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

…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…

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James Foley Prayed, But He Was Not a Martyr

…rs if they have some existing belief. The prayers that were going back and forth between Libya in 2011 and Foley’s family and community were a silent but deeply felt exchange of love. Whether it’s supernatural or not is immaterial. And while Foley’s captivity in Syria was decidedly more grim, we can hope that the “cosmic reach of the universe” penetrated the fortifications of the impossibly cruel ISIS. It would be vulgar to indulge in speculative…

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

…will be framed: as communal or theological obligations? As sometimes-uncomfortable challenges to the status quo? Or as comforting practices that serve personal well-being? Shabbat can be all of these things at once, of course. But I do suspect that companies like Arq, the Brooklyn Jewish lifestyle startup, offer a kind of warning. On a day that is traditionally set aside from consumption, Arq’s guide to observing Shabbat offers, essentially, shop…

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Gay Marriage Bill Totalitarian Says Head Bishop

…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…

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Becoming Forever Lonesome: How Violence Changes Us

…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…

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Star Trek: Politics Anti-Matters

…rek. Our society, and consequently our science fiction, has gotten so uncomfortable with self-discipline that Data needs an emotion chip and Spock needs to go in for Primal Scream therapy. Meanwhile, politics goes off the map. What were once complex enemy societies that might someday become allies have turned into Saddam Hussein-style villains. Setting our emotions free, somehow, means the freedom to see our enemies as demonic madmen, to forget ab…

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ACLU and Thomas More Law Center Rush to Terry Jones Defense

…ones has any brains at all – and I’m not saying he does – he’ll get on the phone to the ACLU right now, begging its attorneys to take his case. What’s so incredibly stupid about all of this is that it seems like the community couldn’t have more bungled the handling of this raging bigot. Now, Jones – who is obviously one of the biggest spotlight-seeking jerks out there – will be made into a martyr and now stands to make a lot of money from the taxp…

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

…”  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…

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The Many, Not the Few: An Anthem for Occupy

…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…

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Meet the “New Age” Stephen Colbert

…w are you going to announce it over social media if you don’t have a smart phone? And smartphones: they are helpful, but they are also limited. I’m working with some of my guides to develop what’s called a WisePhone, and it’s smarter than a smartphone. What are some of the features of the WisePhone? You won’t lose it anymore because it won’t be influenced by gravity, so it won’t fall down the cracks of your couch. It will also be able to tweet or…

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