The problem with Christianity for those who seek earthly power is that Jesus explicitly renounced such power.

Socialism and left-liberalism and “compassionate conservative” are really devices with which the state assumes the moral obligations of the individual — and increasingly robs the individual of the resources to be charitable herself. Christianism — of both left and right – is not just a variation of Christianity.

It’s an attempt to coopt Christianity to empower the political leader. That’s why the politicians like it: it gives them the moral highground, and more money, and eventually more power. All of which leads to less freedom and less genuine faith. Andrew Sullivan

I love it when two things click on the Internet. This morning I came across an insipid ad for the Ford Escape that promised to end boredom if you only bought the $25,000 toy. And then I read about a research project by the European Space Agency where 12 volunteers will lock themselves away for 17 months.

The goal is to simulate a voyage to Mars so that scientists can better understand the boredom likely to occur.

From the BBC:

Dr Richard Ralley, of Edge Hill University, is currently researching how boredom affects people, to determine whether some personality types cope better than others.

“People assume that the opposite of boredom is excitement, so parents take their children to a theme park. Similarly, the information contained on the Internet was what everyone expected to relieve people’s boredom.

“But quite obviously what humans want is social interactivity — so parents would be better off taking their children on a picnic than to a theme park. And with the Internet, people want to engage with each other – that’s where the blogs and the chatrooms came from. The other stuff is seen as nerdy now.”

So maybe instead of buying a $25,000 toy, you would be better off hanging out with people at a coffee shop, doing a little volunteer work or just walking around your neighborhood, greeting the people you see with a smile and a saying a few words.

Buying shit is like crack; it’s never enough.

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

whom she surely knows are sitting
at every red light
in every town,
wishing they could one day be
someone’s
very best thing.

From I ♥ My Wife by Darlyn Finch.

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

A little more than a month ago, my friend, blogger and poet Sherry Chandler posted about a book that she had read. She wrote:

I have been very slowly reading my way through Chris Hedges’ War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning (Public Affairs, 2002). I find it very slow going because every page seems to rip my heart out. Hedges is a great writer; the book is riveting. It’s a portrait of humankind at its most brutal.

I picked up the book and found I had the same problem. Hedges’ book is not one I could read quickly. I read and re-read sentances, whole paragraphs, trying to wrap my head around his experiences. A tremendous amount went into my chapbook, but where I wanted to copy out whole pages I forced myself to capture thoughts I could contemplate.

It is unusual for me to make a case for a book, but in the sixth year of the third millenium of our common era, this is a book that all Americans ought to read.

This is a passage I copied from War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges.

Writers such as Joseph Roth or Ernst Jünger understood that we had entered into a new era, one in which we would always flirt with death and self-destruction on a hitherto unknown scale. p. 85

Tadpole: I give a lot of thought to the suicide bomber who detonated himself less than 30 feet in front of my truck. I see it all over again in dreams. I imagine it instantly when I hear any loud bang. When I tell people about the incident I feel strange, because it seems so alien. People must think I am telling a tall tale. I wish I were. I re-live the moment in my…

I’m really becoming something of a fan of Henery’s photo essays on Word Of Mouth. One of the legititmate complaints that journalists levy against bloggers is that most of us aren’t primary sources; that we just repeat what others have written with our own commentary added. WOM’s bloggers are different.

The bloggers at WOM are out in their community doing good community reporting.

And, I feel really sorry for Tri-C’s students.

To hide is the ultimate victory for Osama and other terrorists. If we build walls, bomb, and slash the flow of immigrants, we may survive for awhile, even decades-but we will cease to be America and to be the globe’s Beacon of Liberty and the Infinite Possibilities of Re-imaginings. Tom Peters

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

A little more than a month ago, my friend, blogger and poet Sherry Chandler posted about a book that she had read. She wrote:

I have been very slowly reading my way through Chris Hedges’ War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning (Public Affairs, 2002). I find it very slow going because every page seems to rip my heart out. Hedges is a great writer; the book is riveting. It’s a portrait of humankind at its most brutal.

I picked up the book and found I had the same problem. Hedges’ book is not one I could read quickly. I read and re-read sentances, whole paragraphs, trying to wrap my head around his experiences. A tremendous amount went into my chapbook, but where I wanted to copy out whole pages I forced myself to capture thoughts I could contemplate.

It is unusual for me to make a case for a book, but in the sixth year of the third millenium of our common era, this is a book that all Americans ought to read.

This is a passage I copied from War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges.

The prospect of war is exciting. Many young men, schooled in the notion that war is the ultimate definition of manhood, that only in war will they be tested and proven, that they can discover their worth as human beings in battle, willingly join the great enterprise. p. 84

SGT Sack: Well, not me exactly. I was on the Fisher House website the other day (getting a link for my post about the forthcoming Sandbox book), and noticed that they have a Marine Corps Marathon support team, where soldiers/ sailors/airmen/marines that are running the MCM can raise money to support the Fisher House. I thought to myself…,

Back in January and February I wrote several posts about Ashley. The story present a broad range of ethical and moral challenges that I couldn’t even begin to wrap my head around. Then on Sunday the Seattle Post Intelligencer ran this Op-Ed piece and I dropped through a trap door in what I thought was the bottom of the pit.

[Hat tip to Terry at I See Invisible People for finding this.]

Three years ago, a 6-year-old Seattle girl called Ashley, who had severe disabilities, was, at her parents’ request, given a medical treatment called “growth attenuation” to prevent her growing. She had her uterus removed, had surgery on her breasts so they would not develop and was given hormone treatment. She is now known by the nickname her parents gave her — Pillow Angel.

The case of Ashley hit the media in January after publication of an article in a medical journal about her treatment. It reappeared in the news recently because of the admission by Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center that the procedures its doctors had performed to stop Ashley from growing and reaching sexual maturity violated state law. In Canada (as in Australia), a child can be sterilized only with the consent of a court.

At the time of the initial publicity about growth attenuation, Ashley’s parents wrote on their blog: “In our opinion only parents of special needs children are in a position to fully relate to this topic. Unless you are living the experience, you are speculating and you have no clue what it is like to be the bedridden child or their caregivers.”

I did live the experience. I lived it not as a parent or caregiver but as a bed-ridden growth-attenuated child. My life story is the reverse of Ashley’s.

Annie McDonald’s story is nothing short of incredible. Please read the whole piece.

I’ve been thinking a lot about firefighters lately. Mostly because of my reading of War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges. Police, firefighters and military personnel all take enormous risks on our behalf. But among those three, it seems to me, firefighters have a special place.

They face a real, not just potential, danger every time the smoke rises and the alarm sounds.

Nine men died in Charleston, South Carolina, yesterday, doing what they’ve done every day of their lives. And their comrades will not stop doing what needs to be done. Knowing that the next fire could be their last, they keep going. There can be no clearer definition of courage.

From the Associated Press:

Fire swept through a furniture warehouse, collapsing the building’s roof and claiming the lives of nine firefighters in a disaster the mayor described Tuesday as “difficult to fathom or quantify.”

“Nine brave, heroic, courageous firefighters of the city of Charleston have perished fighting fire in a most courageous and fearless manner, carrying out their duties,” Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley said at a morning news conference. “To all of their loved ones, our heart goes out to them.”

Two employees in the building were rescued from the blaze, which broke out at about 7 p.m. Monday in the Sofa Super Store and warehouse, Riley said. Firefighters punched a hole through a wall of the warehouse to reach them.

Firefighters, police officers and other rescue workers saluted as the bodies were carried from the warehouse during the night.

“To lose nine is just a tragedy of immense proportions,” Riley said. “To lose nine is just unbelievable.”

But true.

[P.S. Listen to Terry Gross’s interview of Denis Leary for further insight.]

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

In my capacity as a teacher I see a lot of word lists: hundreds of words for the General Educational Development test and thousands for the Scholastic Aptitude Test and American College Testing exams. You need a vocabulary of more than 30,000 words to read Shakespeare.

Americans have a vocabulary of approximately one-third that number. How many of these do you know?

abjure, abrogate, abstemious, acumen, antebellum, auspicious, belie, bellicose, bowdlerize, chicanery, chromosome, churlish, circumlocution, circumnavigate, deciduous, deleterious, diffident, enervate, enfranchise, epiphany, equinox, euro, evanescent, expurgate, facetious.

Be sure to take a look at the rest.

One of my teachers, Rabbi Roger Klein, once told us that you have to use a new words three times the day you learn it to retain it. What word will you be using today?

This is often the way I feel about writing.

Which makes Writing Rule No. 3 so difficult.

I like hearing my opinions
tumble out of my mouth
like toddlers tied together
while crossing the street,
trusting they won’t be squashed
by fate…

From What I Like and Don’t Like by Philip Schultz.

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

A little more than a month ago, my friend, blogger and poet Sherry Chandler posted about a book that she had read. She wrote:

I have been very slowly reading my way through Chris Hedges’ War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning (Public Affairs, 2002). I find it very slow going because every page seems to rip my heart out. Hedges is a great writer; the book is riveting. It’s a portrait of humankind at its most brutal.

I picked up the book and found I had the same problem. Hedges’ book is not one I could read quickly. I read and re-read sentances, whole paragraphs, trying to wrap my head around his experiences. A tremendous amount went into my chapbook, but where I wanted to copy out whole pages I forced myself to capture thoughts I could contemplate.

It is unusual for me to make a case for a book, but in the sixth year of the third millenium of our common era, this is a book that all Americans ought to read.

This is a passage I copied from War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges.

To speak of the Israeli war of independence with many Israelis, in which stateless European Jews established a country in a land that had been primarily Muslim since the seventh century, is to shout into a vast black hole. There is an emotional barrier, a desire not to tarnish the creation myth, which makes it difficult for many Israeli Jews, including some of the most liberal and progressive, acknowledge the profound injustice the creation of the state of Israel meant for Palestinians. p. 47

Eric Coulson: One of the things that Americans have been concerned with as this war has moved along is whether or not we are properly equipped to carry out our missions. And rightfully so. You have paid your tax dollar, you have supported this effort, and you have sent your loved ones to fight. Anyone who has been in the military can give you a litany of…

It’s not about marriage rights. It’s not about civil rights. It’s about human rights. And 40 years after the landmark United States Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia, the battle continues. Mildred Loving (née Jeter) married Richard Perry Loving in 1958. Their home state of Virginia refused to recognize the legality of their marriage.

Judge Leon Brazile infamously proclaimed:

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

It always comes down to somebody’s personal delusion god, doesn’t it?

After 10 days of blog silence, Molly at After Englightenment gets back to chopping wood and carrying water with: the problem with chinese merchandise…., orange crush- snapdragon, private embarrassment, difficult learning and turtle. Welcome back Molly, we missed you.