Amnesty International (AI) est sans aucun doute la plus célèbre organisation de défense des droits de l’homme à travers le monde. Créée en 1961 par l’avocat britannique Peter Benenson, cette organisation non gouvernementale dispose de sections dans plus de cinquante pays et de plus de deux millions d’adhérents à travers la planète. Son travail remarquable [...]
I wonder what Obama’s spiritual advisor thought of him writing a fundraising letter for a fucken KKK racist. Particularly since Wright thinks America is this racist nation.
I’m so confused!!!
Dear MoveOn member,
I’m writing today about a senator who needs your urgent support. Senator Robert Byrd was one of the first senators I met with when I [...]
Its been so long that I wrote, been so much going into my life, but I’m back.Every day from our lives we face contradictions, but the most fascinating ones in my opinion are the ones when people contradicts themselves, when they are convinced with the vice and versus at the same time, this I never could comprehend, how could someone have two opposite opinions at the same time, and on the same subject?Well u have been facing a lot of those lately, contradictions in desires, in fears, in love, in everything, my only conclusion for this that people tend to fear to chose wrong, so they try to take both sides of the equation at the same time, they are the ying and yang.I imagine them like people arguing both sides but with the absence of the basic element of argument, to have two persons, eac
A couple months back The Frontal Cortex had an interesting article about the seemingly contradictory nature of humans. The author is a neuroscientist and so has more than an average faith in the scientific method.
1. Jeff Lewis, the incredibly entertaining lunatic at the center of Flipping Out, the real-estate reality television show on Bravo, fires his psychic because she wasn't doing a good job of predicting the future. So what does he do? He goes and hires a different psychic. I'm fascinated by this thought process. On the one hand, Jeff's empirical enough to realize that his psychic sucked. But he never even flirts with the possibility that all psychics suck. I know that we all have our rational blind spots, but rarely are they so elegantly captured on television.
2. I've recently been spending some time, perhaps too much time, with a few professional poker players. In general, these guys are mathematical freaks, able to crunch complicated probabilities in a split second. Th
A fistful of dollars, a bundle of contradictions Where there's risk, there's opportunity. The dollar's depressed level may itself hold the key to its eventual recovery.The dollar slide seems never-ending. The forex market is in the grip of two intolerable contradictions, and unless a resolution emerges — a new way of thinking about things — the prudent bet is on continuation of the slide.Contradiction No. 1Aside from one good year in 2005, the euro has been cleaning the dollar's clock since bottoming in 2001 just under 84 cents (Figure 1). The price of crude oil is shown on the same chart to highlight the degree of correlation that has developed between these markets in the past five years.At a late-November OPEC meeting in Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela pushed for moving away from pricing oil in dollars. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the falling dollar means oil producers are, in effect, subsidizing the U.S."They get our oil and give us a worthless piece o
By being the world's sixth largest emitter of greenhouses gases, manufacturing some of the most polluting cars on the road, rejecting speed limits to cut CO2 and replacing its nuclear power with coal-burning plants, Germany hopes to set a good example for other nations at the upcoming Bali climate conference, Chancellor Angela Merkel said in her weekly podcast.
Merkel, who made fighting climate change a keystone of her government's program during Germany’s presidencies of the G-8 and EU this year, said the Bali conference will be a crucial one for explaining to other nations what they need to do to help the Germans in their heroic effort to stop catastrophic floods and droughts, melting ice caps, disappearing coastlines and deadly heat waves while they eat their climatic Kuchen (cake) at the same time.
“A timetable for countries other than Germany must be decided upon in Bali under which we can negotiate a successor agreement to the Kyoto agreement by the
Today, youth across the nation are told by our government that Christopher Columbus merits honor and celebration because it marks the arrival of Columbus to the Americas. Most nations of the Americas observe this holiday on October 12, but in the United States the annual observance takes place on the second Monday in October. It was Franklin Roosevelt who first suggested in 1934 that all states adopt October 12 as Columbus Day, later in 1971, under Richard Nixon; the second Monday of October officially became established as a federal holiday to honor the explorer.
The October 12th celebration is commonly known in many countries in Latin America as Día de la Raza, a holiday that is comparatively recent. Before I go on, it is important to address the meaning of “la raza” because I can already hear the complaints how the name of the holiday is just more proof raza means “race.” The Spanish the word raza carries the meaning of an extended community bound by cultura
I began to make a post about my visit to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, but lost it half way through for some reason. But just one artist will do for now. Philip Guston.
Amy introduced me to him. I am intrigued by the man, his place in the abstract expressionist world. When I walked up the stairs at the museum today there was a Guston, much more impressive than the web stuff!
The one I really liked, and the first painting that really drew me today was one called The Tormentors:
I know there is a story about Klu Klux Klan theme (the link is to the site where I found the image), but I liked it because of the way it looked. Both from a distance, where it had some of the majesty of a Hotere, and close up, where the texture was remarkably polished and smooth, like satin.
This is strange as I am drawn to this quote from an article Amy gave me: Philip Guston Talking 1978 :
In a recent article which contrasts the work of a colour-field painter with mine, the painter is qu
From the Anti-Church forumAnd there are so many of them! Like Evans says, the more "bollocks" there is contained in the scriptures, the more faith is needed to believe in them. Why don't we atheists (I don't necessarily include you in that number, Franknhonest) just continue pointing these delicious contradictions out to the Christians and watching them squirm and tie themselves up in knots as they try to resolve them ("Oh, St. Paul was speaking figuratively"), while hoping that a few Christians will see the ludicrousness of the position they adopt and abandon their love affair with the Bible?And anyway, if the Bible is supposed to be God's word to us here on Earth... what a crap God! Is that the best he can come up with? Why doesn't he tell us about the laws of physics? About how he created everything? About what Jupiter's there for? About why we have four fingers when three would do? About the risks of global warming?And more to the point, why does he use up his holy book tellin
Listen to an interesting discussion about the thinkers in The Coast of Utopia at KCRW, featuring William Grimes of "The College Reading List of Utopia" fame and Keith Gessen who wrote the New Yorker feature on Herzen.Coming soon: Utopia the Rock Opera. Brendan Lemon reports at the LCT blog about the cabaret night when cast members showed off their musical chops.Love letter at Edward Copeland on film (part of a long and thoughtful review): [...] As impressive as everyone in the cast is, top acting honors must be conferred upon the luminous Ms. Ehle, who excels in three strikingly different roles. The tremulous delicacy that she brings to her performance in “Voyage” as the frail, gentle Liubuv, who finds bittersweet if fleeting happiness in the blush of first romance, exists in stark contrast to the firm-minded pragmatism of “Salvage’s” Malwida, the perspicacious German governess who exerts a steadying influence on the children of the Herzen household while keeping a wary eye f
History of Bali, the holy act of Puputan, the marriage of the prince of Udayana and princess Mahendratta, daughter of the East Javan King Mpu Sendok, and how it influenced Balinese language and culture.Original article in German language, from the Panorama magazine
