Posts Tagged ‘religion’
A short course in comparative religion
I’ve seen this before, but it’s still funny. (Thanks to my friend Turi Hollis.)
Of logs, eyes, and attributing motives
I got talking over lunch with a friend of mine, Graeme (who comments here at The Paepae as ‘Graeme’). 🙂 Afterwards, I asked him to send me his thoughts about an aspect of that discussion, and he sent me this. I found it good … and share it with you. – P — Peter, I’m […]
The Warrior – by Chuck Girard
I mentioned Chuck Girard’s album Written on the Wind recently as part of my eclectic musical ‘heritage’. My pal Graeme and I remembered Girard (who always struck me as a lost Beach Boy) and a few of his fellow inspirers like Barry McGuire and Larry Norman at lunch today… so I pulled this track up, […]
School girl exorcists. Modelling on Buffy the Vampire-slayer?
Reads like a story from The Twilight Zone … Oh boy. ‘We’re not like normal teenagers’: Meet the exorcist schoolgirls who spend their time casting out DEMONS around the world By JEFF MAYSH Mail Online 11th August 2011 Brynne Larson, 16, is one of many newly-qualified teenage demon slayers Reverend Bob Larson of Spiritual Freedom […]
Browser choice and IQ
What a hoot reading the different ways a ‘study’ ‘finding’ that browser choice has been correlated to IQ has been (cough) ‘reported’… People with higher IQ are shunning Internet Explorer: study IE Users Have Lower IQ Than Users of Other Web Browsers [STUDY] Internet Explorer Users are More Stupid Than Others: Study Internet Explorer Users […]
More inconvenient juxtaposition
While I am committed to the principle of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ I must admit to a groan of dismay and recognition when I read this NZ Herald headline: Missing uni cash: priest quits job A priest working as a senior executive at the Auckland University of Technology has resigned after “accounting discrepancies” involving hundreds […]
Richard Nixon’s dirty dirty tricks alive and well in 2011
I’m still reading Nixonland by Rick Perlstein, initially prompted by the mention of Fox News’s Roger Ailes‘s early work as a Nixon operative. Ailes is credited with teaching Nixon how to succeed in the world of television — by bending reality, faking news events and running highly staged ‘impromptu’ candidate meetings with ‘off the cuff’ […]
Uncovering the Scientology cult and its practices
Writing in The New Yorker, Lawrence Wright gives a comprehensive and illuminating account of the cult known as the Church of Scientology. His article is a follow-up the controversy surrounding writer/film director Paul Haggis’s public defection after 35 years as a Scientologist. I quoted Haggis’s resignation letter with its core message: ‘Silence is consent … […]
Bishop Eddie Long — the unravelling of bling theology
Last week as I referred to in Shame, not shock, we learned that the cult-leader Bishop Eddie Long, the ‘spiritual father’ of Destiny Church’s Bishop Brian Tamaki was being accused of sexual abuse of young men in his ‘flock’. Here’s an insightful article — harsh, in parts, but fair, it seems to me — about Bishop […]
Don Draper is the devil?
Here’s a fantastic review of Mad Men, by Mary McNamara of the Los Angeles Times, suggesting Don Draper is … the devil. While everyone has been sidetracked by tortured-soul vampires and loveable werewolves, Don has been quietly taking over the world, one manipulative half-truth at a time. She makes a good case. (Very good writing […]
Shame, not shock
I wish I could express the same shock and astonishment at the allegations of sexual coercion by the leader of a religious sect that Destiny Church’s Bishop Brian Tamaki does (“Sex claim against mate stuns Bishop Tamaki”). Like many others I’m sure, the news that a persuasive ‘spiritual’ figure is being accused of multiple cases […]
The worst stuff isn’t even in there?
Wow, I thought the ‘It came from Wasilia’ profile on Sarah Palin by Todd Purdue was eye-opening. She also came off pretty badly in that book I hoovered up over a wet weekend Race of a Lifetime … but read this piece from the current Vanity Fair – ‘Sarah Palin: the Sound and the Fury’. […]
Well said, that man.
Sometimes you see what someone else has written and think: “Wow. I couldn’t say that any better.” This, from a rally in support of religious freedom in New York City does it for me… Thank you. One day it could be my freedom under threat from bigots with loud voices.
More good Jon Stewart on NYC controversy
Bless this guy and his team for showing the frailty of the hypocrisy and falsely alarmist nature of the ‘claims’ by the religious right … and pulling out Charlton Heston’s principled speech… … showing their attempted selective application of the ‘founding principles’ of the US Constitution so well. Watch the video below the fold…
