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Ah yes, the dog that is not allowed up on the furniture. I return early to my room and find this –
I’m napping here human, what gives?
Not much you can do with a super cute dog now is there?
Americans force fed their concerns from the elites handbook need to see Liberal Viewers 101 guide to the economy or even just to get a sense of what is going wrong and how crazy it is to support people who are for “more of the same”.
It’s funny, for all the take-down, all the arguing all the debate that has been featured here at DWR, sometimes a picture just nails what is so wrong with a concept. In this case the idea is christian religion.
The picture is so sad. And yet people want to believe that this happened and are *happy* about it. The work of a loving vengeful god.
Hey I need some help eroding the church/state separation. Lets ask the experts!
I’m not really sure what is so shit-hot about the attitudes and conventions of the Dark Ages, but Harper and his government have decided to fecklessly dive into the land of pants-on-head stupid and establish a official government bureau of “Religious Freedom”. Let’s be clear, not something useful like an office sponsoring freedom FROM religion, so sorry Rishma of Pakistan, you still get be sentenced to death for allegedly burning pages from a magic book. Because, obviously we need MORE religion in the world because rational thought is too fucking hard to deal with.
“The federal government’s long-awaited Office of Religious Freedom will be unveiled soon, officials say, after months of delays caused by difficulty in finding the right person to head the office.
The new body, which will be housed within the Department of Foreign Affairs, was expected to be up and running earlier this year.
But a senior government official told CBC News that Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird has had a hard time finding someone to fill the role of ambassador to head up the office. Two people who were approached ultimately turned the post down for logistical and personal reasons.?
Reasons why? Because being head of the Canadian christian god brigade overseas is not appealing. I’m really flabbergasted at my government right now. I’m imaging that in some meeting some wonk pops this ass-blister of a suggestion and throws it out there –
“Hey, you know that separation of church and state thing, its dumb, lets set up an office and get the government officially involved in delusional religious shit”. Ohh the meetings goes quiet. “But where are we going to get the money?” says Economic Wonk, our resident member of brain trust of turdistan says, “oh, well we closed a bunch of science and research down there is plenty of money saved from that…”.
And then there was cabinet/Harper approval. Yes, lets close down scientific research on one hand and fund the promotion of stale religious brain-flatulence from the bronze age. Brilliant! How can we lose? It is astonishing that people voted for people that actually endorse this sort of thinking.
“Some supporters of the idea have grown frustrated with the long wait. The $5-million office was first announced during the May 2011 election campaign as a centrepiece of the government’s foreign policy.”
A vesitgal bone thrown at the dumb-as-dirt religious value voters that worked. Apparently jebus said lower corporate tax rates so we can screw the rest of society over. To my idjit right of centre commentators, did you notice that you only get lip-service paid to your nuttily-regressive ‘social conservative” goals all the while the economic conservatives who hold the real power happily continue to gut the bastions of the social democratic state? You think getting screwed over would become tiresome after the nth time, apparently you thought in 2011, *this* time it would be different.
Bhatti argues the new ambassador must be objective.
“The person shouldn’t be one-sided,” he said. “He doesn’t focus on the one religion, or one persecution. He will treat every religion equally and give his recommendation to the foreign office and government regarding truth and reality.”
I don’t even know what this means. But I think I would be a good candidate for the job. I all religions the same, with contempt, would this make me a good candidate for the job? Probably not since the ability to think clearly is not selected for when trying to get a job within a religion.
“As CBC NEWS reported last year, internal Foreign Affairs documents showed nearly all of the panellists who participated in a closed-door consultation with Foreign Affairs last fall in Ottawa were drawn from Western religions, primarily Christianity. Few Muslims were in attendance and there were no Muslim panellists.
Arvind Sharma, a Canadian scholar of religion, has been carefully monitoring the government’s plans, and says the idea presents a great opportunity for Canada on the world stage.
But the McGill University professor warns that’s only if Canada avoids promoting proselytization.”
Yep, Canadian Christians for Christ, sponsored by the secular government of Canada? *sigh* Canada is a secular democracy and really needs to axe this crumby idea.
Giving government support to mythology is stupid and needs to stop before even more people get that idea that religion is an still acceptable choice in the 21st century.
Did you ever wonder about economic growth? Take the time to question your assumptions on economic growth and how it effects you? Thomas Homer Dixon has and what he says is quite interesting. From The Upside of Down pages 192 – 193.
“One might even say that we’re collectively fixated on maintaining growth. But this is a curious fixation because beyond a certain point – a point many of passed long ago – the higher incomes that growth produces don’t make us any happier.
When psychologists have questioned people over the years about how happy they are, they’ve found that people in rich countries are on average no happier today than people were in the 1970’s of even the 1950’s. During the intervening decades we’ve become far richer. In the United States, personal income (in constant 1995 dollars) more than doubled between 1957 and 1998. But over this period the percentage of people who said they were “very happy” actually declined slightly. Notes the American Psychologist David Myers, “We are twice as rich and no happier.” And when we look at countries around the world, we find that happiness is correlated with income up to about $10,000 to $13,000 per person annually, but beyond this threshold the correlation vanishes.
Money, in economists’ terminology, produces “diminishing returns” of happiness. Once our basic material needs are satisfied, it turns out, we don’t need more money to be happy, but we do need loving families, supportive social relationships, absorption in a satisfying activity, a sense of purpose in our lives, novelty and security from catastrophic threats to our income and health.
So, if above a relatively modest threshold, greater material wealth doesn’t make us happier, why do those of us who are already well off in rich economies work so hard to get more of it? Psychologists and behavioural economists have offered a range of answers to this question. Some say we’re stuck on a “hedonic treadmill”: our aspirations tend to exceed our income, and as our income rises, our aspirations rise in lockstep. Others stress that our happiness is partly a result of our relative social status because human beings naturally compare themselves with other people. We’re all trying to at least keep up with Mr.Jones next door. If our yardstick of comparison is income, a higher income makes us happier only if it goes up relative Jones’s income. But because Jones is working as hard as we are, nobody gets ahead, and no one feels any happier. We are, essentially, in an unwinnable income race with other people.
These theories may explain why most of work so hard to get ahead economically, and why all this effort doesn’t make us happier, but they don’t really address the deeper conundrum that’s our central concern here: why do our politicians, policy makers, economists, and public commentators remain so fixed on maintaining economic growth even when higher incomes don’t make us happier?”
Thank you Mr. Dixon. The next paragraphs in his book, (which I recommend you read) deal with answers to this problem given withing the contextual frame of capitalism. As THD is very thorough with his prescriptions let me offer my insights in addition to his.
If we need a rather modest amount of goods/income to be happy should we not support a system that focuses on building and developing society in ways that will make us more creative, productive and happy. Let’s look again –
Once our basic material needs are satisfied, it turns out, we don’t need more money to be happy, but we do need loving families, supportive social relationships, absorption in a satisfying activity, a sense of purpose in our lives, novelty and security from catastrophic threats to our income and health.
So, once the bases our covered we need things that don’t revolve around acquiring wealth. Here is where I would propose that economic systems that promote and focus on the welfare of society really shine. More egalitarian societies realize what THD has pointed out and consciously distribute their resources to make society a better place to live because they pay attention to all the factors that contribute to making our lives a happier worthwhile experience.
So things like Universal Health Care, Guaranteed Income, Old Age Security, welfare, social programs are necessary and vital parts of resilient, functional society.
Makes sense, no?
The vertical stripes show the rhythmic “grid” — showing the hierarchy of beats. The first beat in a measure is the strongest, followed by the half-measure point, followed by quarter-measure points, etc. This lets you see when a note is “suspended” through a strong beat.
This from Can you Relate, a helpful guide to Rape Prevention.
Ten rape prevention tips:
1. Don’t put drugs in women’s drinks.
2. When you see a woman walking by herself, leave her alone.
3. If you pull over to help a woman whose car has broken down, remember not to rape her.
4. If you are in an elevator and a woman gets in, don’t rape her.
5. When you encounter a woman who is asleep, the safest course of action is to not rape her.
6. Never creep into a woman’s home through an unlocked door or window, or spring out at her from between parked cars, or rape her.
7. Remember, people go to the laundry room to do their laundry. Do not attempt to molest someone who is alone in a laundry room.
8. Use the Buddy System! If it is inconvenient for you to stop yourself from raping women, ask a trusted friend to accompany you at all times.
9. Carry a rape whistle. If you find that you are about to rape someone, blow the whistle until someone comes to stop you.
10. Don’t forget: Honesty is the best policy. When asking a woman out on a date, don’t pretend that you are interested in her as a person; tell her straight up that you expect to be raping her later. If you don’t communicate your intentions, the woman may take it as a sign that you do not plan to rape her.
My co-worker recently created this list, inspired by sites like this. As I was reading, I couldn’t decide if I should laugh or be horrified by the reality that violence prevention tips are always aimed at what the targeted person should do (judgment strongly implied) to protect themselves.
In the past two weeks, headlines about rape have flooded the news—CBS Reporter Recounts a ‘Merciless’ Assault, Congo study sets estimates of rape much higher , Peace Corps volunteer speaks out on rape. And, of course, IMF Chief charged with rape. I am glad to see people speaking out about rape. But raising awareness isn’t enough. How do we actually change perpetrators’ thoughts and convince them not to rape?
If you experienced rape as a reporter, a Peace Corps volunteer, a war survivor, a hotel maid, or by your partner, you don’t need rape prevention tips. It is the rapist and the culture around us that excuses, supports, and looks away that we must change.
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