Religion Dispatches
…de of the road with a flat tire, or a broken down car, that help is just a phone call away. It also gives me discounts on lodging and other perks. My partner has a gold card with her name on it as well. The account number on both cards is the same. Years ago, when we signed up for the cards with the venerable roadside assistance company AAA, the woman at the counter smiled sweetly and never blinked an eye when we asked for the “family” plan. We we…
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…eking to dictate coverage to the media surfaced this week in the form of a phone call taped during his presidential campaign that leaked online. In it, Sisi’s office manager, General Abas Kamal, is heard instructing spokesperson Ahmed Ali to give orders to journalists about what to say about Sisi. In another story, Thom Senzee writes for the Advocate: The current government crackdown on LGBT Egyptians has been amplified by hyperbolic media coverag…
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…descended from instant messaging of old (“lol,” etc.), distinct from cell phone text messaging only by the inclusion of tinyurl hyperlinks. The main feature of my experience of following the “service” was multitasking. Over the course of the three hours, I watched a lecture by Jared Diamond about the social functions of religion, cleaned up my kitchen, and did some transcribing for work. It allowed me, as Paul of Tarsus almost said, to check my e…
Read More…This went on for four years and then suddenly, in 2006, she picked up the phone. We began a relationship that was literally 40 years in the making. Too bad I had already made plans to move to California and once again I would be the prodigal sister. Still we made up for lost time and had a relationship like none I have ever had as an adult. I believe I already mentioned that my second of three grandsons was born on the 22nd of December. We shared…
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…l attention to her. During the past year I have also had an unusually high number of encounters with different physicians attached to my health maintenance organization in Los Angeles. These combined experiences prompt me to consider what ails the practice of medicine these days. And if I may be allowed to state my diagnosis right up front: the problem is time. Doctors aren’t spending nearly enough time listening to and getting to know their patie…
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…orced him to strip naked and interrogated him. His wife received harassing phone calls. Kaggwa appears to be the target of intimidation. Kaggwa is also the executive director of the Support Initiative For People With Atypical Sex Development, a group that advocates for the rights of intersex people in Uganda. Kaggwa was born intersex, and raised as a girl. He “became very Christian, turned to God a lot to see if there would be a miracle of some so…
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…ion of a unified Reich. The German word for “empire,” Reich can refer to a number of entities, the most common association today being Nazi Germany, which referred to itself as the “Third Reich”—following the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and Imperial Germany. The video’s reference to the Reich, as the Associated Press has reported, seems to have been taken verbatim from a Wikipedia entry on World War I: German industrial strength and pro…
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…people to this moment in time. Some players will have seen the shaky cell phone videos of Qaddafi’s discovery now circulating, with all the bumps and blurs you’d expect from someone filming a violent attack close up. The horrifying footage shows the dictator’s last moments, complete with flashes of faces splattered with blood, punctuated with off-screen shouts of “Allahu Akbar,” and revealing glimpses of Qaddafi’s pummeled and resigned visage blu…
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…Nations, a case for the U.S or Israel attacking Iran, and a pitch for the phone ministry 1-888-RAPTURE. Apparently the UFO issue got onto Lindsey’s radar screen because of reports that United Nations is paying attention to it, as discussed here. Lindsey offers a mass of evidence (quite disturbing if true) claiming sightings by military personnel who witnessed UFOs disarming nuclear weapons. In Lindsey’s interpretation, such disarmament fits a sim…
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…e convenience store with Skittles and a soft-drink and talking on his cell phone with his friend. Instead, all that Zimmerman could see was a hooded threat. And so, he deputized himself to be the police, and in that capacity shot Trayvon Martin dead. But more than just deputizing himself to act with police power (and this is the crucial point of Dr. Butler’s reflections), he deputized himself to stand in the place of god, to act in god’s name and…
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