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We were talking about the cocksure Christopher Hitchens at lunch today and when I get back to my desk, a link to an interview with Hitchens appears in my newsreader.
Oh, and I do not “profess” to despise religious extremists. I really do despise them.
(via clusterflock)
Photos of a Masonic handbook from 1920 called King Solomon and His Followers — A Valuable Aid to the Memory. The text is written in shorthand. (via clusterflock)
You won’t need to do that. She will be alive by then.
That’s what the parents of a dead 11-year-old girl said when told the medical examiner was to do an autopsy on her. The girl died from untreated diabetes while her parents, convinced she was under “spiritual attack”, prayed for her instead of taking her to the doctor. They face up to 25 years in prison and probably zero guilt because it was all God’s plan.
A list of the Bible’s greatest massacres.
3. Elijah (and God) burned to death 102 religious leaders in a prayer contest. 2 Kings 1:10-12
(via cyn-c)
A profile of elaborate huckster Pat Robertson. Here’s the introduction to the article from the VQR blog:
Sizemore looks at Roberton’s weight-loss diet shakes, his Liberian diamond-mining operation, African gold-mining operation, his Cayman Island for-profit corporation, and his role in the US attorney appointments scandal. In short, Sizemore doesn’t find much to like about the man.
And here’s a fun little snippet about how they were planning for the broadcast of the second coming of Jesus:
We even discussed how Jesus’ radiance might be too bright for the cameras and how we would have to make adjustments for that problem. Can you imagine telling Jesus, ‘Hey, Lord, please tone down your luminosity; we’re having a problem with contrast. You’re causing the picture to flare.’
If only toning down the luminosity of Jesus were that simple.
A short list of What Every American Should Know About the Middle East.
Arabs are part of an ethnic group, not a religion. Arabs were around long before Islam, and there have been (and still are) Arab Christians and Arab Jews. In general, you’re an Arab if you 1) are of Arab descent (blood), or 2) speak the main Arab language (Arabic).
A companion list of what every resident of the Middle East should know about the US might also be helpful. (via chris glass)
In The Year of Living Biblically, AJ Jacobs followed all the rules in the Bible as literally as he could.
The book that came out of the year has several layers.
- An exploration of some of the Bible’s startlingly relevant rules. I tried not to covet, gossip, or lie for a year. I’m a journalist in New York. This was not easy.
- An investigation of the rules that baffle the 21st century brain. How to justify the laws about stoning homosexuals? Or smashing idols? Or sacrificing oxen? And how do you follow those in modern-day Manhattan?
Jacobs was recently interviewed by Jewish culture magazine Jewcy about the book and will be talking about his experience tomorrow at the 92nd St. Y.
Despite a common heritage, the social, economic, and political differences between the United States and Britain are, in some cases, great.
Like most west Europeans, Britons tend to have more left-wing views than Americans, but the first chart shows that this is often by a surprising margin. (“Left” and “right” are harder to locate than they were: here “left” implies a big-state, secular, socially liberal, internationalist and green outlook; right, the reverse.) The data are derived by subtracting left-wing answers from right-wing ones, for each country and for each main political grouping within each country. A net minus rating suggests predominantly left-wing views and a positive rating suggests a preponderance of right-wing views.
Compared to Britain, the US is a remarkably conservative nation. The companion chart is a good look at some of the data. (via gongblog)
Maybe this is surprising to you: when compared to Roman Catholicism, Islam is less conservative when it comes to sexual ethics.
Video of a debate between Christopher Hitchens and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on the topic of “Does God Exist?”
John Allen Paulos has 12 irreligious questions for the candidates. Among them:
Is it right to suggest, as many have, that atheists and agnostics are somehow less moral when the numbers on crime, divorce, alcoholism and other measures of social dysfunction show that non-believers in the United States are extremely under-represented in each category?
How would you suggest that we reason with someone who claims that his or her decisions are informed, shaped, even dictated by fundamental religious principles, which nevertheless can’t be probed or questioned by those who don’t share them?
(via 3qd)
Cynical-C shares some of the more interesting complaints received by the FCC about television programming. One viewer complains about The Family Guy:
The show has no redeeming/moral value what so ever. The show actually had the gall to show GOD in bed with a young woman ready to have sexual intercourse and the dialogue to go with that event, including the use of condoms. They also had Jesus and his earthly father Joseph having an argument. Along with portraying the total disrespect of family values Stewie hitting his mother, the father and son ganging up on the wife/mother, there was also a male sexual predator in this episode as well.; The whole show was quite revolting. It should be taken off the air.
God’s Eye View presents four important Biblical events as if captured by Google Earth, including The Crucifixion, Noah’s Ark, and Moses parting the Red Sea.
Duelity is a split-screen movie with one half of the screen showing the six-day creation of the earth & man in scientific terms and the other half showing the Big Bang/evolution origin of the universe as it might have been written in the Bible. (Click on “watch” then “duelity” to get the full effect.) Nice use of infographics and illustration. (thx, slava)
With the blessing of the main abbot, Shi Yong Xin, Guariglia has earned the full collaboration of the monks to create an astonishing, empathic record of the Shaolin art forms and the individuals who consider themselves the keepers of these traditions. It is the first time the monks have allowed such extensive documentation of these masters and their centuries-old art forms-from Buddhist mudras to classical kung fu-in their original setting, a 1,500-year-old Buddhist temple.
Photos and video here. Watching the videos, especially the one featuring Tong Jian Quan, I was reminded of hip hop dancing (Michael Jackson in particular) in a way that watching kung-fu and other martial arts in Hollywood movies does not.
Also, Shaolin monk Hai Deng was famous for performing a one-finger handstand. The video seems a little suspect but this performance brings the single finger handstand into the realm of possibility.
Sarah Hepola has a pair of interviews up on her site with two Mormon teens (first interview, second interview).
Joseph Smith was evil incarnate — a little insane, but more evil. Sort of like Charles Manson, only slightly better looking.
I hereby declare the interviewees the two most articulate teenagers on the internet. (via the morning news)
We’re running a bit behind in watching The War; we stopped the other night right before D-Day. The series is quite good so far, even with all its flaws. The last section we watched dealt with the Battle of Monte Cassino and the related Battle of Anzio in Italy. With the Germans holding the high ground, these battles were some of toughest of the war for the Allies. During one particularly difficult moment, an American soldier yelled out a prayer (I’m paraphrasing slightly): “Oh God, where are you? We really could use your help down here. And don’t send Jesus, come down here yourself. This ain’t no place for children.”
James Kugel is a former professor of Hebrew Studies at Harvard and an Orthodox Jew whose current book, How to Read the Bible, is getting really good reviews. From a NY Times piece on the book:
Most unsettling to religious Jews and Christians may be Kugel’s chapters about the origins of God and his chosen people. Kugel says that there is essentially no evidence — archaeological, historical, cultural — for the events in the Torah. No sign of an exodus from Egypt; no proof that Israelites ever invaded, much less conquered, Canaan; no indication that Jericho was ever sacked. In fact, quite the contrary: current evidence suggests that the Israelites were probably Canaanites themselves, semi-nomadic highlanders or fleeing city dwellers who gradually separated from their mother culture, established a distinct identity and invented a mythical past.
A first chapter of the book is also available:
In going through the Bible, however, this book will focus not only on what the text says but on the larger question of what a modern reader is to make of it, how it is to be read. This will mean examining two quite different ways of understanding the Bible, those of modern biblical scholars and of ancient interpreters.
(via mr, where the normally unreserved Tyler Cowen says of the book, “[it’s] so good I don’t know what to say about [it]”)
From an article about teen Christians campaigning against pop culture:
“At one point in Jared Hutchins’ young life, the Beatles were a big problem. ‘I had to stop listening to them for a while,’ said Hutchins, who lives in Cumming, Georgia, and plays the piano, guitar and harmonica. He said the group’s world view ‘had a negative effect on me,’ and made him irritable and angry.”
“‘We’re fighting for those who don’t know they have a voice, that are being manipulated by our pop culture indulging in things that, really, they’re not mature enough to be thinking about yet,’ Luce told CNN. ‘Kids are hurting,’ he said. And of those who he feels inflict these moral wounds, Luce said, ‘We call them terrorists, virtue terrorists, that are destroying our kids. They’re raping virgin teenage America on the sidewalk, and everybody’s walking by and acting like everything’s OK. And it’s just not OK.’”
“Virtue terrorists raping virgin teenage America” is quite the turn-of-phrase.
Biologists Helping Bookstores is a guerilla effort to reshelve pseudo-scientific books (books on intelligent design, for instance), taking them from the Science section and moving them to a more appropriate area of the store, like Philosophy, Religion, or Religious Fiction. (via mr)
Christopher Hitchens’ book about religion and atheism is a surprise hit.
The results from a recent Gallup poll show that more Americans accept creationism than do evolution. Among registered Republicans, almost 7 in 10 don’t believe in evolution. (via cynical-c)
David Plotz has finished his Blogging the Bible series at Slate…he wrote about each book of the Old Testament. “While I’ve been blogging the Bible, I have tried not to take myself too seriously and not to pretend more insight than I actually have. I just wanted to read the book and write about what it’s like to read it. No essays, no philosophy, no experts.”
Earlier this month during a debate between the Republican candidates for the US Presidency in 2008, three candidates raised their hands when asked if they didn’t believe in evolution. One of the three, Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, has an op-ed in the NY Times today that more fully expresses his view. “The scientific method, based on reason, seeks to discover truths about the nature of the created order and how it operates, whereas faith deals with spiritual truths. The truths of science and faith are complementary: they deal with very different questions, but they do not contradict each other because the spiritual order and the material order were created by the same God.”
Update: A related op-ed from The Onion: I Believe In Evolution, Except For The Whole Triassic Period. (thx, third)
Here are some updates on some of the topics, links, ideas, posts, people, etc. that have appeared on kottke.org recently (previous installment is here):
The Celluloid Skyline exhibition at Grand Central is well worth checking out…I was up there this past weekend. Pentagram collaborated with Saunders on the exhibit and wrote up a brief piece on how it came together.
My short post on Nina Planck’s reaction to the recent “death by veganism”, as she calls it, of a baby boy is a good reminder that I don’t always agree with the things I link to. My only criteria for posting a link is that it’s interesting, whether I think it’s right or wrong or am still trying to form an opinion about it. Anyway, I got lots of mail about this one, much of it that said that the parents’ veganism was beside the point — which the prosecutors and jury in the subsequent criminal case agreed with (thx, matt) — and that a headline like “Death By Stupidity” was probably more appropriate. After all, you don’t see “Death by Omnivorism” headlines every time a baby with a more traditional diet dies of starvation.
Debra from Culiblog pointed out that contrary to Planck’s assertion that “there are no vegan societies”, the Jainists practice vegetarianism and veganism. On the other side of the aisle, meat fan Michael Ruhlman chastised Planck for going too easy on vegans, saying that “Veganism is a colossal arrogance, a refusal to admit to our own nature, a denial of our humanity. Sometimes it kills people. And it’s not very much fun, besides.” You can imagine the discussion that generated…although it was nothing like the 300+ comment thread on MetaFilter.
My opinion of Cars improved with a second viewing.
Discover’s chat bot conversation reminded a reader of this old interview with the Ask Jeeves search engine (thx david). Back in 2002, I interviewed ELLEGirl magazine’s AIMbot:
jkottke: Do you do anything to celebrate or recognize the changing of seasons?
ELLEgirlBuddy: do you do anything to celebrate or recognize the changing of seasons? that’s a tough choice.
jkottke: yes, to celebrate or merely recognize. that is a toughie.
ELLEgirlBuddy: yes to celebrate or merely recognize that is a toughie? i dunno.
jkottke: you seem like an actual 13 year old girl.
ELLEgirlBuddy: i haven’t really made a decision ‘bout that.
jkottke: growing up is tough, isn’t it?
ELLEgirlBuddy: i dunno.
And whoever posted the chat bot story to Digg (5696 Diggs and counting!) used the exact wording from my original post. You’re welcome!
Prime, David Burke’s quarter-million-dollar Black Angus bull, has his own web site. (thx, brian)
Regarding Alex Reisner’s excellent baseball statistics web site and, in particular, the pennant race graphs, here’s another interesting visualization of the pennant races…you can see the teams race to the end of the year like horses. (thx, scott)
Re: my post on better living through self-deception, I’ve heard that pregnant women tend to forget the pain of childbirth, perhaps because “endorphins reduce the amount of information trauma victims can store”. Also related tangetially is this article on research into lying and laughing, which includes this simple test to see if you’re a good liar:
Are you a good liar? Most people think that they are, but in reality there are big differences in how well we can pull the wool over the eyes of others. There is a very simple test that can help determine your ability to lie. Using the first finger of your dominant hand, draw a capital letter Q on your forehead.
Some people draw the letter Q in such a way that they themselves can read it. That is, they place the tail of the Q on the right-hand side of their forehead. Other people draw the letter in a way that can be read by someone facing them, with the tail of the Q on the left side of their forehead. This quick test provides a rough measure of a concept known as “self-monitoring”. High self-monitors tend to draw the letter Q in a way in which it could be seen by someone facing them. Low self-monitors tend to draw the letter Q in a way in which it could be read by themselves.
High self-monitors tend to be concerned with how other people see them. They are happy being the centre of attention, can easily adapt their behaviour to suit the situation in which they find themselves, and are skilled at manipulating the way in which others see them. As a result, they tend to be good at lying. In contrast, low self-monitors come across as being the “same person” in different situations. Their behaviour is guided more by their inner feelings and values, and they are less aware of their impact on those around them. They also tend to lie less in life, and so not be so skilled at deceit.
The skyscraper with one floor isn’t exactly a new idea. Rem Koolhaas won a competition to build two libraries in France with one spiraling floor in 1992 (thx, mike). Of course, there’s the Guggenheim in NYC and many parking garages.
After posting a brief piece on Baltimore last week, I discovered that several of my readers are current or former residents of Charm City…or at least have an interest in it. Armin sent along the Renaming Baltimore project…possible names are Domino, Maryland and Lessismore. A Baltimore Sun article on the Baltimore Youth Lacrosse League published shortly after my post also referenced the idea of “Two Baltimores. Two cities in one.” The Wire’s many juxtapositions of the “old” and “new” Baltimore are evident to viewers of the series. Meanwhile, Mobtown Shank took a look at the crime statistics for Baltimore and noted that crime has actually decreased more than 40% from 1999 to 2005. (thx, fred)
Cognitive Daily took an informal poll and found that fewer than half the respondants worked a standard 8-5 Mon-Fri schedule. Maybe that’s why the streets and coffeeshops aren’t empty during the workday.
By now, you’ve probably heard of the Creation Museum that just opened in Kentucky with the idea that the Bible is “the history book of the universe”. Pharyngula has an extensive roundup of information and reaction to the museum, including this inside look at the place. “Journalists, you have a problem. Most of the articles written on this ‘museum’ bend over backwards to treat questions like ‘Did Man walk among Dinosaurs?’ as serious, requiring some kind of measured response from multiple points of view, and rarely even recognized the scientific position that the question should not only be answered with a strong negative, but that it is absurd.”
Religions ranked by number of adherents. 1. Christianity 2. Islam 3. Nonreligious.
Three of the candidates in the recent Republican presidential debate said they don’t believe in evolution: Colorado Representative Tom Tancredo, Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. Hard to believe that this is 2007 and not 1807. John McCain said he did believe in evolution but that “I also believe, when I hike the Grand Canyon and see it at sunset, that the hand of God is there also”.
Update: An earlier version of this post wrongly stated that Mitt Romney raised his hand when asked about disbelieving evolution…Tom Tancredo was the third person. (thx to several who wrote in about this)
Darren Aronofsky is working on a screenplay for a film about Noah. You know, the dude with the Ark. “Noah was the first person to plant vineyards and drink wine and get drunk. It’s there in the Bible — it was one of the first things he did when he reached land. There was some real survivor’s guilt going on there. He’s a dark, complicated character.”
Even though I wasn’t that familiar with the whole Jim Jones/Jonestown story, I felt like they rushed through the early parts of the story…might have worked better at 2 hours than at 90 minutes. The ending is great, a well-paced mix of personal narrative, photography, audio, and video from the last fateful day of over 900 people. After the movie ended, I was trying to imagine what would happen if Jonestown (or to a lesser extent, the Branch Davidian thing or Heaven’s Gate) occurred today. Religious cult leader brainwashes all these people and then kills 900 of them in the South American jungle, including a United States Congressman? CNN, et. al. would got nuts for a start…I don’t know if 72 pt. type on their homepage would be enough. The blogosphere would probably go supernova as well.
The American Experience site has more information about Jones and the film. Check your local listings as well…you might be able to catch the film on PBS sometime in the next week or so.
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