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Posted on November 30 at 12:07 p.m.Suggest removal
I succumbed to temptation and blew $5.50 on a matinee screening of "2012" yesterday afternoon ... and it was everything I feared. I really tried to turn off my brain and enjoy the movie on its own terms, but I failed. I didn't enjoy it. I thought it was crap.
Granted, the special effects were pretty damned interesting at times (though that's not saying much in the CGI era). But why oh why did such an extravaganza have to be overwhelmed by such an utterly stinky, cliché-ridden script? How can we expect one lucky family to continue to out-drive and out-fly one cataclysm after another while millions of other lives are being violently snuffed out?
If you were really interested in seeing "2012," chances are you have already done so. But if you haven't ... well, I don't know what to tell you. I thought "Armageddon" was one of the most ridiculous, brain-dead movies ever made, but a lot of people liked it. One person's trash is another person's treasure, as they say.
But what really bugs me most about "2012" is the whole "prophecy" thing. That people take all this Mayan calendar mumbo-jumbo seriously is downright embarrassing.
Why? Because there is no such thing as prophecy. Of course, there is such a thing as what we call “self-fulfilling prophecy” ... that is, a prediction that is so broadly-phrased that, given enough time, SOMETHING will occur that will fit the bill. Someone solemnly says, “One day a man will come who will lead our people out of bondage!” And given enough time, some guy may eventually come along who matches that description well enough. This is an example of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
And of course it’s those rare prophecies that DO fulfill themselves that are remembered and celebrated for ages afterwards ... whereas the majority of prophecies that are NOT fulfilled are subsequently, conveniently FORGOTTEN.
But prophecy in a supernatural sense? No such thing.
Posted on November 23 at 1:32 p.m.Suggest removal
I have my clock radio set to go off at 5:00am. That’s when my local public radio station carries BBC World News. I usually listen long enough to determine whether anything particularly catastrophic happened while I was asleep … like India and Pakistan tossing nukes at one another. I usually end up going back to sleep for awhile.
But on the morning of Nov. 17 one of the first things I heard was this quote from Bryan Fischer of the conservative American Family Association:
“The more devout a Christian is, the more patriotic he is. The more devout a Muslim is, the more of a threat he is to national security.” This apparently is Mr. Fischer’s way of saying that Muslims need to be purged from the U.S. military.
I nearly jumped out of my skin. Yes, it seems to be the dawning of a new era in conservative Christian McCarthyism.
CHUCK ANZIULEWICZ
http://anziulewicz.livejournal.com
Posted on November 17 at 11:15 a.m.Suggest removal
I am pro-choice for the following reasons:
1: I believe most Americans recognize that there is a moral and ethical distinction to be made between the termination of a pregnancy and the wanton killing of a living, breathing human being.
2: I believe most Americans know that while a woman’s fertilized egg or blastocyst is genetically “human,” the resemblance to a person ends there.
3: The vast majority of abortions take place within the first trimester of pregnancy, and most American still prefer that women still have that option.
4: The most emotional arguments against abortion hinge on religious beliefs: That a human pregnancy is somehow “sacred” or that a fertilized egg is imbued with some kind of “soul” or other supernatural characteristic. Since such religious beliefs vary widely from person to person, all I can suggest is that pro-lifers are welcome to conduct their own reproductive lives as their conscience and religious beliefs dictate. They have absolutely NO right to demand that others do the same.
5: I consider a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy absolutely FUNDAMENTAL to her right to self-determination. PERIOD.
6: In my lifetime alone, the human population of this planet has DOUBLED from over three billion to over six billion, and it could conceivable TRIPLE to nine billion by the time I'm 70. These are all people that will have to be clothed, fed, educated, housed, employed, transported, and have their medical and sanitary needs met. Inevitably more forests will be cleared to make room for it all, energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions will continue to skyrocket, climate change will continue to spiral catastrophically out of control ... and TRUST ME, Jesus ain't gonna come descending out of the clouds to make it all better!
So with that in mind, YES, I'm not only pro-choice, I'm PRO-ABORTION.
Posted on November 17 at 11:12 a.m.Suggest removal
People err when assuming that expanding the hate crimes statute to include sexual orientation (meaning Gay AND Straight, by the way) will "criminalize" a person’s thoughts. The current hate crimes law has been on the books since 1969, and NEVER over the past 40 years has someone been prosecuted for expressing prejudice against members of a race or a religious group. Christian pastors have been invoking Scripture against non-Christians for as long as there have been Christians, and the hate crimes statute has never been used against them.
Yesterday (Nov. 16) a little group of conservative Christians held a rally near the Capitol Building in Washington to express their frustration over the amended hate crimes law. They preached their hatred of Gay people as always, and guess what? No one was arrested. Who cares what they say? I don't. I'm used to it. Pat Robertson, James Dobson, and Sean Hannity can spew their bigotry toward Atheists, Muslims, and Gay people until the cow come home for all I care. All it does is illustrate their own prejudices, and frankly it just makes them look silly.
But there is a BIG difference between expressing personal prejudice against a group, and being motivated by that prejudice to attack someone’s person or property. If someone uses Scripture as a justification for beating up someone who is Gay, that’s a different story.
Likewise when it comes to delineating between different crimes against property: There’s a big moral and ethical difference between someone who spraypaints a "tag" on a highway overpass, and someone who spraypaints swastikas on the front of a synagogue.
Until conservatives mount a concerted effort to repeal the federal hate crimes statute that has been in effect for past 40 years, I’ll continue to see their arguments against the legislation that President Obama signed as pretty disingenuous.
Posted on November 17 at 11:10 a.m.Suggest removal
People err when assuming that expanding the hate crimes statute to include sexual orientation (meaning Gay AND Straight, by the way) will "criminalize" a person’s thoughts. The current hate crimes law has been on the books since 1969, and NEVER over the past 40 years has someone been prosecuted for expressing prejudice against members of a race or a religious group. Christian pastors have been invoking Scripture against non-Christians for as long as there have been Christians, and the hate crimes statute has never been used against them.
Yesterday a little group of conservative Christians held a rally near the Capitol Building in Washington to express their frustration over the amended hate crimes law. They preached their hatred of Gay people as always, and guess what? No one was arrested. Who cares what they say? I don't. I'm used to it. Pat Robertson, James Dobson, and Sean Hannity can spew their bigotry toward Atheists, Muslims, and Gay people until the cow come home for all I care. All it does is illustrate their own prejudices, and frankly it just makes them look silly.
But there is a BIG difference between expressing personal prejudice against a group, and being motivated by that prejudice to attack someone’s person or property. If someone uses Scripture as a justification for beating up someone who is Gay, that’s a different story.
Likewise when it comes to delineating between different crimes against property: There’s a big moral and ethical difference between someone who spraypaints a "tag" on a highway overpass, and someone who spraypaints swastikas on the front of a synagogue.
Until conservatives mount a concerted effort to repeal the federal hate crimes statute that has been in effect for past 40 years, I’ll continue to see their arguments against the legislation that President Obama signed as pretty disingenuous.
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Posted on November 4 at 12:01 p.m.Suggest removal
I’m reminded of a commentator on a Southern Baptist website who wrote, “I can’t reconcile how someone could feel he or she was born with strong homosexual feelings, love Christ and yet take on the limitations of what seem to me to be straightforward biblical teachings. That’s agonizing, and I don’t really understand it.”
And this is the weird thing: “Straighforward biblical teachings” should at least be understandable to the average person. So often I hear it said, “OUR ways are not GOD’s ways,” as if God was some sort of inscrutable alien being.
Consider The Golden Rule: We do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Put all the religious dogma and ritual aside, and this is what our laws boil down to. We don’t lie or bear false witness because we won’t want people to lie to us. We don’t steal from other people because we do not want people stealing from us. We don’t betray the trust of our spouses because we wouldn’t want them doing the same to us. Same goes for killing and a variety of other “bad” behaviors.
And yet somehow there seems to be this sheepish adherence to a double standard for Gay and Straight people. If you’re Straight, it’s all so wonderful to be able to find a compatible person of the opposite sex, court and get engaged and marry and live happily ever after. But if you’re Gay, all of that is completely out of the question. Don’t even bother trying to find a compatible person. Lesbians and Gay men are precluded from any hope for romance or commitment. Gay people are simply told: “Gosh, sorry about that. You make us uncomfortable; acknowledging your existence means we might have to revise what we’ve been teaching all these years - meaning, Whoops! No infallible Magisterium or “literal” Bible ... so you’ll just have to sacrifice your life and any hope of finding somebody to love. Tough luck, kid. God said it, I don’t necessarily understand it, but there it is.”
I wish more social conservatives and Catholics would at least TRY to wrap their minds around why this makes so little sense to Gay people, and why constant exposure to this sort of disdain is exactly WHY so many Gay young people end up taking their own lives.
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