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Your wisdom belies your years.Thanks for sharing these thoughts from your heart.

Maurie,

Thanks for the very interesting information about snakes and monkeys. The snake fear does seem to be very complex in its origins and expression.

What I wrote was what I understood to be the accepted wisdom a couple of decades ago.

Shows what happens when time passes, you age, and don't keep up with a topic. Thanks for the update.

Mary Cunningham

I was happily rampaging left and right in this thread. Engaging in what Norrie Hoyt call a Cyberspace road rage. More fun than being a sober or reasoned poster. After all, the onus of proof and responsibility in being rational and logical is not on true believers:).

I was hoping Paganplace will defend his/her two home villages/small towns - Oxford and Cambridge, after my irreverent thrashing of them. I should be less challenging with Paganplace. S/he is really a lovely, humane and most patient person in spite of taking a lot of heat here for being both gay and pagan. Not fair at all to pagans and gays. Or to anyone on their beliefs and sexual inclinations.

The English weather of "intermittent rain" and "scattered rain showers" almost every day and the greyness of the country exasperated me in the first weeks of arrival. Being from equatorial and chaotic Jakarta, that small town Cambridge, seems pallid and static. But come summer, on a clear, sunny and warm day, it is gorgeous. Punting on the Cam, laying on the grass along the Backs, admiring the replica of the Bridge of Signs.

I was dying to go to the London School of Economics because John Gray, as Professor of European Thought, taught there. He may have moved to Oxford now. The LSE do offer undergraduate courses, including in economics if I remember correctly. And yes, London is quite expensive for students.

Joh Gray's books including and especially "Enlightenment", "Straw Dogs - Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals" and his latest too, "Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia" is interesting. He has a very different take, not as a scientist like Dawkins, or a journalist like Hitchens, but as a philosopher with deep knowledge of European thought. Of course. Judging by the responses from some posters here, what he thinks is not what all will agree to.

Norrie Hoyt

Sorry for that lame joke about pot and potted college Amherst. Even if you involuntarily inhale, at least you never actually voluntarily smoke and inhale. No legal case against you then.
Only as a witness to smokers and innocent victim of the said smoking.

Jacob Josevz

You joked? : "What's the difference between a Lame Duck, a Elephant & a Donkey? Same Shiat! And there is nothing Sunny about that!"

Oh! For heaven's sake !!!!! Shiites as Shiat, Sunnis as Sunny. They teach you that at grad school in Berkeley? That college must reduced its entrance academic requirements and expectations of students, Courtney.

I don't smoke, I don't drink, I don't do drugs, but thanks for the advise anyway. Ummm...Berkeley was notorious for experimenting in drugs in the sixties, no? Nowadays, are Berkeley students into bong? What are you inhaling or imbibing when you post here? Mazel tov.

Which brings me to Candide

So, as I don't drink, don't smoke and don't do drugs, I need other forms of delusions - belief in God. And certainly, much money and many years wasted on education which failed to divest me of my irrational, idiotic, moronic, childish beliefs. So there.

and Maurie Beck

Thanks for your post on phobias. Very informative.

Best regards
J

Norrie Hoyt - Did you know that experiments have shown that fear of snakes in monkeys is inborn and genetic, and not the product of post-birth learning?

Hi Norrie,

You bring up some interesting information on phobias in humans. However, there is a little more to the story than what you suggest. There has been a raging debate in psychology and anthropology over Nature versus Nurture. Fortunately, a lot of headway has been made in resolving this conceptually erroneous either/or debate.

It actually turns out it is both, which is not the same as a middle ground. Genes are Necessary, but not Sufficient, to affect the expression of morphology and behavior in organisms. Gene expression is regulated by environmental cues, whether in the cellular environment (e.g. hormones, transcription factors, etc.) or the outside environment. The snake phobia nicely illustrates this pattern, which has implications for much of human behavior and learning.

Phobias of snakes appear common in humans and other primates. Apparently there is an instinctual component and an environmental component. At the Univ. of Wisconsin, researchers investigated snake phobia in Rhesus monkeys. A snake elicits a very strong response in wild monkeys. This could be genetically inherited (i.e. instinctual) or learned or both. Monkeys born in captivity who grow to adulthood without ever experiencing a snake, show little interest in snakes, even in the presence of other adults showing an obvious fear. Young naive monkeys also show little interest in snakes, unless they see adults eliciting a strong response to the snake. At first glance snake phobia appears to be a learned response, though there also appears to be a critical period (i.e. only young monkeys). However, research has shown that that is an incorrect conclusion.

The researchers used a videotape setup in exposing naive monkeys to snakes. In the foreground was a snake and in the background were adult monkeys responding to it. Naive young monkeys learned snake aversion in the same way from the video as they did in the presence of actual snakes and their troop-mates. With a little editing of the video, the researchers could present images of adults responding to different objects by electronically inserting images into the foreground.

To determine whether a fear of snakes was just a learned response instigated by a timing cue, they did another experiment. Perhaps naive monkeys presented with adults going crazy over any object would elicit a fear of that object, much the same way goslings imprint on the first object they see (usually their mother). The researchers then showed naive young monkeys a doctored videotape of adults in the background going crazy over a long rubber hose (which have the same shape as a snake) in the foreground. The naive monkeys learned to fear rubber hoses. This seemed to confirm that the phobia was learned. Finally, they inserted a flower into the foreground. The young monkeys showed no response to the flower whatsoever, although they did seem perplexed at those crazy monkeys in the background going ape-??it over pink flowers. This example demonstrates the interaction between instinctual behavior encoded in the genes(i.e. Nature) and the environment (i.e Nurture) (Ohman and Mineka 2001). Such interactions between genes and the environment are not the exception, but the norm.

Below are web addresses where you can access papers on this research.

Ohman, A., and S. Mineka. 2001. Fears, phobias, and preparedness: toward an evolved module of fear and fear learning. Psychological Review 108:483-522.

http://64.233.179.104/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=cache:S4aKcPaRv1wJ:www.psych.ubc.ca/~schaller/Ohman2001.pdf+Susan+Mineka

http://pigeonrat.psych.ucla.edu/course%20docs%20110/Cook%20and%20Mineka%20selective%20associations%20of%20fear%20in%20monkeys.pdf

Mary Cunningham,

Did you know that experiments have shown that fear of snakes in monkeys is inborn and genetic, and not the product of post-birth learning?

We agree on one thing - our shared inborn sense that snakes are fearsome.

Buddhism & me: I thought I'd made this clear before, but once again, for the record:

I think of myself as a Buddhist sympathyzer rather than a practicing Buddhist, except when I interact with animals, incleding feared snakes and icky insects, when I really try to be a Buddhist.

I'm agnostic about all belief systems, including traditional Buddhist teachings.

Buddhists are allowed to have fun, including posting on these threads, so long as they aren't nasty or intimidating to others, and so long as they recognize that these posts are in the realm of "relative truth" and not "absolute truth". Many Buddhist monks have had wonderful senses of humor.

I don't proselytize for Buddhism. That would be contrary to Buddhist ethics and the Dalai Lama says specifically that that should not be done.

When I mention Buddhism I do so in the same spirit that a non-proselytizing Christian might lay out his belief system to show it to me. After that it's for the person to take it or leave it.

Buddhism is totally without a belief in worldly progress, except that an individual may progress toward enlightenment. This world is always the same in the realm of relative truth, mostly illusory. The aim is to see through the relative truth to encounter the realm of absolute truth.

Returning to your descriptions of me, I am absolutely not a materialist. I think that Dr. Johnson's refutation of Bishop Berkeley's idealism was a neat trick, but not at all a reflection of reality. And for the infinite time, I am an agnostic, not an atheist.

I'm proud to be called a humanist and a secularist. The Roman Five on our Supreme Court are acting, even today, to dismantle our secular state and they need to be opposed.

I see that the subject of Guest Voices has changed, so to read this you'll have to look in the archives. Hope you find it.

Ms Cunningham:

You write
"Most ex-Christian atheists who become Buddhist somehow hang on to the prosetyzing/demonizing traits of their old religion--and I am talking here about the late Christian cult of atheism here, not modern Christianity.

Unfortunate trait, that. Very unfortunate."

Breath-taking comments. Where do you live?

Here in the people's republic of Cambridge, where 80% of the population is 30% Buddhist, we see virtually no proselytizing. And to call what my alter-ego Norrie does "proselytizing" is to twist meaning even more than your regular contortions.

Neither Norrie nor I engage in demonizing of individuals who have belief systems different than we do. I often castigate people who engage in flabby arguments, but that has nothing to do with their religion. In your case, for instance: to use the old cliche, "some of my best friends are Catholics." I regularly engage with a friend who was Catholic Chaplain at Harvard many years ago in lovely discussions about what we like and don't like about Catholic doctrine or practice.

I will proselytize to this extent: I think a bit of regular buddhist meditation would be good for your blood pressure.

But thinking about it further, maybe what Gray calls the Christian cult of atheism, derived as it was from the Enlightenment, expired at about the same time as the Soviet Union?

Buddhist atheism should feel very different, more agnostic, less materialistic, certainly less Utopian--the old cult of progress--which is what Gray's latest book is about..

There just doesn't seem to be much Buddhism here. Maybe an online context is wrong for it.

Norrie Hoyt,

Pause to paws is nice but cats don't frighten me, few animals do. You could appear as a snake (closer to your reality?), they frighten me, a fright I attribute that to my animal origins: evolved apes like us (do you want to be included here?) will must have some traces of snake-phobia, it was useful once but no more, kind of like wisdom teeth...

As a Buddhist you *are* (or should be)an athist, but your views somehow do not square with Buddhism, at least to me. Your views are humanist, materialist, secularist, atheist. They are most definitely anti-Christian in agreement with the atheism we experience here: a most vehement anti-Christian type of atheism. So--demonstrated by Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens--the "No God" we see here is the "No Judeo-Christian God", God-the-Father, YHWH of the Old Testament. Dawkins is especially excised about Him. Christ is tolerated (barely) as an ethicist and that's about it.

Most ex-Christian atheists who become Buddhist somehow hang on to the prosetyzing/demonizing traits of their old religion--and I am talking here about the late Christian cult of atheism here, not modern Christianity.

Unfortunate trait, that. Very unfortunate.

Henry,

I agree with you: I'd be very happy to be you.

Under a certain view of the cosmos, I am already you, and you me. The same is true of Mary Cunningham, though that thought certainly gives me pause.

[As an aboriginal trickster, that thought might also give me paws, and I would appear to Mary as a frightening cat.]

Now that would be fun!

Mary Cunningham,

Dear Mary.

If you won't call me an atheist, I won't call you Mary. We've been through this atheism issue several times before.

Also, if you'd read Henry's and my posts above about Amherst College, you'd know it was an all-male college when I went there, so you can now drop the S/ when referring to me. I'm a HE.

Addressing Henry James, you wrote:

"But *I* think you are really the multi-personed Norrie Hoyt. S(he) once was everywhere at once and told to "get a life" so s(he) has come back as many people rather than one, but is still the same cosmos-worshipping atheist/agnostic/pagan underneath. Like the Trinity--only profane."

I'm flattered by your characterization of me, but I doubt that Henry is happy that you think he's merely my nom de plume.

You seem to view me as a kind of trickster figure out of aboriginal myths, everywhere at once with all sorts of powers. Or as one of those Masons that some people think are surreptitiously controlling everything in the world. [I hear the Pope looks for such under the Papal bed every night before he goes to sleep.]

I'd love to be that trickster figure but I'm just plain old me, a retired lawyer and government official, and I always post under my own name.

You have my best wishes. May the buddhas and bodhisattvas speed you on your way toward enlightenment.

Dear Ms Cunningham

I will look at Mr Gray more carefully. Well chastened.

You inveigh against our illusions of superiority, but you defend none of the egregious assertions that I noted in my email.

Is secular humanism a cult?
are our only choices Dogmatic belief or dogmatic atheistic social theories?
Is original sin the best explanation we can come up with for the awful things humans do?

Give us an adequate defense of these assertions you made, and we will all be on equal footing.

Finally, I am sure Norrie and I would be thrilled to be each other. All women and men are sisters and brothers.

Mr James

وَلَكِنْ عِنْدَمَا تُكَلِّمُهُمْ بِهَذِهِ الْعِبَارَاتِ فَإِنَّهُمْ لَنْ يَسْمَعُوا، وَتَدْعُوهُمْ فَلاَ يُجِيبُونَكَ

Henry,

Don't call me Mary and I won't call you Henry. In any case John Gray is a better writer on politics and European thought than *you* are a polemicist. You tell me, what is the link between the 'Enlightenment', Communism (Dialectic Materialism) and Atheistic Materialism? Why don't you read a little John Gray before calling anyone ignorant? That's well, ignorant, I'd say...

But *I* think you are really the multi-personed Norrie Hoyt. S(he) once was everywhere at once and told to "get a life" so s(he) has come back as many people rather than one, but is still the same cosmos-worshipping atheist/agnostic/pagan underneath. Like the Trinity--only profane.

Tell me, oh superior one:

*Why is it that the people who claim not to believe in God are obsessed with spending a life time attacking Him and those that believe in Him?

*Why is it that atheistic liberals are so puffed up with their own egos and think their intellect is superior to anyone elses?

*Why is it that atheists have no humility?

Att: The Lion, et al;

"I'll Huff n I'll Puff n I'll Blow the door Down.."

- Big Bad Wolf.

"You are either with US, or you are against US.."

- G.W. Bush.

P.S. I know that "insurgents" Talibany, Bin Laden, the Magnificant 19" 911 terrorist sky jackers and other Islamic finatical hoodlums all smoke & smoked Hashish and some Opium here and there.

You see,besides not being able to handle the Koran, they do not know how to handle Marijuana (Hashish is 30 times stronger).

You see, this is why We need, a Modern Secular Moralist, Gen. "Napolian" G.W. Bush. The goal (objective) is to turn "Radical" Islam on It's head. So some "Ragg-Headers" are getting a taste of American brand Justice & rightiousness.

Hay, not everyone needs to be turned "Upside-Down" on their heads! Jihaddist(s), please stay away from the Hash & the Koran please. You can't handle them, so best to go to rehab & save yourselves from becoming "Koranaholics" again. Please Jihaddists, "We The People" just want to save your kids & posterity, not so much their Koranaholic Parents et al. Ya Ya.

MEMORANDUM

TO: JIHADIST & JOZEVZ

SUBJECT: POT-SMOKING AT AMHERST COLLEGE IN THE 1950'S

When I was at Amherst, pot was used only by a very tiny minority of "far out" students, mostly artsy kids from NYC.

Of course it later became ubiquitous at Amherst and everywhere else. I don't know about its usage on today's campuses. Perhaps Erin White would join this thread and enlighten us.

I had my first trial puff of the stuff in Vermont in the 1970's. I hate smoking anything so that was it. And no, Jozevz, I didn't inhale, not for Bill Clinton reasons, but because I hate smoke in my lungs.

Traveling from Montpelier to Washington in the early 70's for an anti-Vietnam-War march, the bus was thick with pot fumes. I involuntarily inhaled more pot there than I ever did by choice.

Mary

You seemingly have had some education. How can you spout such dogmatic nonsense?

Secular Humankism is a cult? 99% of secular humanists have no connection to each other, as opposed to, say,Mormons.

Look at a standard checklist of cult characteristics and see if you find One that fits.

So Marxist Atheism is the same as Secular Humanist Atheism? Study up on that one too. There are more choices than just 1. Dogmatic Religious Believer or 2. Dogmatic Atheist.

I am not sure, but I think Secular humanists in general would NOT support Stalin's murder of millions of innocents (irony warning).

Don't know John Gray, but based on your quotes, his irony seems slightly more reveletory than Johnny Cash's.

One needn't be a Catholic or believe in Original Sin to realize that humans do atrocious things. There are other explanations that are actually rational and subject to testing.

Atheism is nothing but a late Christian cult, its only distinction its capacity to indulge in unprecedented levels of mass murder.

Anyone leaving college with the same evangelical superstitions they had upon entrance has wasted four years of college.

PS And no more "gotcha" posts halogen. Leave those to Concerned the (neo)Conservative--oops! Concerned the Christian.

Catholics don't have much trouble with John Gray, halozcel, or with the idea that we are--shock!--animals, clever animals, tribal animals who can reason, but animals nonetheless.

Hence the idea of original sin, something which both infuriates and troubles atheists, who like to attribute *all* of humankind's sorry history to religion. But Christians hold that our innermost nature, our animal nature, is as prone to do bad as to do good, maybe more prone towards the former than the latter. I would think that the history of the twentieth century would prove that this is the case.

Secular humanism is far more pleasant for atheists, there is a brief explanation of its tenets in this section of 'On Faith'and I would suggest you have a look at it.

John Gray describes 'Humanity' as rapacious species engaged in 'wipe out' other forms of life while destroying its natural enviroment.

Dear Gray,who wiped out 'ancient St.Andrews belief' in Scotland? and what is happening in Ulster?

There was another 'Straw Dogs',the film,Dustin Hoffman and Susan George.
As far as I remember,english newspapers had protested and blamed USA 'dont play it again Sam'

Jihadist..

You might be interested in this article on the British philosopher John Gray. He taught at Oxford--OK you were at Cambridge:

>"Uncovering the faith base of seemingly rational opinions is a Gray speciality. He finds the apparent rationalism of militant atheists such as Daniel Dennett, Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens particularly funny. He regards atheism as a late Christian cult, based on the supremely Christian (and Marxist) idea that by changing people’s beliefs, you change their behaviour. He also sees an irony here. “They attack something congenitally and categorically human as an intellectual error, yet call themselves humanists.”

>"The road from Fukuyama led him directly to a series of what to future generations will seem classic works. The best are Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals – a coruscating statement of our inability to free ourselves from human nature – and his latest, Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia. Gray was, in the later stage of this phase, driven by what seemed to him to be collective amnesia. “I had been puzzled by the intensity and systematic and methodical character of the violence of the 20th century, because that century was dominated not by religious belief, but by secular belief in progress or the capacity of human beings to create a better world. It also featured unprecedented levels of mass murder."

http://tinyurl.com/257ctj

On another note: Paganplace strikes me neither as English nor British educated and, although she does tend to pontificate a lot, that characteristic is not limited to any particular people, although atheists/humanists &tc. seem a lot more susceptible..(Of course, since I am neither I would say that, wouldn't I?) But her spelling is definitely and consistently North American. And she usually is posting in US not UK time. Well, that's the beauty of these posting boards--one can be anything (even English), post from anywhere and say one is somewhere else, and award oneself some great degrees!

PS The LSE is (still) mostly for post grads. You had a much better time at Cambridge. And London is nose bleedingly expensive, esp. for a poor post grad student, although still a lot of fun

Paganplace

Actually Halozcel do keep up with the markets. As s/he said, hedge funds are very risky. The markets is making me stay at the office right now and I am sort of having comic relief here in On Faith threads.

And Halozcel is right about the old and self-important universities and saw their ridiculousness. Comedic, indeed in being being detached from the real world.

Halozcel,

Thanks for the reminder on the markets. Not a place to be wimps and losers really. One can easily loss millions within seconds and minutes.

Regards.
J

Paganplace

You are English? Good. Tell me about Cambridge since I left it in 1990. Never bothered to go back there since. I need updating of the Oxbridge towns from a former or current resident, especially Cambridge.

You are not saying you really can stand to live in and have homes in Oxford and Cambridge?
How could anyone stand living in both seemingly tired and shabby villages/small towns at the same time, or one after another?

After being impressed by the external beauties of some colleges, how could anyone stand the colleges' rooms, food and pathetic heating system?

Oxford and Cambridge are quite provincial villages masquerading as towns around a collection of colleges to service them, and survive on tourists traisping around small pubs, small hotels, bookshops and souvenir shops.

Amherst is really a small town, like an oversized village compared to Boston. Norrie Hoyt is right is saying Amherst is to Boston, as Cambridge is to London in that regard.

There is more outdated and outmoded industrialization/manufacturing in the environs of Oxford rather than at Cambridge. Cambridge is more provincial than Oxford in location.

I still wish I had gone to LSE just to be in London full time instead of Cambridge. LSE is more egalitarian than Oxbridge. The better Oxbridge academics left for US colleges which offer more money and less workload in the eighties and nineties.

American colleges such as UCLA, USC, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, U of Chicago have better facilities, are more interesting academically, and are better endowed. I wish I had known that before. Their locations are also livelier.

Tell me if Oxford and Cambridge towns have really changed since 1990.

Al Azhar is much, much worst in terms of facilities, scholarship, and location. Cairo is not quite a liveable city for anyone not into chaos and crave peace and order. More interesting than Cambridge or Oxford if one is into living dangerously instead of being sheltered.

I made terrible choices of colleges/universities to study at. They all sound better than they actually are.

Best regards.
J

Umm... Halo?

Whatever that was supposed to prove...

Would you care to explicate?

''Dont call me little girl''
'Comedy film' from 1921,starring Mary Miles Minter and Winifred Greenwood.
Comedy,comedy.

Oxford,Sorbonne and 'Al Azhar' in the same league.Comedy.

By the way,Hedge Funds going to the critical situation.
Carry Trade is creating a currency 'Bubble'.Be careful.
Sub-prime may fall.
Lets be careful.Lets not bankrupt.
Today June 25,London time 7.00
FTSE(London Stock Exchange) may decline,so those who play at FTSE should be very carefully.
Please,please,dont bankrupt.

"Yes, Cmbridge is to London as Amherst is to Boston. Oxford is a more "industrial" town than Cambridge in spite of its beautiful and soaring spires."

This is where I call BS, J.

These are my two homes, and you know nothing of either.

Hah! Some time to attack and ravish my lunch as I ravage this thread too.

Josef Jovezv

Oy vey. I'm a mench now? Nah, shooting rubberbands at one another is not so much of a challenge, eh? Some people do glean your mischievously easy bigotry in your seemingly incomprensible posts. For fun I hope, to make all believers see the evil and stupidity of their ways and beliefs. But if really serious, we should worry. Mazel tov.

Norrie Hoyt

Thanks for that clarification on potted elitist Ivy League US colleges. Potted bring to my mind, the words "pot" and "potty" too in all their meanings. Hope Amherst students and grads don't smoke pot and go potty over things.

Yes, Cmbridge is to London as Amherst is to Boston. Oxford is a more "industrial" town than Cambridge in spite of its beautiful and soaring spires.

Maurie Beck

Yes, Richard Dawkins is a very good evolutionary biologist, but he is not a Cambridge fellow of course. So there. He become well known in public with his book, The Selfish Gene before The God Delusion as you pointed out.

As for the God delusion, Cambridge has many, many scientists/atheists, so the contention in The God Delusion by Dawkins is neither new nor surprising for me. British authors and scientists have been also been extensively writing about and questioning the existence of God from the philosophical and scientific angles in the last twenty years.

And why should you have all the fun in conspiracy theories? There is no copyright on those, right? You don't want me to list all the so-called whackos and weirdos of Cambridge in any given field do you? We are the uncontested uber Weird Ones in higher education.

I don't recognize nor acknowledge your turfs on conspiracies unless you copyrighted them. Besides, the Jewish-Muslim banker conspiracy is thought of by me first. There it is.

By the way, to rape and pillage Charing Cross Road with you and Henry James, I will bring along the "sword of Islam" to slice up and thrash the hapless second books with unrelentless cruelty and inhumanity. Want me to burn them too in a bonfire of insanity and depravity?

I look forward to you raping and pillaging the second hand books at Charing Cross Road with Henry James. Hope CNN and BBC will have full coverage on it.

As we all know, the depravity of the Romans was the cause of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. So Gibbons said among other reasons.

And now on to rape and pillage the markets first.

Best regards
J

"ord Jeffrey Amherst was a soldier of the king
And he came from across the sea,
To the Frenchmen and the Indians he didn't do a thing
In the wilds of this wild country"

Except pass out blankets infested with smallpox to the local tribes.

*koff.*

Jozevz,

I knew a few classmates at Amherst who had leftist views, as opposed to liberal views. The class itself was very conservative from my point of view. I didn't know any real leftists except at Amherst.

I'm not sure today what Oppenheimer was. I do know that after reading many legal transcripts in our American Studies project I concluded he shouldn't have lost his security clearance, but perhaps I was naive.

The McCarthy era was terrible. My wife watched the Army-McCarthy hearings on TV and was terrified. She was about 11 years old.

If you'll excuse me, I'll sign off now -it's past my bedtime. Many folks around here turn in at 8:30 or 9:00 - it's way past that.

Good night to you.

Joozevz,

I think you misunderstand the circumstance in which the person told me he was gay.

If he had been a stranger I might basically have ignored him or I might have listened to what he had to say.

But this was at our 50th college reunion. It has a very different dynamic than the usual situation.

At a 50th reunion, if things go well, all pretense drops away and we just discuss everything openly and easily. All the old antagonisims and rivalries have dissolved, and we have all become friends.

That's the way it was.

Regards to you.

Jihadist - So, want to spread a new conspiracy of Jewish-Muslim bankers controlling the global financial system?

Stay off of our turf!!!!!!!! Being a member of the Jewish Atheist conspiracy of International Bankers is one of the few delusions that allows me to enjoy my self-induced poverty of grad school.

Cambridge, as you know, was also the home of that famed alchemical misanthrope Isaac Newton.

BTW, I'm sure we could make room for you on our raping and pillaging excursion down Charing Cross Road. We could probably use a true believer and your religious heritage suggests you might be better with a sword than Henry or I.

As you can see, I love making stereotypes.

Maurie

Hey Luke- the "free pass "
is for the past . It should result in some kind of change in behavior- you know, loving others , less selfishness, wanting to treat people with love, not disdain, etc. etc.

Remember Mother Teresa? Kind of like that.

Jacob,

You wrote:

"I want to know what it was like to of heard about the Prphets death (Professor that is) and how did the Folk around think and feel? Thank You. Ya."

I can still see myself on that day in 1955, in the Amherst College cafeteria, reading the New York Times account of Professor Einstein's death the day before, with his picture prominent on the front page.

My friends and I went into thoughtful and reflective moods, pondering the meaning of Albert Einstein's life and science.

As mentioned earlier, we had all been forced into taking Professor Arons' physics course the year before, so we were up on many aspects of Dr. Einstein's work.

And in 1955, in our required American Studies' course, we were studying the case of the removal of J. Robert Oppenheimer's security clearance.

So we were up on the intersection of physics and government and, of course, knew of Einstein's letter to President Roosevelt about the possibility of making an atomic bomb.

Dr. Einstein's death made us think of many things, which we discussed at length. They were sober and reflective conversations.

By the way, my family (and I) like the nicknames you have for me.

Best wishes.

Jihadist - Maurie Beck, still looking to send a petition on fear of death to someone?

Hi Jihadist. I still don't have to like it. Of course I'm not losing any sleep over it either.

By the way, Richard Dawkins is actually a very good evolutionary biologist, regardless of his latest rant in The God Delusion. His idea of the selfish gene and subsequently the extended phenotype was quite novel.

Jihadist,

Amherst, Williams, and Wesleyan colleges have been known as the "Potted Ivy League" because of their excellence and relatively small size. They aren't part of the "Ivy League" which operationally really has only to do with sports.

Cambridge in relation to London seems to be like Amherst in relation to Boston. Despite astounding growth and development over 50 years, the Amherst countryside is still beautiful, especially looking from the War Memorial toward the Holyoke Range.

Speaking of fens, I've always liked Ralph Vaughn Williams' "In the Fen Country".

Luke - A free pass, reasonable? Does that mean I can spend the rest of my life ... butchering and raping that I have always wanted in my Godless heart.

Luke, glad to have you aboard. Care to join Henry and I in our depravity down Charing Cross Road? Perhaps you can help us convert and save our souls while we gleefully dispatch saints and sinners alike.

Jihadist

thanks AGAin for the kind and wise words.

i am WELL aware that you are perfectly able to protect yourself.

"protecting" you has not been my motivation.

Affirming the wisdom and thoughtfulness of your posts HAS been.

Your ongoing discourse, among other things, illuminates the creative discord/alliance between the capitalist system, that seems to be the only workable one in the world, and the desires for social justice that we humans often harbor. Justice turns out to be more complicated than our 5 year old conception of "fairness", doesn't it.

For the hard questions, you can't look up the answers in books. Even the Quran or the Bible.?

Henry James - but if you come to suffer from the ill effects of using hilarious variant forms, don't say I didn't warn you.

I was being serious in my use of the hilarious variant form. Perhaps that is being ironic(al).

I seem to be receiving many warnings of late. Now you've got me paranoid and I've locked myself in the basement.

Luke - A free pass? Does that mean I can spend the rest of my life... butchering and raping that I have always wanted in my Godless heart.

Henry, it looks like we have a threesome (don't get any ideas bub) for our Charing Cross Road violent debauchery.

Henry James's Secretary,

It's good to hear from you directly! You must have been in Amherst when I was, with the perspective of a 6-to-10-year-old boy. A novelist could make a good story of our differing views of Amherst in 1953-1957.

I wasn't aware that Arnie Arons was an expert figure skater until earlier this month when a classmate at the 50th told me of it. Curious that both of you took note of that fact.

My late father was a good friend of B.F.Skinner. They knew each other at Hamilton College and graduated a year apart. They continued the friendship in Boston. He probably had met B.F.'s kids. If I grew up in a Skinner Box, I'd be a little screwed up too.

The Class of '57 created a "yearbook" for its 50th reunion. It was a great job - personal statements, photos, etc. Our class poet, Bob Bagg, sent us a questionnaire about everything about our lives - except being gay.

The questionnaire tacitly assumed, as the College did in the 50's, that everyone was straight.

I wrote Bob that his questionnaire treated our gay classmates as Amherst had: as Invisible Men. Bob later wrote in the Yearbook that he deeply regretted that fact, and that the yearbook editors had tried to find some way to gather that information, but it was too late to do that.

How things change: I was sitting in the lounge of reunion headquarters when a classmate [not a close friend at Amherst] sat down next to me and began the conversation by saying, "By the way, I'm gay". He hadn't known about my letter to Bob.

It was amazing how, after 50 years we could pick up old conversations. One classmate, if not a communist, was certainly a fellow-traveler in the 1950's. He had wanted China and North Korea to win the Korean war. My first words to him were, "Howie, have you changed your mind about the Korean War?" After a brief startle reaction, he allowed that he had.

It was good to hear from you.

Who "Got a rise"?

"Being a Muslim woman for women's rights do have its challenges."

"Especially since if one have the funds to support"

etcetera..

Good. Got a rise as wanted.

Jacob Josevz

Good to know what you are majoring in.

35% of my clients in Islamic banking and financial services are non-Muslims for various personal and business reasons.

Many of my counterpart western bankers and agent bankers I do business with are Jewish. So, want to spread a new conspiracy of Jewish-Muslim bankers controlling the global financial system? Bear in mind that behemoths of western banking like Citibank and HSBC are falling all over to dominate the market for Islamic banking and financial services.

Good for consumers in the global markets to have choices in banking and financial services. Customers benefit in getting the choices they feel most comfortable with at the personally and for business.

Anonymous/Annoynymous/Anonymouse

Good to read your response. I was wondering where you were coming from. But, as you stated - God knows best. How can you be sure I wear panties to even have them "in a bunch" as I may be assumed to be swathed in layers of hijab and niqab.

So what does it mean if I have the educational benefits of both the western and eastern worlds - Cambridge for economics, Sorbonne for international law, Al Azhar for Islamic history, and International Islamic University for Shariah. It certainly mess up my English, French and Arabic grammar. But it took the same number of years for all of that if I were to pursue my Masters and PhD in the same field.

Being a Muslim woman for women's rights do have its challenges. No point and not productive in being confrontational with Muslim women and Muslim ulema on it. Better to engage and seek their cooperation rather than to dismiss or marginalize them. Most bona fide ulema with traditional and conservative Muslim education are anxious to remain relevant and respected by the Muslim umma. To get the rights of Muslim women promoted and protected for the well-being of the Muslim umma, awareness-raising and support of conservative Muslim men and women is imperative.

Perhaps it is nice to be the west's poster child or "girl" on Islam and Muslims with regard to women's issues in Muslim societies and countries, and to engage in a war of civilization and values over such poster childs - as in the case of Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Salman Rushdie. But I have no intention of being so or to be used as so as do many Muslim women working in this area.

A dead Muslim woman with wide contacts among national and transnational advocacy and operational NGOs, governments and the private sector is a useless Muslim woman. Especially since if one have the funds to support and the contacts among clients to hustle for funds/donations and sponsorships of the NGOs advancing Muslim women's rights in Indonesia and Malaysia and beyond in Muslim countries.

And what have you actually done for Muslim women apart from lecturing them? And don't raise with me about Muslim lives lost in the Muslim world.

Norrie Hoyt

Harvard was and is prestigious, but do take in academically middling students until after WWII, where entrant requirements were upgraded. You know that in UK and US, sons and daughters of the rich and well-connected in government and business were sent to Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge respectively. Talk about old boys' network and the Establishment and this is what is meant.

Amherst is also an Ivy League college too no? Right up there with Yale, Columbia, etc. Oxbridge graduates tend to look down on redbrick universities' graduates in UK. But some, like Imperial College and Manchester U, have very good schools/departments in the sciences.

I am not impressed with my self-important former universities. Full of pompous fools and jerks who rubs me in me with that trait sometimes, and to rub me the wrong way too. Cambridge professsors do have more time for their students unlike Oxford who are always going down to London for this and that.

As a university stronger in the sciences than Oxford, I am quite familiar with scientists/atheists. Yet, Cambridge colleges also have very good English departments. Many of Britain's current important creative personalities in its theatre and film business are former Cambridge graduates.

Thanks for the history on Amherst. I had regretted going to Cambridge instead of the London School of Economics, but that university in the Fens is quite a pleasant place to be, especially when punting on the Cam on a nice sunny day. Makes one forget about the excitement of London and to revel in the isolation and peace of Cambridge, and to remember with fondness it was the university of Keynes and Robinson, among others, in economics.

Henry James

Two Amherst grads here! Norrie and you, among my favourite posters here - always questioning, not suffering fools too gladly, and being quite nice about it. An Amherst trait?

You are always being a gentleman in wanting to "protect" me from some posters here. I'm fine with whatever anyone say here. I do ignore some posters. I do take on some on their more interesting posts as a lark.

...and go forth to rape and pillage Charing Cross Road. Helene Hanff's 84 Charing Cross Road is still there, but not as anyone who read that book by her expected.

And now, looking forward to another week to legally rape and pillage the global markets:)

Best regards as always.
J

Hello Henry & Norrie, et al;

Question. I was not born yet when you was at Amherst. But talking about Physics back then, I know that OURS Great Prophet of "Quantum Entanglement" & "Relativity" Albert Eistein [pbuh] died in 1955.

I want to know what it was like to of heard about the Prphets death (Professor that is) and how did the Folk around think and feel? Thank You. Ya.

I think Jacob is trying to tell us something.

Att: "The-Lion", you roared;

"..so we all had to take Arnie Arons' physics course. Most of us suffered through it.."

Mr. N.H, you also have the Amherst knowledge, such that you posses the Keys to the "Lions Gate" and you are a diehard Eclati-ON that deserves to be petted more often.

I write from my customary position, sitting on Henry's lap.

As manh of you know, Amherst was all-male when Norrie and I matriculated. What does that tell you about America's greatest dead literary critic?

Norrie, my favorite Arnie Arons (Sadistic physics professor for many scientifically challenged undergraduates) quote was when he would snarl at his freshman lecture group
"\When I think of the fact that you people are going to be voting in three years, it scares the HELL out of me."

Still cautionary words regarding college freshman, though now, OH MY GOD

And did you know that Arnie was an expert figure skater/ GO FIGURE.

I grew up in Amherst, so I knew his kids. not as screwed up as Chomsky's or Skinner's.

Henry,

I just checked. Harvard now accepts 9% of applicants and Amherst 19%.

There's something weird here.

In 1953, Amherst accepted 6% of applicants and Harvard about 10%.

This doesn't make sense to me. Obviously it's much harder to get into any good college today than it was 54 years ago. So why has Harvard's acceptance rate stayed the same and Amherst's tripled?

Maybe it has something to do with the numbers of students who don't bother applying to some selective colleges. If so, Amherst may still effectively be harder to get into than Harvard.

Any admissions officers on line to enlighten us?

Henry,

Such coincidences and synchronicities!

I graduated Amherst in 1957, so I'm presumably 12 years older than your Amherst-graduate secretary.

The "New Curriculum" being in force during my years at Amherst there were no elective courses in the freshman year and only a couple in the sophomore year, so we all had to take Arnie Arons' physics course. Most of us suffered through it. At the reunion there were still vigorous arguments over whether Arons was a great teacher or an insane evildoer.

It was Arons I quoted in my first post on this thread. He was always warning us how easy was to get a grade of ZEE-ROW in his course.

I always liked Professor Baird, though his idiosyncratic English 1-2 was also fought over at the reunion. He loved to carry on about "damned bible-thumpers" in his classes. One year, just before Christmas vacation, a student went up to him and said, "Merry Christmas, Professor Baird!" "Do you mean that ironically?" he replied.

Baird was crusty, reserved, inscrutable, and eccentric but I liked him and really enjoyed his course on Dr. Johnson. He was also a serious student of what good teaching is about, and a respected innovator for his creation of English 1-2 [several books have been writtten about that course]. And he was a great personal friend of Robert Frost. Of him, he said, "It shows what you can make of a life."

Incidentally, Alison Lurie's first novel, "Love and Friendship", is set at Amherst ("Converse") College during the time I was there, as was she, married to an English Instructor. Professor Baird and his notorious English 1-2 course are easily identifiable characters, as are several other real people and events of that time.

I posted a review/commentary of the book on Amazon, which you can consult if you're interested.

I know the kids today are bright and engaged. But they think they're the beneficiaries of the times, when actually they're the victims [grade inflation, etc.] I like to obliquely suggest this fact to them.

They also think that getting into Harvard or Yale is the ultimate. In reality, getting into Harvard is, to quote T.S. Eliot, "The infirm glory of the positive hour".

By the way, Amherst has no course requirements at all today, not even general ones like having to take a science or language course. As I mentioned we had one course choice in the first two years.

Which arrangement is better? We argued over that, too.

Norrie!!!
So you're an Amherst Grad too??
so is my private secretary, who writes these notes for me (being dead, my typiing isn't what it used to be).

My secretary is of course MUCH younger than you appear to be, having graduated in 1969.\\

But he still benefited from Arnie Arons and William Pritchard and Henry Steele Commager and Prof Baird.

Don't be TOO hard on the kids of today. Lots of them are pretty bright and engaged.

And, I think Harvard is now harder to get into than Amherst, though the teaching at Amherst is still better.

Jihadist

you note
"Charing Cross Road is over-rated and now commercialized for tourists."

All the more reason for Maurie and myself to rape and pillage, in consonance with good Christian Tradition (though my being Gay may modify the nature of my raping, if not of my pillaging).

You are too cosmopolitan for all of us. Perhaps that is why we love you (among many other reasons)

Peace
Henry

Jihadist,

It's good to hear from you again. I hope you're completely over your recent illness.

You wrote:

"John Harvard, from Cambridge, gave an endownment to a middling American college that now bears his name that was Ms. Erin White's and your alma mater."

Considering that the Pilgrims landed at Provincetown and Plymouth in 1620 and that Harvard was founded in 1636, it's really remarkable that this college on the fringe of the great wilderness of North America even qualified as "middling".

I have a graduate degree from Harvard but was an undergraduate at another college in Massachusetts,
Amherst College [named for the town that was named for that original biological warrior, Lord Jeffery Amherst, who gave smallpox-infected blankets to the Indians].

[Amherst Song]

Lord Jeffrey Amherst was a soldier of the king
And he came from across the sea,
To the Frenchmen and the Indians he didn't do a thing
In the wilds of this wild country

But for his Royal Majesty he fought with all his might
For he was a soldier brave and true
He conquered all his enemies whenever they came in sight
And he looked around for more when he was through.

On Amherst, Brave Amherst
'Twas a name known to fame in days of yore
Reign ever victorious
Till the sun shall climb the heavens no more.

Rah!

When I entered Amherst, it was more selective and harder to get into than Harvard - it still may be, for all I know. Another reason I went was that Amherst students are taught by full professors and interact informally with them.

Harvard undergraduate students, then and now, are mostly taught by teaching fellows, who have little or no teaching experience and slight acquaintance with what they are trying to teach. A member of the Harvard Corpoation, the controlling body of Harvard University, recently said that undergraduate teaching at Harvard was terrible and pointed to Amherst as the model of what Harvard should become.

As you know, I just attended my 50th class reunion at Amherst. I'd promised to tell you about it, which I will before long.

Here's a teaser: five miles from Amherst College is a hollowed-out mountain with a nuclear-safe bunker, from which an all-out nuclear attack was about to be launched against the Soviet Union by order of General Curtis Lemay, the model for the mad Air Force General in "Dr. Strangelove", during the Cold War.

Fortunately, a minute later, President Kennedy countermanded the order, or none of us would be here today.

Amherst College now owns the mountain and bunker and uses it as a depository for library books. We toured it. When Amherst renovated the bunker they found the hidden 50-year-old girlie magazines of the guy whose duty it was to push the button to start WWIII (they're now stored at the A.C. library) More on this later if you're interested.

ON ANOTHER SUBJECT: I tend to be testy and impatient with recent college graduates like Erin White - the reason is grade inflation.

In the 1950's the average, median, most-frequently-given grade was a "C", meaning that the work was of the average acceptable level of all those insanely bright students.

Today at Harvard, the average grade is "B+" to "A-", meaning not that the work is extraordinarily good but that the grade is meaningless. The hard sciences there still give a few "C"s.

The result is that today's college students and recent graduates think they've done grand things when they haven't.

A few years out of law school, Harvard sent me a letter saying that my grades had been retroactively raised significantly to try to make them comparable to the grades that were then being handed out.

Amherst held to the old standards and never did that.

Hope all's well with you, Jihadist. Best wishes.

jihad girl has her panties in a bunch..

many muslim women have taken a stand for freedom in their islamic countries and have lost their lives in their quest for a better life for muslim women and children.

you are a muslim women enjoying the freedom of a western education and lifestyle and still must speak down to the west.

"I speak to westerners in their own language and terms, made references to their own art, literature etc so they (can) grasp what I am trying to say"

and girl, if you were as wise as you think you are -you would know not to call me boy.

best wishes in your search for personal jihad.

and God knows best.

Anonymous

Get a Name!!!
and after that, Get a sensibility!!!

You call Jidadist "Girl". ???? What century DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA that you are living in.

Jihadist has consistently shown the highest level of morality and eduation and open mindedness of any of us onthe WASH post site.

and YOU call her GIRL.

she was too tolerant and too understanding of your ignorance.

Heal thyself

Anonymous

You asked :

"jihad girl

you speak with fondness for the west and all our truly great art, music, literature, and architecture.

why? "

I speak to westerners in their own language and terms, made references to their own art, literature etc so they grasp what I am trying to say and most certainly to pass my exams at western universities before:)

We both know that most westerners are not quite familiar with other cultures besides their own.
May be time wasting for me to refer to Indian, Chinese, Southeast Asian, African arts and culture as well as their respective intellectual and cultural traditions here.

I noted that most westerners can't distinguish the various strands/schools of Islam and Buddhism as much as Muslims can't differentiate between the various denominations of Judaism and Christian sects.

By the way, Franz Fanon is not white nor a westerner.

And don't call me "girl" boy.

Regards

J

O.K., Jihadist. hugarinos & lots kisarino's. Atleast we a Islamic Jihadist Zionist in the banking industry. Woe.

P.S. Jihaddist, Sistar(s), Brother(s), I am a "Merchant Services" Transaction Processing" Major, if you know what I'm banking on here. Ya Ya.

My "Bye-rates" and Exchange rates are unbeatable. You know why. Because I feel for my merchants, that I literally "give the store away" so to speaketh. But Nurit's are my specialty's. And I specialize in EBT.

After all, making money is not everything, it's just a sport. One is richest when health and is alive today ya? So happy every.

Oh, plerase stay away from the "Koranaholics" they are Bad company, You know Islamic Zionist love using their own kind to.

Wa a Salaam Wa alaikem. Sholom! Ya Ya.

M A U R I E, B E C k, at 1:05 A.M., et al;

Funny and genuine, wow how ironical.

Jacob Josevz:)

Are we at "war" here? On Faith is only a discussion thread no?

Am I supposed to be undergoing fear and trembling by your statement "We're watching you Jihadist wherever you all may be."?

And I am reading y'all Courtney, whatever you wrote and posted here in On Faith, whomever you may be, whatever you're studying as a post-graduate student at Berkeley.

The only intelligence in this marketplace of ideas is to have better and more reliable reports on the economic, political and social realities and changes in the world.

By that defination, counter-intelligence is having better reports and better data and facts than y'all.

In my line of work as a banker, I let my competitors in the global marketplace to hold on to their outdated "facts" and/or wrong data. The cost will be great for them. Garbage in, garbage out. Wrong input = wrong output. Even if there is right data in, the wrong processing of it based on modalities suitable for another society will led to wrong summaries and consequent decisions.

As a person who voluntarily learned three other languages apart from my mother tongue and read extensively in those languages, travelled the world more in a year than you would in ten, have contacts with a wide swath of businesses and governments, and forged extensive networks with and supported various national and transnational NGOs, my world view has certainly become wider, broader, deeper.

A believer I may be, but naive I am never. Pardon the Yodaism:)

Best regards

jihad girl

you speak with fondness for the west and all our truly great art, music, literature, and architecture.

why?

Oh, and, hi, J. :)

"Visit Stonehenge, the British Museum, the Tate Gallery and Tate Modern, the Victoria and Albert, the replica of the Shakespeare Globe theatre along the Thames. And do not miss Boudicca's statue by the British Parliament - talk about rape and pillage's impact on her."

Not to mention Britain.

Andraste.

"Is there such a thing as Counter Jihad Intelligence?"

By the common definition of 'Jihad,' there's no other kind.

There's another definition of 'Jihad' by which there should be nothing *but* intelligence to it.

Just try telling most people *that,* though.

Ms. Erin White

An essay on faith and doubt that leaves more questions than answers. Of course, the "open ended" essay is a brilliant way to keep one options and mind open to other possibilities.

Like you, I prefer the vibrant faith to soft soap. But once in a while one need to take a good bath with plenty of soft soap to cleanse oneself of the muddied faith.

As for the posters here, like me, apparently Harvard, Berkeley, Cambridge, London School of Economics, Oxford, Sorbonne, Al-Azhar et al are good for getting paper qualifications but not necessarily for one to have better taste in reading materials or to think better. But we all are allowed to be irreverent and nonsensical now and then. And to be testy too.

Maurie Beck

Still looking to send a petition on fear of death to someone? We live, we die. Period. Everything else that happened to one in between birth and death is specific to each and everyone.

Norrie Hoyt

Perhaps Ms. Erin White should have gone to Cambridge and not LSE when she decided on a British University. Cambridge did not give any honorary award to Richard Dawkins. He is regarded as a popularizer and mass marketer of prevailing thoughts and current facts on biology and related sciences.

John Harvard, from Cambridge, gave an endownment to a middling American college that now bears his name that was Ms. Erin White's and your alma mater.

Cambridge is heavier on the science subjects than Oxford and has, had more Nobel prizewinners among its faculty members than Oxford. Oxford produces better showmen and charlatans in politics and the sciences:)

Jacob Josevz

Islamic Mafioso? Elders of the Islamic Zion? Is Berkeley not teaching you anything at all Courtney? Well done. You are starting and spreading new conspiracies on Muslims and 9/11. And playing right into phobias.

Better for us all if you start reading light literature (for a start) by George Orwell, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Jean Paul Sartre, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Franz Fanon, Franz Kafka et al.

Hannah Arendt did say that one would understand life better if one read literature and poetry.

Henry James

Charing Cross Road is over-rated and now commercialized for tourists. There are still second hand books there.

Visit Stonehenge, the British Museum, the Tate Gallery and Tate Modern, the Victoria and Albert, the replica of the Shakespeare Globe theatre along the Thames. And do not miss Boudicca's statue by the British Parliament - talk about rape and pillage's impact on her.

Best regards
J

With rare exception, Western media is relatively unbiased.

Consider the "New York Times" (NYT), "The Washington Post" (TWP), and the "Wall Street Journal" (WSJ). NYT is considered to be liberal. TWP is considered to be moderate. WSJ is considered to be conservative.

NYT, TWP, and WSJ are relatively fair in their reporting, but they are distinctly biased in their commentary: editorial pages and analysis columns. Due to this bias in the commentary, we correctly identify each paper as liberal, moderate, or neoconservative.

However, if we move beyond the commentary and look at the actual reports (i.e., news articles), all 3 newspapers give relatively unbiased reporting.

Yet, are newspapers obligated to give unbiased commentary in addition to unbiased reports? No. Commentary, by its very nature, is an expression of opinion.

Consider the opinion of the WSJ. Its editiorial position is the following, on the matter of Iraq.

1. Sending a puny 170,000 soldiers to invade and occupy Iraq is an excellent idea.
2. The current violent mayhem in Iraq is an outstanding accomplishment that is worth the price of 4,000 dead American soldiers and 30,000 seriously wounded American soldiers.
3. The roughly 2 million Iraqi refugees created by the violent mayhem in Iraq is not the responsibility of the American people (who overwhelmingly supported invading Iraq). Washington should not accept them into the USA. That Washington is willing to accept merely 7000 Iraqi refugees is an overly generous act.

Should we condemn the editorial position of the WSJ? Yes. That position is atrocious. Most reasonable people know that the occupation needed a minimum of 370,000 Western soldiers and that 4000 American soldiers died for nothing.

The WSJ, in its editorial pages, is biased in favor of the neoconservative position.

However, the WSJ is relatively unbiased in its news articles.

reference
---------
The Number of Soldiers for a Successful Occupation
--------------------------------------------------
http://theclearsky.blogspot.com/#115853308310007247

June 24, 2007 1:49

"the women Muslums/muslims/Muslems who did not wear “head Scarves” in Brooklyn, N.Y, suddenly wore them. But the interesting thing was that the was in Various Colors, not just standard Black & White"

Interesting observation, JJ.

After the new year in 2001, the Muslims I worked with were all having to leave the US in a hurry -unloading all their belongings and fleeing. They were unusually grim and humorless. We all thought -What is up? By September -we knew..

oops, Ize oopst here. Hello World anyways,

Ah, just more of the typical Christian chauvanism:

"Bill Lang wrote:

"Sometimes I wish I were as intellegent as many of you so I could worship myself also! "

Or, in other words, 'Obey my vicarious authority or I'll say *you're* the one putting themselves in the position of 'God!''

Yah, right.

Bill Lang wrote:

"Sometimes I wish I were as intellegent as many of you so I could worship myself also! No one here could approach the intellect of C.S.Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, John Henry Newman, or Father John Corapi!"

Well, let's start with Father John Corapi, the former high school football star and real estate agent who was a financial adviser to the Tropicana Resort and Casino in Las Vegas.

This super-intellect wrote:

"The devil donned a judicial robe." (In relation to the US Supreme Court decision in Roe vs Wade).

"In the end, forever, you and I will be in Heaven or Hell. Period."

His official web-site features his "Popular Products."

Turning to another of the super-intellects mentioned by Bill Lang:

Hillaire Belloc wrote:

"I am opposed to women's voting as men vote. I call it immoral, because I think the bringing of one's women, one's mothers and sisters into the political arena, disturbs the relations between the sexes."

Others mentioned were indeed fine writers but their beliefs are certainly assailable. All of those mentioned by Bill Lang, except the aforementioned Fr. Corapi, are dead.

Has the world really run out of talented aphorists? Or is that those living today, with today's knowledge, hold views totally opposed to those of the dead writers Mr. Lang lionizes?

A free pass, reasonable? Does that mean I can spend the rest of my life hurting others? Excellent. I hearby renounce Atheism and instead will believe in Jesus amongst the butchering and raping that I have always wanted in my Godless heart. Now that I have a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card, I can do whatever I want!

With that same breath Bill Lang...Richard Dawkins, Einstein, and many others. Ofcourse you ignore them to make your point. I guess it is obvious who the fool is.

Yo Maurie, You Bloke...Who's Ironical Now?

You spurred me to go back to the dictionary, or at least the Internets, and i found the following essay by Thomas McCallister, grammar nerd.

Ironic' vs. 'ironical'
The first factor that comes to mind for me here is simply that the latter of these variants--at least in the US--is much more likely to elicit spontaneous merriment. Dictionaries, of course, cannot record this judgment directly (that's my job); and while I've never actually witnessed laughter in connection with the second form, I can certainly imagine it. Webster's New World, 4th ed., does seem to be aware of this state of affairs, giving sole possession of the main entry to 'ironic,' and relegating 'ironical' to the end of the entry. This placement of the latter form, as the preface to WNW 4 explains, implies that it "occurs less often than the main entry or has a special quality, as in being British, dialectal, poetic, or rare."
Merriam-Webster 10, however, does not register this distinction, listing the two as equal variants.

Because the difference in form between 'ironic' and 'ironical' doesn't carry any semantic weight, and neither is widely considered to be an example of substandard/nonstandard/'bad' usage, the choice is theoretically up to a given writer or speaker in determining which form to use. Burchfield suggests that the choice is "governed by the rhythm of the sentence"; it's my conjecture that this is more true in Britain than America, where, it seems to me, 'ironic' clearly prevails in all contexts. I plan to stick with 'ironic,' if for no better reason than not to be laughed off the block. Others can do as they please; but if you come to suffer from the ill effects of using hilarious variant forms, don't say I didn't warn you.

'enry James - next saturday i am going out pilaging on Charing Cross Road. care to join me?

Love to. Are they still putting the heads of highwaymen on spikes? Yikes. Too bad Cromwell's head is no longer on a pole outside Westminster Abbey. Those were the good old days.

'enry James - so when he talks about believing in Jesus he may be being ironic.

That's being ironical.

In case QTLM doesn't know it, the Jews did kill Jesus. He might ask how do I know this? I am part of the communist, jewish, atheist conspiracy of international bankers; you know, the ones who control the world's media and finance. Like any self-respecting jew, I'm an atheist secular humanist; in other words a moral relativist. In addition to killing the good lord, we also drink the blood of Christian babies, but only on Passover (It was especially tasty this year, as I had Catholic babies, Southern Baptist babies, Pentecostal babies, and even a Eastern Orthodox Church baby from Serbia). The one thing that irks me is that I wasn't in on the original nailing part (I wasn't born yet) and I hate being accused of something without the satisfaction of being guilty. Fortunately, the apocalypse is at hand and I've got my hammer and nails ready for the second coming.

Perhaps that's what you meant by "a word to the wise", eh Henry?

'enry James - You have the wrong name. the FTC will be after you, my friend.

Actually, I hate to contradict Your Literary Lionhood, Henry, but I believe the FSM (Flying Spaghetti Monster) will be after him.

By the way, for some reason I've got the Herman's Hermits rendition of "'Enery the Eyeth" running thru my head and I can't get rid of it.

I'm 'Enery the eyeth, I am!
'Enery the eyeth I am! I am!
I got married to the widow next door,
Shais been married seven times before.
Every one was an 'Enery
She wouldn't have a Willie or a Sam
NO SAM!
I'm 'er eyeth ol' man nymed 'Enery
'Enery the eyeth I am.

It's not the same kind of rendition as the CIA uses, but it is still pretty extreme.

BTW, nice to hear from you again too 'Enery.

Cheers

Maurie

It's hard not to believe in the bible when I read these wise posts! It always reminds me of a verse, "the fools will be called wise, and the wise will be called fools". Sometimes I wish I were as intellegent as many of you so I could worship myself also! No one here could approach the intellect of C.S.Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, John Henry Newman, or Father John Corapi!

Erin - thanks for your comments. Challenge is great for faith - either strengthening it or proving it useless. Doubts and questions are helpful up to a point. But to date and flirt widely keeps one from finding her true love. Marriage, the covenanting together, is essential.
At some point, if we want the fullness of relationship, we need to satisfy the doubts and answer the questions (or put them aside) and commit our lives to the God of gods and Lord of Lords and King of kings by accepting Jesus' invitation/command in Mark 1 to "follow Me."
Much grace,
StephenC

Reasonable

Meant to address that last post to YOU, bro.

You know how one's mind starts to go after one is dead.

LQTM

don't tell anybody
sssh
but i think (Maurie is *Jewish*, if you know what i mean)

so when he talks about believing in Jesus
he may be being ironic.

just a word to the wise.

Norrie
I suspected that you did not walk the Yard in the time of Willam. it is just that you have a wisdom beyond your years.

Maurie.
you old pillager, you.
nice to hear from you again.
next saturday i am going out pilaging on Charing Cross Road. care to join me?

cheers,

'enry

Yo-Yo - Religions are a human response to the fear of death and the nothingness that awaits us all when our lives end... But of course we do die,and it's hard to get our heads around that grim idea.

You seem almost sanguine about death. As to my own feelings about death, I know what death is; it’s a very bad experience from which one does not recover. As such, I’m totally against it, and frankly, I think it’s a raw deal. I’ve thought of getting a petition together, I’m just not sure who to send it to.

Reasonable and not hateful - He fails to mention that God gives us a pass in those ten rules if we believe in His Son Jesus.

I'm especially happy that most true believers are "true believers", because hearing them tell it, without having Christ in their hearts, you can just imagine the additional mayhem they would be up to, besides tousing alter boys, burning people at the stake, and raping and pillaging, without their higher moral sense. I can attest that this is true; I rape and pillage every chance I get. Obviously I’m a secular humanist and a moral relativist. Not having Christ in my heart leaves me morally unencumbered, so no one expects anything from me other than raping and pillaging, which I will merrily continue until caught. What’s absolutely surprising is that I’ve never been arrested. God must be watching over me.

Henry J.,

Thank you for your ever-intelligent posts here, and for your kind words.

Your brother, William, had this to say about posters in this thread such as LTQM:

"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."

Yes, William taught psychology and philosophy at Harvard, but not, as you suggest, while I was there.

William, as you know, was taken from the world at a far too early age, on August 26th 1910, at Chocorua (near Gilmantin Iron Works), New Hampshire.

I'm of a somewhat later vintage.

Reasonable

i have demonstrated the justification for my reputation. It has nothing to do with My Own Mind.

i am a legend in America.

You...

Henry- you are a legend in your own mind, eh?

Carlin is certainly funny, I listened to him in my teenage years. He is still funny.

You are America's greatest literary critic, eh?

It must be nice to vote for yourself and then declare yourself the winner.

I notice you don't do much to critique Jesus but I would bet that is coming.

Keep saying it over and over to yourself.

"I am a legend in my own mind" "I am a legend in my own mind"

You would not truth if it hit you like a bus on the street.

The ego of some people.

Now I Know! Ya! Good Bye!

LQTM

Until I you demonstrate 1/10th of the inteligence, perception, and imagination of Mr Carlin,

I will continue to find him infinitely more interesting and enlightening than I find you.

Remember that you are addressing America's greatest literary critic. And you have so far demonstrated yourself to be a toad.

Hello World.

Henry:

You and Norrie Hoyt find George Carlin eloquent and a role model? Living in a youniverse?

Eeuww, eeuww, eeuww..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3av_qRR_DWc

My editor corrected this sentence to read as it was originally intended

" I didn't get there either by ignoring or being UNABLE to transcend the evidence of my five senses."

My friends who DO NOT believe in the myths of God are in general MUch more spiritually attuned than the dogmatic true believers who accept and blindly follow the words of their sacred scriptures.

Reasonable etc.

You have the wrong name. the FTC will be after you, my friend.

Imagine a Worldly parent who had the attitudes, practices, and promised sanctions that the dysfunctional father of the Old Testament had.

He would have all his children taken away from him in a heartbeat by any responsible childrens' services bureau. But you WORSHIP him? My God.

Carlin, who is a genius in relation to most of us, clearly including you, is able to go beyond the conventional pieties and see the Emporer's New Clothes clearly. How terrible that he uses bad words! Forget that he is trying to tell the truth, and the truth INCLUDES bad words.

Don't lecture us about weakness. I am america's greatest novelist , and I didn't get there either by ignoring or being able to transcend the evidence of my five senses. What awards have you won?

Well Henry James, I don't find the George Carlin line all that funny. He is plenty funny in other observations about life, but not about God. He fails to mention that God gives us a pass in those ten rules if we believe in His Son Jesus.

Faith is substantive whether you want to believe or not believe. You can't put a scientific finger on love and hope either, but they exist are important in people's lives.

The lack of belief is a weakness, not a badge of honour that many on this forum seem to think it is.

Self centric and not being able to think outside the five senses is pretty lame really.

Ooops amendment;

"Satan, "Pot" [Hashish-Marijuana & Brown Opium Smoking "Osama Bin Laden et al] , is calling US, this and that. It is nuke-Time or NO-TIME???,!!!.

Please, SURRENDER Your "Magnificent 19" heroes of the World Trade Center "HEROES", OR, your so called World Trade Center "MATYRES" of ISLAM?, that are going to "72 virgins [for Man or and Women too?] wow!

Where Is Dr. Frank collins when one need the Doc, whom in turn also need a Doc.1 Ya Ya.

Eeeeee Haaaaaa, Praise the Holy No-Mon Eclat = "i" LORD G-d Almighty & more good tidings a commeth de allis geeta mencha! Ya Ya!

"The LION" your Honorable Mr. N O R R I e the Great!

Yes Norrie, brother William taught psychology at Harvard, probably while you were there,

so I can underline your critique.

As I read through this column, I too kept asking, "But, WHAT does this woman have Faith IN?"

and never got an answer, except perhaps CS Lewis.

LQTM: Norrie and I and many others find having faith in, as Mr. Carlin eloquently says, an Invisible Man who will burn us eternally but loves us,

and associated dissociations,

a stance not to be admired but to be pitied. You are of course free to pity us. All humans deserve pity.

The fact that Norrie is consistent (your word: predictable) in his criticism of believing in an Invisible Man seems a cause for praising Norrie rather than burying him.

(((((((((((( PEACE-LOVE-ROCK-n-ROLL-n-Easy-Rap, Mitt ROMNEY for PREZ, 2008 Ya! )))))))))))))

Gee Norrie,

Once again:

There's nothing so relaxing for you in the early afternoon than a little Christian-bashing.

Maybe you should phone it in. You are so predictable here. All you ever do is teamkill.

Dear Erin,

Harvard's really gone downhill since I was there if its graduates use the word "faith" repeatedly without saying anything about what that "faith" consists of. My physics professor used to say that writing like that would earn you a grade of "ZEE-ROW".

You'd have better spent your time reading Ambrose Bierce on the subject of faith instead of C.S. Lewis.

Bierce's definition of "faith":

"FAITH, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel."

Best wishes.

Yes, YOYO ---- well put. Straight and to the point --- you have spoken much truth.

Religions are a human response to the fear of death and the nothingness that awaits us all when our lives end.
If we never died...if death didn't exist...we wouldn't need religion.We wouldn't need to invest so much of our lives in
sucking up to God in order to get into Heaven. We wouldn't need Heaven.We would prefer to stay living on earth.
But of course we do die,and it's hard to get our heads around that grim idea. Death is scary. We would rather not think about it,or talk about it.
And that's where Religion comes in,offering eternal life.and taking a load off your mind.All you have to do is believe and you'll feel so much better.Don't worry if it makes no sense,just have Faith. You are not going to die.You have our word.
Any wonder that people lap up this snake oil? No.

--

Brava! Godspeed on your journey of faith, Erin ... and thank you for the witness which I'll quote from in my sermon on Sunday at All Saints Church in Pasadena. Come visit sometime!

Brava! Godspeed on your journey of faith, Erin ... and thank you for the witness which I'll quote from in my sermon on Sunday at All Saints Church in Pasadena. Come visit sometime!

That foul-mouthed comedian has more insight into religion than all the apologists for faith combined.

Or did you actually have a response to Carlin's point beyond your attempt to smear him?

To Erin:

You said that "Questioning, then and now, is not easy?". I'm curious why you find questioning so difficult. Are you afraid you may not like the answer, or is there something else involved?

Wow!!! Someone actually lives their spiritual understanding by the comments of a foul mouthed stand-up comic? What a sad waste of intellect and depth!

-- George Carlin, You Are All Diseased
Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man -- living in the sky -- who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time! But He loves you.
-- George Carlin Politically Incorrect, May 29, 1997

God wants honesty and an honest doubt as opposed to a parroting of what other people say will be smiled upon. Remember we have already eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, God is Love, Pure Love, not the tyrant that some people think that He is. Also God is not a He or a She or an it, but a Trinity of Pure Love, that is the Oneness of God. God Incarnate was a man though and His earthly Name was, "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews", He was not a second-rate prophet. I happen to be the New Testament Moses chosen to tell the whole world that God Wins Total Victory, the captives shall be released and the dead shall rise. Thank You, Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.