What Art Movement Are You ?

You Are Romanticism

You are likely to see the world as it should be, not as it is. You prefer to celebrate the great things people do... not the horrors they're capable of. For you, there is nothing more inspiring than a great hero. You believe that great art reflects the artist's imagination and true ideals.

What Art Movement Are You?

What's Killing Christianity ?

"Liberalism is not 'killing' Christianity. What is 'killing' Christianity is the lack of ability of Christian churches in general to respond to issues in our society that have always been there, but now, in an era of fast communication, are much more evident and also issues that have developed in the last century, due to other understandings regarding science, psychology, sociology and politics, environment, sexuality, etc..."

--- Luiz Coelho,
in a comment over on Fr. Jake's

How Do You Know When Fox News is Lying ?

Their lips move.



You need to get this t-shirt before their lawyers show up...

QotD for 22 Mar., 2007

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality."

--- Desmond Tutu,
Nobel Peace Prize winner and
retired Anglican Archbishop
of the Province of Southern Africa

Global Rich List

How rich are you? >> I'm loaded. It's official. I'm the 10,881,975 richest person on earth!

That puts me amongst the top 0.18% richest people in the world - and I'm nuthin' but middle-class. Boy, that'll get you thinkin' about the UN Millennium Development Goals...

To see what one person can do about this, visit the ONE Campaign.

[via Eileen]

Republicans are People, Too.

Nicked from the Mad Priest, who nicked it from Ellie, who got it from...?

Ammo for Switchers

Over on Valleywag, Nick Douglas has 42 Reasons Normal People Can Switch to Macs.

Are Macs just for hipster designers? Not at all! Maybe you've wanted to switch to a Mac, but you were afraid it wouldn't work with your Office files. Maybe you can't convince your parents they won't lose their vacation photos. Maybe your boss thinks Macs are toys not meant for serious adults. For all those cases, here are 42 reasons that normal people can switch to Macs.

QotD for 8 Mar., 2007

Technology changes the way we view social problems. Older mechanical technologies make us see the world as deterministic, knowable and manipulable. New emergent technologies like the Internet teach us that control is an illusion, the universe is out of control and laughing at us, and that the more we watch and control, the more problems we have.

--- Cory Doctorow

[via boingboing]

Evangelical Environmentalists, eh ?

There's been a lot of brouhaha lately about how the Christian Evangelical movement is broadening it's focus to issues like social justice, the poor, and the environment.

I've always thought this was just a bunch of window-dressing (or as we in the South like to say, "puttin' lipstick on a pig"). And now a recent article in the Washington Post reminds us that the concept of Christian Evangelical = extremist social conservative is alive and well:

Focus on the Family founder James C. Dobson and other conservative Christian leaders are calling for the National Association of Evangelicals to silence or fire an official who has urged evangelicals to take global warming seriously.

[via the Mad Priest]

Maryland Boy Dies from... Being Poor

A twelve-year-old boy died of a toothache Sunday.

A routine, $80 tooth extraction might have saved him.

If his mother had been insured.

If his family had not lost its Medicaid.

If Medicaid dentists weren't so hard to find.

If his mother hadn't been focused on getting a dentist for his brother, who had six rotted teeth.

By the time Deamonte's own aching tooth got any attention, the bacteria from the abscess had spread to his brain, doctors said. After two operations and more than six weeks of hospital care, the Prince George's County boy died.

I know my readers could find any number of people upon which to place blame for this. But the fact is that we killed this child, all of us, for not having the national will to create a universal health care system that could cover even the simplest things.

Shame. Shame on all of us.