Jim Rittenhouse's semidaily journal of news, commentary and reports
Take a look at the gravestone to the right; that’s from one of my family members; translated from the German, it reads “Born in the year 1736: Heinrich Rittenhouse…” and trails off into the grass. Wikipedia’s entry on the Mennonite church / movement notes: Persecution and the search for employment forced Mennonites out of the [...]
Is the controversy over building a mosque near ground zero a grand distraction or a grand opportunity? Or is it, once again, grandiose demagoguery? It has been said, “Nero fiddled while Rome burned.” Are we not overly preoccupied with this controversy, now being used in various ways by grandstanding politicians? It looks to me like [...]
America is not a “Christian” nation in the way we think of “Muslim” nations. If it were, birth certificates would automatically indicate “Christian” as the “faith of birth.” It would be illegal to convert to another faith. Jews, Native American religions, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Mormons and atheists would be unwelcome. They would need to practice [...]
“When we think of Islam we think of a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world. Billions of people find comfort and solace and peace. And that’s made brothers and sisters out of every race — out of every race. America counts millions of Muslims amongst our citizens, and Muslims make [...]
In Northern Ireland (and I’m sure my readers will correct me), the political system is way unrelated to the rest of UK politics – its own microcosm. You have a multiple divide in politics there – ethnic, religious, class, minority/majority issues, republican versus monarchist, and who smote who first and last. When you get these [...]
I thoroughly recommend Robert Crumb’s new book The Book of Genesis Illustrated; exceptionally well done, and done straight, word for word. One note: while reasonably tastefully done, there’s no way to render the begats and things like Lot and his daughters without pictures that would make your maiden aunt Edna go *gleep, that’s a bare [...]
The 97-year-old heir to the Caliphate and Sultanate of the Ottoman Empire, Osman, died recently in Istanbul…he was the last heir to have been born during the Ottoman Empire (he was a 12 year old student in Vienna when the Empire was abolished) and he spent the rest of his long life in exile, living [...]
The family has taken up a new and very nice practice; having family reading times – not scheduled as such, but so everyone has something good to read and is in the living room together reading. It works pretty well, I think, and is an improvement over endless oh-I-can’t-watch-that debates about TV stuff. Tastes run [...]
Online search references for the Quran and the Bible; the Quran part has both the Arabic and three English translations, and the Bible one has a BUNCH of different translations, most NOT English (which has around 20 different versions). Note that the authoritative version of the Quran is the Arabic one, of course. And this [...]
I have been listening to enough rants, hate and nonsense in the last year and a half to last me a lifetime or more, and I’ve been more than fed up with it all. But I started realizing that this sort of crud is endemic; uninformed people who choke off their sources of information to [...]
I am frequently dismayed by various Truthers out there who insist on a Grand Conspiracy theory of the universe; stories about how the moon landing was faked, the world is flat, that 9/11 was an inside job and how Obama is some kind of Manchurian candidate smuggled into the country as a very small baby [...]
From the Coming Anarchy site: projected maps of Europe in the future and the former Yugoslav areas, along with their tag on microstates. Personally, I strongly doubt some of this; France has been doing a thorough stomp of its minority groups (linguistics-wise, especially) for the last 100+ years to Make Everyone Parisian, and the Bosniak [...]
Big jump in the rates of teen cases of STDs and syphilis and teen pregnancies during the Bush administration, according to the CDC. A different sort of ‘don’t ask, and we won’t tell you’.
New blasphemy criminalization law passed by the Irish Parliament. “Under the changes, the maximum fine for blasphemy will be cut from €100,000 to €25,000.” Gee, thanks.
Rush Limbaugh: Sanford was probably driven in desperation to cheat on his wife and get some small pleasure out of life by Barack Obama’s efforts to destroy America, as in what-the-heck-it’s-all-over-I’m-just-going-to-have-fun. Full quotes at the link. At the other end of the world, Congressman Michelle Bachmann is suggesting that the Obama Administration is going to [...]