Something occurred to me today about the whole Santa Claus myth. Santa Claus is supposed to be this sort of cosmic Big Brother who knows what you've been doing and knows if you've been bad or good. He is supposed to reward good kids with gifts and punish bad kids with a lump of coal. So let's say, for the sake of example, that some six year old ( Read more... )

here is an article about the current state of research into decoding the historical Jesus out of canonical writings and other evidence. Despite being not at all invested in the Christian church spiritually, I am always fascinated by religious scholarship of this sort.

taken from innocent_man's journal. If anyone is interested in reading this and discussing it, I'd be happy to.

article

A MINNESOTA company has made $758,000 selling “His Essence”-a candle that smells the way the Bible says Jesus will upon his return (myrrh, aloe, and cassia).

from an article in Mother Jones.

Two more installments of Robin Law's "Page XX" column have been posted. I think they both bring up interesting points.

The first one is a discussion about social/persuade mechanics in RPGs and the tendency of players to regard loss of control over their characters as a fate worse than death.
( My thoughts on the article )

I've been doing a little stream of consciousness style wandering through friends of friends LJ's and been reminded that there are many ways to use LJ. I've posted mostly links to articles of political or scientific interest to me. I've seen journals where people post nothing but unending series of those Quizfarm things. One person comments ( Read more... )

An article from Wired.

I found out from Savage Love that Target is one of those reprehensible organizations that allow their pharamacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control or emergency contraception. They also insist that their employees may discriminate against customers based on the employee's religious beliefs. What utter bullshit. I sent them a ( Read more... )

I've pasted the article behind the cut. Most jarring and to the point is the last line of the article, "We deserve to lose. We are clutching our past with these tremulous hands, and everyone else is vigorously grasping the future."

( Read more... )

This article likens the many splintered nature of modern Islam to Protestantism. He also makes some interesting observations about what the author terms as the major misconception, based on the Galileo episode, that the Catholic church was anti-science during the the Renaissance and Enlightment periods. I'll stop summarizing and let you read for ( Read more... )