Back in January, 2007, I attended a press conference in Memphis during which Dennis Kucinich appeared to strongly oppose impeachment. Based upon a recent interview with Amy Goodman of DemocracyNow, though, Kucinich seems to be warming up to the idea: I don't think that it's wise for the House and…
Mr. "Life, the Universe, and Everything" makes some good points. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjvSX4Y8C1o[/youtube]
The US House and Senate Democrats have passed supplemental funding bills for Iraq and Afghanistan which, for the first time, put conditions of oversight upon such funding, which past Republican Congresses had merely rubberstamped, with added pork. President Bush has cried “Wolf!” His attack upon the bill first relied upon…
I wrote a paper for one of my Master’s classes a couple of weeks ago, integrating what I’d absorbed from two textbooks into pages of my actual life. Shortly after I got it back from my professor, a friend and I were discussing this very blog, which led to a discussion of philosophizing in general. He lamented how lately, he’s seen an awfully lot of writing overwrought with words at the expense of actual ideas. This guy is an intellectual himself, a prolific writer and thinker, so his comment gave me pause.
As I’ve read for this particular graduate Communication class, I’ve worried more than once that some in my degree program seem to overstate the obvious. I love taking a fragment of seemingly mundane human interaction, analyzing its details and its place in our lives to parse from it a deeper understanding of our connectedness, yet I can’t shake the underlying fear that many would meet our research with a big, “So what?”
I thought I’d share some thoughts from this particular paper here, and ask for the feedback of the ‘blog’s readership. Based on responses I’ve received to previous pieces and the responses I’ve read here to the writing of others, I believe this audience falls toward the thinking end of the spectrum. There. I’ve laid out a blanket compliment. Be nice when you pick me apart, then, please??
Here goes:
Drama unfolds around us continually, though the mundane events of daily life often blur into methodical sameness …
At Dangerous Intersection, we have often encountered definitional issues when we’ve cnsidered whether someone believes in “God.” During a recent vigorous exchange several of us invoked the “Einstein” version of God. Although I had read a few quotes of Einstein regarding his beliefs, I had not comprehensively read Einstein’s own words describing his “God.”
The April 16, 2007 edition of Time Magazine features a new biography about Albert Einstein (Einstein, by Walter Isaacson). For that reason, I jumped at the chance to read this Time article, which focused on what Einstein actually meant when he said he believed in “God.” The bottom line?
[Einstein] settled into a deism based on what he called the’ spirit manifest in the laws of the universe’ and a sincere belief in a ‘God who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists.
Einstein was born to two parents who were Jewish “by cultural designation and kindred instinct, [though] they had little interest in the religion itself.” Young Albert ended up attending a large Catholic school in his neighborhood. While there, he “developed a passionate zeal for Judaism.” At the age of 12, however, he gave this up, concluding that “much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. From that time on, he articulated (through many essays and interviews) a “deepening appreciation of his belief in God, although a rather impersonal version of one.”
At a dinner party in Berlin, one of the guests publicly expressed amazement that …