Eleven people were hanging on a rope under a helicopter, ten men and one woman. The rope was not strong enough to carry them all, so they decided that one had to leave, because otherwise they were all going to fall. They weren’t able to name that person, until the woman gave a very touching speech. She said that she would voluntarily let go of the rope, because, as a woman, she was used to giving up everything for her…
This is disgusting. 50,000 Years of Resilience May Not Save Tribe – Tanzania Safari Deal Lets Arab Royalty Use Lands (Washington Post, Stephanie McCrummen, Sunday, June 10, 2007; Page A01 One of the last remaining tribes of hunter-gatherers on the planet is on the verge of vanishing into the modern world. The transition has been long underway, but members of the dwindling Hadzabe tribe, who now number fewer than 1,500, say it is being unduly hastened by a United Arab…
Richard Rorty has died. Rorty had an uncanny ability to stare into the post-modern abyss, in which nothing is grounded in the divine or universal, and yet somehow, some way, find a kind of practical empathy that could serve as a beacon in the face of nihilism, authoritarianism and cruelty. Yes. Richard Rorty helped me to understand that an ethics based on universals might be neither kind nor accurate to human experience. He offered some possible alternative methods. I had…
I wrote my Ph.D. twice. I tried to write in academic language, but I never found my academic voice. Instead, I wrote in my own voice, and then translated it over. I tried to avoid becoming completely opaque, while maintaining the level of technically-precise terminology (or jargon) that seemed to be required. So I was delighted to see (thanks to Medusa at Professional Mirror Ph.D) that there is a random academic sentence generator from Pootwattle the Virtual Academic. Smedley the…
Thanks to my boss, who donated a used computer to me for my birthday, I now have a computer that can handle ITunes. Unfortunately, the CD drive on the computer reads but doesn’t write. I guess I could hook up my old computer, wipe most of the drive, and use it as music backup. Or even harness the CD drive to make a couple of music disks. I have an mpg player, but it plays cds. I’ve finally begun looking…
According to an article in the Cherry Hill N.J. Courier-Post, Jehovah’s Witnesses aim to “debunk myths” about their faith by adopting the topic “Follow the Christ!” at the District Conventions. The article mentions only the one convention being held in Reading, Pa., but of course the program is an identical thing everywhere, and it’s not as though it’s an actual “conference” type of convention at which one might expect discussions, debates, new scholarship, pastoral support, and the like. It’s reinforcement…