December 2011
31 posts
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“In 1999 Phillip-Morris (now Altria) donated $60 million to charitable programs...”
– Jeffrey D. Bauman, Corporations Law and Policy, 7th Ed. West Publishing 2010
Unbelievable that a corporation can spend nearly 2x what it spends on charity advertising that it’s doing charity work.
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The Affidavit #45.17
mobydickforward:
In the sixth Christian century lived Procopius, a Christian magistrate of Constantinople, in the days when Justinian was Emperor and Belisarius general. As many know, he wrote the history of his own times, a work every way of uncommon value. By the best authorities, he has always been considered a most trustworthy and unexaggerating historian, except in some one or two...
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Church Music: Simultaneously the bane and heart of... →
via Out of Bounds
“We all know that music can evoke feeling and rally a crowd. This is great. It captures something great in the human spirit. But worship is meant to invoke the Holy Spirit, and where it settles for motivating, expressing or (at worst) even manipulating the human spirit, well, it may be something, but we might have to ask ourselves what makes it particularly...
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Responses would be appreciated
Why do we give words such power? Particularly in respect to words that connote imply racial differences hatred* toward other races, [and people of different] physical and mental abilities, [I should also add those of marginalized sexual orientations, genders, sexes, etc.], people have made certain words so taboo as to never be able to be used, even in the context of speaking about the words.
This...
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“Despair over the earthly or over something earthly is the most common form of...”
– Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, Penguin Books 2008; trans. Alistair Hannay (1989); pg. 68
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“One can say many things about the history of the world except that it is...”
– Fyodor Dostoevsky (via theorthodoxheretic)
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Top 5 Albums of 2011
[Disclaimer] To be entirely honest, I don’t really listen to music anymore. I just don’t have the time to sit and actively listen to a piece of music in the way it deserves. These are the records that I loved that were also released in 2011 and that somehow made their way into my consciousness. I’m sure there are many I overlooked, but I don’t have time to listen to every...
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History; "Peoples"; Nationalism; Newt
Newt is in the majority camp when he says the Palestinians are an “invented people.” In fact, most historians will tell you that all peoples were in “invented” between 1600 and 1930. Newt has read a lot of history, but the history he’s read has been from a long line of white dead guys that grew up, lived, and profited in a Western Europe that thought it owned Earth.
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Folks--I want your opinions on the "buy American"...
Hit me with your best shot
——————-
[Edit]
Wow, I wasn’t expecting such an overwhelming response.
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If you’re a Christian, it can never hurt to be reminded of this. Some of the wisest words I’ve seen written down.
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“Lord, may you now let us this year once more approach the light, celebration,...”
– Karl Barth Prayer 3: Advent « Die Kirchliche Blogmatik (via mshedden)
For a guy who writes in almost incomprehensible fashion, this is so very clear and lovely.
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Karl Barth and Incarnational Inerrancy →
via Arni at I Think I Believe
“Drawing the analogy between Jesus and the Bible, Horton concludes, “[F]or Barth, the ‘veiled’ (creaturely) form in which God addresses us in self-revelation [that would be the Bible] is not only necessarily fallible but fallen.” The Bible, then, is fallen, in the sense that it is mistaken in some matters, like history and science as Enns demonstrates, showing...
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An Open Letter to Rachel Held-Evans →
This is funny
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Squashed: So Jesus wasn't actually born on... →
squashed:
I guess I’ve never understood why:
Anybody thinks this would surprise anybody even a rough knowledge of history, and
Why anybody thinks it’s important.
I mean, yes, when we were all six celebrating a birthday on a weekend instead of our real birthday felt deceptive and caused all sorts of existential questions. But we get over that.
cognitivedissonance:
“Not to mention Christmas...
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Just fyi--NDAA passed
If you don’t know what that is, you can read my little summation of it here, or you can read Gawker’s 20 things you should know about it. It’s not a good law, and I really don’t understand why it was passed by the people that supposedly represent the (P)eople’s interests.
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Ex nihilo opinion #20
I think The Pensees by Blaise Pascal is actually the first existentialist piece of literature.
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“I’m goin’ away where you will look for me.
Where I’m...”
– Jeff Tweedy; Theologians, A Ghost is Born
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snagamat asked: What ARE your thoughts on the Federal Income Tax?
Anonymous asked: Any thought's on Kierkegaard's forms of despair and how they relate to Albert, Tommy, and Brad in the filmd "I heart Huckabees"?
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“Anybody gets to ask any question about any fiction-related issue she wants. No...”
– From David Foster Wallace’s English 102 — Literary Analysis I: Prose Fiction Section 2 & 6 syllabus; page 3-4, Fall ‘94
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Paul Wallace: How Atheism Can Help Christians... →
brother-john:
Really interesting article. I think he makes great points.
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"Warzone" = Your living room
UPDATE:
Well, they passed it. I hope Obama shows some balls and vetoes the thing.
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Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) co-authored a bill that includes a frighteningly far-reaching expansion of federal power. It states:
SEC. 1031 AFFIRMATION OF AUTHORITY OF THE ARMED FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES TO DETAIN COVERED PERSONS PURSUANT TO THE AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF...
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Self-Serving Bias
A self-serving bias occurs when people attribute their successes to internal or personal factors but attribute their failures to situational factors beyond their control. The self-serving bias can be seen in the common human tendency to take credit for success but to deny responsibility for failure, while simultaneously assigning fault to others in their own failures. It may also manifest itself...