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POPSGulf oil to drop dollar-denominated pricing Starting in 2018, the Gulf states will no longer sell their oil for dollars. They will instead use a "basket" structure which will include Chinese, Japanese, and European currencies, gold, and a yet-to-be-created common Gulf currency. This could, to put it mildly, have very far-reaching effects.
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POPSDurga Puja is coming up. Swami Sivananda says: do not sacrifice animals for Devi Commentary from Swami Sivananda, founder of the Divine Life society, on the observance of Durga Puja. Traditionally, animal sacrifice has often been a part of the ritual, but Sivananda declares this a violation of the principle of ahimsa, which is binding on all Hindus no matter what caste, jati, or situation they belong to. An interesting example of second-order discourse in contemporary non-Western religion.
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POPSRight, so tell me again how the "free market" is the best way to manage health-care delivery An editorial from 2007 shows how research into three promising anticancer drugs has been abandoned. The reason is that the compounds on which the drugs are based cannot be patented (melatonin, for example), which means that pharma companies are unlikely to turn a profit. Understandable, from the perspective of the pharma companies, but unconscionable, from the perspective of cancer patients.
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POPS"Why I threw the shoe," by Muntazer al-Zaidi From the piece: "When I threw the shoe in the face of the criminal, George Bush, I wanted to express my rejection of his lies, his occupation of my country, my rejection of his killing my people. My rejection of his plundering the wealth of my country, and destroying its infrastructure. And casting out its sons into a diaspora."
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POPSDavid Grann, "Trial by Fire: Did Texas Execute an Innocent Man?" (on Todd Willingham's execution, Feb. 2005), The New Yorker (Sept. 7, 2009) A damning piece by The New Yorker on the story of Todd Willingham. Willingham was executed in 2005 for triple homicide after being convicted of killing his three children by setting their room on fire. Texas officials ignored reports by fire scientists, whose investigations showed that there had been no solid evidence that the fire was arson. The arson investigators who testified in Willingham's case relied on traditional methods whose scientific validity had long ago been disproven, and the parole board apparently did not even bother to read the exonerating information provided to them by Willingham's lawyer.
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POPSThe latest on Rifqa Bary, from the Orlando Sentinel (Sept. 4, 2009) It appears that the legal issues surrounding Rifqa Bary's situation are getting more and more complicated. The judge has so far been dealing only with procedural questions. For the time being, most of the relevant documents are sealed, the attorneys are under a gag order, and the seventeen-year-old Bary, who is insisting on staying in Florida (her parents want her to return home to Ohio), remains in foster care under the guardianship of the state of Florida. In my opinion, the child's lawyers have been making some very unscrupulous and inflammatory public statements, such as the claim that the parents' Columbus mosque is a "haven for Islamic terrorists" (law enforcement officials say there is no evidence for this). From the perspective of the parents, this is a matter of family law; for their opponents, it's about Christianity versus Islam.
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POPSControversy at Calvin College over GLBT issues in the classroom It sounds to me like this is a classic case of a teaching faculty resenting the imposition, by a relatively distant and detached board of trustees, of a set of vague and ideological guidelines for classroom discussion. As a teacher myself, I find it incredibly insulting when someone who's never worked in a classroom setting presumes to tell me what constitutes an acceptable thing to say. Seen on christianitytoday's Delicious stream (delicious.com/christianitytoday).
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POPSMore NHS problems: are terminal patients being sedated to death? More ammunition for the anti-health care reform camp. A protocol known as the "Liverpool Care Pathway," which is meant to prevent over-treatment during a terminal patient's final hours and preserve his or her dignity, has come under fire for acting as a "self-fulfilling prophecy." Once a patient is thought to be near death and is "put on the pathway," they are heavily sedated and are unlikely to make any visible improvement. Very disturbing.
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POPSChris Hedges: "We owe Nader an apology" According to Chris Hedges, progressives were sold a bill of goods with the Obama campaign -- empty slogans and no real pressure for change. I don't entirely agree, but I'm getting there. Clipped mainly for this: " he question not how do we get good people to rule -- those attracted to power tend to be venal mediocrities -- but how do we limit the damage the powerful do to us." Archived at Iterasi: sqrl.it/?jre18.
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POPSOpponents of U.S. healthcare reform take on... the U.K.'s National Health Service This is a good example of what happens when a political culture develops in which true facts no longer matter. In order to discredit the current plans for health-care reform, opponents are trying to tar it with the National Health Service's failures. Only problem is, most of the failures they describe are made up. I kind of like the super-glue story, though. I mean, hell, I pay for a group dental plan through my job, and my wife needs an implant, and I'm seriously considering a second mortgage to pay for it. And I have insurance. Somehow, these supposed British horror stories haven't convinced yet me that our current system is so wonderful that we shouldn't change it. Remember: the U.K. has the 18th-ranked healthcare system in the world; the U.S. has the 37th; and we spend plenty more than they do.
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POPSWhy good teachers quit (hint: it's not just "burnout") This is a point I've made over and over again -- we live in a society that does not value education, period. We might pay lip service to the work teachers do, but at the same time, Americans tend to look down on teaching as a profession for "nice" people without a lot of ambition. They're not respected by students, by parents, by school administrators, or by the culture at large, and teachers are frequently used as convenient scapegoats for a whole range of societal failures. No wonder good people decide not to stay.
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POPSBarbara Ehrenreich on the criminalization of poverty There are a lot of Kafkaesque stories in this piece, like that of wheelchair-bound 62-year-old homeless veteran Al Szekely, who was imprisoned after a nighttime raid on a homeless shelter. His crime? He had an outstanding court summons for criminal trespassing -- he'd gotten a ticket for sleeping on a sidewalk. In other words, " hey arrested a homeless man in a shelter for being homeless." The truancy discussion strikes me as the most vicious part, though.
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POPSThomas the Transformer Engine The Ebay.co.sg auction (bit.ly/f9sZ2) for this item has expired, but it's still cool. Just in case anyone's wondering, that's not Thomas. The blue one is too long to be Thomas. I think it's probably Edward, but maybe Gordon. The red one is James and the green one has got to be Henry. I saw this because Airam F. (a.k.a. haraya) twittered about it (bit.ly/j7nEB).
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POPSNick Cave on Mark: Jesus' anger, loneliness, and desperation Nick Cave describes his fascination with and attraction to Mark in very sophisticated terms, identifying as key elements of Marcan theology a kind of pressured narrative urgency, a constant undercurrent of conflict, the isolation and anger that seem to characterize Jesus' own inner life, hopeless incomprehension on the part of his own family and followers, a looming, desperate awareness of the cross, and the restless activity of Jesus' "jewel-like imagination." Seen at Christopher Cocca's blog (bit.ly/11zhE6).
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POPSEthics, language and health-care reform: rationing and rights
GetReligion's MZ Hemingway on a recent NYT editorial in the Times by Peter Singer. In the op-ed, Singer discusses the idea of "rationing" health care, saying that it is basically inevitable, whether the rationing is done by the government or by insurance companies. Hemingway identifies this, somewhat bizarrely in my view, with a new vogue for "eugenics." I find the post (like all Hemingway's posts) to be little more than a conservative opinion piece, and I don't get how it jibes with GetReligion's mission. But it's worth thinking about. I think that what Hemingway (and many other critics of the current health-care reform discussions) finds objectionable is the idea that the rationing process will be made visible and intentional, instead of being left to impersonal (and basically invisible) market forces -- or, more to the point, instead of being left to the fictional "individual" who supposedly is now in charge of his or her own care....
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POPS"Islam is of the devil": a Gainsville, FL church attracts controversy The photo and the pastor's comments pretty much speak for themselves. I probably wouldn't have clipped this except for the final paragraph in the clip -- "we are definitely trying to open up dialogue." This baffles me. I wonder what they're actually trying to accomplish -- presumably the primary purpose of the sign is illocutionary in nature. To the pastor, I would point out that "All things are lawful for me, but not all things are beneficial" (1 Cor. 6.12). Is this beneficial?
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POPSChicago's "CeaseFire" program uses social interventions to lessen gun violence The program sends "reformed" shooters into the community to defuse violent situations and accustom potential shooters to other ways of resolving conflict, while simultaneously working with trusted, local opnion leaders (e.g., clergy) to spread the message that violent actions are unacceptable -- not just wrong, but also foolish ("uncool"). Described as employing an approach drawn from epidemiology, but I don't really see the connection.
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POPSThe "seven habits of highly effective teachers" I think this is actually a pretty good summary of some important traits for teachers to cultivate. It's based on observations of a small group of award-winning primary teachers, but it has broad applicability, I think. Sure, it's a little vague, and it's kind of predictable, but sometimes bullet-pointed lists can be handy things anyhow. The source has more quotations and more detail.
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POPS15% of teens expect to die before age 35, and these expectations correlate with high-risk behavior I suppose this isn't surprising, but it's the first real, large-scale empirical confirmation that pessimism in teenagers is connected with dangerous behaviors (on the one hand) and with disadvantaging circumstances such as poverty or single-parent family situations (on the other hand). In other words, kids in bad situations are more likely both to believe they will die young and to act in ways that make it more likely that they will.
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