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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
"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.
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.
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.
Good Morning Professor Hoyt, Thank You for such a historic verification, going back to the future has it's advantages and now i am clearer on what it was like at Amherst. P.S. I know you only Puffed & did not inhail like Bill Clinton admitted wrongly [Do n deny]?
Att" Mr. MENCH; Go make some money.
P.S. Oye vay, it's Jihad time again! O.K my preferred weapon are Straw "spitune Balls" . Keep the rubber bands to your self. Ya Ya.
What's the difference between a Lame Duck, a Elephant & a Donkey? Same Shiat! And there is nothing Sunny about that!
Note: Government needs more "SUNSHINE" not less Ya.
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'
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."
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
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.
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.
''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.
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.
"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.
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.
I'm honored me self to have met you sir. but I have another question:
Around 1955, I know that "Tricky Dick" Richard Nixon & Mcartny "G" men was persuing mostly "Commy" or "Reds Sympethizers" at all university's. Did you know of any Commy Sypethizers at Almherst or outside of that Ivy league?
Mote: Was not Oppenheimer a "Socialist" more than a red?
P.S.: I know where his family live or lived & they are Cool, but you are cooler. ya Ya. GOOD NIGHT!
< ?: +)/ Eeeeeeeee Haaaaaaa Praise the LORDi/ECLATi. "Together Forever with source One" yhea ya Babby.
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.
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.
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.
Hello "The Lion", My Alma Mater is Marist Colledge. Besides "The Marist Poll" Marist College is a private school. And I did like Bill Gates, I dropped out at the end of my third Year.
That Year was When my dad died, that year is when I lost me ass-off in the Stock market Crash of the mid 80's, when the Market plunged in equal numbers and > [always think in Percent] to the 1929 Crash. A 22% single day drop is "Skid road" fore many. not just window exitings. But luckely I started from scatch. Ya Ya.
So now I'm just a plain Schlepp and finds me self as a knower of All but a Master of None.
P.S., if someone told me, "Hi" or "I'm Gay" I would walk away silently. Because it takes a nut case to "Come-on", at first blush, by saying some "Sex prefrence" thing instead of making that open wrong ended approach.
In America they have federal Medical Records Protection Laws. And for many good resons. So to Come on and say, hello my name is so & so & I/m Gay! Wow, Such Faggets really! is not that queery behaviour?
Next thing you'll know is that we will have "Gay Education" or oral sex 101 or annal 102... Ya?
"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.
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.
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".
Your Eclati-On name is now "MENCH" or "Mench". Ya, is Yiddish this means "A-MAN" or "A-Man." Well, looks like we can "Shake-Hands" stand Back to back, take ten pace, turnaround and shoot rubber bands at each other or "Spit Paper Ball" Eaa Ha me Mencharino! Ya Ya. Wa Asalaam wa a lae chem!
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.
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.?
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.
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:)
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.
"..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.
< ?: +)/ Ya Ya. No Joke. Praise the Almighty Fearles thus non jealous Lord/Eclat + "i". Ya!
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< they can vote at 18. Fortunately, most of them don't.
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.
All Comments (121)
ghyib vslc tbzous xfrv avbfyku wthcm cvrs
September 4, 2007 7:26 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on September 4, 2007 19:26
ghyib vslc tbzous xfrv avbfyku wthcm cvrs
September 4, 2007 7:24 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on September 4, 2007 19:24
m214k
August 19, 2007 3:08 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on August 19, 2007 15:08
m317k
August 19, 2007 3:08 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on August 19, 2007 15:08
m214k
August 19, 2007 3:07 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on August 19, 2007 15:07
m340k
August 19, 2007 3:07 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on August 19, 2007 15:07
m317k
August 19, 2007 3:07 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on August 19, 2007 15:07
Your wisdom belies your years.Thanks for sharing these thoughts from your heart.
July 5, 2007 1:01 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on July 5, 2007 13:01
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.
June 25, 2007 8:01 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 20:01
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
June 25, 2007 6:59 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 18:59
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
June 25, 2007 4:11 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 16:11
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.
June 25, 2007 1:57 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 13:57
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.
June 25, 2007 1:30 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 13:30
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.
June 25, 2007 1:05 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 13:05
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.
June 25, 2007 12:55 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 12:55
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!
June 25, 2007 12:26 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 12:26
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.
June 25, 2007 12:18 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 12:18
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
June 25, 2007 11:55 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 11:55
وَلَكِنْ عِنْدَمَا تُكَلِّمُهُمْ بِهَذِهِ الْعِبَارَاتِ فَإِنَّهُمْ لَنْ يَسْمَعُوا، وَتَدْعُوهُمْ فَلاَ يُجِيبُونَكَ
June 25, 2007 11:43 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 11:43
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?
June 25, 2007 11:35 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 11:35
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.
June 25, 2007 10:32 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 10:32
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.
June 25, 2007 10:00 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 10:00
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.
June 25, 2007 9:57 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 09:57
Att: THE-LION;
Good Morning Professor Hoyt, Thank You for such a historic verification, going back to the future has it's advantages and now i am clearer on what it was like at Amherst. P.S. I know you only Puffed & did not inhail like Bill Clinton admitted wrongly [Do n deny]?
Att" Mr. MENCH; Go make some money.
P.S. Oye vay, it's Jihad time again! O.K my preferred weapon are Straw "spitune Balls" . Keep the rubber bands to your self. Ya Ya.
What's the difference between a Lame Duck, a Elephant & a Donkey? Same Shiat! And there is nothing Sunny about that!
Note: Government needs more "SUNSHINE" not less Ya.
There is Sholoma in Shiloha.
June 25, 2007 8:56 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 08:56
Atheism is nothing but a late Christian cult, its only distinction its capacity to indulge in unprecedented levels of mass murder.
June 25, 2007 8:46 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 08:46
Anyone leaving college with the same evangelical superstitions they had upon entrance has wasted four years of college.
June 25, 2007 8:04 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 08:04
PS And no more "gotcha" posts halogen. Leave those to Concerned the (neo)Conservative--oops! Concerned the Christian.
June 25, 2007 7:55 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 07:55
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.
June 25, 2007 7:51 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 07:51
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'
June 25, 2007 6:43 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 06:43
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
June 25, 2007 4:47 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 04:47
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
June 25, 2007 3:14 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 03:14
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
June 25, 2007 3:01 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 03:01
Umm... Halo?
Whatever that was supposed to prove...
Would you care to explicate?
June 25, 2007 2:27 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 02:27
''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.
June 25, 2007 2:05 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 02:05
"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.
June 25, 2007 1:35 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 01:35
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
June 25, 2007 1:29 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 01:29
"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.*
June 25, 2007 1:20 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 01:20
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.
June 25, 2007 1:03 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 01:03
His Honorable "The Lion" king, et al;
I'm honored me self to have met you sir. but I have another question:
Around 1955, I know that "Tricky Dick" Richard Nixon & Mcartny "G" men was persuing mostly "Commy" or "Reds Sympethizers" at all university's. Did you know of any Commy Sypethizers at Almherst or outside of that Ivy league?
Mote: Was not Oppenheimer a "Socialist" more than a red?
P.S.: I know where his family live or lived & they are Cool, but you are cooler. ya Ya. GOOD NIGHT!
< ?: +)/ Eeeeeeeee Haaaaaaa Praise the LORDi/ECLATi. "Together Forever with source One" yhea ya Babby.
June 25, 2007 12:46 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 00:46
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.
June 25, 2007 12:38 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 00:38
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
June 25, 2007 12:21 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 00:21
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.
June 25, 2007 12:17 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 00:17
Hello "The Lion", My Alma Mater is Marist Colledge. Besides "The Marist Poll" Marist College is a private school. And I did like Bill Gates, I dropped out at the end of my third Year.
That Year was When my dad died, that year is when I lost me ass-off in the Stock market Crash of the mid 80's, when the Market plunged in equal numbers and > [always think in Percent] to the 1929 Crash. A 22% single day drop is "Skid road" fore many. not just window exitings. But luckely I started from scatch. Ya Ya.
So now I'm just a plain Schlepp and finds me self as a knower of All but a Master of None.
P.S., if someone told me, "Hi" or "I'm Gay" I would walk away silently. Because it takes a nut case to "Come-on", at first blush, by saying some "Sex prefrence" thing instead of making that open wrong ended approach.
In America they have federal Medical Records Protection Laws. And for many good resons. So to Come on and say, hello my name is so & so & I/m Gay! Wow, Such Faggets really! is not that queery behaviour?
Next thing you'll know is that we will have "Gay Education" or oral sex 101 or annal 102... Ya?
June 25, 2007 12:01 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 25, 2007 00:01
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.
June 24, 2007 11:57 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 24, 2007 23:57
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.
June 24, 2007 11:44 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 24, 2007 23:44
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".
June 24, 2007 11:36 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 24, 2007 23:36
Att: Jihaddist,
Your Eclati-On name is now "MENCH" or "Mench". Ya, is Yiddish this means "A-MAN" or "A-Man." Well, looks like we can "Shake-Hands" stand Back to back, take ten pace, turnaround and shoot rubber bands at each other or "Spit Paper Ball" Eaa Ha me Mencharino! Ya Ya. Wa Asalaam wa a lae chem!
June 24, 2007 11:33 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 24, 2007 23:33
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.
June 24, 2007 11:31 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 24, 2007 23:31
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.?
June 24, 2007 11:26 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 24, 2007 23:26
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.
June 24, 2007 11:22 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 24, 2007 23:22
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.
June 24, 2007 11:17 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 24, 2007 23:17
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..
June 24, 2007 11:14 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 24, 2007 23:14
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
June 24, 2007 11:06 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 24, 2007 23:06
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.
June 24, 2007 11:00 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 24, 2007 23:00
I think Jacob is trying to tell us something.
June 24, 2007 10:28 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 24, 2007 22:28
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.
< ?: +)/ Ya Ya. No Joke. Praise the Almighty Fearles thus non jealous Lord/Eclat + "i". Ya!
June 24, 2007 10:14 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 24, 2007 22:14
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< they can vote at 18. Fortunately, most of them don't.
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.
June 24, 2007 10:12 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on June 24, 2007 22:12
Henry,
I just checked. Harvard now accepts 9% of applicants and Amherst 19%.
There's som