Rich and Strange Aeons

Speaking of old appliances: while my gas stove has sensible electric ignition, the gas oven apparently has to be lit with a lighter. Not even conveniently, you have to lift a metal bottom to get at the gas. Unclear if the ignition broke beyond repair or if this is by design. I am way less enthused about trying to use it now. (No baked potatoes?) Also, the dial for the oven gas was broken, though will be replaced... I'm just glad it got stripped in a gas-off position.

In addition to the Odyssey, I finished reading Voyage of the Dawn Treader. It's still fun, apart from the Christ Sledgehammer at the end. I noticed that Lewis gives Eustace something he's good at, botany -- though I don't think that ever contributed to the plot or solving a problem.

I remember as a kid reading about prisoners being fed bread and water, the ultimate in minimalist diet. Bread for food, water for drink, eh? It occurs to me that there's a good chance they also needed the water to make the bread edible: traditional bread goes stale quickly and I doubt prisoners were getting the fresh stuff... hell, you'd be happy if it were just stale and not moldy or wormy. This thought brought to you by my soaking a solid baguette to make it edible again.

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I also finally finished reading Unearthly Powers, by Alan Strathern, a book my friend Amy had turned me onto. I was really slow, she not only finished before me but could have finished re-reading it before I did. To be short, it's about the differences between transcendent (otherworldly) and immanent (this-worldly) religions, and how a given faith may shift between those over time.

Immanentism – a form of religiosity oriented towards the presence of
supernatural forces and agents in the world around us, which are
attributed with the power to help or thwart human aspirations.

Transcendentalism
– a form of religiosity oriented towards the transcendence of mundane
existence and the imperative of salvation or liberation from the human
condition.

All religions have immanentism; some newer ones have transcendentalism as well.

As Amy put it, the book is also trying to explain why "world religions" went through "folk religions" like a hot knife through butter. I don't feel like trying to give a fair summary, but in addition to my old idea that just being a missionary religion gives you an advantage -- you keep trying, they don't, eventually you succeed -- Strathern talks about other differences: immanentist religions tend to be open and empirical in a sense, they're not trying to resist missionary activity, in fact priests and sacred kings may adopt or co-opt the new religion for various religions; OTOH once emplaced, transcendentalist philosophy tends to close the door behind it -- now drought or famine or failure in war aren't a sign of weak gods but a punishment or a test or a reminder to focus on salvation.

why planes need bathroom ashtrays. if someone lights up anyway, they still need to stub it out.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travel-truths/why-do-planes-still-have-ashtrays-/

Hadith revision https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/06/islam-manuscript-discovery-istanbul/531699/

military equipment makes cops more violent https://boingboing.net/2017/07/01/cops-are-civilians.html

Captain Kirk avoiding fights https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?806084-Star-Trek-What-do-Command-officers-actually-do&p=21209328#post21209328

Japan's housing creativity. Houses depreciate rapidly even though they're better made than before, and have little resale value; the flip side is freedom to build your house as you please, without worrying about property values. http://www.archdaily.com/450212/why-japan-is-crazy-about-housing

A full employment plan: http://democracyjournal.org/magazine/44/youre-hired/

Oslo working on banning cars in the center: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/06/this-city-found-a-clever-way-to-get-rid-of-cars-and-it-isn-t-a-ban-09e6e018-84d0-4814-9f0e-37085eaa9218/

Andrew Jackson, Trump, and the Borderers. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/04/trump-and-the-borderers/477084/

If the media covered alcohol like other drugs: https://www.vox.com/2015/6/15/8774233/alcohol-dangerous

I ran across two "bad Catholics" links today. One on an alleged gay network within the Vatican (paging Dan Brown), the other on the founder of the ultra-conservative Legion of Christ, a priest who sexually abused his own children... children which he shouldn't have on account of being a priest. (By a mistress, not by a dead pre-priesthood wife.)

In unrelated, horror, a friend linked to this case of twisted suburbia, where two homes with back-to-back yards can reach each other via seven miles of roads. Comments note that such cul-de-sac design seems bad for evacuation or fire access: block one road and no one can get out.

Jumping yet again, we get carnivory in cows and deer and elephants and other supposedly dedicated herbivores (unlike the KFC-eating chickens I mentioned last year; chickens do eat insects after all.)

I am not a vegetarian. I'd like my meat to come from humanely treated animals but I'm not superdiligent about even that. I'm not unconflicted, I just kind of write it off with "meh, other issues, the natural world is arguably worse" and stuff like that. Nonetheless, when I see a post and comments totally mocking Pearce's Abolitionist Project, I get filled with rage.[1]

A study claims the evidence of sugar causing diabetes is pretty strong. There are truffles on my shelf I haven't eaten yet. I am conflicted.

Happy news! Former US prosecutors and DEA agents defending Colombian drug traffickers. At least it sounds happy, like "we had an attack of conscience", not "oooh, what big wallets you narcolords have".

Pretty funny though not reliable guide to the papal candidates.

Putting babies out to sleep in the freezing cold: child abuse or Nordic custom?

[1] Doubt it's possible is fine. Doubt that even if we thought we could, we'd be wise enough to do so well, is fine. A general suspicious of crazy-sounding extreme ideas is more than fine. "Ha ha he wants to abolish holocaust-loads of pain and suffering, what a doodyhead" or "But all the suffering makes things of beauty" are just terrible, IMO. Yeah, I know I risk hypocrisy here ("meat is tasty"). I'm fine with that for now, and while I poke at them I don't *laugh* mockingly at vegetarians.

I invite you to guess or recall the answers, without looking them up, and post in comments.

( Answers )

Bombay House has $5.99 lunch buffet now, a big drop from the $11 during the school year. Despite the tandoori chicken last time having no actual tandoori flavor, I went back. My first impression was that the chicken was still pretty bland. This impression is pretty vague, because it was quickly swamped by the smell of chicken I would throw away rather than cooking. Mild, but present. I told the waiter, he said the chef said it was fine, I was offered another piece, which still smelled bad. I pigged out on vegetarian dishes and left. I swallowed a piece before the taste and smell really hit me; if I get sick in the next couple of days, I know where I'm placing the blame.

Bloomington Transit (the buses) had resisted taking an atheist ad, but has capitulated before a court case.
http://inatheistbus.org/2009/07/27/campaign-prevails-against-bt-in-free-speech-lawsuit/

* "Jesus killed Mohammed" More on evangelicals in the military. Evangelical crusaders, in this case, waging a Christian jihad. And trying to turn the Air Force Academy into a madrasa.

* A Christian, he explained in full earnestness, “is someone who chooses to be a slave, essentially.”
Gee, sounds like... submission. Islam.

( Read more... )

* Mikey's Military Religious Freedom Foundation

* That commie rag The Economist calls for higher taxes on the rich, suggests a financial-transactions tax, and various pragmatic and moral justifications. Actually it's a hosted debate, I'm not sure if the Economist is taking a stand, though "this house..." suggests that. Proposer is from CPER, a rare progressive think-tank; defender is a professor at the Paris School of Economics, the attacker is from Cato, one of the right-wing's hydra of think-tanks.
* The trials of having only $250,000 a year (probably an ephemeral link)

* Torture memo fun: NYTimes, and long term effects.
* The pirate economy: Why the US Navy can't win
* 10 year anniversay: the myths of Columbine

* Christianity Today article defending belief in God; I link to page 2 for the lols. The article starts by claiming a renaissance of Christian philosophy... and starts with a poor form of the cosmological argument. Page 3 invokes Roger Penrose as supposedly launching "powerful arguments against any appeal to a multiverse as a way of explaining away fine-tuning." but does not even hint as to the arguments. Then the moral argument, and the ontological argument. "Most philosophers would agree that if God's existence is even possible, then he must exist."

* 1960s D&D. Pretty awesome.
* Roman socks with sandals. The article makes fun of them, rather than wondering if sartorial fashion maybe isn't a universal absolute.

* Cheap solar methane?

Matthew 27:
50 Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.
51 And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the
bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent;
52 And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept
arose,
53 And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy
city, and appeared unto many.

Hmm, when I follow actual news sites, rather than picking up random links, I get a lot more things I want to share. Funny, that.

* Leaked Red Cross report alleges torture in CIA camps.
* GOP chairman Rush Limbaugh Michael Steele hosts Bennett's radio show, comparing Obama to Nixo and denying global warming. A critique.

* Europe's crackdown on prostitution, vs. New Zealand's legalization. Despite claims, the number of women working under force doesn't seem much different. 80% of workers may be foreign but only 4% seem forcibly trafficked. High, but not the epidemic perceived.
* Self-immolation by Afghan women

* Israel's post-Gaza isolation, and Jewish anti-Zionism.

* Bill Richardson abolishes the death penalty in New Mexico but only for newly convicted criminals. So, no new additions to Death Row, but if you're already on it they'll take their chances on killing you anyway? What?
* Waterless urinals

* The most religious -- those who most believe in Heaven? -- fight hardest to stay alive, dying in more pain and further from their homes. My atheist parents died at home, in hospice. Something's wrong with this picture.
* El Salvador's evangelicals shift left. The FMLN did win, leftist president now. Time will tell if he's more like Chavez or Lula.
* US evangelicals allegedly collapsing. Christine Wicker tracks them.

New survey on attitudes toward religious groups, terror, and prayer.

It's titled "Unfavorable Views of Jews and Muslims on the Increase in Europe" but this is a rather selective titling. The most dramatically hostile country seems to be Spain, but that hostility encompasses Christians as well:

Negative attitudes toward Christians in Europe are less common than negative ratings of Muslims or Jews. And views about Christians have remained largely stable in recent years, although anti-Christian sentiments have been on the rise in Spain - about one-in-four Spanish (24%) now rate Christians negatively, up from 10% in 2005. Similarly, in France 17% now hold an unfavorable view of Christians, compared with 9% in 2004.

In general, negative attitudes toward Jews and Muslims correlate more strongly with the right than the left, which would be a surprise only to those who like to make a big deal out of "Leftist anti-Semitism".

Also of interest are general decreases, sometimes quite dramatic, in support in Muslim countries for terrorism and suicide bombing, and Muslim worries about Muslim extremism. At the same time, support for fundamentalists has increased at the expense of modernizers (Q55c, pg 65 of pdf) -- though in most surveyed Muslim countries, people aren't actually praying more, and support for restrictions on employment of men and women in the same workplace has decreased (pg 64) and there's generally support for women's right to decide to wear a veil (pg 63)