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dungeonsanddragons

My Childhood Hobby Was Satanic, Or So They Told Me

…on that allows us to think about both role-playing games and religion in a new light. Of course D&D isn’t a “religion” in the way that moral entrepreneurs claimed: players are not actually worshipping deities, casting spells, etc. But something about the game made them think of religion and I think it’s worth asking what that was. I also think these games can be a lot more than just “escapism.” I found a lot of cases of gamers who found these game…

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Israel Under Bush: The Islamophobia Years

…inker, but also holds the respect of fairly conservative Zionists like The New Republic’s Martin Peretz. So what was this about? As Colin Powell put it when he declared his support for Obama, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being an American Muslim—but to suggest as much is. To go one step further and target a secular, educated Arab American as though he embodied of every possible concern ‘average Americans’and Jews supposedly have about Mu…

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RDBook: A City Too Busy To Hate

…hy and geospatial information systems for the Department of Environmental Studies. Photo: Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia by flickr user jasonrowland. Used under a Creative Commons license….

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Gen X, Gadgets, and God

…would provide “Biblical guidance to your everyday ups and downs.” With it, users select from a scrolling list of “blessings” (friendship, new home) or “burdens” (anger, money), shake the phone, and get a Bible verse to guide reflection in the course of daily life. What is cool about apps like the Holy Roller is not, however, just what they contain and how that has been selected, but where they go and what comes back. That is, a user of the Holy Ro…

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Waterboarding in the Living Room

…sed, then, that in comments responding to the The Smoking Gun article, one user called “rahimali” wrote, “I’m ok with a little waterboarding now and again if it shuts the wife’s cakehole. Maybe waterboarding would cure PMS?”  Although the torture captured on film at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was presented as aberrant (the behavior of “a few bad apples”), released memos have shown again and again that torture and so-called enhanced interrogatio…

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Hajj Journal: Using the Toilet at the Grand Mosque

…alright, but like the toilet, I don’t know what made it impossible for the user to at least keep the seat dry!? Maybe this was the result of the overall cleaning method, because it was also clear that the rooms were serviced, and I even saw one of the cleaning ladies. Anyway, I chose the one with the least amount of water on the seat and counted on the heat to dry the rest, as it did in no time at all. Still, it was pretty minimal damage and if no…

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Crowdsourced Catholicism: New iPhone App Lets Users Forgive Sins

…ged like a pinball machine’s top-ten list. The service requires that every user play both Sinner and Saint, and a novice is granted five bits of each one’s currency: Five Horns for confessing, and five Halos for granting penances. One of each is “gifted… every Sabbath day” but for zealots and louts more credits can be purchased for 17¢ apiece. As with fancy chemical aids for our Facebook farms, this money goes straight to the developers. The users…

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Religious Conspiracy Theories About Giffords Shooting Emerge

…l prophecy. Gallups’ videos appear on the channel of the anonymous YouTube user ppsimmons, and his theories are being promoted by Special Guests, a service that books conservative guests on talk radio, which is also plugging Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, in connection with Gallups’ videos. As I wrote yesterday, Pratt told me last summer he is a “Biblical Christian” and insists that state militias need to be “given new l…

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The Google Question of Evil

…But, with all due respect to Ecclesiastes, digital technology is something new under the sun. Laws about stealing, and lying, and loving one’s neighbor aren’t so easy to apply to issues of global connectedness and digital privacy. Back in June, writing about the NSA surveillance scandal, Daniel Schultz pointed out in Christian Century that: there has been minimal reaction by religious groups. A quick survey of eight denominations found that only o…

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Why I Wrote the Freedom Seder And Why It’s Still Necessary 50 Years After Dr. King’s Assassination

…ash itself as a spiral, in which we go back again and again in order to go forward. We draw on ancient wisdom to create new wisdom. What went before, we turn and turn like a kaleidoscope. With every turn, new beauty, new patterns, new complexity. Facing new versions of the world. Birthing new versions of ourselves. *** Download the “MLK + 50 Freedom Seder” from the Shalom Center, here….

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