NOING

NOING

Religiosity is not high up on my menu. I prefer to think of myself as indifferent about the weighty concept of the holy. And even “indifferent” doesn’t really describe it. It’s not like I haven’t thought about it. I’m driven by the same fears of mortality, the tinyness of me and the sense of my vulnerability. Call it, maybe, exasperation or weakness. I guess at the end of the day I’m just left with the idea that the existence, or rather the question of the existence of God, is something futile, that it’s way above my head to prove or worry about and that putting a label on one’s disbelief is just the flip side of hubris, the other sect, the truly faithful, of The Knowing.


When I hear someone describe themselves as an agnostic or atheist (and they may mean something completely different when they use that term) I think about reincarnation. And not really incarnation per se but a quote I read a long time ago. As support for the idea of reincarnation the writer said that it was just as amazing to be born the first time as it is to be born again. It was a tour de force statement for me, rational/faithful jujitsu. I appreciated the cleverness and the depth of what was seemingly such a terse statement. And I was even more profoundly influenced by it when I witnessed the birth of my first son and could appreciate its implications in full.


That statement and the way that it cut through my insistence on just facially denying the idea of a god has always stuck with me. Comfort in any certainty is delusional. It’s dishonest to continue to deny the existence of some other power and, yet, constantly confront the contradictions that are all around us. I may be “science” guy or “rational” guy, but I can’t get my head around the enormity of reality, the illusory concreteness of science and the spongyness of real things, like the paradox of the beginning of infinity or the physical frontier of the universe.


That’s when I come back to that statement about reincarnation and the core of it’s message, that the miraculous doesn’t lose it’s edge because it happens frequently or because you can explain it on some visceral level. Life is still wondrous. I might question the existence of some higher power, but I might be wrong. The Me didn’t get here in a vacuum. I’ve flirted with ideas holy and red. And, maybe, that’s what we’re all doing. We’re a giant organism still trying to get it together. So, I claw from the entrails of most teachings what are, at base, their proscriptions of conduct (sins), trying to emulate what I think they seek to address, the character flaws and the selfishness of an individual to act at the expense of others. Believer or not, I try to do right and that’s all any of us can strive to do. If there is a God, She will love me for it.

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This 99% stuff is pretty interesting, so I've been posting on Facebook what I think are the more interesting positions and arguments, witness this below:
IS THAT WHAT YOU REALLY WANT?
Do you really want the bar set this high? Do you really want to live in a society where just getting by requires a person to hold down two jobs and work 60 to 70 hours a week? Is that your idea of the American Dream?
Do you really want to spend the rest of your life working two jobs and 60 to 70 hours a week? Do you think you can? Because, let me tell you, kid, that’s not going to be as easy when you’re 50 as it was when you were 20.
(DAILY KOS)
But, because I felt guilty about posting more than my "fair share" of these items last night on FB, I've restarted my blog. This will mean some much-needed FB economy and less limitations on me about what I feel I can say.

Alexander M. Martin: Alexander M. Martin on Dominic Lieven’s ‘Russia Against Napoleon’ - Book Review - Truthdig

THE ROAD FROM MOSCOW
Western understandings of the Second World War validated the template inherited from accounts, such as Tolstoy's War and Peace of Napoleon’s downfall in Russia - both Napoleon and Hitler had the hubris to attempt to conquer all of Europe, but they were defeated by the freedom loving peoples of the West and the snowstorms in the East. Dominic Lieven’s Russia Against Napoleon makes the two central arguments that the real reason Napoleon lost was that the Bear's was better, this superiority related to retrograde features of Russian society and politics.
(TRUTHDIG)

How Sarah Palin Has Become a Singular National Industry -- New York Magazine

ALL THE WAY TO THE BANK
Sarah Palin is already president of right-wing America, a position that pays well.Over the past year, Palin has amassed a $12 million fortune. Her memoir has so far sold more than 2.2 million copies, and Palin is planning a second book with HarperCollins. This January, she signed a three-year contributor deal with Fox News worth $1 million a year. In March, Palin sold her cable show to TLC for a reported $1 million per episode, of which Palin is said to take in about $250,000 for each of the eight installments.
(NEW YORK MAGAZINE, suggested by MEDIA BISTRO)

Joe Cutbirth: Phelps' son says "God Hates Fags" church could turn violent

WHY DOES GOD HATE WEST VIRGINIA?
The hateful Westboro church cult spent this weekend in West Virginia taunting the families of the Upper Big Branch mine disaster. They complained they didn't get adequate police protection during a picket at the state Capitol, where they carried signs that read: "Thank God for Dead Miners," "God Hates Your Tears" and "God Hates West Virginia."
(HUFFINGTON POST, suggested by Joel Sogol)

Shades of blue and gray

SHADES OF BLUE AND GRAY
Years ago, as a founder and board member of WHIL, I made a tour of other public radio stations on behalf of the CPB. I spent a few days in Cambridge and was shocked at the blind arrogance directed towards me as a "Southerner". Now, mind you, my hair was kinkier and longer than Jimi Hendrix's, my attire and politics were vintage Fugs and Allen Ginsberg, my heritage Puerto Rican. Yet, here I was listening to the stupidest comments in the world from the supposedly smartest people on the planet, who apparently couldn't see me for who I was. So, while I don't necessarily (completely) agree with him, I love this very articulate writer's response to The Atlantic ARTICLE. I especially like his comments about "the instinctive, knee-jerk hatred of the white southerner that is exhibited by most of the lefty elite media. It's pathological really. It's a similar, but much more intense form of the loathing displayed towards the white working class, and for similar reasons. You guys are the ones that hear dog whistles, not us."

Clandestine - Documentary & Fiction from the Movie Blog

FILM PREMIERES HERE
Clandestine a short film by Gideon C. Kennedy and Marcus Rosentrater will be show today at 5 pm downtown at the Mobile Public Library's Bernheim Hall. Check out their site and you'll no doubt be intrigued. The film documents the history of the spies caught possessing these coded messages. Juxtaposed with the stories of their capture is the fictional tale of a man’s relationship with his father, a shortwave hobbyist, and his legacy of familial secrets.
(CLANDESTINE)

WHO'S THAT TAP TAP TAPPIN'?
They're called tap-taps, the wildly decorated buses of Port-au-Prince. Don't dismiss them as primitive folk art or an unimportant form of transportation, especially now in the midst of this horrible debacle.
(NEWSHOUR)

Dr. Joseph Mercola: MSG: Is This Silent Killer Lurking in Your Kitchen Cabinets?

READ THE LABEL BEFORE YOU BUY
In 1959, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration labeled MSG as "Generally Recognized as Safe" (GRAS). Yet, it was a telling sign when just 10 years later a condition known as "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome" entered the medical literature, describing the numerous side effects, from numbness to heart palpitations, that people experienced after eating MSG-laden food.
(HUFFINGTON POST, suggested by GARET COX)

- Salon.com

MOVING ON
As the health care reform bill waddles toward reconciliation, Republicans are complaining about having been excluded. But an examination of the health care reform bill shows that it includes 161 amendments authored by Republicans. Only 49 Republican amendments were rejected out of 210 considered. Yet the bill got zero Republican votes when it passed out of the committee.
(SALON)

SMITH Magazine: Creators of Six-Word Memoirs

WHAT'S SAID IN LESS IS MORE
Now four years old and going.
Minimalist six-word screeds they post.
Careful, though, this thing is addictive!

(SMITH)

Learning Medicine the Cuban Way | Feature | East Bay Express

WHERE IT HURTS
Cuba began educating American medical students after members of the Congressional Black Caucus met with Fidel Castro in 2000. Congressman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi told Castro about areas in his district that suffer from extreme doctor shortages. The Cuban president responded by promising scholarships for 500 Americans to attend medical school in Cuba, under the umbrella of the Latin America School of Medicine. To qualify, the students would have to show aptitude and a commitment to work in under-served communities in the United States. Since then, 34 have graduated, and more than 160 are currently enrolled.
(EAST BAY EXPRESS, suggested by ALTERNET)

The Jihadist Next Door. | SomalilandPress

THE KID NEXT DOOR
Despite the name he acquired from his father, Omar Hammami was every bit an Alabaman as his mother, a warm, plain-spoken woman who sprinkles her conversation with blandishments like “sugar” and “darlin’.” Brought up a Southern Baptist, Omar went to Bible camp as a boy and sang “Away in a Manger” on Christmas Eve. As a teenager, his passions veered between Shakespeare and Kurt Cobain, soccer and Nintendo. In the thick of his adolescence, he was fearless, raucously funny, rebellious, contrarian. “It felt cool just to be with him,” his best friend at the time, Trey Gunter, said recently. “You knew he was going to be a leader.” A decade later, Hammami has fulfilled that promise in the most unimaginable way.
(SOMALI LAND PRESS, suggested by IRVING SILVER)

POPEYE AND THE ANIME
My friend Patti Martin sent me this. I used to watch Popeye every day. So, as someone who has unsuccessfully tried to watch and enjoy anime but never "got it" nor understood my kids' fascination with the genre, this video struck a really responsive chord.

Obama, GOP Confront Political Differences in Rare Debate | PBS NewsHour | Jan. 29, 2010 | PBS

TALKING TO EACH OTHER
I don't know how the spin meisters on the cable networks will feature it, but last night's News Hour segment shows the true value of real journalism. They featured an in-depth (or, at any rate, in-depth for television) account of the meeting between Obama and the GOP. I'm not sure that they "went at it" but the really important thing was that each side was actually talking TO (not AT) each other. I thought both sides acted responsibly and were reasonably courteous while still expressing their viewpoints. Each came out a winner. Now, if we could only get that translated into "Realpolitik".