2001/12/14

Here's an excellent article discussing Islam and [western] Modernity. This touches on topics that were explored in a class I took last semester entitled Mass Communication and Society.

2001/11/06

I can't believe how incredibly crummy some people are. Last week, I went to review my personal website and discovered that somebody had broken into the server, deleted a number of websites (including my personal one) to free up diskspace and loaded a porn video onto it.

Scum.

2001/10/25

Just got back from a holiday in Estes Park where we stayed south of town. What a blessing! This is our fourth trip there since 1994 ('94, '96, '98, '01). I love the day hiking, the scenery, the elk and the paucity of tourists.

2001/06/19

I learned something about what happened in Lithuania ten years ago and 55 years ago after WWII at: Email from the Baltics. Certain people involved in the oppression in Lithuania are now in Chechnya on the other side. Marcus Warren speculates on what they learned.

2001/06/12

As to his higher nature, the farmer believed in God - that is he tried to do what God required of him, and thus was on the straight road to know him. He talked little about religion, and was no partisan. When he heard people advocating or opposing the claims of this or that party in church, he would turn away with a smile such as men yield to the talk of children. He had no time, he would say, to spend on such disputes: he had enough to do trying to practice what was beyond dispute.
-Geo. MacDonald "Salted with Fire"

2001/06/08

Now this is cool. Using John Brockman's methodology of taking a bunch of interesting, leading edge thinkers, stick them into a room together and see what happens. About The Reality Club is website supported by Brockman which does just that.

2001/06/06

An Edge interview with
Edge: GEORGE LAKOFF, somebody whose books I want to read. He is the author of Metaphors We Live By (with Mark Johnson), Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind and others.
A great article at Computerworld about how eBay User Interface design is managed and rolled out.

2001/05/29

A segment on NPR Morning Edition today highlighted the growing trend of Israeli's leaving the country as the violence spreads. Two families mentioned as examples moving to Canada and Australia.

This morning in the London Telegraph, there is more about the events in Oldham, Greater Manchester. There the cultural tension is between "native" Britons and "Asians" (in other words, Pakistanis, Bangladeshi's, others from the Indian sub-continent). A prominent Tory party member, John Townsend, has sounded the old familiar refrain of fear that Britain is being turned into a mongrel nation. What amuses me is that Britain IS a mongrel nation and has been for millenia. Recall the invasions of the Angles and the Saxons and the Normans and the internal fighting and intermingling with the Hibernians, Celts and Picts. Britain is now known as an Anglo-Saxon nation, ironically named after groups that had invaded in the past.

2001/04/13

Other Views


CultureBox on Slate (Judith Shulevitz) discusses Kevin McDonald, known in the field of Evolutionary Psychology, re: Anti-Semitism Evolutionary Psychology's Anti-Semite by Judith Shulevitz

Israel Shamir's view on Anti-Semitism: iviews.com
A 3-part series in the Telegraph of London on "Being Jewish" today; On-going feelings of insecurity in the Jewish community; Concerns about Assimilation and Jew against Jew.

Part 1: 'Our history has taught us to be insecure, that no place is for ever'

Part 2: Assimilation: will it spell the end of the Jews?

Part3: 'Jew against Jew is a greater threat than anything from the Arab world'

2001/02/16

Today, I'm getting my mind wrapped. I delved into this blogging thing a year or so ago and kinda wondered what it was all about. Didn't get it then, so I'm trying harder now. Cheers all --