jewish prayer 'Praise be onto him for not making me a gentile.'" The attackers also took the opportunity to destroy some three hundred olive trees, a major source of local income...

Peloza v. Capistrano Unified School District (1994): Is Evolution a Religion?

Peloza v. Capistrano Unified School District (1994)
About.com

Evolution & Creationism: Is Evolution a Religion?
Exploring: Church & State > Court Decisions > Evolution & Creationism

Some of those who object to evolution for religious reasons also argue that evolution itself is a religion or, sometimes, that it is a part of secular humanism which itself is a religion. Therefore, they conclude, teaching evolution in public schools violates the Establishment Clause (because it imposes a religion on students) and the Free Exercise Clause (in particular, of the teachers who are forced to teach it). But are such arguments valid? Is evolution a religion?

Background Information

High school biology teacher John E. Peloza brought action against the Capistrano School District, claiming that the school district's requirement that he teach "evolutionism," as well as a school district order barring him from discussing his religious beliefs with students, were infringements both on his rights to free speech and his rights to free exercise of religion.

According to Peloza, "evolutionism" is a religion and therefore being forced to teach it violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. In Peloza's view, Evolutionism is an historical, philosophical and religious belief system, but not a valid scientific theory. Evolutionism is one of "two world views on the subject of the origins of life and of the universe." The other is "creationism" which also is a "religious belief system."

The belief system of evolutionism is based on the assumption that life and the universe evolved randomly and by chance and with no Creator involved in the process. The world view and belief system of creationism is based on the assumption that a Creator created all life and the entire universe.

Peloza also claimed that the district conspired to destroy and damage his professional reputation, career and position as a public school teacher. He had been reprimanded in writing for proselytizing to students and teaching religion in the classroom - according to him, they did this because they were hostile towards practicing Christians.

A District Court had dismissed the suit and awarded attorney fees to the school district, but Peloza appealed.

Court Decision

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals completely rejected all of Peloza's arguments. First, they noted that his claims were not entirely consistent - in some places he claimed that it is unconstitutional for the school district to require him to teach, as a valid scientific theory, that higher life forms evolved from lower ones, but at other times he claimed the district was forcing him to teach evolution as fact.

The Court also noted what just about every creationist seems to miss: the fact that evolution is about how life has developed and has nothing to do with the origins or development of the universe itself...

The Case for God

All quiet on the God front
Simon Blackburn discusses the argument that religious experience can't be discussed
Simon Blackburn
The Guardian
4 July 2009


This is an eloquent and interesting book, although you do not quite get what it says on the tin. Karen Armstrong takes the reader through a history of religious practice in many different cultures, arguing that in the good old days and purest forms they all come to much the same thing. They use devices of ritual, mystery, drama, dance and meditation in order to enable us better to cope with the vale of tears in which we find ourselves. Religion is therefore properly a matter of a practice, and may be compared with art or music. These are similarly difficult to create, and even to appreciate. But nobody who has managed either would doubt that something valuable has happened in the process. We come out of the art gallery or concert hall enriched and braced, elevated and tranquil, and may even fancy ourselves better people, though the change may or may not be noticed by those around us.

1. The Case for God
2. : What Religion Really Means
3. by Karen Armstrong
4. 384pp,
5. Bodley Head,
6. £20
7.

1. Buy The Case for God at the Observer bookshop

This is religion as it should be, and, according to Armstrong, as it once was in all the world's best traditions. However, there is a serpent in this paradise, as in others. Or rather, several serpents, but the worst is the folly of intellectualising the practice. This makes it into a matter of belief, argument, and ultimately dogma. It debases religion into a matter of belief in a certain number of propositions, so that if you can recite those sincerely you are an adept, and if you can't you fail. This is Armstrong's principal target. With the scientific triumphs of the 17th century, religion stopped being a practice and started to become a theory - in particular the theory of the divine architect. This is a perversion of anything valuable in religious practice, Armstrong writes, and it is only this perverted view that arouses the scorn of modern "militant" atheists. So Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris have chosen a straw man as a target. Real religion is serenely immune to their discovery that it is silly to talk of a divine architect.

So what should the religious adept actually say by way of expressing his or her faith? Nothing. This is the "apophatic" tradition, in which nothing about God can be put into words. Armstrong firmly recommends silence, having written at least 15 books on the topic. Words such as "God" have to be seen as symbols, not names, but any word falls short of describing what it symbolises, and will always be inadequate, contradictory, metaphorical or allegorical. The mystery at the heart of religious practice is ineffable, unapproachable by reason and by language. Silence is its truest expression. The right kind of silence, of course, not that of the pothead or inebriate. The religious state is exactly that of Alice after hearing the nonsense poem "Jabberwocky": "Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas - only I don't exactly know what they are." If Alice puts on a dog collar, she will be at one with the tradition.

Armstrong is not presenting a case for God in the sense most people in our idolatrous world would think of it. The ordinary man or woman in the pew or on the prayer mat probably thinks of God as a kind of large version of themselves with mysterious powers and a rather nasty temper...

9 Tied to Christian Militia Charged in Plot to Murder Officers

9 Tied to Militia Charged in Plot to Murder Officers
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
March 29, 2010

WASHINGTON — Nine members of a Michigan-based Christian militia group have been indicted on sedition and weapons charges in connection with an alleged plot to murder law enforcement officers in hopes of setting off an anti-government uprising.


In court filings unsealed Monday, the Justice Department accused the nine people of planning to kill an unidentified law enforcement officer, then plant improvised explosive devices of a type used by insurgents in Iraq to attack the funeral procession.

Eight of the defendants were arrested over the weekend in raids in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. A ninth remained at large, the Justice Department said. The indictments against them were returned last Tuesday. The defendants were identified as members of Hutaree, described by federal prosecutors as an anti-government extremist organization based in Lenawee County, Michigan, and which advocates violence against local, state and federal law enforcement. The group saw local and state police as “foot soldiers” for the federal government, which it viewed as its enemy, along with participants in what they deemed to be a “New World Order,” according to the indictment...

Anger in schools and beyond: Are some of these people actually motivated by other problems?

Sometimes people are actually angry about something different from what they're yelling about

A lot of kids have been given less-than-stellar educations by our local school districts, and many of their parents are angry. I agree entirely with these parents' demands for better treatment for students. I also agree that many parents who complain have been bullied shamefully by school lawyers. Some of these lawyers have violated professional codes of conduct and state law to the extent that they deserve severe reprimands, even disbarment or jail time. Of course, these lawyers are unlikely to be called to account for their unethical and illegal actions.

But some of these parents are too angry, in my opinion.

I suspect that some parents are angry about situations that have nothing to do with schools, but they unleash this anger on a handy, accessible target: their kids' school. Sometimes it's really hard to keep track of exactly what these people are furious about.

Recently one of these parents sent me, for no apparent reason, an email claiming that President Obama was "first born"* in Kenya. Apparently the theory is that he was first born in Kenya, then born for a second time in Honolulu. (Sometimes it's hard to figure out exactly what these "Birthers" are trying to say.) The email I received included a photo of Obama's elementary school application to an Indonesian Catholic school. Very clearly on the application, right after his name, Obama's place of birth was listed as Honolulu. The person who filled out the form, Obama's Indonesian stepfather, was in no way trying to make his stepson sound more American.



Obama's birthplace was a matter of record, and no one had yet cooked up a plan to pretend otherwise. Yet this email was sent to me, as the sender indicated in the subject line, "to fuel the debate over Obama's qualifications." How does the human brain malfunction so spectacularly?

If anything, this San Diego parent should be angry at her own teachers for not training her adequately as a critical thinker.

But I must say that many teachers and administrators were not taught how to be critical thinkers, either. During my years of teaching I saw plenty of teachers and adminstrators spewing anger (at kids, parents and each other). Many of them made no more sense than the confused parent who emailed me. To top it off, I heard teachers make disparaging remarks about high intelligence itself. Smart people were not considered cool by the most popular and powerful teachers at my schools.

My suggestion? Critical thinking classes for school professionals.

Everyone involved would benefit from better decision-making by school personnel, and students would benefit from the improved thinking skills of their teachers.



------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Quote from the email:
"This document provides the smoking gun that many of Obama's detractors have been seeking - that he is NOT a natural-born citizen of the United States - necessary to be President of these United States . Along with the evidence that he was first born in Kenya , here we see that there is no record of him ever applying for US citizenship...Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation has released the results of their investigation..."



Next installment: Muslims versus Mormons: whom do Americans trust less?


__________________________________________________________________________

Here's a story about another nasty email. The woman who sent the racially offensive email in the first place was angry that a recipient forwarded it to the NAACP, and caused that recipient to be fired. This is just the sort of thing that happens in schools, in my experience. School officials want bad behavior covered up, and they take action NOT against the bad actors, but against those they fear might reveal the truth about the bad actions to the public. That's what Chula Vista Elementary School District and its lawyers did to cover up the crimes of Robin Donlan and Linda Watson. In the end, the district committed felonies like perjury and alteration of documents to cover misdemeanors. Things really get out of control once the cover-up starts. What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.


NAACP: SunTrust Mortgage worker fired over e-mail
CHRIS I. YOUNG TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
March 18, 2010

The NAACP says a 14-year employee was fired from SunTrust Mortgage Inc. in Richmond after she was accused of sending a chain e-mail she received at work that ultimately was forwarded to the NAACP.

The fired African-American employee said she found the e-mail offensive.

The e-mail contains pictures of 40 bumper stickers such as, "Clinton ruined a dress, Obama ruined a nation," "So I guess we're even on that slavery thing eh?" and, "Diversity -- It killed 13 at Fort Hood."...

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People released a copy of what it said was the e-mail sent by a SunTrust official to 13 office employees and one outside recipient under the subject line "FW: Bumper Stickers that Make Sense."...

Russ, an accountant, said SunTrust conducted an internal investigation and then brought her into a meeting. There, she was told she was being terminated because her supervisor had "trust issues" with her and because of the e-mail, she said in a telephone interview.

She said SunTrust accused her of trying to go public with the e-mail by forwarding it to someone who would give it to the NAACP.

The official who sent the e-mail collected Russ' belongings and escorted Russ out of the building immediately after the Feb. 18 meeting, Russ said. She said she was paid through March 4...

CNN debunks false report about Obama

CNN debunks false report about Obama
January 23, 2007


JAKARTA, Indonesia (CNN) -- Allegations that Sen. Barack Obama was educated in a radical Muslim school known as a "madrassa" are not accurate, according to CNN reporting.

Insight Magazine, which is owned by the same company as The Washington Times, reported on its Web site last week that associates of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-New York, had unearthed information the Illinois Democrat and likely presidential candidate attended a Muslim religious school known for teaching the most fundamentalist form of Islam.

Obama lived in Indonesia as a child, from 1967 to 1971, with his mother and stepfather and has acknowledged attending a Muslim school, but an aide said it was not a madrassa. (Watch video of Obama's school Video)

Insight attributed the information in its article to an unnamed source, who said it was discovered by "researchers connected to Senator Clinton." A spokesman for Clinton, who is also weighing a White House bid, denied that the campaign was the source of the Obama claim.

He called the story "an obvious right-wing hit job."

Insight stood by its story in a response posted on its Web site Monday afternoon.

The Insight article was cited several times Friday on Fox News and was also referenced by the New York Post, The Glenn Beck program on CNN Headline News and a number of political blogs. (Watch how the Obama "gossip" spread Video)
School not a madrassa

But reporting by CNN in Jakarta, Indonesia and Washington, D.C., shows the allegations that Obama attended a madrassa to be false. CNN dispatched Senior International Correspondent John Vause to Jakarta to investigate.

He visited the Basuki school, which Obama attended from 1969 to 1971.

"This is a public school. We don't focus on religion," Hardi Priyono, deputy headmaster of the Basuki school, told Vause. "In our daily lives, we try to respect religion, but we don't give preferential treatment."

Vause reported he saw boys and girls dressed in neat school uniforms playing outside the school, while teachers were dressed in Western-style clothes.

"I came here to Barack Obama's elementary school in Jakarta looking for what some are calling an Islamic madrassa ... like the ones that teach hate and violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan," Vause said on the "Situation Room" Monday. "I've been to those madrassas in Pakistan ... this school is nothing like that."

Vause also interviewed one of Obama's Basuki classmates, Bandug Winadijanto, who claims that not a lot has changed at the school since the two men were pupils. Insight reported that Obama's political opponents believed the school promoted Wahhabism, a fundamentalist form of Islam, "and are seeking to prove it."

"It's not (an) Islamic school. It's general," Winadijanto said. "There is a lot of Christians, Buddhists, also Confucian. ... So that's a mixed school."

The Obama aide described Fox News' broadcasting of the Insight story "appallingly irresponsible."

Fox News executive Bill Shine told CNN "Reliable Sources" anchor Howard Kurtz that some of the network's hosts were simply expressing their opinions and repeatedly cited Insight as the source of the allegations.

Obama has noted in his two books, "Dreams From My Father" and "The Audacity of Hope," that he spent two years in a Muslim school and another two years in a Catholic school while living in Indonesia from age 6 to 10.



Obama's Catholic School Ready for Possible Visit
Voice of Indonesia
Monday, 15 March 2010 21:31

Jakarta, VOI News - The Catholic school Barack Obama attended as a child in Jakarta is getting ready to receive a possible visit when the US president comes to Indonesia later this month.

“We do not know for sure if President Obama will visit this school, but we are prepared for the visit,” Maria Yohana of Santo Fransiskus Asisi Elementary School told Union of Catholic Asian News. “We will serve fried rice and rambutan, his favorite food."
She said students had also prepared a number of performances, including a traditional Jakarta Betawi dance, the Balinese pendet, and Sundanese angklung music. Yohana said the school would also like to show Obama its new leadership laboratory, "whose vision is to produce future leaders based on love".

Obama attended Santo Fransiskus Asisi from 1968 to 1970, before transferring to Menteng 01 elementary school. While the latter has a statue of the child then known as "Barry", Santo Fransiskus has set aside the desk and chair he used. “I want to shake hands and get his signature," said current student Stefanus Febrian, 10. "I also want to ask him about his favorite subject."

Meanwhile, the latest Indonesian book about Barack Obama was launched in Jakarta on Monday, the week before the US President is scheduled to arrive in Indonesia. The book titled "Obama Anak Menteng" ("Obama The Menteng Kid") was written by Damien Dematra. During a launching at Obama's former elementary school in Menteng, Damien said he hoped the book would inspire Indonesian children to dare to dream.

Obama was successful “because of the power of dreams," he told Trijaya Radio. Damien wrote the 206 page book in five days after spending two weeks interviewing Obama's childhood friends and relatives in Indonesia. He said the book would be made into a movie in June. Several books have been written about Obama in Indonesia. The US leader spent part of his childhood in Menteng after his mother married an Indonesian. jg



Obama's Early Days in Jakarta
Former Teacher Remembers 'Barry' as a Good Student, Leader


...Fermina Katarina Sinaga Suhanda, Obama's third-grade teacher, remembered him distinctly because he looked different.

"He's the only black, he's the only one with curly hair," she said, adding that he was also bigger than the other children.

She also remembered a telling essay from the Illinois senator.

"He wrote like this," Suhanda said in Bahasa, the local language. "I am Barry Soetoro. I am in third grade [at] Fransiskus Asisi Elementary School."

He wrote about his friends, parents, Indonesia and ended the essay with "I want to be the president."

The president of what, the third-grader did not specify.

"To be President Taxi or where I don't know," Suhanda said.
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Obama's teachers said he was already showing signs of leadership at a young age. They described him as a "number-two teacher," sharing how he used to lead his classmates to line up after recess and volunteer to erase the chalkboard.

They remembered how his mother walked Obama to school in the mornings and occasionally exchanged words with them in Bahasa.

His best subject, in a school taught in the local language, was math. Referring to teachers as "ma'am," he dressed neatly with his shirt tucked in and wore shoes and socks, while some of the other children wore sandals or flip-flops, his teachers remembered.

Friends said that Obama is left-handed, a noticeable trait in a predominately Muslim country, where the left hand is reserved for bodily hygiene.

He was fast and agile, good at playing ball, and hide and seek. In many ways, he was just like his energetic classmates.

"Some boys [were] always running around and teas[ing] the girls, and Barry was one of them," Kisjanto said, recalling how Obama sometimes pulled their long, braided hair.

Over time, Obama's mother's Indonesian husband landed a better job, and the family moved into another home in a better neighborhood. With a long side hallway connecting them, the rooms of their house were lined up back-to-back like a train. A bench the family of four sat in for a family portrait still sits in the front room.

In third grade, Obama transferred to Besuki Elementary School, a school political opponents would later proclaim was a "madrassas." Classmates who attended the school know otherwise and said the mosque that is there now wasn't there before.

"Everybody is exposed to both religion[s] -- both Muslim and Christian. So it was a very open, very tolerant school," said Kisjanto, who is Christian.

"Because our class[rooms] are open, we don't have air conditioning at that time, so we can hear [when] the Muslims are reciting the Koran, and I can still remember it, and I can recite it because I hear[d] it," she said. "It's lovely that we are exposed to both religion[s]."

Obama detailed in his book his recollection of living in a world with his mother so distant from America.

Harmless Creature Killed Because of Superstition

Harmless Creature Killed Because of Superstition
Updated: 9 hours 4 minutes ago
David Knowles
AOL News
(March 27) -- For some residents of the African island nation of Madagascar, encountering the tiny mammal called the aye-aye is as bad as meeting death itself.

The 4- to 6-pound animal is believed to creep into the houses of villagers and use its peculiarly long middle finger to lance the hearts of sleeping victims, according to Discovery News.
aye-aye
Rob Cousins, Bristol Zoo via Getty Images
Natives of Madagascar often kill harmless aye-ayes over fears of what the animal represents.

For that reason, locals often kill the harmless animals on sight. Along with the loss of habitat caused by deforestation, superstition is a major reason the aye-aye is now considered to be at risk. Aye-aye population estimates range from 1,000 to 10,000.

Found only on Madagascar, aye-ayes are nocturnal primates that tend to live high in the trees of the rain forest, where they build nests of leaves and twigs. They use their long middle fingers to extract insect larvae from tree bark, according to National Geographic.

Some locals believe the legend that the appearance of an aye-aye -- which does not seem to fear the presence of human beings -- is a sign that a villager will soon die.

The animal, the largest nocturnal primate in the world, is now officially protected by law, but that often does not protect the aye-aye from residents convinced of its evil nature...

Ex-Scientology Lawsuits Reveal Elite Sea Org Group

Ex-Scientology Lawsuits Reveal Elite Sea Org Group
Mar 27, 2010 10:31 am US/Pacific
Ex-Scientology Lawsuits Reveal Elite Sea Org Group
GILLIAN FLACCUS, Associated Press Writer
SAN JACINTO, Calif. (AP) ― At the edge of arid foothills far outside Los Angeles, hundreds of Scientology followers live on a gated, 500-acre campus and work long hours for almost no pay reproducing the works of founder L. Ron Hubbard and creating the church's teaching and promotional materials.

The church says its 5,000 so-called Sea Organization members are religious devotees akin to monks who are exempt from wage requirements and overtime. But two lawsuits filed by two former Sea Org members, as they are known, allege the workers are little more than slave laborers, forced to work 100-hour weeks for pennies and threatened with manual labor if they cause trouble.

Marc Headley and his wife, Claire, are seeking back pay and overtime that could add up to $1 million each, according to their attorney, Barry Van Sickle.

Experts say the plaintiffs face an uphill battle; one similar lawsuit in state court has already been dismissed, although the plaintiff plans to appeal.

But the dispute has nonetheless focused unwelcome attention on the Sea Org, which operates as a nerve center for the church's most important business. While Sea Org members hold positions of authority within the international church, from the public relations team to the top leadership, lower-ranking members make up much of the work force.

The members are Scientology's most devoted followers: they sign a billion-year pledge, vow not to have children and live and work communally.

Scientology has been sued by disgruntled members before, but experts believe these suits are the first to use labor law to challenge the premise that the Sea Organization is akin to a fraternal religious order.

A victory for plaintiffs would "certainly go to the heart of Scientology's self-identification as a religion," said J. Gordon Melton, director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion and author of a scholarly book on Scientology.

US geneticist wins $1.5 million religion prize

US geneticist wins $1.5 million religion prize

By BRETT ZONGKER (AP)
March 25, 2010

WASHINGTON — A one-time priest who later became an evolutionary geneticist and molecular biologist and helped scientifically refute creationism with his research was honored Thursday with one of the world's top religion prizes.

Francisco J. Ayala, 76, a U.S. citizen originally from Spain, will receive the 2010 Templeton Prize, valued at $1.53 million, the John Templeton Foundation announced at the National Academy of Sciences.

It is the largest monetary award given each year to an individual and honors someone who made exceptional contributions to affirm spirituality. Officials increase the value each year to exceed the Nobel Prize.

"I see religion and science as two of the pillars on which American society rests," Ayala told The Associated Press, saying the United States is one of the world's most religious countries. "We have these two pillars not talking, not seeing they can reinforce each other."

Ayala is a notable choice because he opposes the entanglement of science and religion. The former Dominican priest is adamant that science and religion do not contradict each other.

"If they are properly understood, they cannot be in contradiction because science and religion concern different matters, and each is essential to human understanding," he said in remarks prepared for the acceptance ceremony.

Ayala is a top professor of biological sciences at the University of California, Irvine. His pioneering genetic research led to revelations that could help develop cures for malaria and other diseases.

In January, he co-authored a paper that established gorillas and chimps may serve as reservoirs for parasites that cause human malaria, showing that even if a vaccine is developed, humans will be vulnerable to re-infection.

Ayala has long worked to foster dialogue between religion and science and said tension between the fields has subsided over time.

In 1981, Ayala was an expert witness in a U.S. federal court challenge that helped overturn an Arkansas law mandating the teaching of creationism alongside evolution. Three years later, the National Academy of Sciences asked Ayala to serve as principal author of "Science, Evolution and Creationism," which categorically refuted creationism and intelligent design.

How God created light

Light
George Musser
Scientific American 301, 96 (2009)

In the book of Genesis, all God had to do was say the word. In modern cosmology, the creation of light took rather more effort.

Killing for a Higher Cause: Political Violence in a World in Crisis

Merari notes that many suicide bombers are not mentally ill, in fact, they're well adjusted to the society they live in. It's normal to be influenced by people around us. All I can say is, nature clearly knows what it's doing when it creates people who go against the grain. But perhaps nature does not consider going-against-the-grain people to be abnormal. Maybe it's our beliefs about normalcy that are off.


Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Expert Shares Suicide Bomber Research March 4
The lecture is part of a semester-long lecture series on political conflict.
Event Details

* 4:30 - 6:30 p.m., Thursday, March 4
* Nasitir Hall 100
* Free and open to the public

Ariel Merari will present his research of suicide bombers during his presentation, "In their own voice: Interviews with, and psychological tests of suicide bombers, their commanders and families." Merari speaks at 4:30 p.m., Thursday, March 4, in Nasatir Hall, room 100. The event is free and open to the public.

About Merari

Ariel Merari is professor emeritus, Department of Psychology, at Tel Aviv University in Israel. He has studied every suicide bombing in the Middle East since the U.S. Marine barracks attack in Beirut 25 years ago.

About the lecture series

SDSU’s spring lecture series, “Killing for a Higher Cause: Political Violence in a World in Crisis,” takes an in-depth look at political violence and conflict around the world.

Judge Judith Hayes made a mistake of law on Feb. 19, 2010

Judge Judith Hayes made a mistake of law in San Diego Superior Courton February 18, 2010
http://www.firstamendmentcoalition.org/2009/11/in-taping-a-reporter-ag-browns-spokesman-showed-bad-judgment-but-didnt-break-the-law/
California law prohibits the recording–without consent of all parties–of a “confidential communication.” (CA Penal Code Sec. 632(a)(emphasis supplied)).

The judge was concerned that I remembered what her clerk had said to me, and asked if I had recorded the conversation. I hadn't. But I did grab a scrap of paper and started taking notes when the clerk began to say repeatedly, "There is no injunction." I have received no apology from the clerk for misleading me, but I have received a $3000 contempt sanction for violating the injunction that supposedly didn't exist.

The judge had no problem with the clerk's misleading statements, although she acknowledged the accuracy of my report about the statements by saying that it seemed like I had recorded the conversation.

Then the judge made her mistake of law. She told me it would be illegal for me to record my conversation with her clerk when I called and asked for a hearing date. It seems Judge Hayes needs some law school refresher courses. There's nothing confidential about a request to a court for a hearing date.

Is money a sign of God's approval?

Lee Jenkins Financial Ministries
Money Myths and Old Sayings
Gospel Today Magazine
January / February 2008


...Myth #2: “Financial Prosperity is a sign of God’s approval.”
Truth: Financial prosperity is not always a sign of God’s approval. You and I both know people who go against God’s will (thieves, drug dealers, adulterers) and still make plenty of money. It’s a mistake to measure God’s approval by the amount of “stuff” you or your neighbor has. If God “blessed” you with a BMW or a big house, be thankful, but don’t get full of yourself and think it means you’re more special than the brother or sister cruisin’ in a Pinto.

Yes, there are instances when God rewards obedience. It’s been happening since biblical times when God gave material wealth to Abraham (Genesis 13:1-7), Isaac (Genesis 26:12-14), Jacob (Genesis 30:43), Joseph (Genesis 39:2-6), Solomon (1 Kings 3:13), and Job (Job 42:10-17). However, if you are struggling financially, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re doing something wrong, and it certainly doesn’t mean that God doesn’t love you. Remember Job’s “comforters” thought there must be hidden sin in his life to account for his loss of prosperity, but they were wrong. God approved of Job (Job 1:8; 42:7), yet he permitted Satan to destroy everything of earthly value that Job possessed...




SERMONWRITER
Resources for Lectionary Preaching
SCRIPTURE: Mark 10:17-31

They have been taught that wealth is a sign of God's approval, so how can it be difficult for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God?




That Which God Hath Lent Thee
The Puritans and Money
by LELAND RYKEN

...The Puritans had no guilt about making money; to make money was a form of stewardship. The Weber thesis made mileage out of Baxter’s statement:

If God shows you a way in which you lawfully get more than in another way (without wrong to your soul, or to any other), if you refuse this, and choose the less gainful way, you cross one of the ends of your calling, and you refuse to be God’s steward...

What About Poverty?

If riches are a blessing from God, then poverty must be a curse and a sign of God’s disfavor—right? Wrong, said the Puritans, who disagreed with a whole tissue of assumptions often attributed to them in the twentieth century.

In the first place, the Puritans disagreed that godliness is a guarantee of success. Thomas Watson went so far as to say that “true godliness is usually attended with persecution .… The saints have no charter of exemption from trials.… Their piety will not shield them from sufferings.”

If godliness is not a guarantee of success, then the converse is also true: success is not a sign of godliness. This is how the Puritans understood the matter. John Cotton stated that a Christian “equally bears good and evil successes as God shall dispense them to him.” Samuel Willard wrote, “As riches are not evidences of God’s love, so neither is poverty of his anger or hatred.”...



Money--A Sign of God's Love: God's Abundant Supply for Every Need--Explained

About the Author

Jeff Wilburn has worked in the financial securities industry for the last twenty-two years, building wealth for his clientele by using divine principles. He lives in Katy, TX, with his wife of twenty-seven years and daughter. Jeff enjoys exercising, reading, and serves on various local church committees.


What does God's compassion for creation mean for you? Jeff Wilburn explains a revolutionary new view of money that can be proved in our everyday experience. Unseen divine laws have now been summarized, bringing supply in new and exciting forms.

Are Liberals Smarter Than Conservatives?

Study: Are Liberals Smarter Than Conservatives?
By John Cloud
Feb. 26, 2010

The notion that liberals are smarter than conservatives is familiar to anyone who has spent time on a college campus. The College Democrats are said to be ugly, smug and intellectual; the College Republicans, pretty, belligerent and dumb. There's enough truth in both stereotypes that the vast majority of college students opt not to join either club.

But are liberals actually smarter? A libertarian (and, as such, nonpartisan) researcher, Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics and Political Science, has just written a paper that is set to be published in March by the journal Social Psychology Quarterly. The paper investigates not only whether conservatives are dumber than liberals but also why that might be so. (See the top 10 political gaffes of 2009.)

The short answer: Kanazawa's paper shows that more-intelligent people are more likely to say they are liberal. They are also less likely to say they go to religious services. These aren't entirely new findings; last year, for example, a British team found that kids with higher intelligence scores were more likely to grow into adults who vote for Liberal Democrats, even after the researchers controlled for socioeconomics. What's new in Kanazawa's paper is a provocative theory about why intelligence might correlate with liberalism. He argues that smarter people are more willing to espouse "evolutionarily novel" values — that is, values that did not exist in our ancestral environment, including weird ideas about, say, helping genetically unrelated strangers (liberalism, as Kanazawa defines it), which never would have occurred to us back when we had to hunt to feed our own clan

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1968042,00.html#ixzz0giCHiKMB

See the continents drift, collide, and separate

Geology: Plate Tectonics


Thanks to UC Berkeley, you can see the continents collide and separate for 510 million years.

Click the arrows on the right to see the timeline in slow motion, one picture at a time.



ANOTHER COOL SITE

The Geological Evolution of the Earth

This document presents in a vertical time line images of the Earth's geologic evolution from 510 million years ago to the present -- roughly the last 10% of the Earth's existence. The crust has already solidified and the atmosphere has accumulated oxygen from 300 million years of algal growth in the Earth's vast oceans.

African gene trawl may provide secrets to long life

African gene trawl may provide secrets to long life
Maggie Fox
Feb 17, 2010
WASHINGTON (Reuters)

A genetic peek deep into the heart of Africa confirms that Africans have more genetic diversity than Europeans or Asians and provides insights into how to live a long life despite disease and famine.

Researchers sequenced the complete genomes of five southern Africans over the age of 80 -- Archbishop Desmond Tutu from South Africa and four Bushmen from Namibia.

"On average we found as many genetic differences between two Bushmen than between a European and an Asian," said Dr. Vanessa Hayes of the University of New South Wales in Australia, who worked on the study reported in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature...

Geneticists have long known that, on the level of DNA, there is no such thing as race.

They have also known that Africa, the source of all modern humans, also has more genetic diversity. This is probably because so many different peoples stayed and evolved there, while Europeans, Asians and other groups arose from smaller populations that migrated from the continent.

"To know how genes affect health we need to see the full range of human genetic variation, and Southern Africa is the place to look," said Webb Miller of Pennsylvania State University.

The team looked at some of the oldest Africans, both in terms of age and genetic roots. Tutu is an ethnic Bantu, while the four Bushmen all come from hunter-gatherer societies in the Kalahari desert of Namibia.

"The Bushmen participants have reached their advanced age despite living under harsh conditions due to periodical famine and untreated illness," the researchers wrote.

There were surprises. For instance, Tutu and one Bushman had many more different mutations known as single nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPs (pronounced "snips") than have been seen in sequencing other individuals.

They found differences in the genes that allow adults to digest cow milk, one related to having light-colored skin and SNPs that made all five men susceptible to malaria...

American Exceptionalism

How Christian Were the Founders?
By RUSSELL SHORTO
February 11, 2010
New York Times


...IN 1801, A GROUP of Baptist ministers in Danbury, Conn., wrote a letter to the new president, Thomas Jefferson, congratulating him on his victory. They also had a favor to ask. Baptists were a minority group, and they felt insecure. In the colonial period, there were two major Christian factions, both of which derived from England. The Congregationalists, in New England, had evolved from the Puritan settlers, and in the South and middle colonies, the Anglicans came from the Church of England. Nine colonies developed state churches, which were supported financially by the colonial governments and whose power was woven in with that of the governments. Other Christians — Lutherans, Baptists, Quakers — and, of course, those of other faiths were made unwelcome, if not persecuted outright.

...Their answer is rather specific. Merely weaving important religious trends and events into the narrative of American history is not what the Christian bloc on the Texas board has pushed for in revising its guidelines. Many of the points that have been incorporated into the guidelines or that have been advanced by board members and their expert advisers slant toward portraying America as having a divinely preordained mission. In the guidelines — which will be subjected to further amendments in March and then in May — eighth-grade history students are asked to “analyze the importance of the Mayflower Compact, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut and the Virginia House of Burgesses to the growth of representative government.” Such early colonial texts have long been included in survey courses, but why focus on these in particular? The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut declare that the state was founded “to maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus.” The language in the Mayflower Compact — a document that McLeroy and several others involved in the Texas process are especially fond of — describes the Pilgrims’ journey as being “for the Glory of God and advancement of the Christian Faith” and thus instills the idea that America was founded as a project for the spread of Christianity. In a book she wrote two years ago, Cynthia Dunbar, a board member, could not have been more explicit about this being the reason for the Mayflower Compact’s inclusion in textbooks; she quoted the document and then said, “This is undeniably our past, and it clearly delineates us as a nation intended to be emphatically Christian.”



...One recurring theme during the process of revising the social-studies guidelines was the desire of the board to stress the concept of American exceptionalism, and the Christian bloc has repeatedly emphasized that Christianity should be portrayed as the driving force behind what makes America great. Peter Marshall is himself the author of a series of books that recount American history with a strong Christian focus and that have been staples in Christian schools since the first one was published in 1977. (He told me that they have sold more than a million copies.) In these history books, he employs a decidedly unhistorical tone in which the guiding hand of Providence shapes America’s story, starting with the voyage of Christopher Columbus. “Columbus’s heart belonged to God,” he assures his readers, and he notes that a particular event in the explorer’s life “marked the turning point of God’s plan to use Columbus to raise the curtain on His new Promised Land.”

...The other nonacademic expert, David Barton, is the nationally known leader of WallBuilders, which describes itself as dedicated to “presenting America’s forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on our moral, religious and constitutional heritage.” Barton has written and lectured on the First Amendment and against separation of church and state. He is a controversial figure who has argued that the U.S. income tax and the capital-gains tax should be abolished because they violate Scripture (for the Bible says, in Barton’s reading, “the more profit you make the more you are rewarded”) and who pushes a Christianity-first rhetoric. When the U.S. Senate invited a Hindu leader to open a 2007 session with a prayer, he objected, saying: “In Hindu [sic], you have not one God, but many, many, many, many, many gods. And certainly that was never in the minds of those who did the Constitution, did the Declaration when they talked about Creator.”

In his recommendations to the Texas school board, Barton wrote that students should be taught the following principles which, in his reading, derive directly from the Declaration of Independence: “1. There is a fixed moral law derived from God and nature. 2. There is a Creator. 3. The Creator gives to man certain unalienable rights. 4. Government exists primarily to protect God-given rights to every individual. 5. Below God-given rights and moral laws, government is directed by the consent of the governed.”

A third expert, Daniel L. Dreisbach, a professor of justice, law and society at American University who has written extensively on First Amendment issues, stressed, in his recommendations to the guideline writers about how to frame the revolutionary period for students, that the founders were overwhelmingly Christian; that the deistic tendencies of a few — like Jefferson — were an anomaly; and that most Americans in the era were not just Christians but that “98 percent or more of Americans of European descent identified with Protestantism.”

If the fight between the “Christian nation” advocates and mainstream thinkers could be focused onto a single element, it would be the “wall of separation” phrase. Christian thinkers like to point out that it does not appear in the Constitution, nor in any other legal document — letters that presidents write to their supporters are not legal decrees. Besides which, after the phrase left Jefferson’s pen it more or less disappeared for a century and a half — until Justice Hugo Black of the Supreme Court dug it out of history’s dustbin in 1947. It then slowly worked its way into the American lexicon and American life, helping to subtly mold the way we think about religion in society. To conservative Christians, there is no separation of church and state, and there never was. The concept, they say, is a modern secular fiction. There is no legal justification, therefore, for disallowing crucifixes in government buildings or school prayer...

In fact, the founders were rooted in Christianity — they were inheritors of the entire European Christian tradition — and at the same time they were steeped in an Enlightenment rationalism that was, if not opposed to religion, determined to establish separate spheres for faith and reason. “I don’t think the founders would have said they were applying Christian principles to government,” says Richard Brookhiser, the conservative columnist and author of books on Alexander Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris and George Washington. “What they said was ‘the laws of nature and nature’s God.’ They didn’t say, ‘We put our faith in Jesus Christ.’ ” Martin Marty says: “They had to invent a new, broad way. Washington, in his writings, makes scores of different references to God, but not one is biblical. He talks instead about a ‘Grand Architect,’ deliberately avoiding the Christian terms, because it had to be a religious language that was accessible to all people.”

Or, as Brookhiser rather succinctly summarizes the point: “The founders were not as Christian as those people would like them to be, though they weren’t as secularist as Christopher Hitchens would like them to be.”...

“BROWN BEAR, BROWN BEAR, What Do You See?” It’s not an especially subversive-sounding title, but the author of this 1967 children’s picture book, Bill Martin Jr., lost his place in the Texas social-studies guidelines at last month’s board meeting due to what was thought to be un-American activity — to be precise, “very strong critiques of capitalism and the American system.” Martin, the creator of 300 children’s books, was removed from the list of cultural figures approved for study by third graders in the blizzard of amendments offered by board members.

Over all, the TEKS guidelines make for impressive reading. They are thoughtful and deep; you can almost feel the effort at achieving balance. Poring down the long columns and knowing that the 1998 version of these guidelines served as the basis for textbooks in most U.S. states, you even begin to feel some hope for the future.

What is wrong with the Texas process, according to many observers, is illustrated by the fate of Bill Martin Jr. The board has the power to accept, reject or rewrite the TEKS, and over the past few years, in language arts, science and now social studies, the members have done all of the above. Yet few of these elected overseers are trained in the fields they are reviewing. “In general, the board members don’t know anything at all about content,” Tom Barber, the textbook executive, says. Kathy Miller, the watchdog, who has been monitoring the board for 15 years, says, referring to Don McLeroy and another board member: “It is the most crazy-making thing to sit there and watch a dentist and an insurance salesman rewrite curriculum standards in science and history. Last year, Don McLeroy believed he was smarter than the National Academy of Sciences, and he now believes he’s smarter than professors of American history.” In this case, one board member sent an e-mail message with a reference to “Ethical Marxism,” by Bill Martin, to another board member, who suggested that anyone who wrote a book with such a title did not belong in the TEKS. As it turned out, Bill Martin and Bill Martin Jr. are two different people. But by that time, the author of “Brown Bear, Brown Bear” was out. “That’s a perfect example of these people’s lack of knowledge,” Miller says. “They’re coming forward with hundreds of amendments at the last minute. Don McLeroy had a four-inch stack of amendments, and they all just voted on them, whether or not they actually knew the content. What we witnessed in January was a textbook example of how not to develop textbook standards.”

Before the January board meeting, one of the social-studies curriculum writers, Judy Brodigan, told me that she was very pleased with the guidelines her team produced. After the meeting, with its 10-hour marathon of amendments by board members, she spoke very differently. “I think they took a very, very good document and weakened it,” she said. “The teachers take their work seriously. I do believe there are board members on the ultraright who have an agenda. They want to make our standards very conservative and fit their viewpoint. Our job is not to take a viewpoint. It’s to present sides fairly. I thought we had done that.” ...

Reid's Jobs Bill Includes Tax-Evasion Provisions

FEBRUARY 12, 2010
Reid's Jobs Bill Includes Tax-Evasion Provisions
Wall Street Journal
By MARTIN VAUGHAN And HENRY J. PULIZZI

WASHINGTON—Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid intends to use measures cracking down on offshore-tax evasion to pay for the cost of a $15 billion stimulus bill he wants to push through the Senate this month...

Ancient Tribe, the Bo, Goes Extinct as Last Member Dies

From what I understand, the Bo belonged to the same group as the people who eventually populated Europe (and lost some skin pigment in the process). Boa Sr has dark skin, but she is among the people on earth most DISTANTLY related to today's black Africans. (The Australian aborigines are the most distantly related to black Africans.) Boa Sr is more closely related to white Europeans. Boa Sr looks like Europeans would look if they had gone south instead of north when they left Africa. Skin color has little to do with our distant origins, clearly, and everything to do with WHERE our ancestors lived in the more recent past. I understand that the human Y-chromosome evolved in southern Africa, probably among individuals with lighter skin. The human mitochondrial DNA, on the other hand, which is passed from mothers to each human being on earth, evolved in equatorial Africa. It would seem that Eve was probably very dark skinned. When southern and northern populations of human ancestors got together, a hybrid that was stronger than either parent group was produced: us. Among the eventual offspring were blacks, whites and Asians. I'm guessing that Asians left Africa with a trait they are famous for today: very little body hair. Quite possibly the extra fold in the eyelids of today's Asians evolved in the far north during the ice age.


Ancient Tribe Goes Extinct as Last Member Dies
David Knowles
Feb. 5, 2010

Marking the end of a language and an entire people, the last member of the Bo, an ancient tribe that lived in the Andaman Islands, has died.

When Boa Sr, as she was known, died last week, she was believed to be about 85 years old. Her husband had died years beforehand, and Boa, whose name means "land" or "earth" in the Bo language, had no children...

"She was the only person who spoke Bo," Anvita Abbi, a professor of linguistics at India's Jawaharlal National University, told The Times of London...

The Bo are believed to have first come to the Andaman Islands – located roughly 850 miles off India's east coast in the Bay of Bengal – 65,000 years ago. Bo was one of at least 10 pre-colonial languages spoken on the islands.

According to Survival International, an advocacy group for native peoples throughout the world, the Bo were one of the oldest surviving human cultures on earth.

Of the thousands of Great Andamanese who once inhabited the islands, only 52 people are still alive today...

Americans don't know squat about their Revolutionary War

The American Revolution Center found that Americans overestimate their knowledge of the Revolution. For example, 89% of adults predicted they would pass a test on the American Revolution, but only 17% actually passed.

A film about euthanasia: I've Loved You So Long

I've Loved You So Long

After more than a decade apart, estranged sisters Juliette (Kristin Scott Thomas) and Lea (Elsa Zylberstein) try to rebuild their fractured relationship. But the task is hardly easy, considering Juliette's past: She's been in jail for 15 years -- for killing someone. As she settles into small-town life with Lea's family, the locals can't help but talk.

Awards:

2009 BAFTA®: Best Foreign Language Film

2009 BAFTA®: Best Actress nominee: Kristin Scott Thomas

2009 Golden Globe Awards: Best Actress in a Motion Picture (Drama) nominee: Kristin Scott Thomas

2009 Golden Globe Awards: Best Foreign Language Film nominee
Original Release Date:
2008

Social separation breeds contempt

Garrison Keillor
Jan 12, 2010
Salon.com
Social separation breeds contempt

There is no better place to learn the delicate ballet of social skill than in a big city

...When I hear long tales of woe -- Poor Me, my benighted life -- my inner Republican thinks, "That was you who poured all that alcohol down your gullet. You. Nobody else. And why didn't you work a little harder in school? Duh. Your mama tried to tell you and you sneered at her. You did it to yourself, pal. You got on the train to Nowheresville and guess what? You arrived."...

Pat Robertson: Haiti had "pact with devil"; Televangelist believes momentous earthquake is epic revenge

Jan 13, 2010
Robertson: Haiti had "pact with devil"
Televangelist believes momentous earthquake is epic revenge
By Kerry Lauerman
CBN

On his Christian Broadcasting Network today, televangelist Pat Robertson told viewers:

And you know, Christy, something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it, they were under the heel of the French, uh, you know, Napoleon the third and whatever, and they got together and swore a pact to the devil, they said, we will serve you, if you get us free from the Prince, true story. And so the devil said, 'OK, it's a deal.' And they kicked the French out, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free, and ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the other, desperately poor. . . the Island of Hispaniola is one island cut down the middle. On the one side is Haiti, on the other side is the Dominican Republic. Dominican Republic is, is, prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, etc. Haiti is in desperate poverty, same Islands, uh, they need to have, and we need to pray for them, a great turning to God. And out of this tragedy, I'm optimistic something good may come, but right now we're helping the suffering people, and the suffering is unimaginable.