Search Results for:

VIPREG2024 1xbet promo code no deposit Western Sahara

McCain’s VP Courts Conservative Evangelicals

…New Republic‘s Plank blog imagined Palin’s religion a libertarian-infused Western evangelicalism: toting guns, having taken drugs once, naming two children after witches, vetoing a ban on domestic benefits to gay couples. These were things Wolfe imagined could complicate her reputation with more straight-laced Southern Baptists, although he seems to have misunderstood her refusal to sign HB 4001, the bill forbidding gay domestic benefits. Palin r…

Read More

Sit Down and Shut Up: Pulling Mindfulness Up By Its (Buddhist) Roots

…ntary, has pointed out crucial differences between traditional and modern (Western) mindfulness. “The Buddha himself defined sati as the ability to remember,” he writes, whereas contemporary teaching vivifies the breath as something continually discovered anew. The traditional focus on remembrance draws upon a practitioner’s experience in cultivating the technique. But for modern-day meditators, instructed in the benefit of practicing just five mi…

Read More
office planking

What the Critics of the Mindfulness Trend Don’t Get

…and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek has similarly criticized such practices. Western appropriations of non-western traditions that emphasize mindfulness, inner peace, disinterest, non-attachment, and so on function for Žižek as “the paradigmatic ideology of late capitalism.” That is, they “represent the most efficient way for us fully to participate in capitalist dynamics while retaining the appearance of mental sanity.” Mindfulness practices, in ot…

Read More

Mitt’s Jesus, Barack’s Jesus, and Why Christ’s Color Matters

…in American society that images of Christ are not the real issue, but just code for broader sets of values for particular groups? Paul Harvey: The fact that the white Jesus was in the stained glass window of 16th St. Baptist emerged from a long history in which the image of Jesus represented, in one sense, racial and class structures deeply embedded in American society. That’s why that image, and not some other, was there in the window in the firs…

Read More

Where Christianity and Islam Collide

…al rule of law than the government does. [They] lay out a social and moral code that governs human interaction, and supplies a context for suffering and poverty, constructing a group identity through which followers can hope to secure their worldly needs, and find some certainty about the hereafter.” It follows that in such places, religion may be the only guiding principle, the only social, moral, even legal code to abide by. Somalia, for example…

Read More

Creationism: Don’t Use the “C-Word”

…chool boards “to create and foster an environment” in public schools that “promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.” In addition to state-approved textbooks, teachers “may use supplemental textbooks and other instructional materials to help students understand, analyze,…

Read More

Capricology Week 5: Fathers, Funerals, and the Ethics of Gaming

…with free will (though this may still be an illusion of free will, as the code for the game is likely to be quite deterministic). Since she is the only one in the game that suffers pain but no death, it will be interesting to see the evolution of her ethical code within the virtual world. The transformation of Tamara from a helpless lost soul to a gun-toting avenger sets up the stage for her probable showdown with Zoe—a continuation of Adama-Gray…

Read More

Hipsters v. Hasidim Over Brooklyn Bike Lane

…orhood, one Hasidic man who wouldn’t give his name said that blaming dress code for the removal of the bikes lane “is just bullshit.” He is disappointed with how his people have been portrayed in news reports about this issue and insists that safety was a genuine concern. That’s what nearly everybody walking up and down Hasidic Bedford in daytime says as well. When asked directly about it, they concede that they believe many cyclists to be inappro…

Read More

Texas Board of Education Wants to Change History

…ling through the expert reports—separating the agenda-driven items and the code words from the sound pedagogical-based suggestions. The appointed reviewers will then write draft curricula based on the recommendations, and present them to the Board of Education. In August, the board members will begin the first round of hearings to review the proposed changes. “I don’t see at all that we will divide into factions,” said new board Chairwoman Gail Lo…

Read More

Women of Opus Dei Explain “True Feminism”

…shrouded in secrecy, came into the spotlight after Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code hit the New York Times bestseller list. The novel suggested that the women in Opus Dei are “forced to clean the men’s residence halls for no pay,” and remarked upon the broad subjugation of women in the order. And while the novel is fictional, the alleged “misconceptions” that arose in the fallout of the media attention surrounding The DaVinci Code provided much of the…

Read More