“I think oysters are more beautiful than any religion," he resumed presently. "They not only forgive our unkindness to them; they justify it, they incite us to go on being perfectly horrid to them. Once they arrive at the supper-table they seem to enter thoroughly into the spirit of the thing. There's nothing in Christianity or Buddhism that quite matches the sympathetic unselfishness of an oyster.”
― Saki
During Chuck Nevitt's undistinguished NBA playing career, he earned the nickname "The Human Victory Cigar," as he only made it onto the court after his team was ahead by an insurmountable margin. . . .
In Wisconsin politics, the billionaire Koch brothers have now become the Republican human victory cigars. When the left has exhausted every talking point and political strategy, it trots out uncles Charles and David Koch as a last gasp.
Hearing the word "Koch" from a Democrat means something he really doesn't like is about to happen, and he is powerless to stop it. When it is invoked, there is likely a Republican and a bottle of champagne chilling nearby.
Such is the case with this week's right-to-work debate as legislative Republicans are poised to send a bill to Gov. Scott Walker's desk.
The U.S. Department of State slammed the reported Islamic State siege of several Syrian villages and subsequent abduction of 150 Christian men, women and children, calling it an act of “evil” and insisting such violence needs to stop — but that most terror victims have been Muslims.If ten men got sent to prison and four of them were black, this same administration would cry racism (as black men don't make up 40% of the population overall, but are 40% of prisoners in this example). Somehow that argument, which seems so clear to them when applied to American society, just isn't available when talking about a society in which the vast majority are Muslims -- but somehow religious minorities seem to suffer disproportionately.
The department also fell shy of labeling the terror attack and kidnapping as rooted in anti-Christian sentiment, suggesting it was simply one of several that the Islamic State had conducted against those of all faiths — especially Muslims.
To play the [popular video game "Ingress"], you join a side, either the Enlightened or the Resistance, and walk around to various [real world] landmarks and claiming them for your side. By claiming three landmarks, you create a triangle, and your side “controls” the people within that triangle.
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Maybe you’re one of the folks who have heard of this; the fan base is global. But the game went open to “general release” in December 2013 and I had heard absolutely nothing about this. I asked Flint and a couple other folks involved in the game if I had missed it from media coverage, and they chuckled that Google doesn’t need media coverage for its projects. I felt as if I had asked why they hadn’t chiseled any stone tablets to spread the word.
Think about this; as we on the right argue about the mainstream media’s power over the electorate and how we can counter it, Google -- admittedly, an institution with enormous resources and technical know-how -- is demonstrating that a small team can build something massively popular, with millions of participants, with almost no one in the media noticing.
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Never mind the question, “Are the mainstream media still powerful?” In some corners of our national or global life, are the mainstream media even a factor at all?
Starting March 23, 2015, you won't be able to publicly share images and videos that are sexually explicit or show graphic nudity on Blogger.Damn. Sorry, kids. All that nudity you've come to expect from the Hall is just going to have to go away.
Note: We’ll still allow nudity if the content offers a substantial public benefit. For example, in artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific contexts.
You grew up as an Italian-American Catholic, but seemed to identify more strongly with the pagan elements of Catholic art and culture than with the church’s doctrines. What caused you to fall away from the Catholic Church?I was brought to the Church as much by King Arthur as by Jesus. I remember a book of mythology I had as a boy, which had myths from many cultures illustrated by drawings in the style of the culture which gave rise to the myth. It was Beowulf whose drawings I immediately recognized as my own, not any of the ones from the Middle East or Asia.
Italian Catholicism remains my deepest identity—in the same way that many secular Jews feel a strong cultural bond with Judaism. Over time I realized—and this became a main premise of my first book, Sexual Personae (based on my doctoral dissertation at Yale)—that what had always fascinated me in Italian Catholicism was its pagan residue. I loved the cult of saints, the bejeweled ceremonialism, the eerie litanies of Mary—all the things, in other words, that Martin Luther and the other Protestant reformers rightly condemned as medieval Romanist intrusions into primitive Christianity. It's no coincidence that my Halloween costume in first grade was a Roman soldier, modeled on the legionnaires' uniforms I admired in the Stations of the Cross on the church walls. Christ's story had very little interest for me—except for the Magi, whose opulent Babylonian costumes I adored! My baptismal church, St. Anthony of Padua in Endicott, New York, was a dazzling yellow-brick, Italian-style building with gorgeous stained-glass windows and life-size polychrome statues, which were the first works of art I ever saw.
After my parents moved to Syracuse, however, I was progressively stuck with far blander churches and less ethnic congregations. Irish Catholicism began to dominate—a completely different brand, with its lesser visual sense and its tendency toward brooding guilt and ranting fanaticism. I suspect that the nun who finally alienated me from the church must have been Irish! It was in religious education class (for which Catholic students were released from public school on Thursday afternoons), held on that occasion in the back pews of the church. I asked the nun what still seems to me a perfectly reasonable and intriguing question: if God is all-forgiving, will he ever forgive Satan? The nun's reaction was stunning: she turned beet red and began screaming at me in front of everyone. That was when I concluded there was no room in the Catholic Church of that time for an inquiring mind.
[G]raduating from college is what makes you a “gentleman.” . . . If you don’t have a college degree, by contrast, you are looked down upon as a vulgar commoner who is presumptuously attempting to rise above his station. Which is pretty much what they’re saying about Scott Walker. This prejudice is particularly strong when applied to anyone from the right, whose retrograde views are easily attributed to his lack of attendance at the gentleman’s finishing school that is the university.
That brings us to the heart of the matter. I have observed before that left-leaning politics has become “part of the cultural class identity of college-educated people,” a prejudice that lingers long after they have graduated. You can see how this goes the other way, too. If to be college-educated is to have left-leaning views—then to have the “correct” political values, one must be college-educated.
You can see now what is fueling the reaction on the left. If Scott Walker can run for president, he is challenging the basic cultural class identity of the mainstream left. He is more than a threat to the Democrats’ hold on political power. He is a threat to the existing social order.
“CPD [Chicago police department] abides by all laws, rules and guidelines pertaining to any interviews of suspects or witnesses, at Homan Square or any other CPD facility. If lawyers have a client detained at Homan Square, just like any other facility, they are allowed to speak to and visit them. It also houses CPD’s Evidence Recovered Property Section, where the public is able to claim inventoried property,” the statement said, something numerous attorneys and one Homan Square arrestee have denied.Probably these are mostly bad people. Nevertheless, a chilling report from an American city -- even one as notorious as Chicago.
“There are always records of anyone who is arrested by CPD, and this is not any different at Homan Square,” it continued....
When a Guardian reporter arrived at the warehouse on Friday, a man at the gatehouse outside refused any entrance and would not answer questions. “This is a secure facility. You’re not even supposed to be standing here,” said the man, who refused to give his name....
“They just disappear,” said Anthony Hill, a criminal defense attorney, “until they show up at a district for charging or are just released back out on the street.”
This summer, in his hometown of Raqqa, 13-year-old Mohammad was forced to attend a children's training camp established by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). When his father opposed his son's conscription, ISIS fighters threatened to kill him. Mohammad left for camp, which his father describes as a form of “brainwashing the children.” After his return, his mother says she was surprised to find in his bag a blond, blue-eyed doll – along with a large knife given to her son by his ISIS supervisors.When she confronted Mohammad, he told her that the camp manager had distributed the dolls and asked that the children decapitate them using the knife, and that they were asked to cover the dolls' faces when they performed the decapitation. It was his homework: practice beheading a toy likeness of a blond, white Westerner.Love your enemies. Even these, who teach children to murder. Just why, though? Because they serve to justify the wielding of the sword, and the sword properly used is glorious.
