Some time ago, after watching awful remakes of The Manchurian Candidate and Charade, I went on a rant against Hollywood remaking films that were excellent in the original. What was the point, I asked? How could the remakes not come out looking worse than the originals? Calming down from that exhilarating bout of righteous indignation, …
Monthly Archive: January 2006
Jan 30 2006
The rapturites among us
After I wrote about the rapture letters, I viewed the film The God Who Wasn’t There (thanks to Aaron Shaffer (Manager of the Freedman Center) who loaned me the DVD) and the filmmaker included an interview with the creator of that letter writing site. He seems like a nice guy who sincerely believes that the …
Jan 27 2006
The Role of Blogs in the New Media Age-2
Blogs are highly idiosyncratic and so hard to talk about except in terms of our own personal response to them. Clearly there are different types of blogs: those that dwell on the personal lives of the authors, those that highlight particular issues (e.g., evolution and intelligent design), those that seek to provide perspective and commentary …
Jan 26 2006
The Role of Blogs in the New Media Age-1
Today marks the one year anniversary of this blog. I had no idea when I started it with a very tentative posting on January 26, 2005 where it would go or that it would take the shape it currently has. I had no idea, though, that it would be as much fun, as useful (to …
Jan 25 2006
David Horowitz busted again
Most people are by now aware of David Horowitz’s publicity-seeking gimmicks, where he runs around the country trying to scare everyone with lurid tales of left wing academics gone wild, abusing their power by terrorizing conservative students. As long-time readers of this blog know, I became part of this story when I wrote an op-ed …
Jan 24 2006
The threat of terrorist attacks – 2
The recent release of an audiotape by Bin Laden offering a truce in the war may be used to kick off the election year season of ratcheting up the fear of terrorism. In his message bin Laden points to attacks in other countries and promises a new attack on the US and explains the reason …
Jan 23 2006
The threat of terrorist attacks-1
I have posted in the past about how the current administration likes to keep the populace in a state of constant fear. Succeeding in that task, persuading them that each one of us is under imminent threat enables the administration to undertake the systematic dismantling of the hard-won rights and civil liberties that underly societies …
Jan 20 2006
Religion and respect
Last month I posted a tongue-in-cheek article about the “rapture letters”. Most readers found it amusing but I was gently upbraided by one who said that I was making fun of the deep and sincere beliefs of many people and not being respectful of them. It is undoubtedly true that I was having fun at …
Jan 19 2006
Morality exists independently of, and prior to, religion
There were some very thoughtful and lively comments to yesterday’s post on the topic Should atheists come out of the closet? It was suggested that one of the other reasons that atheists might feel uncomfortable about revealing their point of view is because of the common perception that morality is derived from religion and that …
Jan 18 2006
Should atheists come out of the closet?
Some time ago, I posed the question on whether atheists should “come out.” I was reminded of this recently when I was involved in a discussion some time ago on the topic of whether atheists should ‘come out of the closet.’ The implication of the question was that stating openly that was one was an …
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