While I’ve been flattened by a virus (my guts are still gurgling at me), everyone else on the network has been charging on ahead. It’s too bad I’m only doing a virtual tour, a real one would do a better job of spreading the disease and reducing productivity so I could catch up.
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Al Stefanelli has started a series on mental illness. First up: OCD.
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Kate Donovan has a series on how to be a friend to a mentally ill person.
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Stephanie Zvan has been running a series all week on the Social Security system. What’s with all the series posts lately?
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Dana Hunter’s heart is thrilled by medieval mayhem and horses. Perhaps a little TMI on just how much she loves the horses…
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Ian Cromwell notices some troubling similarities between a certain presidential candidate and an American Psycho in #MittBateman.
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Mano Singham notices a similarly troubling obsessive vanity in Paul Ryan, Superman.
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Sikivu Hutchinson also has a few complaints about Massa Mitt and white privilege that exempts them from the stigma of ‘handouts’.
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Taslima Nasreen observes that all the anti-Islam movies are badly made films slapped together by people who don’t know how to make movies. But we don’t kill people for bad acting.
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Aron Ra debated Ray Comfort. Ray Comfort then declares victory, announces that he never heard of this guy “Aaron”, and mocks him for using a great big sciencey word that means “lives in trees”.
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Chris Clarke observes the entirely coincidental, fortuitous, and convenient suitability of southern California flora for terraforming alien worlds, with special attention to the their applicability to the Firefly universe.
Well, there was that scene from Bullets Over Broadway…
Why am I not surprised that Ray Comfort doesn’t know what “arboreal” means?
This “Around TfB” series of posts is a great idea. It helps Patheos to identify which bloggers are most active and interesting, for their next recruitment drive.
I think that Ray Comfort is misinterpreting John Lennon’s lyrics.
Here’s my interpretation of these lyrics:
Personally, I believe that John is implying that he doesn’t believe that heaven and hell exist (unlike what Ray Comfort says), but is speaking to those who do. He may be suggesting to these people that not wasting your life – the only one you’ll get – fantasising about an imaginary Disneyland in the sky or fearing a fictional pit of fire under the earth’s crust, makes it all the more special.
Here I think that John acknowledges that possessions exist (like Ray Comfort’s interpretation), but asks us to try to imagine a world in which they no longer exist – something he thinks is attainable. He could be saying that “greed and hunger” are negative attributes of people who want to gain assets that they can selfishly keep for themselves. I think he is dreaming of a world where we need no possessions, in which all of the world can join together as brothers and sisters, and share everything.
But that’s just me. Any thoughts?
Given that the original version of Imagine had the lyrics “Imagine no religion,” I suspect your interpretation is accurate.
Comment 10 over there:
Reply:
OK, Selkirk, that was just plain mean.
Could she miss the point more completely if she tried? The Innocence of Muslims has, I am sure, succeeded beyond its makers’ wildest dreams, since its aim was quite clearly to provoke violence by Muslims against innocent third parties, in order to advance their own dominionist agenda. Nor are the actors those in most danger, although at least one is now suing the makers of the film, in part for putting her life in danger. In Pakistan today, a policeman has been shot dead while defending the US consulate in Karachi, while a driver for ARY TV was shot dead when police fired into a crowd – but I’m sure both were more than willing to die for the freedom of Terry Jones, Steve Klein and Nakoula Basseley Nakoula to troll Muslims.