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POPSAn Indian Hymn to Obama America needs more money. Much of the infrastructure is second rate or crumbling. The education system calls for renovation. Almost half the population has no health cover. A completely new social security system needs to be put together . The disparities have reached unacceptable level...The US economy, in other words, has hit a wall. A deadend has come. A complete change of course is necessary. The question is to provide the country a more sustainable future. Obama's challenge is on the one hand to shepherd his countrymen through the present downturn. At the same time, he needs to explain to them that physical resources are finite. He must underscore that America needs to get to save again both at the national and family level. He is striding a political minefield. He will have to sound convincing when he says he does not hold a magic wand to wave the situation away.
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POPSPillar of Unbelief - Marx Monism: the idea that everything is one and that common sense's distinction between matter and spirit is illusory. Pantheism: the notion that the distinction between Creator and creature, the distinctively Jewish idea, is false. For Hegel, the world is made into an aspect of God (Hegel was a pantheist); for Marx, God is reduced to the world (Marx was an atheist). Historicism: the idea that everything changes, even truth; that there is nothing above history to judge it; and that therefore what is true in one era becomes false in another, or vice versa. Dialectic: the idea that history moves only by conflicts between opposing forces, a "thesis" vs. an "antithesis" evolving a "higher synthesis." Necessitarianism, or fatalism: the idea that the dialectic and its outcome are inevitable and necessary, not free. Statism: the idea that since there is no eternal, trans-historical truth or law, the state is supreme and uncriticizable. Militarism: (read article)
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POPSNationalism vs. Patriotism In the light of what has been said we understand how utilitarianism, the doctrine which defines morality not in terms of what is good but of what is advantageous, threatens the freedom of individuals and nations and obstructs the building of a true culture of freedom. Utilitarianism often has devastating political consequences, because it inspires an aggressive nationalism on the basis of which the subjugation, for example, of a smaller or weaker nation is claimed to be a good thing solely because it corresponds to the national interest. No less grave are the results of economic utilitarianism, which drives more powerful countries to manipulate and exploit weaker ones.
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POPSTheistic Sanity It's not often that I agree with religious leaders but when I do it deserves to be pointed out. The point that Benedict makes of refuting the claim that evolution promotes atheism is of course correct. Although many, particularly in the States, believe otherwise. Unfortunately, the persons that fall into this category are also people that are the least informed on the subject.
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POPSYou Bet Your Tintype, Buckaroo Mr. Kendrick belongs to a growing group of commercial and art photographers who have retreated in recent years from the ease and exactitude of the digital age and taken up the difficult, ethereal techniques of early photography, including the ambrotype (in which a unique image is created on a glass plate), daguerreotype (on polished silver) and tintype (usually on tin-plated iron ). The pictures — made by exposing and developing the metal plates after they have been coated with a light-sensitive solution of silver nitrate — are a kind of ideal meeting of subject and style. Mr. Kendrick, like most cowboys, is much happier when doing things the hard way.“Making these kinds of pictures, you don’t need the mental skills that you have to have a Ph.D. for,” he said. “It’s more like learning to be a carpenter. It’s work and it’s satisfying. What you get is unique, not mass-produced. You can’t repeat the process. So it’s the antithesis of digital.”
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POPSHow al Qaeda Will Perish
Al-Sahab, media arm of al Qaeda urgent call for recruits. "We call on the fathers and mothers not to become a barrier between their children and paradise." No less significant is that the rejection of al Qaeda is not a liberal phenomenon, in the sense that it represents a more tolerant mindset or a better opinion of the U.S. On the contrary, this is a revolt of the elders, whether among the tribal chiefs of Anbar province or Islamist godfathers like Sayyed Imam. They have seen through (or punctured) the al Qaeda mythology of standing for an older, supposedly truer form of Islam. Rather, they have come to know al Qaeda as fundamentally a radical movement -- the antithesis of the traditional social order represented by the local sovereign, the religious establishment, the head of the clan and, not least, the father who expects to know the whereabouts of his children. It would be a delightful irony if militant Islam were ultimately undone by a conservative style reaction.
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POPSDefending Israel to the 'End Times' Rosenberg appears to believe that if a peace deal is concluded, it will not contradict Biblical prophesy: "While . . . Matthew 24 and Luke 21 indicate that there will be wars, rumors of wars and revolutions in the Middle East in the last days, Ezekiel 38 also indicates that for a season at least the Jews will be living 'securely' in the land prior to the apocalyptic War of Gog & Magog (the Russian-Iranian alliance to destroy Israel)." Netanyahu said that 'In a war of attrition the enemy strikes and you react, the enemy strikes harder and you retaliate harder. This gradual increase in violence is the antithesis of deterrence. . . . Deterrence always means using disproportionate force. We need to move from a concept of attrition to one of tough deterrence that will eventually lead to the removal of the Hamas regime, because as long as it exists it will continue arming itself and continue its attacks.'
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POPSLaw of Distraction And it is in the “but” where many of us, either in whole or in part, are interacting with a great and powerful law. From our perspective it is a default law, the antithesis of the mighty Law of Attraction. Well learned colleagues have even stated it as a corollary of the Law of Attraction.
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POPSFrom Gutter to Glamour BOB HERBERT "It took an extraordinary $10 million fund-raising effort by a retired advertising executive named Jack Connors, and an equally extraordinary construction effort by workerswho at times pitched tents and slept on the island to get the camp ready for the kids by the start of this summer."
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POPSSchool Moves to Block Bully Game by Rockstar (of GTA fame)
Ok, so I am usually all for the game makers and thier right to sell games. But in this case, I am on the fence, and even leaning towards supporting the schoolboard. This game is obviously targeted at teens. And the rating it will get will be M (for Mature, meaning you must be at least 17 to buy it). That being said, is Rockstar responsible if violence happens as a result of kids playing this game? Or are parents responsible here too? One can argue that GTA was always meant as an "Adult" game, that Rockstar never intended for it to fall into the hands of children. But this game, "Bully" takes place in a private school, and seems to be aimed at senior high school grade kids. (Most kids are about to enter university at 17, the legal age to buy an M rated game). Personally, I think this game is in just bad taste, and Rockstar is just asking for trouble. Why make this game? Again, I'm usually for the game industry and hate the idea of games being censored. Not here though
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