Our Little Chatterboxes: TSA – Sexual Assault

I haven’t written on here in a while.  There hasn’t been much that has been greatly concerning to me, until now.

The link here (Our Little Chatterboxes: TSA – Sexual Assault) will take you to a blog site by a prominent mom-blogger.  She flew recently with her child to run a marathon.  Without TSA full-body scanning machines at the airport from which she flew, she was subject to a full body scan for which she was not aware she had to be subject to.

I’ll leave the rest of the story up to her to tell, but please read her full story and forward her site onto who you feel should know about this:

Here is why I was sexually assaulted. She (the TSA screener) never told me the new body search policy. She never told me that she was going to touch my private parts. She never told me when or where she was going to touch me. She did not inform me that a private screening was available. She did not inform me of my rights that were a part of these new enhanced patdown procedures.

Tags: Current Events, patdowns, privacy, screening, sexual assualt, TSA

A New Equation

(Brown + Funny name = Muslim) = Stupid

Spiritual But Not Religious – CNN.com

It has its own acronym, SBNR.

I’ve often described myself as “spiritual but not religious” knowing that it sounds to others like I’m hopping onto  a bandwagon, but, the thing is, it’s exactly what I mean.

Evidently there are people who despise SBNR.  They say that it’s inherently selfish, that it cuts off community, that it reinforces our country’s individuality problem.

I guess there are some SBNR’s who may live out their spirituality in that sort of selfish way, but my guess is that there are other SBNR’s like me who feel their spirituality is the very thing that connects them to community and to the world in an even more profound way then any  religious community would ask or demand of them.

To anybody who sees anything wrong with “spiritual but not religious”, I’d say, where did you get that rule?

Are there dangers in being ‘spiritual but not religious – CNN.com

Tags: community, religion, spirituality

How Obama Is Losing It

I think I posted earlier (or maybe that was on Twitter) a comment about the President that went like this: ” Obama carefully preparing to get angry about the oil spill.”

Wherever I posted it, that was weeks ago.  The oil is still gushing.  Americans were convinced in 2008 that he would finally be a President who would fight for them.  Represent them.  Get angry and passionate for them.  They must now feel stranded.  I’m disappointed to say the least.

President Barack Obama has effectively and with great skill, marginalized himself through all of this–the oil spill, health care, Afghanistan.  For all of the things he’s done in his more than 1 year as President, what his non-reaction to and seeming internal confusion about each of these major issues suggest is that he’s lost the command he so easily gained during his campaign.

During his 2008 campaign he was a warrior.  Now he looks like a man defeated.

During his campaign he convinced me that he was one who was too smart to use political propaganda–who knew that Americans were tired of political posturing.  He seemed to me to be above it all.  He was a clear break from the normal politician–he was here for the people and not to protect his own political viability.  He was the American President.

Maybe he would be one of those Presidents who didn’t care who he offended as long as he defended the American people from politics run amok.

That’s what I hoped then.  That’s not at all what I see now.  What I see now is a President too scared to offend anybody at  all.  A President who confuses diplomacy with being a doormat.  Who isn’t taking charge at all, but is being blown away by the harsh political winds of Washington DC.

At the risk of saying something that sounds like it’s from the intro to MTV’s “Real World”, President Obama needs to stop being careful and start leading this country.

Here’s a part of Peggy Noonan’s peice:

The president, in my view, continues to govern in a way that suggests he is chronically detached from the central and immediate concerns of his countrymen. This is a terrible thing to see in a political figure, and a startling thing in one who won so handily and shrewdly in 2008. But he has not, almost from the day he was inaugurated, been in sync with the center. The heart of the country is thinking each day about A, B and C, and he is thinking about X, Y and Z. They’re in one reality, he’s in another.

Here’s her complete article:  Peggy Noonan: He Was Supposed to Be Competent – WSJ.com.

Tags: Barack Obama, leadership, oil spill, Politics

Teens Take Vodka Straight Up – Through Their Eyes – TIME NewsFeed

Things are getting stupider.  The newest trend among teenagers–evidently only among white teenagers–is called eyeballing.

Eyeballing is taking shots of vodka  not through their mouth–no, that would make too much sense–but through their eyes.

I wonder what my optometrist thinks of this.

Teens Take Vodka Straight Up – Through Their Eyes – TIME NewsFeed.

Tags: Current Events, teen trends

Science and Theology As Partners

Science and religion are both their own unique searches for truth, but, as Michael Zimmerman points out in his article Religion and Science: Respecting the Differences, the means by which science gets its ideas are rooted in method rather than simple  assertion.

A piece:

Where does that leave religion? Well, it depends what you mean by religion. When religion (or more likely its fundamentalist adherents) begins to make claims in the complete absence of evidence and in a manner that is not falsifiable, and when those claims are passed off as scientific, the record must be set straight. Creationism, in all of its guises, including intelligent design, regularly makes claims of exactly this sort. Rather than addressing evidence, creationists simply make faith statements and expect that those faith statements be taught in science classes.

Zimmerman goes on to praise the United Methodist Church, for one, for making this particular assertion at its quadrennial conference in 2008:

Be it resolved that the General Conference of the United Methodist Church go on record as opposing the introduction of any faith-based theories such as Creationism or Intelligent Design into the science curriculum of our public schools.

Unfortunately, the UMC and other more progressive denominations are in the minority when it comes to inviting science into theology.

Intolerance towards science abounds in other, more fundamentalist strains of  all faith traditions.

On a more personal note, I have heard a story from a former fellow seminary student who said the administrative assistant at the church she did her summer internship at told her she believed that Satan planted dinosaur bones in the ground to mislead us all into thinking that the world was older than creationists say it is.  I other words: dinosaurs never existed; they are fabrications of satan.  This coming from a Presbyterian.  And I’m sure she’s not alone in her cosmic conspiracy theories.

As long as this sort of ignorance exists within the Church–within faith at all–the entire Church, as well as faith itself, looses out on the very thing it says it possesses: the Way towards Truth.

Tags: faith, religion, science, truth

Allen Ginsberg: Poet And Photographer : NPR

Beautiful shots of a forgotten photographer and submerged poet.

Allen Ginsberg: Poet And Photographer : NPR.

Bristol Palin Deal: $30,000 Per Speech.

Bristol Palin Deal: $30,000 Per Speech. That averages out to $10 for each time she says the word “like” during said speeches. http://goo.gl/efiC

Why Is Anyone Still Catholic? | Belief | AlterNet

Fair question.

Why Is Anyone Still Catholic? | Belief | AlterNet.

Tags: Catholic, faith, sex abuse scandal

Should More People Skip College? – Business – The Atlantic

Been thinking a lot about this lately.

Should More People Skip College? – Business – The Atlantic.

Wise Words from President Obama

“If you’re someone who only reads the editorial page of The New York Times, try glancing at the page of The Wall Street Journal once in awhile. If you’re a fan of Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh, try reading a few columns on the Huffington Post website. It may make your blood boil; your mind may not often be changed. But the practice of listening to opposing views is essential for effective citizenship. So too is the practice of engaging in different experiences with different kinds of people.

For four years at Michigan, you have been exposed to diverse thinkers and scholars; professors and students. Do not narrow that broad intellectual exposure just because you’re leaving here. Instead, seek to expand it. If you grew up in a big city, spend some time with some who grew up in a rural town. If you find yourself only hanging around with people of your race or your ethnicity or your religion, broaden your circle to include people who’ve had different backgrounds and life experiences. You’ll learn what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes, and in the process, you’ll help make this democracy work,” - president Obama.

Tags: Barack Obama, democracy

The Strange Tale of Phineas Gage

I find this story fascinating…

The picture above and below, as well as the text below are courtesy of Neatorama.com

A HOLE IN ONE

Phineas Gage considered himself a lucky man. At the age of 25, he had a responsible, well-paid job as construction foreman for Rutland and Burlington Railroad in Vermont. On September 13, 1848, as Gage was packing a load of explosives into the ground, the charge exploded without warning. The iron rod he was using to tamp the explosives into the earth flew into the air with the force and speed of a rocket, hitting Phineas Gage directly in the head. The 3’7″ rod (109 cm), which weighed 13 pounds (6 kg), entered his left cheek, careened straight through his skull and brain, and emerged out of the top of his head like a yard-long bullet.

The Strange Tale of Phineas Gage.

Tags: american history, history, neurology

What the Buddha Might Say About The Tea Party Movement

With the popular emergence of the Tea Party and the conservative strains of the Libertarian Party comes this false sense that we all could live our individual lives without any connections or involvement at all from local, state, or federal government.

In fact, many libertarian ideologies seem to verge on anarchy–this idea that every individual can and must make it on their own and has the right to do whatever it takes to be successful, even if their efforts undermine the basic principles of moral law or the rights of others.  The emerging motto of the Tea Party is the old “Don’t Tread On Me”.

My feeling about these emerging conservative movements is that they either choose to ignore or quite simply take for granted the many ways that a host of government services make our everyday lives not only better, but just plain livable.  The greatest weakness of  both of these political ideologies is what we might call “the fallacy of autonomy”.

One of the greatest aspects of the Buddhist tradition is an everyday awareness of our interconnectedness–the idea that none of us could possibly live dependent on ourselves only.  We wouldn’t be  able to do much more than wake up in the morning if we could not depend upon the previous hard work of others (for example, who baked the Poptart you threw in the toaster this morning?  Who picked the ingredients that made it possible for the baker of your Poptart to bake it in the first place?  The box of Poptarts wasn’t baked in the  cereal aisle of the grocery store, so who were the many people responsible for getting it there?)   This awareness of our interconnectedness, the Buddha says, should lead us all to a profound sense of gratitude.

Here is an essay (which I did not write) that highlights the many ignored (and often under-appreciated) ways we rely on the way our government–local, state, as well as federal–makes it possible for us to make our safe ways through each day.

It’s not news to say that there are ways that the government, on all levels, could make aspects of our lives more pleasant if they just butt out in particular ways, but those who are asking the government to butt out completely may not know what they are asking for.

Here is the entire essay,  written by someone who uses the handle “Radical Texan” and posted on the Democratic Underground website:

This morning I was awakened by my alarm clock powered by the electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US Dept of Energy. I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility. After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC-regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service (of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric  Administration) determined the weather was going to be like (using satellites launched and maintained by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration). I watched while eating my breakfast of US Dept of Agriculture-inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time as regulated by the US Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the US Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-approved automobile and set out to work on the roads built by the local, state and federal departments of transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of quality level determined and tested by Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank. On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the US Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational safety and Health Administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back  home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence thanks to state and local building codes, fire marshall’s inspections during government-overseen construction (and possibly since), and the vigilant watch of my city and county Fire Departments. I find my home has not been plundered of all it’s valuables thanks to the cooperation of the city, county, and state Police Department.

I then log on to the Internet (which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration) and post on freerepublic.com and Fox News forums about how government involvement in healthcare is SOCIALISM which is BAD because the government can’t do anything right.

Tags: Buddha, Buddhism, Current Events, government, interconnectedness, interdependence, libertarian party, Politics, tea party

Another Iteration of Freakonomics

I don’t know about you, but after reading Freakonomics, I felt smarter–or at least like I could discern the crazy things that people do better than I had before.

Here’s yet another way to get smarter.  The discerning minds of Stephen and Steven go audio with their new Freakonomics  podcast.

It looks like new episodes may come out weekly-ish.

Tags: behavioral economics

On Glenn Beck’s attacks on Jim Wallis

Here’s Jim Wallis, leader of the Sojourners, and a wonderful example of  a person of faith who puts his faith in action every single day, rebutting Glenn Beck’s attacks on him.

It’s sad that Glenn Beck’s microphone is bigger than Jim Wallis’.  Wallis has been doing the work of changing unjust social and political structures through his keen prophetic voice and insightful understanding of Scripture for more than 40 years, but in spite of all of that, he may go down in the minds of many people with the labels Glenn Beck has pinned him with–Marxist, socialist, communist.

Jim Wallis is, assuredly, not any of these.  He’s a modern day visionary and a man who, just like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Micah and other Hebrew prophets, speaks wisdom and truth to power.

Perhaps none of these aforementioned prophets would have ever guessed that their voices would ring through the ages as powerfully as they have.  Let’s hope that just like their’s, Jim Wallis’ voice–however small it is right now compared to Beck’s, or however lost it is in this noisy world–will one day be recognized as uncompromisingly biblical and truth-telling.

Here’s a paragraph excerpt from Jim Wallis’ letter to Glenn Beck:

Private charity, which Beck and I are both for, wasn’t enough to end the slave trade in Great Britain, end legal racial segregation in America, or end apartheid in South Africa. That took vital movements of faith which understood the connection between personal compassion and social justice. Those are the movements that have inspired me and shaped my life — not BIG GOVERNMENT. And my allies in faith-based social justice movements have wonderfully different views on the role of government — some bigger than mine and some smaller than mine — but we all believe social justice requires changing both personal choices and unjust structures. Apparently Beck thinks social justice ends with private charity, but very few churches in the nation would agree with him.

Read Jim Wallis’ entire rebuttal to Glenn Beck:

Jim Wallis: What Glenn Beck Doesn’t Understand About Biblical Social Justice.

Tags: Current Events, faith, Politics, progressive faith, prophetic wisdom, social Gospel, social justice

BBC’s Knowledge Magazine

I’d like to share a new magazine that I have just introduced myself to.  BBC’s Knowledge Magazine is a beautiful bi-monthly magazine dedicated to nature, science, and history–three of my favorite topics that don’t come together in most magazines out there. Nat Geo aside.

The latest issue highlights Mark Twain at the 100th anniversary of his death.

Good stuff.

Tags: history, magazine, nature, science

Brief History: The Textbook Wars – TIME

The long tradition of misinformation in school textbooks continues…or gets even worse.

Here’s a snippet from this week’s Time magazine:

…the Texas board of education voted 10-5 in favor of curriculum standards that would promote conservative takes on controversial issues in the pages of the state’s textbooks. The changes, expected to win final approval in May, include an increased emphasis on and sympathetic treatment of such Republican touchstones as the National Rifle Association and the Moral Majority. They also tout the superiority of capitalism and the role of Christianity in the nation’s founding. Even Thomas Jefferson’s profile will be diminished; some board members were less than fond of his ideas about the separation of church and state.

Shouldn’t it be troubling to all of us that Thomas Jefferson is deemed too progressive for the 21st century?

Here’s the whole article:

Brief History: The Textbook Wars – TIME.

Tags: censorship, misinformation, school textbooks, Texas board of education, Time Magazine

Facedown Photos

I find this completely hilarious, artistic, and apocalyptic.

Facedown Photos.

Tags: art, photography

The Dropout Economy – 10 Ideas for the Next 10 Years – TIME

Here’s a must read article in this week’s Time Magazine about the way employment, education, and living is changing and may play out in the near future.  I’ve had many of these exact same ideas myself, so it’s intriguing to think that others are thinking along the same lines.

1) What good is a college education anymore?

2) The ways most of us are learning are different than they were just 10 or 15 years ago.  What about 10 years from now?

3) It seems like we all are moving toward a smaller, more communal way of everyday living.  Working out of our houses, condensing our budgets, sharing out resources with our friends and extended families.  Even moving in with one another to simplify our lives. Is communal living the future?

The Dropout Economy – 10 Ideas for the Next 10 Years – TIME.

Tags: behavioral economics, economics, jobs, society

Retail Worker’s Lament: An Original Poem

Retail Worker’s Lament        by Patrick Ryanball

(after Elliott Kahlil Wilson’s Wedding Vows)  Note: These are not the intended line breaks

I like being stepped on.  I have no need for personal space.   Feel free to reach across me without saying a word.  I want that.  Assume I will move for you like a weather vane moves for the wind.  That your time is more valuable than mine.  Assume I’m uneducated.  That I have nothing better to give to the world but my cracked and soiled hands.  All my time.   Emptied for you to fill.

Please call me a strange name even though I wear a name tag like a clear day wears sunlight and the night pins on the moon.   And go ahead, ask me where the bananas are, I will tell you with some joy born out of pithy revenge that they are the bright yellow things right in front of you, and the both of us will laugh.

I have nothing better to do right now than to serve you.  I’m always ready to go the extra mile.  I’ll do it with a smile slapped across my face.  I’m as flexible as taffy.  Stretch me as far as I can go.  I am not yet broken.   And pay no mind to the mess you’re making.  Once you walk away, it vanishes you know.

Minimum wage is just fine.  In fact, I wouldn’t accept anything less.  I’m not interested in paying my bills this month.  Let me work for the holy gift of health insurance and fair pay.  I can wait years.   I’m as patient as a fire alarm for it.  I will lose my house for this job.  My dignity.  My free time.  All of my relationships.   I am that committed to this company.

Want to know my retirement plan?  I will work up to the day I die, poor and anonymous.

Tags: poem, poet, poetry, working class