http://www.jhm.org/home-new.asp One of the difficulties of carrying on dialogue with some folks is the cloying urge to stop being polite and just explode with a perfunctory "ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?!?" This is my reaction when I hear or read enough of the kind of thing to be found…
A follow up, answer, another viewpoint…
The title is somewhat rhetorical. Hate–in its undiluted, culturally-disseminated form has only one reason–the perpetuation of local power–for the individual, the power to insist that he/she is right and refuses to countenance criticism, implicit or otherwise; for the state, the power to maintain power in the face of outside insistence on change. . If those against whom the hatred is directed are unfortunate enough not to see how they play into it, then the issue becomes complicated. What we now see in the Middle East and many other parts of the world is a hatred based on local potentates (single rulers, committees, vested interests, or cultural hegemons) desire, need, hunger to maintain a privileged position in their section of the world, something that became more and more untenable int he aftermath of World War ll.
Can that really be? After the decades of beating ourselves (namely, the West, which includes Europe, North America, and certain isolated pockets here and there and may now, paradoxically, include Japan, but certainly includes Australia, and may in time include India…) for our “responsibilities” in causing global problems (such self-recrimination soundly based on the legacies of a colonialist past), maybe it’s time to revisit some of that surplus self-loathing and see where the responsibilities actually lie.
The current exacerbating events of the current mess are all from the same source–the end of the second world war and the onset of the Cold War. Lest we forget, WW ll was …
I don’t usually go around discussing poop.
That might have changed forever, though, once I stumbled upon smellypoop.com, a site dedicated to disseminating information about . . . well, poop. Smellypoop.com is a refreshingly frank site presenting “solid” information on a subject that simultaneously compels and repels.
For example, smellypoop.com addresses each of the following topics (as well as others):
But there’s more. Smellypoop.com provides comprehensive research on the topic of farts. You can order fake poop and poop-themed greeting cards at the site (click on “Order Fake Poop and Other Great Gifts”). There is a poop forum and a poop photo gallery. You’ll find poop poems, poop riddles, and poop sayings, including “Never kick a fresh turd on a hot day” (attributed to Harry S Truman).
What especially interests me, though, is the comprehensive list of poop synonyms at smellypoop.com. There are hundreds of them. Though I was already aware of dozens of poop terms (including the classic four-letter reference and oldie-but-goodie “number two”), I was woefully unaware of the vast number of poop synonyms. Thanks to stinkypoop.com, my repertoire now includes terms like “blind eels,” “bootycakes,” “colon cobras,” “dookie-doop-droop” “mooky-stinks,” and the quaint but useful “pooplets.”
Why so many synonyms for a basic bodily function, I wondered? Then it hit me: …
This will be short. Seems the Pope has gotten into a bit of controversy because of a couple of ill-conveived remarks he made about Islam. Now, like most people, he probably meant Those Bad Ones Over There, who wear bombs and kill people in order to get into heaven. But…
Would you like to see an actual photograph of a human soul entering an embryo at conception? Here it is (with permission of the artist at Pixwit): To see the full-size high-rez photo, along with numerous other fascinating images, check out the collection at Pixwit.com. Each image is accompanied with a…