We should recognize agnosticism and atheism as religions. If not, they could be “established,” because nothing says they can’t. You think the public schools are bad now ( Read more... )

I'm not letting ADD completely get in the way of things around here. I'm trying to keep my hair on and vindicate my one overarching New Year's Resolution: Routine and Regularity Replace Risk ( Read more... )

sbroadway saw The Nativity Story the other day, and he posted his views, which are not only remarkably consistent to my own, but to the extent ours differ, I adopt some of his having now had the opportunity to consider them.

( Where we agreed )

I have been overjoyed at the response both to the prior post and to a few comments left on other journals -- but somewhat unfortunately, I have a massive class to get prepped for tomorrow, plus a 6:30 a.m. meeting (I am not being paid enough ( Read more... )

You are all used to me griping because of the non-productive conversations that go on concerning the "bigger" issues on europeanunion. In the past few days, I am pleased to report that a very productive conversation occurred -- numerous competiting views, ideas developed, members introduced to things they hadn't thought of, no one person dominating the ( Read more... )

I'm keeping a list of Muslim leaders -- religious and political -- who are condemning violence or otherwise urging restraint in average citizens' response to the cartoon incident. Let's not leap to conclusions that "moderate Islam" or "Muslim leaders" do not speak in favor of curbing violence.

This post will be continually edited.

King Abdullah ( Read more... )

So, my (actually mistakenly!) open post on human rights just got linked to two journals. That's OK, but it does come with a history and an "ending" that isn't in the post and probably should be provided for any readers who end up wandering around here confused because we seem to be lacking the posts about nice young pianists the userpage ( Read more... )

The thing about discussions about "human rights" (let us now bow down and worship at the altar!) is there actually is something called the law of human rights that has content. There are procedures for unpacking questions like "What is or should be recognized as a human right?" "Who has authority to enforce a human right and when?" "How do we know ( Read more... )

I'm here in NYC. Oh what an UNBELIEVEABLE, PLEASE GOD NEVER LET ME REPEAT THIS adventure it was today. At least it was a beautiful drive and I did make the plane by about ten minutes. It almost got into this weird camaraderie thing today, where so many people were having problems, and we were all just hanging together to get them all solved. ( Read more... )

Joyce is on board! She's actually talking about manipulating her flight schedule in Louisville to do the interview. Stick her on the list with Sa Chen and Roberto Plano who think this thing is cool ( Read more... )