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From A Belize Jungle, A Look At Creationist “Outreach” in Vancouver

By Lauri Lebo

…eteorite? Bomb? End of the world? We were freaked out. No television, cell phone, internet service. There was no way to find out what happened. Later that night, in the Mayan village, the men gathered outside our hut, talking about it in hushed voices. Lacking any better answers, my husband offered the theory that perhaps it was from aliens. We learned the source of the explosion the next morning. At 8:59, the space shuttle, taking a detour due to…

Looking For Answers at the Oscars: A Guide to This Year’s Contenders

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…etimes communication technologies facilitated that friendship (a letter, a phone call). In the new age the structure is reversed as friendships are built upon those very communication technologies. We are now databases, plugged into a network. Face-to-face friendships have become interface friendships. A more ethereal ethernet was evoked in Inception. Here too people are linked to each other through a social network, and here too identities are…

James Foley Prayed, But He Was Not a Martyr

By Alana Massey

…ect of both personal and corporate prayer. When he speaks to his mother by phone from Libya, she asks if he has felt the prayers coming from his home as well. He tells her that he has felt them and reports, “Maybe it was others’ prayers strengthening me, keeping me afloat.” This is precisely the kind of hope that prayer can inspire that should become central to the understanding of it for those of us who do not engage in prayer. Though the old aph…

Maybe The Question Is: Should Shabbat Be The New Yoga?

By Michael Schulson

…a nonprofit that creates unconventional Jewish programming, including an iPhone app designed to help people disconnect and unwind on Friday afternoons. The organization has a simple, ten-principle Sabbath Manifesto that’s “designed to slow down lives in an increasingly hectic world” by giving people a “provisional guide to observing a weekly day of rest.” (Manifesto principles include “Avoid technology,” “Get outside,” and “Drink wine.”) Reboot a…

Gay Marriage Bill Totalitarian Says Head Bishop

By Peter Montgomery

…anization for Marriage (NOM) urgently called on its supporters to get more phone calls into Senate offices. NOM is urging Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos to use his power to keep marriage from coming to the floor for a vote. Meanwhile, Archbishop Timothy Dolan is getting increasingly shrill in his efforts to stop the shift toward equality. This week, on his official blog, he wrote: “Last time I consulted an atlas, it is clear we are living in N…

Becoming Forever Lonesome: How Violence Changes Us

By Amanda Robb

…ued until nightfall. They continued until counselors and nuns in habits outnumbered wild-eyed parents. Then some guy came over and asked for identifying information about their children—jewelry, tattoos, dental records. Two women went outside and threw up. A man who was shot while watching the premier of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado this July remembers that he was sitting in the fifth row of the theater. When the theater filled with s…

Star Trek: Politics Anti-Matters

By Nathan Schneider

…chise has been its eerie habit of taking the barometer of its times (often the best of its times), and of pointing a way forward. It showed the first interracial kiss on American television, and it invented the flip-phone. I hope, for our sake, that Star Trek has finally gotten out of touch….

ACLU and Thomas More Law Center Rush to Terry Jones Defense

By Lauri Lebo

…ckward country preacher spouting off about his xenophobic fears of Arab-Americans and/or Islam? Indifference, ridicule, pity — any of these would’ve been an appropriate response to this fool. Arguing him down outside the center would’ve been fine, too, for the more passionate among us. But throwing the man in jail truly risks turning a gasbag into a poster boy for the fight against governmental assaults on free speech. What’s more, it’ll only mak…

White House Position
on Exemption from Contraception Coverage
“Not a Done Deal”?

By Sarah Posner

…” The Washington Post reports this morning that Democratic Senators, on a phone call yesterday with White House senior advisor David Plouffe, argued against adopting the Bishops’ position. My source says it’s “not a done deal” yet, but expected action from the White House within a week. UPDATE: Another womens’ rights advocate tells me that she has “no reason to think” that the Obama administration feels it “owes” the Bishops for health care refo…

The Many, Not the Few: An Anthem for Occupy

By Elizabeth Drescher

…e prohibition on cell phones, because Makana’s guitar is tuned with a smartphone app. Or, reporters are interested in how Obama, his guests, and security detail responded—or didn’t, as it turned out. But this misses the heart of the story, as Makana’s set at the APEC dinner was less dissenting performance than performative utterance—the songs he played, the protest t-shirt hidden beneath the complaint dinner musician’s suit, and the secretive cell…