Religion Dispatches
…visa or go to Berlin. They said then, the embassy says it will take 10-12 business days. I figured: if they got my visa into the embassy on the same day it arrived, at least ten days were up. Anyway I was too nervous NOT to make contact before the weekend, because, well, I was just nervous, okay? So when I finally got up the nerve to call the tour agency about my visa process, the woman said, “you got the visa, but since your passport was submitt…
Read More
…very difficult to extract should the politicians ever want to. Already outnumbering the regular soldiers deployed in Iraq, this highly adaptable force blurs the lines between business and warfare, military and civilian. Contractors have taken part in human trafficking, accounting fraud, and murderous outbursts that usually escape prosecution. In place of religious fundamentalism, their way of warfare follows another kind of science: that of Ameri…
Read More
…ans would be attracted to, appreciate and consider careers in science (the number is decreasing annually). I bet we’d have more productive conversation among students and leaders of science and religion around the many profound issues in our nation that engage both: abortion, medical care, stem cells, homosexuality, and genomic research. The battle rhetoric would fade and, more than likely, movies like Expelled wouldn’t be made in the first place….
Read More…es ECI’s leadership – knows this to be the case. Which makes ECI’s video a cheap lie — yet another in a long litany of desperate efforts by the far right to convert the largely liberal American Jewish community to neo-conservatism, hawkish policies on Israel, and the belief that “Barack Hussein Obama” is a Muslim. That said, there actually are two interesting forms of antisemitism going on here. First is the antisemitism of ECI itself. To tug at…
Read More
…umber of marriages within the church has declined by nearly half. Only the number of Catholic funerals has held steady. And while the number of Catholics overall has remained level, that’s largely due to Hispanic migration to the US; some 40 percent of those born Catholic have left the church. But numbers don’t tell the whole story. The church Francis will encounter is fundamentally different in character from the church of John Paul in two import…
Read More
…capitalism. There’s no question that Christian ideas have shaped American business practices, just as American business practices have influenced churches. Lumping the annual revenues of Walmart in with synagogue dues, donations to the Salvation Army, and Catholic hospitals seems like a stretch. And if you look at other corporations, and the criteria used to include them, the territory becomes even murkier. Take Trijicon, for example, chosen from…
Read More
…kepocalypse”: for the first time ever, the event sold out. Scalpers hawked tickets for hundreds of dollars over their purchase price and artists who had been working feverishly to finish their projects but had put off purchasing tickets were left out in the cold. It was a different scene in 1997 when I first came to Burning Man and only waited briefly at the entrance as a “Greeter” cast a cursory glance at my car. But the Greeters’ enthusiastic re…
Read More
…items within their borders (as is already the case federally with lottery tickets). A Republican-controlled Congress could then impose a nationwide ban on the mailing of abortion pills or certain contraceptives. (Republican-controlled state legislatures have already demonstrated a willingness to enact questionable legislation for nothing more than its intimidation factor.) Which brings us back to Anthony Comstock. In 1878, the Supreme Court uphel…
Read More
…he Opera Theatre to be banned. The European Court of Human Rights has on a number of occasions found that the likelihood of counter-events does not justify restricting citizens right to peaceful assembly. The regional police also asked for the ban, although it is they who are obliged to protect all citizens exercising their right to gather. Indonesia: Anti-Gay Islamists Continue Rhetorical War On LGBTs Weeks of escalating anti-gay rhetoric in Indo…
Read More
…of 78% and an Adjusted EBITDA Margin of 32% in 2014.” Is SoulCycle in “the business of changing lives” or is it in the business of producing the “highly attractive financial profile and unit economic returns” and “strong Free Cash Flows” that investors crave? After 148 pages I’m still not sure. These two businesses may not be mutually exclusive, but if, as the IPO filing claims, “we believe SoulCycle is more than a business, it’s a movement,” then…
Read More