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American Airlines 1800-299-7264 Flight Pet Policy

An Open Letter to CEO Jeff Smisek On United Airlines’ Blasphemous Safety Video

…ual recompense. In the video message that was played before my last United Airlines flight, you expressed your desire to greet each and every passenger; you invited us to sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight. If I could greet you now, I would want to know: were you unaware of the monstrosity that was about to follow? There, rising above the hiss of the pressurized air, as the video monitors snapped to the image of an engorged sun bursting from be…

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Euthanasia Billboards, Post-Rapture Pet Care, Can You Tell a Burqa from a Hijab?

…at happens to Fido or Mr. Boots after you’re raptured? Eternal Earth-bound Pets, USA is a group of atheists willing to take care of your pet after you’ve been taken to glory. Tuesday marked the 41st anniversary of the moon landing. What did evangelicals think about it, at the time? NPR offers a view into religious life in China. So far, the series has profiled women imams, Protestants, and Catholics. Sufis from Pakistan brought ancient devotional…

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Why the Hell Does Hell Still Matter?

…. The common claim that hell has been on the outs in America since at least 1800 is simply untrue. If anything, 1800 represented a turning point in the other direction. The idea of universal salvation had appealed to both elites like Chauncy and common folk in the late-1700s. The promise that all humans would eventually be saved represented an extreme backlash against the dominant Calvinist notion that God chose only some for heaven. Universal sal…

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Mile-High Identity Politics: What We Can Learn From the Same-Sex Seating Controversy

…ssues in the broader culture and the long history of oppression of African Americans justified creating this protected space. There is a parallel to be made to the situation on the plane. Women have long been marginalized by men. A man asking a woman to move on a flight may reasonably be interpreted as another chapter in a seemingly never-ending story. I am sympathetic to such a view. But haven’t Orthodox Jews experienced a long history of oppress…

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Our Failure To Understand Ferguson: A Cognitive Explanation

…of individual decisions by white families to move away from their African American neighbors. For Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute, individual-oriented explanations like white flight are “too partial, and too conveniently excuse public policy from responsibility.” In a major report for the EPI, “The Making of Ferguson,” Rothstein documents how metropolitan segregation, and the differential distribution of resources between segre…

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Hajj Journal: The Journey Begins and Ends

…ly swarm to three million persons! But others travel to Jeddah too on this flight, including Muslims and non-Muslims. Jeddah is a port city; and as the major airport hub for Saudi Arabia, this flight has all types. Now, I’ve been on many planes, but this is the first time I’ve been on a plane where 50% of the seats are business- and first-class. Sorta gives you an idea who comes to the Kingdom, among Muslims and non-Muslims alike: big business. Ok…

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Scolding Those Who Choose Pets But No Children Pope Misses the Rainforest for the Trees

…o live with other species downplay their rights to live independent lives. Pets are not always treated well, with many left outside chained to stakes or physically abused. Hand-in-hand with the pet business comes forced breeding, puppy mills, and “exotic” wildlife trapping (which was the backdrop of Netflix’s popular Tiger King series). Finally, billions of animals will be factory farmed to become cat and dog food. We cannot deny the ecological pa…

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Denzel’s Profane Preaching: A Religious Movie for the Rest of Us

…d gathering—on his way to a lurching belly-flop in an adjoining field. But Flight, like most of the other religiously-themed scripts to which Washington agrees to lend his star power, is no Kirk Cameron morality play. As in The Book of Eli, in which Washington played a post-apocalyptic loner who creates a trail of gore during a violent spiritual pursuit of the lone remaining copy of the Bible, the celluloid preaching in Flight is rated R. In addit…

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Along Came a Spider: What the Pope Doesn’t See

…. Unfortunately, the road to success for a bishop seems to owe more to the Peter Principle (“rising in the hierarchy to the level of one’s incompetence”) than anything else. In the Catholic Church hierarchy, this means you can go pretty far. It is high time to stop the shuffling shell game, and for the church to admit the one thing it believes, theologically, that it cannot do: sin. Rather than piling on for political grandstanding by deciding who…

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What Does a Moral Economy Look Like for the 99 Percent?

…y left the airport and began marching a mile to the headquarters of Alaska Airlines. I think the photo does a great job of embodying the energy of the budding movement—clergy and workers from a diversity of backgrounds and faiths. To me, the picture reinforces a key argument of the book: this is a moral fight. For nine months leading up to the rally, organizers had been meeting people at the airport and in the community, coaxing them to take on an…

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