The Glair - Imagine the World without a Pope
Imagine the World without a Pope
By Johnson Willy Geeter for Missive News
Last updated: 7:20 PM
Monday, September 18, 2006
Recently this reporter was privileged to attend a pro-Islamic rally at an undisclosed Mosque in the center of a major urban area in the heart of Europe.
“Imagine a world without the Pope!” These striking words, shouted in reaction to the pope’s critical condemnation of the supposed violent tendencies of Islam by the Ayatotal Jihadallalah, sparked a chorus of approval. Young Muslims immediately burned the pope in effigy, as if on cue. The Ayatotal (a.k.a. the Grand Muffititi) an outspoken proponent of world Islam continued with his fiery diatribe.
“Islam, that most reasonable of all religions, cannot tolerate such criticism and unreasonableness! Words kill us in our heart, make us bleed with fear and sensitivity, and saying bad things about us makes us feel really bad inside. Deep down inside. To correct this feeling of shame and bitterness we will all feel better when we have killed the pope!” Another roar of approval followed.
“When you criticize Islam it is like criticizing an unclean woman on her menstrual flow. You cannot do this and not expect the Wrath of Allah!”
“Our prophet said, ‘Kill all the Infidels’ and I say yes, kill everyone as the prophet says, peace be upon him. And the quickest way to peace is through killing!” At this point thousands of Muslims in attendance began to shout, “Yes, kill for peace! Kill for peace! Peace be upon them! Let them die.”
“We call the curse of Allah down upon the head of the infidel. Only then will the infidel understand that we kill him for his own good, so that he may burn in hell in the name of Islam. Peace be upon them! Peace be upon them!”
Allah was unavailable for comment, but speaking through his spokesman, the Grand Muffititi, it is apparent that Allah would naturally approve of the sentiment.
“Reason tells us that there is no way but our way. Reason tells us that we must blindly ignore all criticism and look away from the evidence. The evidence is a trick of the Great Satan. The Great Satan is the Father of Truth that lies. We must be children of lies that speak the truth. It is not up to us to reform, it is up to the infidels to die. There’s nothing wrong with us that a little mass killing can’t fix.”
“You tell em Titi!” A voice could be heard to shout in the background. Another roar of chants went up. “Titis for all Muslims, Titis for all Muslims!” At this the Ayatotal Jihadallalah smiled knowingly and nodded his approval.
“Yes, all Muslims should have Titis,” said the Ayatotal. “This is the way we are and the way we act. True Muslims have Titis and need their Titis to lead them!”
“Allah be praised,” was the natural reaction.
“We are like the American gansta rappers, we must be merciless and grab our crotches whenever we hear devilish criticisms of the true faith. We must frown and seek our revenge, we must be hard, street hard, and put on our game face, we must bust a move for Allah! We must pop a cap in any bitch who opens their mouth to backtalk us. Backtalk us bitch and get the prophetical beat-down!” The crowd erupted once more in pleasure.
“But, but, but…” continued the Ayatotal Titi, “deep inside we are like a delicate, little, vulnerable buttercup of a flower, full of peace and sunshine like the prophet, peace be upon him. We only cap bitches because they need a cappin. If we had our preference then we’d just beat out bitches till they was black and blue, wrap em up in bed sheets, knock em up, and keep em down on the old plantation. Bitches ain’t no trouble down on the plantation! Specially whens they can’t read nor write.”
“The pope is an old bitch! America is a good-looking bitch! Israel is a hot bitch!!” the crowd screamed fanatically with desire.
“That’s right,” shouted the Ayatotal in return. “And Islam knows how to treat her bitches. We enslave them! And if they backtalk us then set them on fire with petrol. And brothers, do we have plenty of petrol.”
“Yeah, plenty of petrol, plenty of petrol!” The young Muslim men shouted in loud cadence.
“But not so much we don’t need nuclear energy!”
“We need nuclear energy! We need nuclear energy!” came the determined reply.
“Burn the pope with uranium!”
“Burn the pope with uranium!”
“Peace through Jihad!”
“Peace through Jihad”
“Reason through murder!”
“Reason through murder!”
“Now imagine a world without a pope. How we gonna get there?”
“Kill that bitch!”
“Now you understand Islam,” said the Ayatotal Jihadallalah. “So go forth into all the world and spread the Good News!”
© JWG 2006
Monday, September 18, 2006
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Pesharim - An Update on Operations
Pesharim - An Update on Operations
First of all I would like to express my gratitude to some of those friends, among others, who encouraged me to start blogging; mousestealth, the Brothers Aggresso (both the Major and the birdman), K, and the goddess, to mention a few. I'd also like to thank my wife who encouraged me to seek greater exposure and a larger audience for my writings and other works. Let me also not forget to mention those people, like Big Al, who gave me technical advice and assisted me with research in redesigning my websites and it getting started as a blogger. Your advice and expertise was most appreciated. And lastly I'd like to thank all of those other people who shall remain anonymous because they wish to remain so who have nevertheless encouraged me to put my work and writings on the web. I have come to realize in the past couple of months that not only has blogging been of immense value to my various business projects and endeavors, it has also assisted me with personal projects, current operations, experiments and exposure for my public writings. Of course my private writings will necessarily remain uncirculated except by those who need to see them but otherwise blogging has proven itself to me as a very valuable medium in less than three months time. Combined with my other communications experiments I suspect that blogging will continue to grow as an informational tool for me. I don't know why I didn't start earlier as has been suggested to me numerous times by numerous people, but I guess in the press of other work, and I guess because of my own fears of being unable to control my products I suspected that the effort would lead nowhere good. But I am coming to realize that I was very wrong in my previous assumptions and prejudices.
Secondly I'd like to thank those people who are now reading my various public works on the web with some regularity. My readership is growing, slowly but steadily, and I appreciate it. There would be little to no purpose in presenting and posting my writings and other work without readers. So I appreciate the fact that you are there, visit and view my pages, even when you make no comment. I hope I have put some interesting stuff up so far and hope to greatly increase the variety of interesting material I present as I become more fluent with this method of presentation. I also appreciate those readers who come to my various sites and blogs with the intention of gathering information but have no intention of commenting. To me you are equally important as an invisible and unspoken audience.
Nevertheless I invite any reader to visit this or any of my other sites as they wish, comment on anything they wish if they feel like doing so and feel free to contact me regarding any current, future, or past project which might be of personal interest. Also feel free to link to any of my sites anytime you wish and if you want then send me some information about your site and if you wish I'll be glad to add your link to my List of Other Blogs which appears in the sidebar of nearly all of my blogs and websites.
In the sidebar of all of my sites you will now see that all of my sites, blogs, portfolios, and newsletters are now cross linked. All of the links should be in working order and will navigate you to any place you choose. Email and disseminated newsletters will be similarly cross-linked.
I have developed a modus operandi of how I intend to blog and operate on the web. This method will work in the following way. My on-line portfolios and business sites will be updated when new information is available or as necessary due to on-going projects. Newsletter sites will be updated every time they are published and disseminated in original form, or as corrections or additions are needed. My three newsletters are published ordinarily once a month or so, sometimes sooner, sometimes later, depending upon what is needed and necessary. My writing sites will be updated as soon as new material becomes available and can be presented in a form I feel is edited properly and refined enough for posting. Overall few of my sites and blogs are completed or in anything like a final form I am satisfied with so I will be working as quickly and as hard as possible to put them in a form with which I am satisfied. Also I will be adding new content as soon as possible and other work and circumstances permit.
However this site, The Missal, will be updated two to four times a week or more as time and work permits. Also whenever I update my other sites or run across something of real interest it will be posted here first. So, in effect, the Missal will be the Gateway through which my other sites and work pass in order to become public.
I am therefore looking to blogging as being very helpful in several different but interrelated ways.
It will be helpful with:
Information and Intelligence Gathering
Contacts and Networking: in establishing new contacts, in forming new networks, and in maintaining my old contacts and networks
Business Projects
Personal Projects and Experiments, as well as Political Projects
Gaining Exposure for my Public Writings.
There will be other unmentioned benefits too I suspect. But we'll see how that goes as time passes.
In the near future I plan on finishing some of the posts I've already started here, the multi-part ones, that I have yet to complete.
Also I plan on posting writings on the following subjects:
The Duties and Education of the Renaissance Man - probably to be posted as a multi-part essay in the Opus Magnus.
The Human Suit - probably to be posted as a theory paper in the Opus Magnus.
Individual Education Accounts - to be posted on the Renaissance Academy
Grand Political Strategy - undecided as to where I will post this
I will also be posting some accounts of various criminal cases I have worked in the past and am currently working. But since these will not be modified fictional accounts I will probably just be posting synopses minus real names and place details.
I also intend, now that I'm up and going with this site in posting summaries of some of my Vadding and Rudding Expeditions. (For those of you who do not know, Vadding is a very old hacking term for physical hacking, or what is nowadays termed Urban Exploration. Rudding is a term for Rural Hacking/Exploration. By hacking of course I do not mean cracking.)
I may also establish a public blog whose purpose is to act as a Contact and Information Gateway for people on the internet who would like to establish electronic communications with people in different parts of the world in a more detailed fashion. When I was a teenager I had pen-pals from many different parts of the world, Asia, the Soviet Union, China, Europe, South and Central America, Australia, South Africa, and other parts of Africa. I found these contacts immensely helpful and interesting in many different ways. So if I establish this site it will allow people to establish in-depth communications with people throughout the world, but it will especially be targeted in assisting young people, military personnel, and missionaries in establishing communications, contacts and friends throughout the world. I don't know, I'm gonna have to research this project a little bit and see if such a site is really needed and if so how I might structure and operate it.
In other news I saw JC today at church. He was back from his latest duty station in the Air Force. I got to meet his wife today too, and she is pretty and very nice. JC did well for himself and I'm glad to see he prospers.
My nephew Sean has also finished his Air Force tech training and has shipped out to his tour of duty in Asia. He married before shipping out and I like his wife. She seems like a fine young woman. Sean looks like he is doing very well indeed though I think he lost way too much weight in basic. He was able to attend my grandmother's (his great-grandmother) funeral before shipping out. He and Bear were both pall bearers at the funeral and personally I greatly appreciated this. He was supposed to drop by before bugging out but either he cut out without the drop by or I missed him. But I guess with the packing and everything that has been going on I can't blame him for shipping before seeing me. Anyway because of his duties prayers for his service and safety are greatly appreciated.
One last thing I'd like to mention. Rhys from New Zealand listed some of my blogs in his sidebar section of Friends of a World of Bloggers. I returned the favor by listing his blog in my Links to Other Blogs. His blog is a very interesting site with a very unusual project underway. I think he has one of the more interesting blogging projects on the web along with the Bestest Blog site. Rhys site is called A World of Bloggers. The link is: http://aworldofbloggers.blogspot.com/
As I sit here writing this I'm listening to Handel's Messiah. The music matches my elevated mood at this moment, of how I feel about these recent developments.
So I guess I'm gonna knock off while I'm at the top of my game and go watch The Wild with my daughters. They both swear it's funny.
First of all I would like to express my gratitude to some of those friends, among others, who encouraged me to start blogging; mousestealth, the Brothers Aggresso (both the Major and the birdman), K, and the goddess, to mention a few. I'd also like to thank my wife who encouraged me to seek greater exposure and a larger audience for my writings and other works. Let me also not forget to mention those people, like Big Al, who gave me technical advice and assisted me with research in redesigning my websites and it getting started as a blogger. Your advice and expertise was most appreciated. And lastly I'd like to thank all of those other people who shall remain anonymous because they wish to remain so who have nevertheless encouraged me to put my work and writings on the web. I have come to realize in the past couple of months that not only has blogging been of immense value to my various business projects and endeavors, it has also assisted me with personal projects, current operations, experiments and exposure for my public writings. Of course my private writings will necessarily remain uncirculated except by those who need to see them but otherwise blogging has proven itself to me as a very valuable medium in less than three months time. Combined with my other communications experiments I suspect that blogging will continue to grow as an informational tool for me. I don't know why I didn't start earlier as has been suggested to me numerous times by numerous people, but I guess in the press of other work, and I guess because of my own fears of being unable to control my products I suspected that the effort would lead nowhere good. But I am coming to realize that I was very wrong in my previous assumptions and prejudices.
Secondly I'd like to thank those people who are now reading my various public works on the web with some regularity. My readership is growing, slowly but steadily, and I appreciate it. There would be little to no purpose in presenting and posting my writings and other work without readers. So I appreciate the fact that you are there, visit and view my pages, even when you make no comment. I hope I have put some interesting stuff up so far and hope to greatly increase the variety of interesting material I present as I become more fluent with this method of presentation. I also appreciate those readers who come to my various sites and blogs with the intention of gathering information but have no intention of commenting. To me you are equally important as an invisible and unspoken audience.
Nevertheless I invite any reader to visit this or any of my other sites as they wish, comment on anything they wish if they feel like doing so and feel free to contact me regarding any current, future, or past project which might be of personal interest. Also feel free to link to any of my sites anytime you wish and if you want then send me some information about your site and if you wish I'll be glad to add your link to my List of Other Blogs which appears in the sidebar of nearly all of my blogs and websites.
In the sidebar of all of my sites you will now see that all of my sites, blogs, portfolios, and newsletters are now cross linked. All of the links should be in working order and will navigate you to any place you choose. Email and disseminated newsletters will be similarly cross-linked.
I have developed a modus operandi of how I intend to blog and operate on the web. This method will work in the following way. My on-line portfolios and business sites will be updated when new information is available or as necessary due to on-going projects. Newsletter sites will be updated every time they are published and disseminated in original form, or as corrections or additions are needed. My three newsletters are published ordinarily once a month or so, sometimes sooner, sometimes later, depending upon what is needed and necessary. My writing sites will be updated as soon as new material becomes available and can be presented in a form I feel is edited properly and refined enough for posting. Overall few of my sites and blogs are completed or in anything like a final form I am satisfied with so I will be working as quickly and as hard as possible to put them in a form with which I am satisfied. Also I will be adding new content as soon as possible and other work and circumstances permit.
However this site, The Missal, will be updated two to four times a week or more as time and work permits. Also whenever I update my other sites or run across something of real interest it will be posted here first. So, in effect, the Missal will be the Gateway through which my other sites and work pass in order to become public.
I am therefore looking to blogging as being very helpful in several different but interrelated ways.
It will be helpful with:
Information and Intelligence Gathering
Contacts and Networking: in establishing new contacts, in forming new networks, and in maintaining my old contacts and networks
Business Projects
Personal Projects and Experiments, as well as Political Projects
Gaining Exposure for my Public Writings.
There will be other unmentioned benefits too I suspect. But we'll see how that goes as time passes.
In the near future I plan on finishing some of the posts I've already started here, the multi-part ones, that I have yet to complete.
Also I plan on posting writings on the following subjects:
The Duties and Education of the Renaissance Man - probably to be posted as a multi-part essay in the Opus Magnus.
The Human Suit - probably to be posted as a theory paper in the Opus Magnus.
Individual Education Accounts - to be posted on the Renaissance Academy
Grand Political Strategy - undecided as to where I will post this
I will also be posting some accounts of various criminal cases I have worked in the past and am currently working. But since these will not be modified fictional accounts I will probably just be posting synopses minus real names and place details.
I also intend, now that I'm up and going with this site in posting summaries of some of my Vadding and Rudding Expeditions. (For those of you who do not know, Vadding is a very old hacking term for physical hacking, or what is nowadays termed Urban Exploration. Rudding is a term for Rural Hacking/Exploration. By hacking of course I do not mean cracking.)
I may also establish a public blog whose purpose is to act as a Contact and Information Gateway for people on the internet who would like to establish electronic communications with people in different parts of the world in a more detailed fashion. When I was a teenager I had pen-pals from many different parts of the world, Asia, the Soviet Union, China, Europe, South and Central America, Australia, South Africa, and other parts of Africa. I found these contacts immensely helpful and interesting in many different ways. So if I establish this site it will allow people to establish in-depth communications with people throughout the world, but it will especially be targeted in assisting young people, military personnel, and missionaries in establishing communications, contacts and friends throughout the world. I don't know, I'm gonna have to research this project a little bit and see if such a site is really needed and if so how I might structure and operate it.
In other news I saw JC today at church. He was back from his latest duty station in the Air Force. I got to meet his wife today too, and she is pretty and very nice. JC did well for himself and I'm glad to see he prospers.
My nephew Sean has also finished his Air Force tech training and has shipped out to his tour of duty in Asia. He married before shipping out and I like his wife. She seems like a fine young woman. Sean looks like he is doing very well indeed though I think he lost way too much weight in basic. He was able to attend my grandmother's (his great-grandmother) funeral before shipping out. He and Bear were both pall bearers at the funeral and personally I greatly appreciated this. He was supposed to drop by before bugging out but either he cut out without the drop by or I missed him. But I guess with the packing and everything that has been going on I can't blame him for shipping before seeing me. Anyway because of his duties prayers for his service and safety are greatly appreciated.
One last thing I'd like to mention. Rhys from New Zealand listed some of my blogs in his sidebar section of Friends of a World of Bloggers. I returned the favor by listing his blog in my Links to Other Blogs. His blog is a very interesting site with a very unusual project underway. I think he has one of the more interesting blogging projects on the web along with the Bestest Blog site. Rhys site is called A World of Bloggers. The link is: http://aworldofbloggers.blogspot.com/
As I sit here writing this I'm listening to Handel's Messiah. The music matches my elevated mood at this moment, of how I feel about these recent developments.
So I guess I'm gonna knock off while I'm at the top of my game and go watch The Wild with my daughters. They both swear it's funny.
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Pesharim - A Difference of Opinion
Pesharim - A Difference of Opinion
A lot of people in the modern world don't understand the difference between a thought and an opinion.
They just assume that because they have an opinion then they must have necessarily had a thought to go along with it. That's not really the case at all of course, but, C'est la Vie.
Now if you're reading this and don't understand what I'm saying then I'd like to explain it to you but you're probably not gonna get it anyway. If you're reading this and understanding what I mean then go ahead and laugh at the other guy.
A lot of people in the modern world don't understand the difference between a thought and an opinion.
They just assume that because they have an opinion then they must have necessarily had a thought to go along with it. That's not really the case at all of course, but, C'est la Vie.
Now if you're reading this and don't understand what I'm saying then I'd like to explain it to you but you're probably not gonna get it anyway. If you're reading this and understanding what I mean then go ahead and laugh at the other guy.
The Exchange - Stick to Your Crosses
The Exchange - Stick to Your Crosses
In my opinion Benedict should in no way apologize for his actual remarks, nor for the remarks of Emperor Manuel II Paleologus. They were both right to criticize the Islamic ideal and propensity of attempting to spread faith by the sword, and the pope was right about his critique of Western Society, especially European Western Society. His criticisms of the Western Educational system are also interesting, good, true, and very beneficial. Stick to your crosses Father, and don't waver.
I also find it extremely fascinating that the pope is attempting to harmonize Greek and Christian thought and by implication Greek Orthodoxy and more general Western Christian traditions. In this respect I agree with him completely as well.
After a prior century of Germans like Himmler and Hitler (even though he wasn't really German) it is extremely refreshing and nice to hear a German speaking like a Christian, and even a Greek Christian again.
Benedict may turn out to be a very interesting and useful pope indeed.
Address by the pope:
APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO MÜNCHEN, ALTÖTTING AND REGENSBURG (SEPTEMBER 9-14, 2006)
MEETING WITH THE REPRESENTATIVES OF SCIENCE
LECTURE OF THE HOLY FATHER
Aula Magna of the University of RegensburgTuesday, 12 September 2006
Faith, Reason and the University Memories and Reflections
Your Eminences, Your Magnificences, Your Excellencies,Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a moving experience for me to be back again in the university and to be able once again to give a lecture at this podium. I think back to those years when, after a pleasant period at the Freisinger Hochschule, I began teaching at the University of Bonn. That was in 1959, in the days of the old university made up of ordinary professors. The various chairs had neither assistants nor secretaries, but in recompense there was much direct contact with students and in particular among the professors themselves. We would meet before and after lessons in the rooms of the teaching staff. There was a lively exchange with historians, philosophers, philologists and, naturally, between the two theological faculties. Once a semester there was a dies academicus, when professors from every faculty appeared before the students of the entire university, making possible a genuine experience of universitas - something that you too, Magnificent Rector, just mentioned - the experience, in other words, of the fact that despite our specializations which at times make it difficult to communicate with each other, we made up a whole, working in everything on the basis of a single rationality with its various aspects and sharing responsibility for the right use of reason - this reality became a lived experience. The university was also very proud of its two theological faculties. It was clear that, by inquiring about the reasonableness of faith, they too carried out a work which is necessarily part of the "whole" of the universitas scientiarum, even if not everyone could share the faith which theologians seek to correlate with reason as a whole. This profound sense of coherence within the universe of reason was not troubled, even when it was once reported that a colleague had said there was something odd about our university: it had two faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God. That even in the face of such radical scepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith: this, within the university as a whole, was accepted without question.
I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both. It was presumably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than those of his Persian interlocutor. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship between - as they were called - three "Laws" or "rules of life": the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur'an. It is not my intention to discuss this question in the present lecture; here I would like to discuss only one point - itself rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole - which, in the context of the issue of "faith and reason", I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.
In the seventh conversation (*4V8,>4H - controversy) edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached". The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably (F×< 8`(T) is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...".The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practise idolatry.
At this point, as far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we are faced with an unavoidable dilemma. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God. Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, the first verse of the whole Bible, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: "In the beginning was the Logos." This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts, F×< 8`(T, with logos. Logos means both reason and word - a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist. The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance. The vision of Saint Paul, who saw the roads to Asia barred and in a dream saw a Macedonian man plead with him: "Come over to Macedonia and help us!" (cf. Acts 16:6-10) - this vision can be interpreted as a "distillation" of the intrinsic necessity of a rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek inquiry.
In point of fact, this rapprochement had been going on for some time. The mysterious name of God, revealed from the burning bush, a name which separates this God from all other divinities with their many names and simply declares "I am", already presents a challenge to the notion of myth, to which Socrates' attempt to vanquish and transcend myth stands in close analogy. Within the Old Testament, the process which started at the burning bush came to new maturity at the time of the Exile, when the God of Israel, an Israel now deprived of its land and worship, was proclaimed as the God of heaven and earth and described in a simple formula which echoes the words uttered at the burning bush: "I am". This new understanding of God is accompanied by a kind of enlightenment, which finds stark expression in the mockery of gods who are merely the work of human hands (cf. Ps 115). Thus, despite the bitter conflict with those Hellenistic rulers who sought to accommodate it forcibly to the customs and idolatrous cult of the Greeks, biblical faith, in the Hellenistic period, encountered the best of Greek thought at a deep level, resulting in a mutual enrichment evident especially in the later wisdom literature. Today we know that the Greek translation of the Old Testament produced at Alexandria - the Septuagint - is more than a simple (and in that sense really less than satisfactory) translation of the Hebrew text: it is an independent textual witness and a distinct and important step in the history of revelation, one which brought about this encounter in a way that was decisive for the birth and spread of Christianity. A profound encounter of faith and reason is taking place here, an encounter between genuine enlightenment and religion. From the very heart of Christian faith and, at the same time, the heart of Greek thought now joined to faith, Manuel II was able to say: Not to act "with logos" is contrary to God's nature.
In all honesty, one must observe that in the late Middle Ages we find trends in theology which would sunder this synthesis between the Greek spirit and the Christian spirit. In contrast with the so-called intellectualism of Augustine and Thomas, there arose with Duns Scotus a voluntarism which, in its later developments, led to the claim that we can only know God's voluntas ordinata. Beyond this is the realm of God's freedom, in virtue of which he could have done the opposite of everything he has actually done. This gives rise to positions which clearly approach those of Ibn Hazn and might even lead to the image of a capricious God, who is not even bound to truth and goodness. God's transcendence and otherness are so exalted that our reason, our sense of the true and good, are no longer an authentic mirror of God, whose deepest possibilities remain eternally unattainable and hidden behind his actual decisions. As opposed to this, the faith of the Church has always insisted that between God and us, between his eternal Creator Spirit and our created reason there exists a real analogy, in which - as the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 stated - unlikeness remains infinitely greater than likeness, yet not to the point of abolishing analogy and its language. God does not become more divine when we push him away from us in a sheer, impenetrable voluntarism; rather, the truly divine God is the God who has revealed himself as logos and, as logos, has acted and continues to act lovingly on our behalf. Certainly, love, as Saint Paul says, "transcends" knowledge and is thereby capable of perceiving more than thought alone (cf. Eph 3:19); nonetheless it continues to be love of the God who is Logos. Consequently, Christian worship is, again to quote Paul - "8@(46¬ 8"JD,\"", worship in harmony with the eternal Word and with our reason (cf. Rom 12:1).This inner rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek philosophical inquiry was an event of decisive importance not only from the standpoint of the history of religions, but also from that of world history - it is an event which concerns us even today. Given this convergence, it is not surprising that Christianity, despite its origins and some significant developments in the East, finally took on its historically decisive character in Europe. We can also express this the other way around: this convergence, with the subsequent addition of the Roman heritage, created Europe and remains the foundation of what can rightly be called Europe.
The thesis that the critically purified Greek heritage forms an integral part of Christian faith has been countered by the call for a dehellenization of Christianity - a call which has more and more dominated theological discussions since the beginning of the modern age. Viewed more closely, three stages can be observed in the programme of dehellenization: although interconnected, they are clearly distinct from one another in their motivations and objectives.
Dehellenization first emerges in connection with the postulates of the Reformation in the sixteenth century. Looking at the tradition of scholastic theology, the Reformers thought they were confronted with a faith system totally conditioned by philosophy, that is to say an articulation of the faith based on an alien system of thought. As a result, faith no longer appeared as a living historical Word but as one element of an overarching philosophical system. The principle of sola scriptura, on the other hand, sought faith in its pure, primordial form, as originally found in the biblical Word. Metaphysics appeared as a premise derived from another source, from which faith had to be liberated in order to become once more fully itself. When Kant stated that he needed to set thinking aside in order to make room for faith, he carried this programme forward with a radicalism that the Reformers could never have foreseen. He thus anchored faith exclusively in practical reason, denying it access to reality as a whole.The liberal theology of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries ushered in a second stage in the process of dehellenization, with Adolf von Harnack as its outstanding representative. When I was a student, and in the early years of my teaching, this programme was highly influential in Catholic theology too. It took as its point of departure Pascal's distinction between the God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In my inaugural lecture at Bonn in 1959, I tried to address the issue, and I do not intend to repeat here what I said on that occasion, but I would like to describe at least briefly what was new about this second stage of dehellenization. Harnack's central idea was to return simply to the man Jesus and to his simple message, underneath the accretions of theology and indeed of hellenization: this simple message was seen as the culmination of the religious development of humanity. Jesus was said to have put an end to worship in favour of morality. In the end he was presented as the father of a humanitarian moral message. Fundamentally, Harnack's goal was to bring Christianity back into harmony with modern reason, liberating it, that is to say, from seemingly philosophical and theological elements, such as faith in Christ's divinity and the triune God. In this sense, historical-critical exegesis of the New Testament, as he saw it, restored to theology its place within the university: theology, for Harnack, is something essentially historical and therefore strictly scientific. What it is able to say critically about Jesus is, so to speak, an expression of practical reason and consequently it can take its rightful place within the university. Behind this thinking lies the modern self-limitation of reason, classically expressed in Kant's "Critiques", but in the meantime further radicalized by the impact of the natural sciences. This modern concept of reason is based, to put it briefly, on a synthesis between Platonism (Cartesianism) and empiricism, a synthesis confirmed by the success of technology. On the one hand it presupposes the mathematical structure of matter, its intrinsic rationality, which makes it possible to understand how matter works and use it efficiently: this basic premise is, so to speak, the Platonic element in the modern understanding of nature. On the other hand, there is nature's capacity to be exploited for our purposes, and here only the possibility of verification or falsification through experimentation can yield ultimate certainty. The weight between the two poles can, depending on the circumstances, shift from one side to the other. As strongly positivistic a thinker as J. Monod has declared himself a convinced Platonist/Cartesian.
This gives rise to two principles which are crucial for the issue we have raised. First, only the kind of certainty resulting from the interplay of mathematical and empirical elements can be considered scientific. Anything that would claim to be science must be measured against this criterion. Hence the human sciences, such as history, psychology, sociology and philosophy, attempt to conform themselves to this canon of scientificity. A second point, which is important for our reflections, is that by its very nature this method excludes the question of God, making it appear an unscientific or pre-scientific question. Consequently, we are faced with a reduction of the radius of science and reason, one which needs to be questioned.I will return to this problem later. In the meantime, it must be observed that from this standpoint any attempt to maintain theology's claim to be "scientific" would end up reducing Christianity to a mere fragment of its former self. But we must say more: if science as a whole is this and this alone, then it is man himself who ends up being reduced, for the specifically human questions about our origin and destiny, the questions raised by religion and ethics, then have no place within the purview of collective reason as defined by "science", so understood, and must thus be relegated to the realm of the subjective. The subject then decides, on the basis of his experiences, what he considers tenable in matters of religion, and the subjective "conscience" becomes the sole arbiter of what is ethical. In this way, though, ethics and religion lose their power to create a community and become a completely personal matter. This is a dangerous state of affairs for humanity, as we see from the disturbing pathologies of religion and reason which necessarily erupt when reason is so reduced that questions of religion and ethics no longer concern it. Attempts to construct an ethic from the rules of evolution or from psychology and sociology, end up being simply inadequate.
Before I draw the conclusions to which all this has been leading, I must briefly refer to the third stage of dehellenization, which is now in progress. In the light of our experience with cultural pluralism, it is often said nowadays that the synthesis with Hellenism achieved in the early Church was a preliminary inculturation which ought not to be binding on other cultures. The latter are said to have the right to return to the simple message of the New Testament prior to that inculturation, in order to inculturate it anew in their own particular milieux. This thesis is not only false; it is coarse and lacking in precision. The New Testament was written in Greek and bears the imprint of the Greek spirit, which had already come to maturity as the Old Testament developed. True, there are elements in the evolution of the early Church which do not have to be integrated into all cultures. Nonetheless, the fundamental decisions made about the relationship between faith and the use of human reason are part of the faith itself; they are developments consonant with the nature of faith itself. And so I come to my conclusion. This attempt, painted with broad strokes, at a critique of modern reason from within has nothing to do with putting the clock back to the time before the Enlightenment and rejecting the insights of the modern age. The positive aspects of modernity are to be acknowledged unreservedly: we are all grateful for the marvellous possibilities that it has opened up for mankind and for the progress in humanity that has been granted to us. The scientific ethos, moreover, is - as you yourself mentioned, Magnificent Rector - the will to be obedient to the truth, and, as such, it embodies an attitude which belongs to the essential decisions of the Christian spirit. The intention here is not one of retrenchment or negative criticism, but of broadening our concept of reason and its application. While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them. We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons. In this sense theology rightly belongs in the university and within the wide-ranging dialogue of sciences, not merely as a historical discipline and one of the human sciences, but precisely as theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith.
Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today. In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world's profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures. At the same time, as I have attempted to show, modern scientific reason with its intrinsically Platonic element bears within itself a question which points beyond itself and beyond the possibilities of its methodology. Modern scientific reason quite simply has to accept the rational structure of matter and the correspondence between our spirit and the prevailing rational structures of nature as a given, on which its methodology has to be based. Yet the question why this has to be so is a real question, and one which has to be remanded by the natural sciences to other modes and planes of thought - to philosophy and theology. For philosophy and, albeit in a different way, for theology, listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity, and those of the Christian faith in particular, is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding. Here I am reminded of something Socrates said to Phaedo. In their earlier conversations, many false philosophical opinions had been raised, and so Socrates says: "It would be easily understandable if someone became so annoyed at all these false notions that for the rest of his life he despised and mocked all talk about being - but in this way he would be deprived of the truth of existence and would suffer a great loss". The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur - this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. "Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God", said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university.
***
NOTE:
The Holy Father intends to supply a subsequent version of this text, complete with footnotes. The present text must therefore be considered provisional.
© Copyright 2006 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana
In my opinion Benedict should in no way apologize for his actual remarks, nor for the remarks of Emperor Manuel II Paleologus. They were both right to criticize the Islamic ideal and propensity of attempting to spread faith by the sword, and the pope was right about his critique of Western Society, especially European Western Society. His criticisms of the Western Educational system are also interesting, good, true, and very beneficial. Stick to your crosses Father, and don't waver.
I also find it extremely fascinating that the pope is attempting to harmonize Greek and Christian thought and by implication Greek Orthodoxy and more general Western Christian traditions. In this respect I agree with him completely as well.
After a prior century of Germans like Himmler and Hitler (even though he wasn't really German) it is extremely refreshing and nice to hear a German speaking like a Christian, and even a Greek Christian again.
Benedict may turn out to be a very interesting and useful pope indeed.
Address by the pope:
APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO MÜNCHEN, ALTÖTTING AND REGENSBURG (SEPTEMBER 9-14, 2006)
MEETING WITH THE REPRESENTATIVES OF SCIENCE
LECTURE OF THE HOLY FATHER
Aula Magna of the University of RegensburgTuesday, 12 September 2006
Faith, Reason and the University Memories and Reflections
Your Eminences, Your Magnificences, Your Excellencies,Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a moving experience for me to be back again in the university and to be able once again to give a lecture at this podium. I think back to those years when, after a pleasant period at the Freisinger Hochschule, I began teaching at the University of Bonn. That was in 1959, in the days of the old university made up of ordinary professors. The various chairs had neither assistants nor secretaries, but in recompense there was much direct contact with students and in particular among the professors themselves. We would meet before and after lessons in the rooms of the teaching staff. There was a lively exchange with historians, philosophers, philologists and, naturally, between the two theological faculties. Once a semester there was a dies academicus, when professors from every faculty appeared before the students of the entire university, making possible a genuine experience of universitas - something that you too, Magnificent Rector, just mentioned - the experience, in other words, of the fact that despite our specializations which at times make it difficult to communicate with each other, we made up a whole, working in everything on the basis of a single rationality with its various aspects and sharing responsibility for the right use of reason - this reality became a lived experience. The university was also very proud of its two theological faculties. It was clear that, by inquiring about the reasonableness of faith, they too carried out a work which is necessarily part of the "whole" of the universitas scientiarum, even if not everyone could share the faith which theologians seek to correlate with reason as a whole. This profound sense of coherence within the universe of reason was not troubled, even when it was once reported that a colleague had said there was something odd about our university: it had two faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God. That even in the face of such radical scepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith: this, within the university as a whole, was accepted without question.
I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both. It was presumably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than those of his Persian interlocutor. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship between - as they were called - three "Laws" or "rules of life": the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur'an. It is not my intention to discuss this question in the present lecture; here I would like to discuss only one point - itself rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole - which, in the context of the issue of "faith and reason", I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.
In the seventh conversation (*4V8,>4H - controversy) edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached". The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably (F×< 8`(T) is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...".The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practise idolatry.
At this point, as far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we are faced with an unavoidable dilemma. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God. Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, the first verse of the whole Bible, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: "In the beginning was the Logos." This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts, F×< 8`(T, with logos. Logos means both reason and word - a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist. The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance. The vision of Saint Paul, who saw the roads to Asia barred and in a dream saw a Macedonian man plead with him: "Come over to Macedonia and help us!" (cf. Acts 16:6-10) - this vision can be interpreted as a "distillation" of the intrinsic necessity of a rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek inquiry.
In point of fact, this rapprochement had been going on for some time. The mysterious name of God, revealed from the burning bush, a name which separates this God from all other divinities with their many names and simply declares "I am", already presents a challenge to the notion of myth, to which Socrates' attempt to vanquish and transcend myth stands in close analogy. Within the Old Testament, the process which started at the burning bush came to new maturity at the time of the Exile, when the God of Israel, an Israel now deprived of its land and worship, was proclaimed as the God of heaven and earth and described in a simple formula which echoes the words uttered at the burning bush: "I am". This new understanding of God is accompanied by a kind of enlightenment, which finds stark expression in the mockery of gods who are merely the work of human hands (cf. Ps 115). Thus, despite the bitter conflict with those Hellenistic rulers who sought to accommodate it forcibly to the customs and idolatrous cult of the Greeks, biblical faith, in the Hellenistic period, encountered the best of Greek thought at a deep level, resulting in a mutual enrichment evident especially in the later wisdom literature. Today we know that the Greek translation of the Old Testament produced at Alexandria - the Septuagint - is more than a simple (and in that sense really less than satisfactory) translation of the Hebrew text: it is an independent textual witness and a distinct and important step in the history of revelation, one which brought about this encounter in a way that was decisive for the birth and spread of Christianity. A profound encounter of faith and reason is taking place here, an encounter between genuine enlightenment and religion. From the very heart of Christian faith and, at the same time, the heart of Greek thought now joined to faith, Manuel II was able to say: Not to act "with logos" is contrary to God's nature.
In all honesty, one must observe that in the late Middle Ages we find trends in theology which would sunder this synthesis between the Greek spirit and the Christian spirit. In contrast with the so-called intellectualism of Augustine and Thomas, there arose with Duns Scotus a voluntarism which, in its later developments, led to the claim that we can only know God's voluntas ordinata. Beyond this is the realm of God's freedom, in virtue of which he could have done the opposite of everything he has actually done. This gives rise to positions which clearly approach those of Ibn Hazn and might even lead to the image of a capricious God, who is not even bound to truth and goodness. God's transcendence and otherness are so exalted that our reason, our sense of the true and good, are no longer an authentic mirror of God, whose deepest possibilities remain eternally unattainable and hidden behind his actual decisions. As opposed to this, the faith of the Church has always insisted that between God and us, between his eternal Creator Spirit and our created reason there exists a real analogy, in which - as the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 stated - unlikeness remains infinitely greater than likeness, yet not to the point of abolishing analogy and its language. God does not become more divine when we push him away from us in a sheer, impenetrable voluntarism; rather, the truly divine God is the God who has revealed himself as logos and, as logos, has acted and continues to act lovingly on our behalf. Certainly, love, as Saint Paul says, "transcends" knowledge and is thereby capable of perceiving more than thought alone (cf. Eph 3:19); nonetheless it continues to be love of the God who is Logos. Consequently, Christian worship is, again to quote Paul - "8@(46¬ 8"JD,\"", worship in harmony with the eternal Word and with our reason (cf. Rom 12:1).This inner rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek philosophical inquiry was an event of decisive importance not only from the standpoint of the history of religions, but also from that of world history - it is an event which concerns us even today. Given this convergence, it is not surprising that Christianity, despite its origins and some significant developments in the East, finally took on its historically decisive character in Europe. We can also express this the other way around: this convergence, with the subsequent addition of the Roman heritage, created Europe and remains the foundation of what can rightly be called Europe.
The thesis that the critically purified Greek heritage forms an integral part of Christian faith has been countered by the call for a dehellenization of Christianity - a call which has more and more dominated theological discussions since the beginning of the modern age. Viewed more closely, three stages can be observed in the programme of dehellenization: although interconnected, they are clearly distinct from one another in their motivations and objectives.
Dehellenization first emerges in connection with the postulates of the Reformation in the sixteenth century. Looking at the tradition of scholastic theology, the Reformers thought they were confronted with a faith system totally conditioned by philosophy, that is to say an articulation of the faith based on an alien system of thought. As a result, faith no longer appeared as a living historical Word but as one element of an overarching philosophical system. The principle of sola scriptura, on the other hand, sought faith in its pure, primordial form, as originally found in the biblical Word. Metaphysics appeared as a premise derived from another source, from which faith had to be liberated in order to become once more fully itself. When Kant stated that he needed to set thinking aside in order to make room for faith, he carried this programme forward with a radicalism that the Reformers could never have foreseen. He thus anchored faith exclusively in practical reason, denying it access to reality as a whole.The liberal theology of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries ushered in a second stage in the process of dehellenization, with Adolf von Harnack as its outstanding representative. When I was a student, and in the early years of my teaching, this programme was highly influential in Catholic theology too. It took as its point of departure Pascal's distinction between the God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In my inaugural lecture at Bonn in 1959, I tried to address the issue, and I do not intend to repeat here what I said on that occasion, but I would like to describe at least briefly what was new about this second stage of dehellenization. Harnack's central idea was to return simply to the man Jesus and to his simple message, underneath the accretions of theology and indeed of hellenization: this simple message was seen as the culmination of the religious development of humanity. Jesus was said to have put an end to worship in favour of morality. In the end he was presented as the father of a humanitarian moral message. Fundamentally, Harnack's goal was to bring Christianity back into harmony with modern reason, liberating it, that is to say, from seemingly philosophical and theological elements, such as faith in Christ's divinity and the triune God. In this sense, historical-critical exegesis of the New Testament, as he saw it, restored to theology its place within the university: theology, for Harnack, is something essentially historical and therefore strictly scientific. What it is able to say critically about Jesus is, so to speak, an expression of practical reason and consequently it can take its rightful place within the university. Behind this thinking lies the modern self-limitation of reason, classically expressed in Kant's "Critiques", but in the meantime further radicalized by the impact of the natural sciences. This modern concept of reason is based, to put it briefly, on a synthesis between Platonism (Cartesianism) and empiricism, a synthesis confirmed by the success of technology. On the one hand it presupposes the mathematical structure of matter, its intrinsic rationality, which makes it possible to understand how matter works and use it efficiently: this basic premise is, so to speak, the Platonic element in the modern understanding of nature. On the other hand, there is nature's capacity to be exploited for our purposes, and here only the possibility of verification or falsification through experimentation can yield ultimate certainty. The weight between the two poles can, depending on the circumstances, shift from one side to the other. As strongly positivistic a thinker as J. Monod has declared himself a convinced Platonist/Cartesian.
This gives rise to two principles which are crucial for the issue we have raised. First, only the kind of certainty resulting from the interplay of mathematical and empirical elements can be considered scientific. Anything that would claim to be science must be measured against this criterion. Hence the human sciences, such as history, psychology, sociology and philosophy, attempt to conform themselves to this canon of scientificity. A second point, which is important for our reflections, is that by its very nature this method excludes the question of God, making it appear an unscientific or pre-scientific question. Consequently, we are faced with a reduction of the radius of science and reason, one which needs to be questioned.I will return to this problem later. In the meantime, it must be observed that from this standpoint any attempt to maintain theology's claim to be "scientific" would end up reducing Christianity to a mere fragment of its former self. But we must say more: if science as a whole is this and this alone, then it is man himself who ends up being reduced, for the specifically human questions about our origin and destiny, the questions raised by religion and ethics, then have no place within the purview of collective reason as defined by "science", so understood, and must thus be relegated to the realm of the subjective. The subject then decides, on the basis of his experiences, what he considers tenable in matters of religion, and the subjective "conscience" becomes the sole arbiter of what is ethical. In this way, though, ethics and religion lose their power to create a community and become a completely personal matter. This is a dangerous state of affairs for humanity, as we see from the disturbing pathologies of religion and reason which necessarily erupt when reason is so reduced that questions of religion and ethics no longer concern it. Attempts to construct an ethic from the rules of evolution or from psychology and sociology, end up being simply inadequate.
Before I draw the conclusions to which all this has been leading, I must briefly refer to the third stage of dehellenization, which is now in progress. In the light of our experience with cultural pluralism, it is often said nowadays that the synthesis with Hellenism achieved in the early Church was a preliminary inculturation which ought not to be binding on other cultures. The latter are said to have the right to return to the simple message of the New Testament prior to that inculturation, in order to inculturate it anew in their own particular milieux. This thesis is not only false; it is coarse and lacking in precision. The New Testament was written in Greek and bears the imprint of the Greek spirit, which had already come to maturity as the Old Testament developed. True, there are elements in the evolution of the early Church which do not have to be integrated into all cultures. Nonetheless, the fundamental decisions made about the relationship between faith and the use of human reason are part of the faith itself; they are developments consonant with the nature of faith itself. And so I come to my conclusion. This attempt, painted with broad strokes, at a critique of modern reason from within has nothing to do with putting the clock back to the time before the Enlightenment and rejecting the insights of the modern age. The positive aspects of modernity are to be acknowledged unreservedly: we are all grateful for the marvellous possibilities that it has opened up for mankind and for the progress in humanity that has been granted to us. The scientific ethos, moreover, is - as you yourself mentioned, Magnificent Rector - the will to be obedient to the truth, and, as such, it embodies an attitude which belongs to the essential decisions of the Christian spirit. The intention here is not one of retrenchment or negative criticism, but of broadening our concept of reason and its application. While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them. We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons. In this sense theology rightly belongs in the university and within the wide-ranging dialogue of sciences, not merely as a historical discipline and one of the human sciences, but precisely as theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith.
Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today. In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world's profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures. At the same time, as I have attempted to show, modern scientific reason with its intrinsically Platonic element bears within itself a question which points beyond itself and beyond the possibilities of its methodology. Modern scientific reason quite simply has to accept the rational structure of matter and the correspondence between our spirit and the prevailing rational structures of nature as a given, on which its methodology has to be based. Yet the question why this has to be so is a real question, and one which has to be remanded by the natural sciences to other modes and planes of thought - to philosophy and theology. For philosophy and, albeit in a different way, for theology, listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity, and those of the Christian faith in particular, is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding. Here I am reminded of something Socrates said to Phaedo. In their earlier conversations, many false philosophical opinions had been raised, and so Socrates says: "It would be easily understandable if someone became so annoyed at all these false notions that for the rest of his life he despised and mocked all talk about being - but in this way he would be deprived of the truth of existence and would suffer a great loss". The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur - this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. "Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God", said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university.
***
NOTE:
The Holy Father intends to supply a subsequent version of this text, complete with footnotes. The present text must therefore be considered provisional.
© Copyright 2006 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana
Thursday, September 14, 2006
The Exchange - Why Modern Music Sucks
The Exchange - Why Modern Music Sucks
A couple of weeks back I went to the library. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular to read or listen to, just sort of browsing. I went by the music section to pick up some Opera and Art music, probably Verdi and Bach. My love affair with modern and popular music waned a long time ago as music began to decline, but occasionally I’ll still listen to stuff from earlier eras of even modern stuff just to see what it sounds like. I got a truly fantastic CD by the Squirrel Nut Zippers called Ballroom Bedlam that I highly recommend, but that’s a tale for another day. And my personal newsletter.
Anyhow while at the popular shelf I saw a CD called Hits of the Seventies and another called Greatest Hits of the Eighties. In my opinion neither CD had the greatest hits of those eras but the music included as tracks for the seventies was nearly all good, and there were a couple of stand out tracks on the eighties collection.
So I checked them out along with the new copy of Handel’s Messiah I got my hands on and went home and listened to both CDs. While I was listening I began to think to myself that popular music from the seventies and part of the eighties was vastly superior to most of the stuff produced nowadays and I began to wonder exactly why that was. I’ve always known this to be true and it’s why I don’t listen to local music radio stations anymore, just music off the satellite. But I began to really wonder if I could formulate real reasons for why the popular music produced 30 years ago was so much superior to the popular music currently produced. So I began to think on the matter and soon the seventies disk was over. So I put on the eighties disk and the very first song was an old song entitled Video Killed the Radio Star by the Buggles. Now I liked that song when I was younger but while listening to it this time I was suddenly struck by just how good the song was, and what it was really saying. Then I had an epiphany of sorts about popular music, then, and now. And slowly it began to take shape in my mind the exact reasons why modern music sucks so badly. Viciously really. Like an 8 lb. Oreck.
The first reason, and this is blatantly obvious if you stop to think of it for just a moment or two, is exactly what the Buggles’ song was speaking of. Video, and video music, and video images make it possible for supposed musical talent to fake being a real musician. Whereas in the past everyone in a band could play at least one instrument, everyone could read music, even if only in shortcut form, and everyone had exposure to making music personally, nowadays you don’t have bands, or musicians, you have singers, and acts. Music is no longer the important function of being a musician, performance is. Video has made it possible for acts to survive on appearance alone, devoid of anything any past age would recognize as in any way resembling real musical talent. Singing and dancing are the new music. Sounds and noises are the new tones. Squeals and raps are the new lyrics. Bitching and moaning is the new art. Thank God music has finally arrived.
Prepackaged individuals whose only real musical talent, if you can call it that, is singing and maybe dancing (often not) have debased music from the playground of the musician, professional or amateur, to the jungle of the entertainer. And the entertainer is always a professional, even when it is obvious he is not. Because video is like stage magic, it doesn’t rely upon the actual physical skill of the magician to make real things happen (in this case music), it relies upon the ability of the magician to deceive the audience into thinking something real is happening. And baby does it work. Because very, very little real popular music has been made since about 1985, but the way people lick up any old piece of auditory crap nowadays you would think they were starving to ingest a scurvy infested turd. But I can’t really blame em too much because turds and words is what passes for music nowadays, and the music industry is more than happy to hock what will hang in a dry wind. Why go to all the trouble of recruiting talented bands and real musicians when you can hire some guy who can dance and sing and all of your troubles are taken care of? Besides entertainers are a lot easier to promote because the entertainer has a natural talent for self-promotion that few real musicians possess. And then again if you are a performer and entertainer and you know that your shot at stardom is gonna come on stage, and not from any musical skill, then why bother to learn music? Your time is much better spent learning dance moves and vocal tricks. Real musicians don’t become American Idols, entertainers do. And that’s what the modern audience expects and wants, an entertainer. The music industry has pushed that kinda crap for so long that nobody much remembers what the real thing looks like anymore. A musician today is 9 parts entertainer, 1 part musician. And music nowadays is 90% performeration, and 10% imitation.
But aside from the fact that so few popular acts nowadays have any real musical talent at all, much less know anything about music; you also have the vexing problem of versatility. There is none. All acts today produce a million different versions of the same song, in the same type or category of music in which they will always produce the same kind of music they will during their entire careers. In other words you just play the same tune and sing the same song over and over again and vary the dancers and video images. This is related to the fact of the Balkanization of musical genres nowadays, a subject I’ll get to in a moment, but for right now let me just say that the lack of versatility and flexibility on the part of modern musicians (and every time I use this term in this article I feel more and more like I’m prostituting the word, making a whore of music so that the musician may eat cake) is a sort of microcosm of the entire musical industry. A band makes metal death hardcore split spine incest apathy tunes and that’s all they will ever make, metal death hardcore split spine incest apathy tunes. A performer makes R&B tracks, and she couldn’t even conceive of writing her own songs, much less of remaking an old bluegrass song. A gangsta rappa puts his pile on the streets, day after day, but he couldn’t imagine writing or performing a love ballad. I guess he’s afraid that if he smiled his face might stick like that. It’s juvenile of course, this calcification of musical categorization.
But that’s the Age of the Reptiles in which we live. It can’t last forever like that of course, but for now the dinosaurs walk again, and few seem willing to ask them what comes after the approaching Ice Age. Fewer still want to know. But you just don’t say this kind of thing in public, that the emperor has no clothes, that it takes a village of record producers to make a single idiot, and that the modern listener hears angel harps while Nero fiddles. But they do. Either because they want it that way, or because they are just too damned ignorant to know any better. The good news kids is that this generation of musically skill-less performers will die off. Nature will take care of that even if talent won’t. The better news is that their audience will either grow up one day, or die off too. It’s an even fifty-fifty as far as I can read it right now.
(To be continued…)
© JWG, Jr. 2006
A couple of weeks back I went to the library. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular to read or listen to, just sort of browsing. I went by the music section to pick up some Opera and Art music, probably Verdi and Bach. My love affair with modern and popular music waned a long time ago as music began to decline, but occasionally I’ll still listen to stuff from earlier eras of even modern stuff just to see what it sounds like. I got a truly fantastic CD by the Squirrel Nut Zippers called Ballroom Bedlam that I highly recommend, but that’s a tale for another day. And my personal newsletter.
Anyhow while at the popular shelf I saw a CD called Hits of the Seventies and another called Greatest Hits of the Eighties. In my opinion neither CD had the greatest hits of those eras but the music included as tracks for the seventies was nearly all good, and there were a couple of stand out tracks on the eighties collection.
So I checked them out along with the new copy of Handel’s Messiah I got my hands on and went home and listened to both CDs. While I was listening I began to think to myself that popular music from the seventies and part of the eighties was vastly superior to most of the stuff produced nowadays and I began to wonder exactly why that was. I’ve always known this to be true and it’s why I don’t listen to local music radio stations anymore, just music off the satellite. But I began to really wonder if I could formulate real reasons for why the popular music produced 30 years ago was so much superior to the popular music currently produced. So I began to think on the matter and soon the seventies disk was over. So I put on the eighties disk and the very first song was an old song entitled Video Killed the Radio Star by the Buggles. Now I liked that song when I was younger but while listening to it this time I was suddenly struck by just how good the song was, and what it was really saying. Then I had an epiphany of sorts about popular music, then, and now. And slowly it began to take shape in my mind the exact reasons why modern music sucks so badly. Viciously really. Like an 8 lb. Oreck.
The first reason, and this is blatantly obvious if you stop to think of it for just a moment or two, is exactly what the Buggles’ song was speaking of. Video, and video music, and video images make it possible for supposed musical talent to fake being a real musician. Whereas in the past everyone in a band could play at least one instrument, everyone could read music, even if only in shortcut form, and everyone had exposure to making music personally, nowadays you don’t have bands, or musicians, you have singers, and acts. Music is no longer the important function of being a musician, performance is. Video has made it possible for acts to survive on appearance alone, devoid of anything any past age would recognize as in any way resembling real musical talent. Singing and dancing are the new music. Sounds and noises are the new tones. Squeals and raps are the new lyrics. Bitching and moaning is the new art. Thank God music has finally arrived.
Prepackaged individuals whose only real musical talent, if you can call it that, is singing and maybe dancing (often not) have debased music from the playground of the musician, professional or amateur, to the jungle of the entertainer. And the entertainer is always a professional, even when it is obvious he is not. Because video is like stage magic, it doesn’t rely upon the actual physical skill of the magician to make real things happen (in this case music), it relies upon the ability of the magician to deceive the audience into thinking something real is happening. And baby does it work. Because very, very little real popular music has been made since about 1985, but the way people lick up any old piece of auditory crap nowadays you would think they were starving to ingest a scurvy infested turd. But I can’t really blame em too much because turds and words is what passes for music nowadays, and the music industry is more than happy to hock what will hang in a dry wind. Why go to all the trouble of recruiting talented bands and real musicians when you can hire some guy who can dance and sing and all of your troubles are taken care of? Besides entertainers are a lot easier to promote because the entertainer has a natural talent for self-promotion that few real musicians possess. And then again if you are a performer and entertainer and you know that your shot at stardom is gonna come on stage, and not from any musical skill, then why bother to learn music? Your time is much better spent learning dance moves and vocal tricks. Real musicians don’t become American Idols, entertainers do. And that’s what the modern audience expects and wants, an entertainer. The music industry has pushed that kinda crap for so long that nobody much remembers what the real thing looks like anymore. A musician today is 9 parts entertainer, 1 part musician. And music nowadays is 90% performeration, and 10% imitation.
But aside from the fact that so few popular acts nowadays have any real musical talent at all, much less know anything about music; you also have the vexing problem of versatility. There is none. All acts today produce a million different versions of the same song, in the same type or category of music in which they will always produce the same kind of music they will during their entire careers. In other words you just play the same tune and sing the same song over and over again and vary the dancers and video images. This is related to the fact of the Balkanization of musical genres nowadays, a subject I’ll get to in a moment, but for right now let me just say that the lack of versatility and flexibility on the part of modern musicians (and every time I use this term in this article I feel more and more like I’m prostituting the word, making a whore of music so that the musician may eat cake) is a sort of microcosm of the entire musical industry. A band makes metal death hardcore split spine incest apathy tunes and that’s all they will ever make, metal death hardcore split spine incest apathy tunes. A performer makes R&B tracks, and she couldn’t even conceive of writing her own songs, much less of remaking an old bluegrass song. A gangsta rappa puts his pile on the streets, day after day, but he couldn’t imagine writing or performing a love ballad. I guess he’s afraid that if he smiled his face might stick like that. It’s juvenile of course, this calcification of musical categorization.
But that’s the Age of the Reptiles in which we live. It can’t last forever like that of course, but for now the dinosaurs walk again, and few seem willing to ask them what comes after the approaching Ice Age. Fewer still want to know. But you just don’t say this kind of thing in public, that the emperor has no clothes, that it takes a village of record producers to make a single idiot, and that the modern listener hears angel harps while Nero fiddles. But they do. Either because they want it that way, or because they are just too damned ignorant to know any better. The good news kids is that this generation of musically skill-less performers will die off. Nature will take care of that even if talent won’t. The better news is that their audience will either grow up one day, or die off too. It’s an even fifty-fifty as far as I can read it right now.
(To be continued…)
© JWG, Jr. 2006
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Pesharim - The Indicative View of God
Pesharim - The Indicative View of God
Michelangelo's fresco "La Creazione" depicts the making of man on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. But Americans have their own picture of God. The most comprehensive national religion survey to date, written and analyzed by sociologists at Baylor University and conducted by Gallup, finds that Americans don?t see themselves the way the media, politicians or even religion experts do.AP 1999 file photo
View of God can predict values, politics
Updated 9/12/2006 12:54 AM ET
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HOW IMAGES OF GOD AFFECT POLITICS
A person's image of God tells more about his or her social, moral and political views than religious denomination or other familiar measures, the Baylor survey says.
Authoritarian
Benevolent
Critical
Distant
Total
Supporting these policies is always wrong
(percentages)
Gay marriage
80.6
65.8
54.8
30.7
57.0
Research on embryonic stem cells
38.5
22.7
13.2
3.8
20.3
War
16.4
18.4
23.1
20.2
19.2
Abortion is always wrong even if ...
The baby has/may have a serious defect
48.1
34.6
13.8
7.4
27.1
The woman's health is in danger
24.7
19.5
6.9
3.1
14.1
The pregnancy is the result of rape
41.5
31.7
12.6
4.6
23.5
The family cannot afford the child
80.8
69.2
41.7
22.9
54.1
The woman does not want the child
81.3
67.5
42.2
26.2
55.2
The federal government should ...
Advocate Christian values
74.5
54.8
36.5
21.1
45.6
Fund faith-based organizations
47.2
24.6
32.3
12.7
28.9
Abolish the death penalty
12.1
17.3
14.2
27.3
18.4
Distribute wealth more evenly
56.8
53.2
58.7
62.5
57.8
Regulate businesses more closely
60.3
63.5
70.6
68.7
65.1
Do more to protect the environment
75.9
81.2
89.0
87.2
82.9
Expand its authority to fight terrorism
76.2
62.7
64.0
40.4
59.5
Allow prayer in public schools
90.9
79.0
69.4
46.5
69.9
God favors the United States in world affairs
Agree
32.1
22.0
12.4
6.9
18.6
Source: Institute for Studies of Religion, Baylor University survey of 1,721 Americans, fall 2005; margin of error +/- 4 percentage points
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By Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAY
The United States calls itself one nation under God, but Americans don't all have the same image of the Almighty in mind.
A new survey of religion in the USA finds four very different images of God — from a wrathful deity thundering at sinful humanity to a distant power uninvolved in mankind's affairs.
Forget denominational brands or doctrines or even once-salient terms like "Religious Right." Even the oft-used "Evangelical" appears to be losing ground.
Believers just don't see themselves the way the media and politicians — or even their pastors — do, according to the national survey of 1,721 Americans, by far the most comprehensive national religion survey to date.
Written and analyzed by sociologists from Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion, in Waco, Texas, and conducted by Gallup, the survey asked 77 questions with nearly 400 answer choices that burrowed deeply into beliefs, practices and religious ties and turned up some surprising findings:
• Though 91.8% say they believe in God, a higher power or a cosmic force, they had four distinct views of God's personality and engagement in human affairs. These Four Gods — dubbed by researchers Authoritarian, Benevolent, Critical or Distant — tell more about people's social, moral and political views and personal piety than the familiar categories of Protestant/Catholic/Jew or even red state/blue state.
For example: 45.6% of all Americans say the federal government "should advocate Christian values," but 74.5% of believers in an authoritarian God do.
Sociologist Paul Froese says the survey finds the stereotype that conservatives are religious and liberals are secular is "simply not true. Political liberals and conservative are both religious. They just have different religious views."
• About one in nine (10.8%) respondents have no religious ties at all; previous national surveys found 14%. The Baylor survey, unlike others, asked people to write in the names and addresses of where they worship, and many who said "none" or "don't know" when asked about their religious identity named a church they occasionally attend.
• The paranormal — beliefs outside conventional organized religion — is immensely popular. Most people said they believe in prophetic dreams; four in 10 say there were once "ancient advanced civilizations" such as Atlantis.
• "Evangelical" may be losing favor as a way Americans describe themselves. About one in three Americans say they belong to denominations that theologians consider evangelical, but only 14% of all respondents in the survey say this is one way they would describe themselves. Only 2.2% called it the single best term. Top choices overall: "Bible-believing" (20.5%) or "born-again" (18.6%).
"Any politician who really wants to connect with Christians should be looking at those terms, not vague abstractions like evangelical. ... They need to tap into labels that have salience," Baylor sociologist Kevin Dougherty says.
• Most Americans think their nearest and dearest are going to heaven. The pearly gates open widest for family (75.3% say they'll get in) and personal friends (69.3%). The survey did not ask whether people expect to go to heaven themselves.
• Religion-themed movies and books have a vast reach: 44.3% of those polled saw Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ. More than one in 10 of all surveyed say they spent $50 or more in the past month on items such as religious books, music and jewelry.
A closer look at what people read finds that 28.5% of Americans say they've read The Da Vinci Code. Baylor also found 19%, including 25% of all U.S. women, have read the Rev. Rick Warren's Christian handbook The Purpose-Driven Life, and 19% overall have read at least one of the novels in the Left Behind apocalyptic fiction series.
These are part of the first wave of results from the random survey of Americans who completed and mailed in a 16-page questionnaire. Conducted in the fall of 2005, the survey is a statistically representative sampling of the USA by age, gender and race.
The Baylor team will spend two years digging through the findings and releasing reports on subtopics such as civic involvement and volunteerism, then repeat the core questions in fall 2007 to track trends. The research is funded by the John Templeton Foundation.
Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll, calls the analysis "intriguing. Baylor was able to ask many more probing questions than the usual surveys."
Others agree.
The Four Gods breakdown is helpful "if you are trying to understand religion's impact on society by how people see themselves from the inside, not by observations from outsiders," says John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
God's 'personality'
Baylor researchers determined the Four Gods breakdown by analyzing questions about God's personality and engagement.
The survey asked respondents to agree or disagree with any of 10 descriptions of their "personal understanding of what God is like," including phrases such as "angered by my sins" or "removed from worldly affairs." They could check off 16 adjectives they believe describe God, including words such as "absolute," "wrathful," "forgiving," "friendly" or "distant."
When USA TODAY asked people similar questions, it found views as varied as those of self-described fundamentalist Brian Snider of Madison, Ala., and Marilyn McGuire, who says she sees God in every sunrise and sunset, flower and kitten at her home on Orcas Island near Seattle.
Snider, 46, says God is "involved in the affairs of men at all times and he does judge us. ... We still believe he is angry at sin."
McGuire, in her late 60s and once an active Episcopalian, now rejects all dogma. "I have my own system of what I think is true and sacred. I try to keep myself peaceful and keep myself in a loving state."
The four visions of God outlined in the Baylor research aren't mutually exclusive. And they don't include 5.2% of Americans who say they are atheists. (Although 91.8% said they believe in God, some didn't answer or weren't sure.)
Still, says Baylor's Christopher Bader, "you learn more about people's moral and political behavior if you know their image of God than almost any other measure. It turns out to be more powerful a predictor of social and political views than the usual markers of church attendance or belief in the Bible."
Though 12.2% overall say abortion is wrong in all circumstances, the number nearly doubles to 23.4% for those who see an authoritarian God and slides to 1.5% for followers of a distant God.
The four categories
Highlights of Baylor's analysis:
• The Authoritarian God (31.4% of Americans overall, 43.3% in the South) is angry at humanity's sins and engaged in every creature's life and world affairs. He is ready to throw the thunderbolt of judgment down on "the unfaithful or ungodly," Bader says.
Those who envision God this way "are religiously and politically conservative people, more often black Protestants and white evangelicals," Bader says.
"(They) want an active, Christian-values-based government with federal funding for faith-based social services and prayer in the schools."
They're also the most inclined to say God favors the USA in world affairs (32.1% vs. 18.6% overall).
•The Benevolent God (23% overall, 28.7% in the Midwest) still sets absolute standards for mankind in the Bible. More than half (54.8%) want the government to advocate Christian values.
But this group, which draws more from mainline Protestants, Catholics and Jews, sees primarily a forgiving God, more like the father who embraces his repentant prodigal son in the Bible, Froese says.
They're inclined (68.1%) to say caring for the sick and needy ranks highest on the list of what it means to be a good person.
This is the group in which the Rev. Jeremy Johnston, executive pastor and communications director for his father's 5,000-member Southern Baptist congregation in Overland Park, Kan., places himself.
"God is in control of everything. He's grieved by the sin of the world, by any created person who doesn't follow him. But I see (a) God ... who loves us, who sees us for who we really are. We serve a God of the second, third, fourth and fifth chance," Johnston says.
•The Critical God (16% overall, 21.3% in the East) has his judgmental eye on the world, but he's not going to intervene, either to punish or to comfort.
"This group is more paradoxical," Bader says. "They have very traditional beliefs, picturing God as the classic bearded old man on high. Yet they're less inclined to go to church or affiliate seriously with religious groups. They are less inclined to see God as active in the world. Their politics are definitely not liberal, but they're not quite conservative, either."
Those who picture a critical God are significantly less likely to draw absolute moral lines on hot-button issues such as abortion, gay marriage or embryonic stem cell research.
For example, 57% overall say gay marriage is always wrong compared with 80.6% for those who see an authoritarian God, and 65.8% for those who see God as benevolent. For those who believe in a critical God, it was 54.7%.
•The Distant God (24.4% overall, 30.3% in the West) is "no bearded old man in the sky raining down his opinions on us," Bader says. Followers of this God see a cosmic force that launched the world, then left it spinning on its own.
This has strongest appeal for Catholics, mainline Protestants and Jews. It's also strong among "moral relativists," those least likely to say any moral choice is always wrong, and among those who don't attend church, Bader says.
Only 3.8% of this group say embryonic stem cell research is always wrong, compared with 38.5% of those who see an authoritarian God, 22.7% for those who see God as benevolent and 13.2% who see God as critical but disengaged.
'God is the universe'
"I still believe in God," says Joanne Meehl, 56, of Barre, Mass., who wrote a book in the mid-'90s called Recovering Catholics. "But to me God is the universe, not as small as a 'He' or a 'She' but bigger than all of that." Humanity is on its own, she says. "People who do wrong are punished in this world, not in the next. This world is it."
Some might question whether a survey by Baptist-affiliated Baylor has a conservative Protestant tilt. For example, there's no mention of communion or saints — central to Catholic believers. Also, questions often used "church," with no mention of synagogues or mosques. But Baylor researchers say their testing finds people view the word as generic for "house of worship."
"This work was done by well-respected sociologists of religion," Green says. "Baylor is becoming a leading evangelical university in the same way Notre Dame is a leading Catholic university, by doing first-rate objective social science."
Rodney Stark, former president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and part of the Baylor team, says: "We wanted to break from the past 30 years of narrow questions. " 'Do you believe in God?' Everyone says yes.
"If you ask 'Are you a Protestant, Catholic or Jew?' people don't even know what denomination they are today or what the label means."
Baylor sociologists broke down religious affiliation by region, gender, race and age (percentages):
Gender
Race
Age
Education
West
Midwest
South
East
Total
Male
Female
White
Black
18-30
31-44
45-64
65+
High school or less
Some college or more
Black Protestant
1.3
5.6
7.2
5.0
5.0
2.8
6.9
0
62.5
3.8
5.4
3.9
7.3
5.0
3.0
Evangelical Protestant
31.7
33.7
50.3
13.1
33.6
30.0
36.7
35.4
9.5
39.0
34.9
31.3
33.1
45.4
23.5
Mainline Protestant
17.7
26.0
19.3
26.0
22.1
22.1
22.1
24.1
7.7
20.1
17.6
22.5
28.1
18.0
29.0
Catholic
19.2
22.1
11.5
35.1
21.2
23.8
18.9
22.8
5.0
10.1
23.0
23.7
19.9
22.0
21.4
Jewish
2.2
1.4
1.9
4.7
2.5
2.5
2.4
2.6
3.7
2.7
1.9
2.7
2.9
2.3
3.6
Other
10.3
3.0
2.7
4.6
4.9
6.0
3.9
4.3
6.0
5.7
5.8
4.8
3.5
2.1
6.7
Unaffiliated
17.6
8.3
7.1
11.6
10.8
12.8
9.0
10.8
5.7
18.6
11.4
11.1
5.4
5.2
12.8
Source: Baylor Religion Survey, margin of error +/- 4 percentage points
Michelangelo's fresco "La Creazione" depicts the making of man on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. But Americans have their own picture of God. The most comprehensive national religion survey to date, written and analyzed by sociologists at Baylor University and conducted by Gallup, finds that Americans don?t see themselves the way the media, politicians or even religion experts do.AP 1999 file photo
View of God can predict values, politics
Updated 9/12/2006 12:54 AM ET
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HOW IMAGES OF GOD AFFECT POLITICS
A person's image of God tells more about his or her social, moral and political views than religious denomination or other familiar measures, the Baylor survey says.
Authoritarian
Benevolent
Critical
Distant
Total
Supporting these policies is always wrong
(percentages)
Gay marriage
80.6
65.8
54.8
30.7
57.0
Research on embryonic stem cells
38.5
22.7
13.2
3.8
20.3
War
16.4
18.4
23.1
20.2
19.2
Abortion is always wrong even if ...
The baby has/may have a serious defect
48.1
34.6
13.8
7.4
27.1
The woman's health is in danger
24.7
19.5
6.9
3.1
14.1
The pregnancy is the result of rape
41.5
31.7
12.6
4.6
23.5
The family cannot afford the child
80.8
69.2
41.7
22.9
54.1
The woman does not want the child
81.3
67.5
42.2
26.2
55.2
The federal government should ...
Advocate Christian values
74.5
54.8
36.5
21.1
45.6
Fund faith-based organizations
47.2
24.6
32.3
12.7
28.9
Abolish the death penalty
12.1
17.3
14.2
27.3
18.4
Distribute wealth more evenly
56.8
53.2
58.7
62.5
57.8
Regulate businesses more closely
60.3
63.5
70.6
68.7
65.1
Do more to protect the environment
75.9
81.2
89.0
87.2
82.9
Expand its authority to fight terrorism
76.2
62.7
64.0
40.4
59.5
Allow prayer in public schools
90.9
79.0
69.4
46.5
69.9
God favors the United States in world affairs
Agree
32.1
22.0
12.4
6.9
18.6
Source: Institute for Studies of Religion, Baylor University survey of 1,721 Americans, fall 2005; margin of error +/- 4 percentage points
swapContent('firstHeader','applyHeader');
By Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAY
The United States calls itself one nation under God, but Americans don't all have the same image of the Almighty in mind.
A new survey of religion in the USA finds four very different images of God — from a wrathful deity thundering at sinful humanity to a distant power uninvolved in mankind's affairs.
Forget denominational brands or doctrines or even once-salient terms like "Religious Right." Even the oft-used "Evangelical" appears to be losing ground.
Believers just don't see themselves the way the media and politicians — or even their pastors — do, according to the national survey of 1,721 Americans, by far the most comprehensive national religion survey to date.
Written and analyzed by sociologists from Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion, in Waco, Texas, and conducted by Gallup, the survey asked 77 questions with nearly 400 answer choices that burrowed deeply into beliefs, practices and religious ties and turned up some surprising findings:
• Though 91.8% say they believe in God, a higher power or a cosmic force, they had four distinct views of God's personality and engagement in human affairs. These Four Gods — dubbed by researchers Authoritarian, Benevolent, Critical or Distant — tell more about people's social, moral and political views and personal piety than the familiar categories of Protestant/Catholic/Jew or even red state/blue state.
For example: 45.6% of all Americans say the federal government "should advocate Christian values," but 74.5% of believers in an authoritarian God do.
Sociologist Paul Froese says the survey finds the stereotype that conservatives are religious and liberals are secular is "simply not true. Political liberals and conservative are both religious. They just have different religious views."
• About one in nine (10.8%) respondents have no religious ties at all; previous national surveys found 14%. The Baylor survey, unlike others, asked people to write in the names and addresses of where they worship, and many who said "none" or "don't know" when asked about their religious identity named a church they occasionally attend.
• The paranormal — beliefs outside conventional organized religion — is immensely popular. Most people said they believe in prophetic dreams; four in 10 say there were once "ancient advanced civilizations" such as Atlantis.
• "Evangelical" may be losing favor as a way Americans describe themselves. About one in three Americans say they belong to denominations that theologians consider evangelical, but only 14% of all respondents in the survey say this is one way they would describe themselves. Only 2.2% called it the single best term. Top choices overall: "Bible-believing" (20.5%) or "born-again" (18.6%).
"Any politician who really wants to connect with Christians should be looking at those terms, not vague abstractions like evangelical. ... They need to tap into labels that have salience," Baylor sociologist Kevin Dougherty says.
• Most Americans think their nearest and dearest are going to heaven. The pearly gates open widest for family (75.3% say they'll get in) and personal friends (69.3%). The survey did not ask whether people expect to go to heaven themselves.
• Religion-themed movies and books have a vast reach: 44.3% of those polled saw Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ. More than one in 10 of all surveyed say they spent $50 or more in the past month on items such as religious books, music and jewelry.
A closer look at what people read finds that 28.5% of Americans say they've read The Da Vinci Code. Baylor also found 19%, including 25% of all U.S. women, have read the Rev. Rick Warren's Christian handbook The Purpose-Driven Life, and 19% overall have read at least one of the novels in the Left Behind apocalyptic fiction series.
These are part of the first wave of results from the random survey of Americans who completed and mailed in a 16-page questionnaire. Conducted in the fall of 2005, the survey is a statistically representative sampling of the USA by age, gender and race.
The Baylor team will spend two years digging through the findings and releasing reports on subtopics such as civic involvement and volunteerism, then repeat the core questions in fall 2007 to track trends. The research is funded by the John Templeton Foundation.
Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll, calls the analysis "intriguing. Baylor was able to ask many more probing questions than the usual surveys."
Others agree.
The Four Gods breakdown is helpful "if you are trying to understand religion's impact on society by how people see themselves from the inside, not by observations from outsiders," says John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
God's 'personality'
Baylor researchers determined the Four Gods breakdown by analyzing questions about God's personality and engagement.
The survey asked respondents to agree or disagree with any of 10 descriptions of their "personal understanding of what God is like," including phrases such as "angered by my sins" or "removed from worldly affairs." They could check off 16 adjectives they believe describe God, including words such as "absolute," "wrathful," "forgiving," "friendly" or "distant."
When USA TODAY asked people similar questions, it found views as varied as those of self-described fundamentalist Brian Snider of Madison, Ala., and Marilyn McGuire, who says she sees God in every sunrise and sunset, flower and kitten at her home on Orcas Island near Seattle.
Snider, 46, says God is "involved in the affairs of men at all times and he does judge us. ... We still believe he is angry at sin."
McGuire, in her late 60s and once an active Episcopalian, now rejects all dogma. "I have my own system of what I think is true and sacred. I try to keep myself peaceful and keep myself in a loving state."
The four visions of God outlined in the Baylor research aren't mutually exclusive. And they don't include 5.2% of Americans who say they are atheists. (Although 91.8% said they believe in God, some didn't answer or weren't sure.)
Still, says Baylor's Christopher Bader, "you learn more about people's moral and political behavior if you know their image of God than almost any other measure. It turns out to be more powerful a predictor of social and political views than the usual markers of church attendance or belief in the Bible."
Though 12.2% overall say abortion is wrong in all circumstances, the number nearly doubles to 23.4% for those who see an authoritarian God and slides to 1.5% for followers of a distant God.
The four categories
Highlights of Baylor's analysis:
• The Authoritarian God (31.4% of Americans overall, 43.3% in the South) is angry at humanity's sins and engaged in every creature's life and world affairs. He is ready to throw the thunderbolt of judgment down on "the unfaithful or ungodly," Bader says.
Those who envision God this way "are religiously and politically conservative people, more often black Protestants and white evangelicals," Bader says.
"(They) want an active, Christian-values-based government with federal funding for faith-based social services and prayer in the schools."
They're also the most inclined to say God favors the USA in world affairs (32.1% vs. 18.6% overall).
•The Benevolent God (23% overall, 28.7% in the Midwest) still sets absolute standards for mankind in the Bible. More than half (54.8%) want the government to advocate Christian values.
But this group, which draws more from mainline Protestants, Catholics and Jews, sees primarily a forgiving God, more like the father who embraces his repentant prodigal son in the Bible, Froese says.
They're inclined (68.1%) to say caring for the sick and needy ranks highest on the list of what it means to be a good person.
This is the group in which the Rev. Jeremy Johnston, executive pastor and communications director for his father's 5,000-member Southern Baptist congregation in Overland Park, Kan., places himself.
"God is in control of everything. He's grieved by the sin of the world, by any created person who doesn't follow him. But I see (a) God ... who loves us, who sees us for who we really are. We serve a God of the second, third, fourth and fifth chance," Johnston says.
•The Critical God (16% overall, 21.3% in the East) has his judgmental eye on the world, but he's not going to intervene, either to punish or to comfort.
"This group is more paradoxical," Bader says. "They have very traditional beliefs, picturing God as the classic bearded old man on high. Yet they're less inclined to go to church or affiliate seriously with religious groups. They are less inclined to see God as active in the world. Their politics are definitely not liberal, but they're not quite conservative, either."
Those who picture a critical God are significantly less likely to draw absolute moral lines on hot-button issues such as abortion, gay marriage or embryonic stem cell research.
For example, 57% overall say gay marriage is always wrong compared with 80.6% for those who see an authoritarian God, and 65.8% for those who see God as benevolent. For those who believe in a critical God, it was 54.7%.
•The Distant God (24.4% overall, 30.3% in the West) is "no bearded old man in the sky raining down his opinions on us," Bader says. Followers of this God see a cosmic force that launched the world, then left it spinning on its own.
This has strongest appeal for Catholics, mainline Protestants and Jews. It's also strong among "moral relativists," those least likely to say any moral choice is always wrong, and among those who don't attend church, Bader says.
Only 3.8% of this group say embryonic stem cell research is always wrong, compared with 38.5% of those who see an authoritarian God, 22.7% for those who see God as benevolent and 13.2% who see God as critical but disengaged.
'God is the universe'
"I still believe in God," says Joanne Meehl, 56, of Barre, Mass., who wrote a book in the mid-'90s called Recovering Catholics. "But to me God is the universe, not as small as a 'He' or a 'She' but bigger than all of that." Humanity is on its own, she says. "People who do wrong are punished in this world, not in the next. This world is it."
Some might question whether a survey by Baptist-affiliated Baylor has a conservative Protestant tilt. For example, there's no mention of communion or saints — central to Catholic believers. Also, questions often used "church," with no mention of synagogues or mosques. But Baylor researchers say their testing finds people view the word as generic for "house of worship."
"This work was done by well-respected sociologists of religion," Green says. "Baylor is becoming a leading evangelical university in the same way Notre Dame is a leading Catholic university, by doing first-rate objective social science."
Rodney Stark, former president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and part of the Baylor team, says: "We wanted to break from the past 30 years of narrow questions. " 'Do you believe in God?' Everyone says yes.
"If you ask 'Are you a Protestant, Catholic or Jew?' people don't even know what denomination they are today or what the label means."
Baylor sociologists broke down religious affiliation by region, gender, race and age (percentages):
Gender
Race
Age
Education
West
Midwest
South
East
Total
Male
Female
White
Black
18-30
31-44
45-64
65+
High school or less
Some college or more
Black Protestant
1.3
5.6
7.2
5.0
5.0
2.8
6.9
0
62.5
3.8
5.4
3.9
7.3
5.0
3.0
Evangelical Protestant
31.7
33.7
50.3
13.1
33.6
30.0
36.7
35.4
9.5
39.0
34.9
31.3
33.1
45.4
23.5
Mainline Protestant
17.7
26.0
19.3
26.0
22.1
22.1
22.1
24.1
7.7
20.1
17.6
22.5
28.1
18.0
29.0
Catholic
19.2
22.1
11.5
35.1
21.2
23.8
18.9
22.8
5.0
10.1
23.0
23.7
19.9
22.0
21.4
Jewish
2.2
1.4
1.9
4.7
2.5
2.5
2.4
2.6
3.7
2.7
1.9
2.7
2.9
2.3
3.6
Other
10.3
3.0
2.7
4.6
4.9
6.0
3.9
4.3
6.0
5.7
5.8
4.8
3.5
2.1
6.7
Unaffiliated
17.6
8.3
7.1
11.6
10.8
12.8
9.0
10.8
5.7
18.6
11.4
11.1
5.4
5.2
12.8
Source: Baylor Religion Survey, margin of error +/- 4 percentage points
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Signal, Sygnet and Sigil - White Paper
Signal, Sygnet and Sigil - White Paper
I am in the Process of writing a White/Theory Paper on Intelligence and Information Matters as regards the Internet and the World Wide Web. I am still not entirely certain of the contents of this paper, how long exactly it will take me to write or on which of my various Blogs or websites it will be posted.
I am uncertain also as to whether to make the paper limited access or public.
If you have any suggestions as to content or thematic issues you would like to see me discuss or any suggestions as to whether you think this paper should be publicly accessible or subscribed, let me know.
The paper/article will also briefly describe the various personal experiments I have conducted in these matters and what conclusions they have led me to draw as a result.
As of now the working title is: An Analysis of the World Wide Web and the Internet as regards Intelligence Matters, Information Sharing, and the New Methodologies of Data Distribution
Intelligence on the Internet - Terrorism, Intelligence, Information Sharing and Retrieval, Data Distribution, Counterterroism, Counterintelligence, International Criminal activity, Monitoring, Data and Intel Mining, Illicit Transfer of Information, Secret Transfer of Information, Vigilance, Private Communications, Substrata Communications, SubRosa Activities, Informational Pathologies and Degradation Vectors (Worms, Viruses, etc.) Clandestine Research, Cracking, Hacking and Informational Vadding Activities.
Paper Contents:
Threads
Sites
(Web) Blogs
Portals and Gateways
Web 2.0
Web 3.0 and 4.0
Surrogate Site Gates (SSG)
Linkages
Metadata
Surgical Data
Gray Lit
Black Lit
Project Information
Analytical Toolmaking and Collational Construction
Deep Mining, Wide Mining, and Hack Mining
Transference
The Underworld Web
Pathologies and Vectoring
Limited Accessibility Information (LAI)
Invisible Web (also known as the: Hidden Web, Black Web, Deep Web, Underground Web, the Invisible Net, etc.)
WETNET
Open and Closed Military Intelligence
Experiments in Steganography, Encoding and Encryption
Public Sites as Secret Validators, Dead Drops, and Information Validators
Ubiquitous Exchange
The Vadding Imperative
Uncontrolled Experimentation
Glossary of Terminology
I am in the Process of writing a White/Theory Paper on Intelligence and Information Matters as regards the Internet and the World Wide Web. I am still not entirely certain of the contents of this paper, how long exactly it will take me to write or on which of my various Blogs or websites it will be posted.
I am uncertain also as to whether to make the paper limited access or public.
If you have any suggestions as to content or thematic issues you would like to see me discuss or any suggestions as to whether you think this paper should be publicly accessible or subscribed, let me know.
The paper/article will also briefly describe the various personal experiments I have conducted in these matters and what conclusions they have led me to draw as a result.
As of now the working title is: An Analysis of the World Wide Web and the Internet as regards Intelligence Matters, Information Sharing, and the New Methodologies of Data Distribution
Intelligence on the Internet - Terrorism, Intelligence, Information Sharing and Retrieval, Data Distribution, Counterterroism, Counterintelligence, International Criminal activity, Monitoring, Data and Intel Mining, Illicit Transfer of Information, Secret Transfer of Information, Vigilance, Private Communications, Substrata Communications, SubRosa Activities, Informational Pathologies and Degradation Vectors (Worms, Viruses, etc.) Clandestine Research, Cracking, Hacking and Informational Vadding Activities.
Paper Contents:
Threads
Sites
(Web) Blogs
Portals and Gateways
Web 2.0
Web 3.0 and 4.0
Surrogate Site Gates (SSG)
Linkages
Metadata
Surgical Data
Gray Lit
Black Lit
Project Information
Analytical Toolmaking and Collational Construction
Deep Mining, Wide Mining, and Hack Mining
Transference
The Underworld Web
Pathologies and Vectoring
Limited Accessibility Information (LAI)
Invisible Web (also known as the: Hidden Web, Black Web, Deep Web, Underground Web, the Invisible Net, etc.)
WETNET
Open and Closed Military Intelligence
Experiments in Steganography, Encoding and Encryption
Public Sites as Secret Validators, Dead Drops, and Information Validators
Ubiquitous Exchange
The Vadding Imperative
Uncontrolled Experimentation
Glossary of Terminology
The Exchange - Counterterrorism Blog
The Exchange - The Counterterrorism Blog
I'm really impressed by the recent changes and improvements to the Counterterrorism Blog. I highly recommend it.
http://counterterrorismblog.org/
I'm really impressed by the recent changes and improvements to the Counterterrorism Blog. I highly recommend it.
http://counterterrorismblog.org/
Saturday, September 09, 2006
The Exchange - My Wiki Wunderkind
The Exchange - My Wiki Wunderkind
I've been working on creating some new websites to replace my old ones. While doing that I researched some Web 2.0 articles and sites on Wiki websites.
After doing the research and experimenting around I discovered that Wiki sites are far superior to normal, static HTML and related sites.
Construction is far easier. It's as easy as a matter of fact as using a standard Word Processing/Office program. And just as fast. All you really have to do to create the site you want is create whatever content you want in any other program and then cut and paste to your website.
Coding is nothing, it's all done for you. Links are created just as simply. In many ways it reminds me of when I was a kid and computers were punch cards or entirely codes and complicated languages (standard websites) and now when the program does all of the coding for you (Wiki), all you have to do is be able to type. It's like the difference between 1960 television sets and modern big screens where all you have to do is point and shoot with the remote. Functionality is incredibly more versatile.
Anyway I just started last night and this morning building my new writing website, the Center and Circumference. I haven't put much content on it yet, but have just been experimenting, building menus and tables of content, and site contents, stuff like that. It's incredibly easy to do and I've gotten 1000 mb to play around with plus additional storage capacity for other things. Far more than I'll need.
I'm gonna improve the graphics a little bit as time goes along, but as far as construction, it takes minutes instead of hours now, and you really don't have to worry about coding anything other than the most elementary commands that a three year old could follow. For instance I created page links by just putting brackets [ ] around the names of the pages I had already created. You can create tables of contents automatically just by typing inplus exclamation marks !
And navigation is so intuitive and easy that it's just a matter of point and click, for me and the user.
All of my websites, business, writing, etc. will now be built using this method.
Unless more normal programs of website creation and hosting vastly, vastly improve then I'll never be going back to the old ways. Web 2.0 for my own sites from now on, that is until the next better thing comes along. But for now Wiki is my wunderkind.
http://centerandcircumference.pbwiki.com/
I've been working on creating some new websites to replace my old ones. While doing that I researched some Web 2.0 articles and sites on Wiki websites.
After doing the research and experimenting around I discovered that Wiki sites are far superior to normal, static HTML and related sites.
Construction is far easier. It's as easy as a matter of fact as using a standard Word Processing/Office program. And just as fast. All you really have to do to create the site you want is create whatever content you want in any other program and then cut and paste to your website.
Coding is nothing, it's all done for you. Links are created just as simply. In many ways it reminds me of when I was a kid and computers were punch cards or entirely codes and complicated languages (standard websites) and now when the program does all of the coding for you (Wiki), all you have to do is be able to type. It's like the difference between 1960 television sets and modern big screens where all you have to do is point and shoot with the remote. Functionality is incredibly more versatile.
Anyway I just started last night and this morning building my new writing website, the Center and Circumference. I haven't put much content on it yet, but have just been experimenting, building menus and tables of content, and site contents, stuff like that. It's incredibly easy to do and I've gotten 1000 mb to play around with plus additional storage capacity for other things. Far more than I'll need.
I'm gonna improve the graphics a little bit as time goes along, but as far as construction, it takes minutes instead of hours now, and you really don't have to worry about coding anything other than the most elementary commands that a three year old could follow. For instance I created page links by just putting brackets [ ] around the names of the pages I had already created. You can create tables of contents automatically just by typing in
And navigation is so intuitive and easy that it's just a matter of point and click, for me and the user.
All of my websites, business, writing, etc. will now be built using this method.
Unless more normal programs of website creation and hosting vastly, vastly improve then I'll never be going back to the old ways. Web 2.0 for my own sites from now on, that is until the next better thing comes along. But for now Wiki is my wunderkind.
http://centerandcircumference.pbwiki.com/
Thursday, September 07, 2006
The Glair - Blair's Bye-Bye
The Glair - Blair's Bye-Bye
One of the greatest Americans ever to hold office as British Prime Minister is stepping down. You were one of the truly greats Tony, right up there with Disraeli, Churchill, and Thatcher, and they treated you exactly the same way. For a modern day liberal, you were a helluvah Conservative.
Godspeed to ya on whatever you do next. My hat's off to ya Limey.
And if it ever strikes ya to do so then come to the Real West and enjoy a well deserved working retirement...
Britain's Tony Blair Promises to Resign Within a Year
Thursday, September 07, 2006
LONDON — Prime Minister Tony Blair promised Thursday to resign within a year, hoping to appease critics in his governing Labour Party who are calling for his resignation by revealing a time frame.
"I would have preferred to do this in my own way," Blair said. He refused to set a specific departure date, but said the annual Labour Party conference this month would be his last. Next year's conference is scheduled for September 2007.
Pressure for the prime minister to announce a departure date had intensified in recent weeks, fueled by widespread anger at Blair's handling of last month's fighting between Israel and Lebanon-based Hezbollah militants.
Many within Blair's governing Labour party were furious at his refusal to call for an early cease-fire, a stance critics saw as tacitly allowing Israel to bomb Lebanon for weeks.
Environment Secretary David Miliband — a key Blair ally — said on Thursday that Gordon Brown was the only person who should succeed Blair and claimed the party was excited about the prospect of his premiership.
"I would say the transition...the energizing, refreshing transition to Gordon Brown — not to anyone else — is a transition that is about ideas and values more than about dates," he said in an interview with the leftist New Statesman magazine, published Thursday.
Miliband, often mentioned as a potential rival to Brown, said he would not be "a runner nor a rider" in leadership and deputy leadership elections following Blair's departure.
Eight junior officials said Wednesday they had quit rather than remove their names from a letter demanding that the prime minister step aside. They were among 15 Labour lawmakers who signed the letter, writing that while they supported the centrist direction Blair had taken the party, he was no longer the right man to lead it.
Tom Watson, the most senior of those to resign, quit his post as minister for veterans in the Ministry of Defense.
Blair smacked back after receiving Watson's resignation letter, saying he would have fired Watson if he had not quit himself, and calling his decision to sign the lawmakers' letter "disloyal, discourteous and wrong."
For Fox News
CountryWatch: United Kingdom
One of the greatest Americans ever to hold office as British Prime Minister is stepping down. You were one of the truly greats Tony, right up there with Disraeli, Churchill, and Thatcher, and they treated you exactly the same way. For a modern day liberal, you were a helluvah Conservative.
Godspeed to ya on whatever you do next. My hat's off to ya Limey.
And if it ever strikes ya to do so then come to the Real West and enjoy a well deserved working retirement...
Britain's Tony Blair Promises to Resign Within a Year
Thursday, September 07, 2006
LONDON — Prime Minister Tony Blair promised Thursday to resign within a year, hoping to appease critics in his governing Labour Party who are calling for his resignation by revealing a time frame.
"I would have preferred to do this in my own way," Blair said. He refused to set a specific departure date, but said the annual Labour Party conference this month would be his last. Next year's conference is scheduled for September 2007.
Pressure for the prime minister to announce a departure date had intensified in recent weeks, fueled by widespread anger at Blair's handling of last month's fighting between Israel and Lebanon-based Hezbollah militants.
Many within Blair's governing Labour party were furious at his refusal to call for an early cease-fire, a stance critics saw as tacitly allowing Israel to bomb Lebanon for weeks.
Environment Secretary David Miliband — a key Blair ally — said on Thursday that Gordon Brown was the only person who should succeed Blair and claimed the party was excited about the prospect of his premiership.
"I would say the transition...the energizing, refreshing transition to Gordon Brown — not to anyone else — is a transition that is about ideas and values more than about dates," he said in an interview with the leftist New Statesman magazine, published Thursday.
Miliband, often mentioned as a potential rival to Brown, said he would not be "a runner nor a rider" in leadership and deputy leadership elections following Blair's departure.
Eight junior officials said Wednesday they had quit rather than remove their names from a letter demanding that the prime minister step aside. They were among 15 Labour lawmakers who signed the letter, writing that while they supported the centrist direction Blair had taken the party, he was no longer the right man to lead it.
Tom Watson, the most senior of those to resign, quit his post as minister for veterans in the Ministry of Defense.
Blair smacked back after receiving Watson's resignation letter, saying he would have fired Watson if he had not quit himself, and calling his decision to sign the lawmakers' letter "disloyal, discourteous and wrong."
For Fox News
CountryWatch: United Kingdom
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
The Exchange - Dreams and Revulsions
The Exchange - Dreams and Revulsions
The other day I went to the library and picked up a book by Neil Gaiman called, Adventures in the Dream Trade.
I've read a few things by Gaiman including a Batman novel he wrote, some comics, some short stories, Sandman, etc. So I think he's an okay writer. This book is about, well, it's sort of a writing journal and that's why I picked it up.
For a long time when I was younger I would tell stories about my personal adventures for which my friends would usually say, "Damn, that's a good story." Then we'd talk about it or maybe recall different aspects of the story from different points of view because often they were along with me when such and such happened. Then later some would say, "Write that down man, you could sell that easily," or "People would love that man." Most of my stories, even my fictional ones were or are based on real life experiences of things I had done or gone through or had seen happen to others, and I think that's why most people liked them. I've been told I have a good imagination but I've never had to rely on it or even gave it much importance. Observation was always my game, watching what happened, and recording it in my head till I could retell it. Even the stuff inside my own head was more observation than creation, I would just retell visions or dreams I had, rather than trying to invent.
But I started writing stuff down to pass around to my friends and others and so forth and so I've been writing fiction like that for well over twenty years. But unlike my non-fiction I've never had a desire to sell it or distribute it widely, and have even been repulsed by the idea to some extent. Occasionally I would get an idea to sell something but always pull back before trying. I've just never considered fiction nearly as important as real life (even when I really liked fiction), so even when I modify a real-life tale it has for a long time, to me, become diluted and weak and artificial. Sort of juvenile and not nearly as important as the real events. Nor as fascinating. (I've rarely ever read any fiction of any kind which is even fractionally as interesting as some of the things I've seen really happen, and usually when I read fiction I can tell when an author is creating in his head versus modifying something he has really experienced or seen. I do that kind of instinctively when reading fiction, I say to myself, "something like that really happened, that's too good to have been imagined," or, "that's such a piece of crap it must have come straight out of his imagination.")
Anyway, recently my family and other people I know including friends and church members and old work associates have said to me, "Sell your fiction. It would sell well." So I've been working hard to overcome my prejudices about fiction writing and I have to a very large extent over come these personal psychological inhibitions. One obstacle remains however and Gaiman's book reminded me of it. He spoke in several places about "the Fans." God Almighty this very idea disgusts me and makes me want to wretch.
In the past, not often but once or twice I've been to book signings, once for myself and once for somebody else. Also two or three times I've been to comic book conventions and gotten a few autographs. I however cannot stand and it almost makes me sick to my stomach to think of me signing some book or graphic novel or something else I've produced and some overwrought fan gushing on and on about what a genius I am and whatnot. I've seen this kind of embarrassing shit go on before, once at a book-signing, and once at a comics convention. It ain't pretty, not in any rendition.
I think this is what ought to occur. The fan walks up and says something to the effect of; "I really like your work, thank you for your autograph." Then move the hell along, other people are waiting. I don't want to hear, and could not long stomach, "Oh, you're such a genius, I have all of your works, blah, blah, blah..."
Thirty seconds of that and I'd feel compelled, and those of you who know me also know I would to stand up and say, "Damn-it!! It's just words cupcake! I wrote a freaking book. Jesus in Bethlehem, go do something with your damned life, instead of blowing your time wallowing and whining about my supposed genius near me, I can't stand to hear it. I didn't cure cancer, I don't fly, I wrote a freakin piece of fiction. Do you understand what that means? It's fiction!! I don't care what you think of me, I've never cared what anyone thinks of me. It's a story. What, do you worship actors too?"
It churns my stomach right now at my desk just thinking about getting invited to some seminar or some book signing or some convention (and believe me I'm not at all sure I'd go) and listening to some twit prattle on and on about some piece of fiction. I still have a long way to go in my own mind before I could keep my lunch down if I came within three hundred yards of that kind of crap. I don't see how fictional writers stand that kinda shit. I guess either, 1) they have gotten used to it over time and they don't even bother to hear it anymore, 2) they are made out of tougher stuff than I am and have the patience to suffer through that, or 3) they have egos so brittle and fragile that they actually want or need to hear that crap.
Look, if I'm ever successful at something involving fiction then give me an audience base who can appreciate my stuff, and the profits that come with it. God in Heaven preserve me from the "modern fan" and his disgusting sycophantic droolings. Rich, okay. Recognized and fawned over in public, no thanks. That kind of thing can go straight to hell. I got no interest in "fictional fame." And I feel sorry for famous people who have to endure that kind of thing. I don't want to lose my essential invisibility, and have no plans to do so.
As for getting back to Gaiman's book, after having read several parts of it I found it very good. I agreed with much of it. Not all (I never agree with anybody about everything, not even God), but enough that I felt a sort of kinship with what he was saying about several subjects. I liked the section on the Screwtape Letters, a Writer's Prayer was very interesting, and good, It said a lot of truth in contrasting ways. His little piece on the Swords of Lankhmar is terrific and his observations excellent. In that piece he said something that although, I've never really thought of it like that, in this context, was a near perfect insight. He wrote,
And that is the way I feel about a great many things in life, writing included. Like a magician at a show who already knows the tricks.
Most of the time that makes me internally and secretly happy, even I have to admit, smug. Sometimes though it's just a shame to know the trick before it's even attempted.
It's a sort of tragedy at times to know too often what is gonna happen before it actually does.
The other day I went to the library and picked up a book by Neil Gaiman called, Adventures in the Dream Trade.
I've read a few things by Gaiman including a Batman novel he wrote, some comics, some short stories, Sandman, etc. So I think he's an okay writer. This book is about, well, it's sort of a writing journal and that's why I picked it up.
For a long time when I was younger I would tell stories about my personal adventures for which my friends would usually say, "Damn, that's a good story." Then we'd talk about it or maybe recall different aspects of the story from different points of view because often they were along with me when such and such happened. Then later some would say, "Write that down man, you could sell that easily," or "People would love that man." Most of my stories, even my fictional ones were or are based on real life experiences of things I had done or gone through or had seen happen to others, and I think that's why most people liked them. I've been told I have a good imagination but I've never had to rely on it or even gave it much importance. Observation was always my game, watching what happened, and recording it in my head till I could retell it. Even the stuff inside my own head was more observation than creation, I would just retell visions or dreams I had, rather than trying to invent.
But I started writing stuff down to pass around to my friends and others and so forth and so I've been writing fiction like that for well over twenty years. But unlike my non-fiction I've never had a desire to sell it or distribute it widely, and have even been repulsed by the idea to some extent. Occasionally I would get an idea to sell something but always pull back before trying. I've just never considered fiction nearly as important as real life (even when I really liked fiction), so even when I modify a real-life tale it has for a long time, to me, become diluted and weak and artificial. Sort of juvenile and not nearly as important as the real events. Nor as fascinating. (I've rarely ever read any fiction of any kind which is even fractionally as interesting as some of the things I've seen really happen, and usually when I read fiction I can tell when an author is creating in his head versus modifying something he has really experienced or seen. I do that kind of instinctively when reading fiction, I say to myself, "something like that really happened, that's too good to have been imagined," or, "that's such a piece of crap it must have come straight out of his imagination.")
Anyway, recently my family and other people I know including friends and church members and old work associates have said to me, "Sell your fiction. It would sell well." So I've been working hard to overcome my prejudices about fiction writing and I have to a very large extent over come these personal psychological inhibitions. One obstacle remains however and Gaiman's book reminded me of it. He spoke in several places about "the Fans." God Almighty this very idea disgusts me and makes me want to wretch.
In the past, not often but once or twice I've been to book signings, once for myself and once for somebody else. Also two or three times I've been to comic book conventions and gotten a few autographs. I however cannot stand and it almost makes me sick to my stomach to think of me signing some book or graphic novel or something else I've produced and some overwrought fan gushing on and on about what a genius I am and whatnot. I've seen this kind of embarrassing shit go on before, once at a book-signing, and once at a comics convention. It ain't pretty, not in any rendition.
I think this is what ought to occur. The fan walks up and says something to the effect of; "I really like your work, thank you for your autograph." Then move the hell along, other people are waiting. I don't want to hear, and could not long stomach, "Oh, you're such a genius, I have all of your works, blah, blah, blah..."
Thirty seconds of that and I'd feel compelled, and those of you who know me also know I would to stand up and say, "Damn-it!! It's just words cupcake! I wrote a freaking book. Jesus in Bethlehem, go do something with your damned life, instead of blowing your time wallowing and whining about my supposed genius near me, I can't stand to hear it. I didn't cure cancer, I don't fly, I wrote a freakin piece of fiction. Do you understand what that means? It's fiction!! I don't care what you think of me, I've never cared what anyone thinks of me. It's a story. What, do you worship actors too?"
It churns my stomach right now at my desk just thinking about getting invited to some seminar or some book signing or some convention (and believe me I'm not at all sure I'd go) and listening to some twit prattle on and on about some piece of fiction. I still have a long way to go in my own mind before I could keep my lunch down if I came within three hundred yards of that kind of crap. I don't see how fictional writers stand that kinda shit. I guess either, 1) they have gotten used to it over time and they don't even bother to hear it anymore, 2) they are made out of tougher stuff than I am and have the patience to suffer through that, or 3) they have egos so brittle and fragile that they actually want or need to hear that crap.
Look, if I'm ever successful at something involving fiction then give me an audience base who can appreciate my stuff, and the profits that come with it. God in Heaven preserve me from the "modern fan" and his disgusting sycophantic droolings. Rich, okay. Recognized and fawned over in public, no thanks. That kind of thing can go straight to hell. I got no interest in "fictional fame." And I feel sorry for famous people who have to endure that kind of thing. I don't want to lose my essential invisibility, and have no plans to do so.
As for getting back to Gaiman's book, after having read several parts of it I found it very good. I agreed with much of it. Not all (I never agree with anybody about everything, not even God), but enough that I felt a sort of kinship with what he was saying about several subjects. I liked the section on the Screwtape Letters, a Writer's Prayer was very interesting, and good, It said a lot of truth in contrasting ways. His little piece on the Swords of Lankhmar is terrific and his observations excellent. In that piece he said something that although, I've never really thought of it like that, in this context, was a near perfect insight. He wrote,
"Now an admission: I find it harder and harder to read fiction for pleasure. I
have spent too long wandering around behind the scenes where fictions
are created. Like a stage magician at a magic show, I may appreciate the
skill with which the trick is done...I find it hard to be a member of the
audience."
And that is the way I feel about a great many things in life, writing included. Like a magician at a show who already knows the tricks.
Most of the time that makes me internally and secretly happy, even I have to admit, smug. Sometimes though it's just a shame to know the trick before it's even attempted.
It's a sort of tragedy at times to know too often what is gonna happen before it actually does.
Sunday, September 03, 2006
The Exchange - The Agony and the Ecstasy
The Exchange - The Agony and the Ecstasy : Body Image and the Modern World
Updated 9/3/2006 9:04 AM ET
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Subscribe to stories like this
The Agony and the Ecstasy : Body Image and the Modern World
For The Catastrophe
By Jason Geriatric
Part 1 of 2
Part One, Tattoodom Come
In recent years tattooing and body piercing have become ever more vital methods of personal expression for millions of people, especially those of the younger generations. But now many people are discovering incredible new and valuable uses for their collections of individual and wearable body art.
On college and public high school campuses across the United States tattooing and body piercing have become the acknowledged means of expressing personal individuality. One young student described it succinctly in this way, “You’re really not an individual unless you’ve got some kind of tattoo or body piercing. And now everybody’s got them. So because of that everybody can be an individual who is just like everybody else. The advantage is that you can fit in with anyone else who has a tattoo or piercing, but you can still be yourself, just like everybody else who fits in. See how that works? Since everybody has them everyone is the same, only different. If I had a friend then the first thing I’d do is tell them to get marked, and quick. Unless you’re just like everybody else, then you’re really not an individual, are you? Duh!!”
This bright young student concluded with this telling statement about modern life. “Man I’d be totally lost without my toos. Man if I didn’t have tattoos then who would know how special I am? It either shows on what’s on you or nobody knows. Who wants to be ordinary when they could look like me?”
The advantages of tattooing and body piercing for those in the know however is hardly limited to social advantage and an expression of fierce and determined individuality. Take Maria-Lochita, a first generation illegal alien, who through a generous California state funded grant program is now a sophomore at USC at San Bernardino. After graduation she plans to continue her academic career with a follow up grant from Californian taxpayers at the University of Pittsburgh where she will take a doctorate in multi-lingual, multi-cultural, trans-national-multi-gendered refugee subsistence economic programs. Eventually she hopes to work for the UN.
She credits her tattoo of the Virgin Madonna with helping her beat out several other student candidates to win her educational grant. “Yeah,” she says in a bubbly but heavily accented Spanglish, “I got the grant by beating out a Guatemalan, an Asian of some kind, three gringas, la Negra, and an aboriginal belly dancer. All my cousins say I’m loco but I know I won because of the tattoo of the Virgin Madonna I have tattooed on my right nipple. She brings me luck, mucho grande, and because she’s there she’s a constant inspiration to me. I feel like I can be her in some way. Plus I really love her music.”
Yet this too is only the beginning of the possible uses of tattoos and piercings. Many are now discovering that their tattoos really do have special powers. Some are even whispering the “M” word.
David, an underground street monkey, crack whore, and homeless mime, sat down in his stolen lounge chair for an interview. “Well, it’s like this. My tattoos are like magical and everything. I’ve got tattoos all over and what they do is put me in this special ‘frame of mind,’ where I can do anything man, anything. Say I wanna knock over a liquor store, then man I just get totally wasted, I mean really tore up, then I look at this sort of really wack lion like thing I got on my arm man. Then I walk right in that joint and show him my ‘Crazy Cat’ and man that things jumps off my arm and starts running around the place busting stuff and scaring the hell outta the counter guy. Then they give me whatever I tell em to, see, for fear of the ‘Cat’ man. Cause that cat is crazy; hell it’s just like Beastmaster or something like that. Exactly like that, now that I think about it… Anyway I don’t have to do nothing man. The Cat is magical and makes people do what I want. The law can’t touch me, it’s the Cat. I’m clean. I laugh every time I hit a place.”
David is hardly the only person with tattoos who believe that the tattoo imparts some “special status” or “magical power” to the owner. Recent whisper campaigns among the Goth-Vampire, Raver, and Alien Abductee movements have made startling claims that their tattoos are actually methods of communicating with other vampires, aliens, Satan, or are even living marks of the Beast. A Raver told this reporter that when taking ecstasy mixed with rat poison he could use his life sized body tattoo of Walt Disney to communicate with the mind of Dick Cheney and thereby run the country as surrogate President. “Yeah man,” said the young raver, who did not wish to be identified by any name other than Vermillion Sunshine, “I could have gotten us out of Iraq ten or twelve years ago dude but I keep making Dick tell George we’re not leaving yet. It’s a hoot man. I can also make MTV voters show up anywhere and anytime to elect Democrats but I just don’t do it man cause like I keep forgetting what year it is and everything. I could have gotten Al Gore elected too but he pissed me off when he married that ketchup sow. Walt Disney rocks man, I got his penis tattooed on my penis - WHOOOOOOO!!! Seriously dude…who are you again?”
(Disclaimer: The message in the above paragraph was endorsed by the Democratic National Party and is due to be used as part of their November MTV Rap and Rock the Vote campaign. It is expected to work.)
No doubt this is only the beginning of numerous generations to come who will all indulge heavily in the material advantages of modern culture; tattooing, body piercing and puncturing, rap music, Christina Aguilera, American Idol, Reality Television, the United Nations, Global Warming infomercials, and nano-sized atomic hand-grenades. The future, the real future, has yet to be written upon virgin flesh. But we’re getting there.
© JG 2006
This article to be continued in Part Two, Power Piercings.
Updated 9/3/2006 9:04 AM ET
E-mail Save Print
Subscribe to stories like this
The Agony and the Ecstasy : Body Image and the Modern World
For The Catastrophe
By Jason Geriatric
Part 1 of 2
Part One, Tattoodom Come
In recent years tattooing and body piercing have become ever more vital methods of personal expression for millions of people, especially those of the younger generations. But now many people are discovering incredible new and valuable uses for their collections of individual and wearable body art.
On college and public high school campuses across the United States tattooing and body piercing have become the acknowledged means of expressing personal individuality. One young student described it succinctly in this way, “You’re really not an individual unless you’ve got some kind of tattoo or body piercing. And now everybody’s got them. So because of that everybody can be an individual who is just like everybody else. The advantage is that you can fit in with anyone else who has a tattoo or piercing, but you can still be yourself, just like everybody else who fits in. See how that works? Since everybody has them everyone is the same, only different. If I had a friend then the first thing I’d do is tell them to get marked, and quick. Unless you’re just like everybody else, then you’re really not an individual, are you? Duh!!”
This bright young student concluded with this telling statement about modern life. “Man I’d be totally lost without my toos. Man if I didn’t have tattoos then who would know how special I am? It either shows on what’s on you or nobody knows. Who wants to be ordinary when they could look like me?”
The advantages of tattooing and body piercing for those in the know however is hardly limited to social advantage and an expression of fierce and determined individuality. Take Maria-Lochita, a first generation illegal alien, who through a generous California state funded grant program is now a sophomore at USC at San Bernardino. After graduation she plans to continue her academic career with a follow up grant from Californian taxpayers at the University of Pittsburgh where she will take a doctorate in multi-lingual, multi-cultural, trans-national-multi-gendered refugee subsistence economic programs. Eventually she hopes to work for the UN.
She credits her tattoo of the Virgin Madonna with helping her beat out several other student candidates to win her educational grant. “Yeah,” she says in a bubbly but heavily accented Spanglish, “I got the grant by beating out a Guatemalan, an Asian of some kind, three gringas, la Negra, and an aboriginal belly dancer. All my cousins say I’m loco but I know I won because of the tattoo of the Virgin Madonna I have tattooed on my right nipple. She brings me luck, mucho grande, and because she’s there she’s a constant inspiration to me. I feel like I can be her in some way. Plus I really love her music.”
Yet this too is only the beginning of the possible uses of tattoos and piercings. Many are now discovering that their tattoos really do have special powers. Some are even whispering the “M” word.
David, an underground street monkey, crack whore, and homeless mime, sat down in his stolen lounge chair for an interview. “Well, it’s like this. My tattoos are like magical and everything. I’ve got tattoos all over and what they do is put me in this special ‘frame of mind,’ where I can do anything man, anything. Say I wanna knock over a liquor store, then man I just get totally wasted, I mean really tore up, then I look at this sort of really wack lion like thing I got on my arm man. Then I walk right in that joint and show him my ‘Crazy Cat’ and man that things jumps off my arm and starts running around the place busting stuff and scaring the hell outta the counter guy. Then they give me whatever I tell em to, see, for fear of the ‘Cat’ man. Cause that cat is crazy; hell it’s just like Beastmaster or something like that. Exactly like that, now that I think about it… Anyway I don’t have to do nothing man. The Cat is magical and makes people do what I want. The law can’t touch me, it’s the Cat. I’m clean. I laugh every time I hit a place.”
David is hardly the only person with tattoos who believe that the tattoo imparts some “special status” or “magical power” to the owner. Recent whisper campaigns among the Goth-Vampire, Raver, and Alien Abductee movements have made startling claims that their tattoos are actually methods of communicating with other vampires, aliens, Satan, or are even living marks of the Beast. A Raver told this reporter that when taking ecstasy mixed with rat poison he could use his life sized body tattoo of Walt Disney to communicate with the mind of Dick Cheney and thereby run the country as surrogate President. “Yeah man,” said the young raver, who did not wish to be identified by any name other than Vermillion Sunshine, “I could have gotten us out of Iraq ten or twelve years ago dude but I keep making Dick tell George we’re not leaving yet. It’s a hoot man. I can also make MTV voters show up anywhere and anytime to elect Democrats but I just don’t do it man cause like I keep forgetting what year it is and everything. I could have gotten Al Gore elected too but he pissed me off when he married that ketchup sow. Walt Disney rocks man, I got his penis tattooed on my penis - WHOOOOOOO!!! Seriously dude…who are you again?”
(Disclaimer: The message in the above paragraph was endorsed by the Democratic National Party and is due to be used as part of their November MTV Rap and Rock the Vote campaign. It is expected to work.)
No doubt this is only the beginning of numerous generations to come who will all indulge heavily in the material advantages of modern culture; tattooing, body piercing and puncturing, rap music, Christina Aguilera, American Idol, Reality Television, the United Nations, Global Warming infomercials, and nano-sized atomic hand-grenades. The future, the real future, has yet to be written upon virgin flesh. But we’re getting there.
© JG 2006
This article to be continued in Part Two, Power Piercings.
Saturday, September 02, 2006
The Exchange - Wiki Versus Website
The Exchange - Wiki Versus Website
I have established or am in the process of establishing all of my blogs; personal, business, professional and artistic.
However every time I set out to redesign one of my websites I discover new information about superior ways of developing, designing, and producing a website. I plan to build three, or build two actually, and rebuild one.
Recently I have been doing a good deal of research on the WEB 2.0. I have learned some interesting things including the creation of Wiki Websites and their various advantages and disadvantages regarding more normal and standard websites.
So for those of you in the know I would like to solicit your opinions.
What do you consider the best approach and web format system generally, both in terms of traffic and in terms of presentation and information sharing, the typical and more standardized Website, or the Wiki system?
Which do you consider the future of information sharing and presentation on the web? Is the website becoming dated and ineffective and static as a format or is Wiki too insecure and as yet too primitive and undeveloped?
Also, in regards to some of the Web 2.0 research I've been doing I've run across some very interesting software programs and websites.
Here are a few I thought you might find interesting:
http://www.tucows.com/preview/427644
http://www.tucows.com/preview/503826
http://teacherlibrarianwiki.pbwiki.com/
I have also been updating my lists of Links to Other Blogs and Links to Interesting Websites. And I will continue to do so as warranted.
I will also be cross linking all Newsletters I produce with all of my Blogs and Websites as they become available.
Have a nice Labor Day.
Jack.
I have established or am in the process of establishing all of my blogs; personal, business, professional and artistic.
However every time I set out to redesign one of my websites I discover new information about superior ways of developing, designing, and producing a website. I plan to build three, or build two actually, and rebuild one.
Recently I have been doing a good deal of research on the WEB 2.0. I have learned some interesting things including the creation of Wiki Websites and their various advantages and disadvantages regarding more normal and standard websites.
So for those of you in the know I would like to solicit your opinions.
What do you consider the best approach and web format system generally, both in terms of traffic and in terms of presentation and information sharing, the typical and more standardized Website, or the Wiki system?
Which do you consider the future of information sharing and presentation on the web? Is the website becoming dated and ineffective and static as a format or is Wiki too insecure and as yet too primitive and undeveloped?
Also, in regards to some of the Web 2.0 research I've been doing I've run across some very interesting software programs and websites.
Here are a few I thought you might find interesting:
http://www.tucows.com/preview/427644
http://www.tucows.com/preview/503826
http://teacherlibrarianwiki.pbwiki.com/
I have also been updating my lists of Links to Other Blogs and Links to Interesting Websites. And I will continue to do so as warranted.
I will also be cross linking all Newsletters I produce with all of my Blogs and Websites as they become available.
Have a nice Labor Day.
Jack.
Friday, September 01, 2006
The Glair - The Party's Over
The Glair - The Party's Over
End of an Affair
It turns out that the person who exposed CIA agent Valerie Plame was not out to punish her husband.
Friday, September 1, 2006; A20
WE'RE RELUCTANT to return to the subject of former CIA employee Valerie Plame because of our oft-stated belief that far too much attention and debate in Washington has been devoted to her story and that of her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, over the past three years. But all those who have opined on this affair ought to take note of the not-so-surprising disclosure that the primary source of the newspaper column in which Ms. Plame's cover as an agent was purportedly blown in 2003 was former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage.
Mr. Armitage was one of the Bush administration officials who supported the invasion of Iraq only reluctantly. He was a political rival of the White House and Pentagon officials who championed the war and whom Mr. Wilson accused of twisting intelligence about Iraq and then plotting to destroy him. Unaware that Ms. Plame's identity was classified information, Mr. Armitage reportedly passed it along to columnist Robert D. Novak "in an offhand manner, virtually as gossip," according to a story this week by the Post's R. Jeffrey
Smith, who quoted a former colleague of Mr. Armitage.
It follows that one of the most sensational charges leveled against the Bush White House -- that it orchestrated the leak of Ms. Plame's identity to ruin her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson -- is untrue. The partisan clamor that followed the raising of that allegation by Mr. Wilson in the summer of 2003 led to the appointment of a special prosecutor, a costly and prolonged investigation, and the indictment of Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on charges of perjury. All of that might have been avoided had Mr. Armitage's identity been known three years ago.
That's not to say that Mr. Libby and other White House officials are blameless. As prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has reported, when Mr. Wilson charged that intelligence about Iraq had been twisted to make a case for war, Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney reacted by inquiring about Ms. Plame's role in recommending Mr. Wilson for a CIA-sponsored trip to Niger, where he investigated reports that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium. Mr. Libby then allegedly disclosed Ms. Plame's identity to journalists and lied to a grand jury when he said he had learned of her identity from one of those reporters. Mr. Libby and his boss, Mr. Cheney, were trying to discredit Mr. Wilson; if Mr. Fitzgerald's account is correct, they were careless about handling information that was classified.
Nevertheless, it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame's CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming -- falsely, as it turned out -- that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush's closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It's unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
End of an Affair
It turns out that the person who exposed CIA agent Valerie Plame was not out to punish her husband.
Friday, September 1, 2006; A20
WE'RE RELUCTANT to return to the subject of former CIA employee Valerie Plame because of our oft-stated belief that far too much attention and debate in Washington has been devoted to her story and that of her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, over the past three years. But all those who have opined on this affair ought to take note of the not-so-surprising disclosure that the primary source of the newspaper column in which Ms. Plame's cover as an agent was purportedly blown in 2003 was former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage.
Mr. Armitage was one of the Bush administration officials who supported the invasion of Iraq only reluctantly. He was a political rival of the White House and Pentagon officials who championed the war and whom Mr. Wilson accused of twisting intelligence about Iraq and then plotting to destroy him. Unaware that Ms. Plame's identity was classified information, Mr. Armitage reportedly passed it along to columnist Robert D. Novak "in an offhand manner, virtually as gossip," according to a story this week by the Post's R. Jeffrey
Smith, who quoted a former colleague of Mr. Armitage.
It follows that one of the most sensational charges leveled against the Bush White House -- that it orchestrated the leak of Ms. Plame's identity to ruin her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson -- is untrue. The partisan clamor that followed the raising of that allegation by Mr. Wilson in the summer of 2003 led to the appointment of a special prosecutor, a costly and prolonged investigation, and the indictment of Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on charges of perjury. All of that might have been avoided had Mr. Armitage's identity been known three years ago.
That's not to say that Mr. Libby and other White House officials are blameless. As prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has reported, when Mr. Wilson charged that intelligence about Iraq had been twisted to make a case for war, Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney reacted by inquiring about Ms. Plame's role in recommending Mr. Wilson for a CIA-sponsored trip to Niger, where he investigated reports that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium. Mr. Libby then allegedly disclosed Ms. Plame's identity to journalists and lied to a grand jury when he said he had learned of her identity from one of those reporters. Mr. Libby and his boss, Mr. Cheney, were trying to discredit Mr. Wilson; if Mr. Fitzgerald's account is correct, they were careless about handling information that was classified.
Nevertheless, it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame's CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming -- falsely, as it turned out -- that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush's closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It's unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Allele - Greatest Weaknesses of Modern Authors
Allele - Greatest Weaknesses of Modern Authors
I'm gonna list what I consider to be the Greatest Weaknesses of Modern Authors, their writings, worldviews, methods of working, work produced, etc.
Discuss if you like.
1. Little or No Real World Experience: Too many modern authors, writers, screenwriters (not to mention artists of all kinds) have little or no real world experience. They go to school to learn how to write, they spend their lives obsessing over writing, they spend most all of their free time writing or learning to write. Yet they never lived and have nothing to write about except what is spawned within their own imaginations. They spend all of their time creating fictional worlds because they have nothing to say about and have made no observations on the real world. How could they? They've never spent any time living in it. Writing about what they see in their own heads is the only accomplishment they've ever had or tried to have.
2. Overspecialization: They write only Fiction, or only Non-Fiction. They cannot and do not cross over convincingly, because they are either afraid to do so or let other people tell them they cannot.
3. Overgenrelization: They become a genre writer. Which means that for the most part they become a standardized and serialized hack writer or a closet book entertainer.
4. No Word Hoard: The modern writer has no word hoard. No vocabulary other than that of his genre. He has no poetry and no word-soul. He's like reading a White Paper on computer graphics. So he is not truly literate. Not that that ever bothers him. Lack of poetry is considered gritty, urban, hip, modern, sophisticated. He's as vital as a disco ball at a cotillion. And half as fancy.
5. All Idea, No Story: The modern writer is filled with the most incredibly clever ideas and schemes, about nothing of any importance at all.
6. Worldview: The modern author has a worldview derived entirely from his own very limited real world experience, or derived entirely from his own imagination. Which all too often is little more than an academically recycled imagination. Full of sound and fury, signifying bluffing.
7. Methodologies: The modern author believes the best way to write is to sit in a room all day and stare at a computer screen or at a mirror and navel gaze. It would never once occur to him to get out in the world and watch how it operates and how people actually live. He thinks his job is to sit in a little room and stink it up. And God knows that's also about the size and smell of what he produces.
8. Art is as Art Does: The modern author thinks of himself as a modern Artist. Why anyone would want to do this is beyond me but it tells a lot about why they write what they do. And what they write about. And why they write so badly.
9. Manhood is Dead: Being a writer used to mean you first were a man who had some experience with being a man and so you had something to say about being a man. You can pretty much forget about that now. It's gonna be awhile before manhood becomes a common attribute among writers again.
10. Ignorance is Bliss: Just ask most modern authors. Compare what little they know of the world to how much they're willing to write about how little they know. You'll get the idea pretty quick.
11. The Psychopop Imperative: If there's a deep pop psychology imperative then some modern writer is gonna find a way to carefully explore the idea. Of course if there were such a thing as a deep pop psychological imperative it might be worth the effort.
12. The Deconstructive Myth: With the right technique the modern author can explain everything. Even the unexplainable. Just ask him. He'll tell ya, and then he'll write 15 books in a series explaining how he figured it all out. "In his head." This is also called the "Fictional Conceit" or the "Theory as Fact" motif. A dedicated Fanbase will eat this one up. Just ask em sometime.
I'm gonna list what I consider to be the Greatest Weaknesses of Modern Authors, their writings, worldviews, methods of working, work produced, etc.
Discuss if you like.
1. Little or No Real World Experience: Too many modern authors, writers, screenwriters (not to mention artists of all kinds) have little or no real world experience. They go to school to learn how to write, they spend their lives obsessing over writing, they spend most all of their free time writing or learning to write. Yet they never lived and have nothing to write about except what is spawned within their own imaginations. They spend all of their time creating fictional worlds because they have nothing to say about and have made no observations on the real world. How could they? They've never spent any time living in it. Writing about what they see in their own heads is the only accomplishment they've ever had or tried to have.
2. Overspecialization: They write only Fiction, or only Non-Fiction. They cannot and do not cross over convincingly, because they are either afraid to do so or let other people tell them they cannot.
3. Overgenrelization: They become a genre writer. Which means that for the most part they become a standardized and serialized hack writer or a closet book entertainer.
4. No Word Hoard: The modern writer has no word hoard. No vocabulary other than that of his genre. He has no poetry and no word-soul. He's like reading a White Paper on computer graphics. So he is not truly literate. Not that that ever bothers him. Lack of poetry is considered gritty, urban, hip, modern, sophisticated. He's as vital as a disco ball at a cotillion. And half as fancy.
5. All Idea, No Story: The modern writer is filled with the most incredibly clever ideas and schemes, about nothing of any importance at all.
6. Worldview: The modern author has a worldview derived entirely from his own very limited real world experience, or derived entirely from his own imagination. Which all too often is little more than an academically recycled imagination. Full of sound and fury, signifying bluffing.
7. Methodologies: The modern author believes the best way to write is to sit in a room all day and stare at a computer screen or at a mirror and navel gaze. It would never once occur to him to get out in the world and watch how it operates and how people actually live. He thinks his job is to sit in a little room and stink it up. And God knows that's also about the size and smell of what he produces.
8. Art is as Art Does: The modern author thinks of himself as a modern Artist. Why anyone would want to do this is beyond me but it tells a lot about why they write what they do. And what they write about. And why they write so badly.
9. Manhood is Dead: Being a writer used to mean you first were a man who had some experience with being a man and so you had something to say about being a man. You can pretty much forget about that now. It's gonna be awhile before manhood becomes a common attribute among writers again.
10. Ignorance is Bliss: Just ask most modern authors. Compare what little they know of the world to how much they're willing to write about how little they know. You'll get the idea pretty quick.
11. The Psychopop Imperative: If there's a deep pop psychology imperative then some modern writer is gonna find a way to carefully explore the idea. Of course if there were such a thing as a deep pop psychological imperative it might be worth the effort.
12. The Deconstructive Myth: With the right technique the modern author can explain everything. Even the unexplainable. Just ask him. He'll tell ya, and then he'll write 15 books in a series explaining how he figured it all out. "In his head." This is also called the "Fictional Conceit" or the "Theory as Fact" motif. A dedicated Fanbase will eat this one up. Just ask em sometime.
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