Book of Hours

Season 3 of The Guild has begun!

Rejoice!

Blackwater Founder Implicated in Murder by Jeremy Scahill (www.thenation.com)

'...Briefed on the substance of these allegations by The Nation, Congressman Dennis Kucinich replied, "If these allegations are true, Blackwater has been a criminal enterprise defrauding taxpayers and murdering innocent civilians." Kucinich is on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and has been investigating Prince and Blackwater since 2004.

"Blackwater is a law unto itself, both internationally and domestically. The question is why they operated with impunity. In addition to Blackwater, we should be questioning their patrons in the previous administration who funded and employed this organization. Blackwater wouldn't exist without federal patronage; these allegations should be thoroughly investigated," Kucinich said.'

Ali, didn't these two show up at an event in NY?  ;)

Cheap Grace in Senate's Apology for Slavery by Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite (On Faith section of the Washington Post, www.washingtonpost.com)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's name has come up several times during the past few years during sermons in two churches that I've attended, one evangelical and the other very liberal.  The few things that I know about the man suggest that he was remarkable: a Christian theologian, a Nazi resistor, a participant in a plot to assassinate Hitler that resulted in his execution by hanging, and something of a Renaissance man (if I remember correctly).  I'm curious to learn more about the man, his thinking, and his beliefs.

re: Your Brains

ROFLMAO

An interesting short essay concerning different views of the afterlife by one of my favorite contributors to the On Faith section of the Washington Post.  If you read the below linked article at all, please read all the way through the end.  Stopping only part of the way through misses the better part.

Edit: Having read Sasha's comment and realized that I nowhere state that the author writes exclusively from the perspective of his own faith tradition (in this case, liberal mainline Protestant Christianity), please note that he does so.  The On Faith section of the Washington Post provides a forum for authors of different religious and philosophical persuasions to respond to questions from the perspective of their own traditions.  The below short essay is not intended to nor does it constitute anything like an exhaustive survey of the afterlife as understood by the major religious traditions of the world.  ~S~

“The Man upstairs, if any, will be kind to me. Never mention God to me again.” by Willis E. Elliot (www.washingtonpost.com)

If anyone would like to read all of the panelists' responses, please click here.  The majority of the contributors are Christians of some persuasion, but several belong to other faith traditions or are secular in their outlook.

The above data reflects a complete run of Mana Tombs.

I'm the blue bar in second place just beneath the DK tank. I confess that I over-aggroed about three times and got stomped into a sin'dorei-flavored puddle of goo, but it was so worth it. =D

Relativism does not imply subjectivism and skepticism.  It is not evident that the man who is forced to confess that his view of things is conditioned by the standpoint he occupies must doubt the reality of what he sees. It is not apparent that one who knows that his concepts are not universal must also doubt that they are concepts of the universal, or that one who understands how all experience is historically mediated must believe that nothing is mediated through history.

- Richard Niebuhr, Meaning of Revelation (18-19)

General Napier, the British officer, responding to the Indian custom of suttee:

see more pwn and owned pictures

The mystery of Ireland's worst driver (news.bbc.co.uk)

'All reality is iconoclastic.  The earthly beloved, even in this life, incessantly triumphs over your mere idea of her.  And you want her to; you want her with all her resistances, all her faults, all her unexpectedness.  That is, in her foursquare and independent reality.  And this, not any image or memory, is what we are to love still, after she is dead.'

"You're one of the lucky few."

Thus did the chair of the psychology department speak unto me concerning my missing grade.  Evidently, MCC experienced a computer systems glitch that resulted in some students' grades not being properly saved after being entered by the instructors.

I now have a shiny new grade in my transcript, and life is good.

For reasons unknown, my PSY290 instructor has not seen fit to post my grade for that class.  According to the Records Office, this ought to have been done some time ago.

Meanwhile, my readmission application to ASU, lacking a complete final transcript, languishes in bureaucratic limbo even as the spring semester draws ever closer...

I arrive at work at 0700 this morning after not falling asleep until 0200 or so.  I punch the time clock only to discover that I work from 1300 to 2200 today.

FAIL.

On a related note, I felt exhausted to the point of mild nausea at 2100 yesterday evening, but could not fall asleep after going to bed at 2300 to save my life.  Yet, I felt relatively awake and alert at 0130.  Why does my circadian rhythm hate me so?

Update: I was able to fall back asleep after getting back home from my failed attempt to work, something that I'm typically incapable of doing.  I'm am glad, very glad.  =D

An American president publicly supporting labor union workers demanding their earned wages and benefits?

Yes, indeed!  Hail to the chief, baby!

::does Tauren victory dance, complete with "raising the roof" movement::

Chicago workers' sit-in becomes a rallying point by Rupa Shenyo (www.washingtonpost.com)

Who would like to go to see the movie "Frost/Nixon" sometime this weekend or next week?  It looks fascinating, and you can read a review of the film in Variety by clicking the link below.

Frost/Nixon by Todd McCarthy (www.variety.com)

My friends (insert creepy McCain smile here), are you willing to complete a 10-15 minute survey on attachment style and romantic relationship history by Friday of this week?  All of your results are 100% anonymous (even from me), and I will make your results available to you via your test number, which only you will know, should you wish to see them.

As part of a research project for my Research Methods class, I'm administering a survey, the first part of which consists of the Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised (ECR-R) Adult Attachment Questionnaire (Fraley, Waller, and Brennan (2000)), an attachment style assessment tool available in the public domain.  Should you agree to participate, I will give you more information regarding the test and the meaning of the results after you've completed the survey.

Unfortunately, I've rather let this go longer than I should have.  I had meant to bring the surveys with me on Friday, but didn't get around to finishing them in time.  Thus, for all who're willing, I'll try to deliver them to you by hand on Monday or Wednesday.

Thanks for reading this over.

How does everyone's late afternoon look on this upcoming Friday for a get-together at Zach and Ali's place to hang out and celebrate Sasha and I's birthday?  Ali has offered to bake a cake or two, and Zach has expressed his willingness to employ his grill-fu.  The rest of us can bring a dish or some such.

What do you say?

Doesn't Anyone Care About Moral Hazard Anymore? by Dan Mitchell (www.npr.org)


What I find so frustrating about the situation described in the above article, in which tax payers wind up involuntarily insuring ultra-risky investments, is that the epic-scale financial institutions guilty of frittering away their depositors' money hold the entire economy hostage against the threat of their businesses being allowed to fail.  Investment banks and hedge funds, and to a lesser extent some holding banks, have demonstrated that they can and will take advantage of depositor insurance and the federal government (read: the tax payers) as ways of shifting the risk for their idiotic attempts to make money with money by leveraging the market beyond all reason.  It is my considered opinion that if depositor insurance serves a useful purpose as the safety net of last resort (and I think that it does) and financial institutions frequently invest depositor money in manifestly foolish ways and then expect the tax payer to assume the burden of their debts, but not to share in the profits ("socializing the risk and privatizing the profits"), then closer regulation of financial institutions and markets becomes an essential part of protecting the economic wellbeing of the country.

I doubt that the author of the above article would agree with my conclusion regarding the role of regulation, but I'm no libertarian.  As for libertarianism and the financial crisis, please see the below article.  As the title indicates, it's quite polemical and paints with a broad brush.  Even so, I agree with his basic conclusions.

The End of Libertarianism: The financial collapse proves that its ideology makes no sense by Jacob Weisberg (www.slate.com)