Search for "can you buy cheap airline tickets on thursday phone number 1-800-299-7264"

The Pope in My Pocket; We Are All Dilettantes Now

By Michael A. Elliott

…or sell for under two dollars). And unlike the internet, the space of the iPhone feels not just private, but personal. Yes, the iPhone might be my means of connection with the world—it is, after all, a phone—but it is also my own little password-locked garden that I carry with me wherever I go. Moreover, I can remake the landscape with a few flicks of my fingers whenever I choose. As a result, the territory necessarily mixes the sacred and the pro…

But ‘Natural’ is Better, No? ‘How Faith in Nature’s Goodness Leads to Harmful Fads, Unjust Laws, and Flawed Science’

By Andrew Aghapour

…cause it’s more potent.) And yet, when faced with the choice, I most often buy what’s natural. The expensive stuff comes from a plant. It’s real. “It’s probably better for me and for the world,” I think, without a modicum of supporting evidence. “There’s a picture of a flower right there on the package.” The allure of naturalness isn’t limited to the grocery store. From diet and medicine to childbirth and economics, we assume that natural is good…

LGBT Editor In Bangladesh Murdered by Islamists—and More, In this Week’s Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ures against online harassment The European Parliament adopted a report on Thursday that calls for measures to counter homophobic and transphobic hate speech online. Malin Björk MEP, Vice-President of the LGBTI Intergroup, who was involved in the writing of the report, continued: “Many women and LGBTI people face online harassment, hate speech or blackmail. However, it is often unclear how to report the offence and where to seek help.” “This repor…

Virgins and Vampire Worship: The Religion of Twilight

By Linda Kay Klein

…an fiction (the most famous of which became Fifty Shades of Grey), and buy buy buy branded Twilight merchandise between the release of the books and movies to keep the magic of the series alive. They “Twi-bond,” supporting one another in times of need (TwilightMoms, an online group of moms who read Twilight, ritually send one another cards and gifts when others in their lives forget to), and they study “Cullenism,” the value system of the Cullens,…

Advice from a Disaster Pastor: Open Your Wallet, Not Your Closet

By Carlos Wilton

…e of worship or relief agency than there is in using the same greenback to buy dog food or diapers. The cost of transportation must always be factored in. Besides that, empowering local non-profits to do the shopping close to the distribution-point helps jump-start the storm-ravaged local economy. But there’s another, more ominous reason why, for so many donors, gifts of stuff trump gifts of money. Money’s not only abstract; it’s also dangerous. M…

On Pi Day, Puzzling Over the Most Famous Transcendental Number

By Ilana E. Strauss

…Physicsworld.com user asks, “What could be more mystical than an imaginary number interacting with real numbers to produce nothing?” Where infinity merges with the earth When you dig into pi, you encounter questions that are as much theological as mathematical: is there a pattern to the universe? Or is it fundamentally random? And how do we reckon with the infinite? Some people have always insisted that there must be a pattern behind pi. If only h…

Contraception Isn’t Meat

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…d have to say this: Imagine you live in a country where the default way to buy food is buying it from your employer. You get a job, and your employer negotiates with companies who in turn have agreements with grocery stores and growers, shipping companies and meat processing plants, and so on. The end result of all this is that you get a card, which you present when you buy groceries at one of the stores where an agreement has been negotiated on b…

Conservative Bishops Unhappy At Synod, But Ignore Walkout Call; Australian Religious Leaders Step Up Marriage Equality Opposition; Italy Debates Civil Unions; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ong after, the former acquaintance called to threaten Subhi from a Turkish phone number. Power noted that Subhi spoke at a recent UN Security Council Session, the first-ever dedicated to LGBT rights, which she said was an important precedent to set: But also, it allowed us to convey, in a single voice, and with the authority of the Security Council – which is the premiere global enforcement body for peace and security – it allowed us to convey tha…

The March for Life: Grassroots Movement or Agitprop?

By Patricia Miller

…for Life President Jeanne Mancini told the Times: I don’t think that these numbers are the most important. The number most important for us is 58 million, which is the number of Americans that have been lost to abortion. But either they have the numbers or they don’t. And if they don’t, maybe the media should take a hard look at how it covers a predictable, lightly attended act of agitprop which claims to represent hundreds of thousands of people…

From Shofars to Hammers: The Spiritual Warriors of MAGA are ‘ReAwakening’ to Political Violence

By Mark Clatterbuck

…the dominant brand of today’s Republican Party. For good reason, a growing number of expert observers have begun sounding the alarm. I suggest it’s time we hit the panic button. The rally featured plenty of repugnant elements—from the relentless attacks on transgender youth consistent with fascist scapegoating, to the steady drumbeat of election fraud claims, to accusations that Dr. Fauci engineered Covid-19 in a Chinese lab to help a demonic caba…