Religion Dispatches
…ence was later commuted to wearing a double cross on her outer garments to signify her repentance and admission of error. Back in the day, Yahweh probably would have had her stoned (see Leviticus 24), but his medieval viceroys wanted her kept alive to proclaim the falsity of her former opinion. For Beatrice’s blasphemy was not defilement of God’s name as such, but defiance of the earthly authorities who had installed themselves as the custodians o…
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…ning Advantages in Video Games. Zoe’s also on to some key issues in game design with her discussion of generative design. It is in some senses the holy grail of game development. The reliance on formulas to produce essentially similar landscapes in games is an ongoing frustration for players and designers alike. So, whoever is writing these scenes knows enough about game design to be on top of key debates in the field. Of course, this gets us clos…
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…et what they want,” Mother Teresa said, and went on to suggest adoption be promoted as an alternative to abortion. “Please don’t kill the child. I want the child. Please give me the child.” Mother Teresa’s pro-life fans swooned, with many giving the nun a standing ovation. The Clintons remained seated, yet both—particularly the ever-politic Hillary—understood how behind-the-scenes power politics work within the Christian Right, and responded to th…
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…s” to advance a plot. See here for the full list of discussions so far, or sign up here for the RSS feed. Diane Winston_________________ Sunday, February 7. Fellow Capricologists: What did you make of the centrality of the news to “Reins of the Waterfall,” this week’s episode? On an earlier post, I’d joked about Ron Moore’s nod to newspapers with the debut of The Caprican on the SyFy Web page. But this week’s clips from Cap2 News, the Caprica Tr…
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…ve some throwaway lines about Uncle Sam Adama’s tattoos, which we are told signal to others in his community who he is and what he has done. His “tats” are a kind of information appliance which has been inked directly onto his body—and indeed, this is often the way tattoos function in contemporary criminal societies—as markers of affiliation, as statements of fidelity, and as records of accomplishments. Is there any parallels to be drawn here betw…
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…first episode here.] See here for the full list of discussions so far, or sign up here for the RSS feed. Diane Winston ___________________________ Comrades, Capricsters, Y’all (or simply Anthea, Henry and Salman): If there had just been the BSG miniseries – Dayeinu If there had been the miniseries and four seasons of BSG – Dayeinu If there had been the miniseries, the four seasons, and the Caprica pilot – Dayeinu But The Caprican? At the very m…
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…to be held accountable for their racism. Too many people are hearing this coded rhetoric and deciding that the real problem with the economy must be folks of color, immigrants, and the Jews.” During the last period of Patriot and militia growth in the mid-1990s, Ward witnessed this coded racist rhetoric being tested in the margins of the right-wing media, though it has since moved into the mainstream. In the past year I’ve interviewed dozens of a…
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…ghborhoods like Beverly Hills. But economics are not the whole story. Some sign up, as many did in World War II, because they want to fight a war they support. Lt. Ehren Watada, a college graduate, enlisted after 9/11 because he wanted to defend his country. Instead, he became the first commissioned officer to refuse deployment to Iraq—he believed ordering soldiers to fight would make him a war criminal. He volunteered to go to Afghanistan or to r…
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…s more, many early Zionists were ashamed of their weakness, seeing it as a sign that Jews were “abnormal.” They expected to escape all those feelings once they had their own independent nation, with its own armed forces. It doesn’t seem to have worked out that way. They have the power, to be sure (by various accounts, the fourth, fifth, or sixth most effective military in the world) which they frequently put on display. But all that expenditure of…
Read More…sociation of Michigan, was one of the first social conservative leaders to sign the letter. He believes CPAC’s embrace of GOProud is symptomatic of a broader problem — what he calls the “dumbing down of the pro-family stand in the public policy arena.” If “dumbing down” is something that concerns Glenn, why isn’t he, Falwell and their cohorts protesting against another co-sponsor of next year’s event: The John Birch Society. Calling the Birchers “…
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