Priest cancels nun beauty contest

An Italian priest who said he wanted to hold the world's first beauty contest for nuns has decided to cancel the project, saying he was misunderstood.

Antonio Rungi said he had never intended to put sisters on the catwalk, but had wanted to erase a stereotype of them as being old and dour.

He had wanted to hold the contest online on his internet blog.

Father Rungi said he changed his mind after the local religious authorities expressed their displeasure.

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see above and toon at top.

Russia: we are ready for a new cold war
Relations with the west plummet as Kremlin recognises breakaway states

Russia's relations with the west plunged to their most critical point in a generation today when the Kremlin built on its military rout of Georgia by recognising the breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states.

Declaring that if his decision meant a new cold war, then so be it, President Dmitri Medvedev signed a decree conferring Russian recognition on Georgia's two secessionist regions. The move flouted UN Security Council resolutions and dismissed western insistence during the crisis of the past three weeks on respecting Georgia's territorial integrity and international borders.

Tonight, Medvedev accused Washington of shipping arms to Georgia under the guise of humanitarian aid.

The Kremlin's unilateral decision to redraw the map of the strategically vital region on the Black Sea surprised and alarmed the west, and raised the stakes in the Caucasus crisis. Moscow challenged Europe and the US to respond, while calculating that western divisions over policy towards Russia would dilute any damage.

Washington condemned the move. Britain called for a European coalition against Russian "aggression". Sweden said Russia had opted for a path of confrontation with the west, and international organisations denounced Medvedev's move as illegitimate and unacceptable.

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The Serbians must be rubbing their hands in glee...See toon at top.

Some Americans today are so stupid and/or ignorant of their country's history that if you asked them if people have the right to overthrow a government, they would reply in the negative. I had a professor who asked that question, and in a class of more than 30 students, only four of us said "Yes."  

For God's sake, if you're going to claim to be an American, at least read the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Federalist Papers. A good history of England and America certainly wouldn't hurt.  

Our concepts of a free society are as foreign to the Arabs (and the rest of the non-Anglo-Saxon world) as Arabic and Chinese are to us. If Allah wills, they might evolve their own version of a more or less free society, but it will not be like ours. And they darn sure are not going to accept anything imposed on them at the point of a gun by "infidels."  

George W. Bush is dead-wrong to believe he's been anointed by God to spread democracy. He was merely barely elected to serve the people of the United States in accordance with our Constitution. Even that appears to be more than he can handle. 

But if he tries to lead a crusade against the Muslim world, he will meet the same fate as the earlier Crusaders – defeat and disgrace.  

The Basic Flaw

Every now and then, reason, outrage, determination, and citizen activism combine to defeat the forces of avarice and arrogance. This is one of those times – children, organic farmers, and cows have just triumphed over mighty Monsanto and its political handmaidens. 

For years, this biotech behemoth has thrown its ample weight around in Washington, in courthouses, in the media, and in state governments, trying to force Americans to swallow Posilac. You wouldn’t know the name of this artificial growth hormone, because Monsanto spent millions trying to hide it from consumers – an odd strategy for a corporation marketing a product. 

But Posilac is not a product that people wanted. It’s essentially a bioengineered sex hormone that’s injected into dairy cows to force their bodies to produce more milk. It’s not at all healthy for the cows, it provides no health benefits (and possibly causes serious harm) for humans, and mothers never warmed up to the idea of pouring a daily dose of sex-hormone milk for their children. 

Mighty Monsanto Gives Up

August 26, 2008
Democrats Try to Heal Bruises as Convention Kicks Off
By CARL HULSE [NYT]

DENVER — Democrats gaveled their national convention to order Monday afternoon with party leaders hoping the coming four days at the foot of the Rocky Mountains can inspire unity behind their new ticket and heal bruises from a contentious primary.

“During our national convention, we will demonstrate to all Americans why we need Barack Obama and Joe Biden in the White House,” Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said as he called to order an opening session that is scheduled to feature a speech by Michelle Obama and a tribute to ailing Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts. “Looking out from this podium tonight, I see this diverse assembly of Democrats as a testament to the strength and unity of our party and the fruition of our 50-state strategy.”

Yet even as he and other members of the party elite sought to downplay any party disputes and introduce the woman they hope is the next first lady to a national prime-time audience, they were finding it difficult to keep the focus off a former first lady – Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

Mrs. Clinton, preparing for her own speech Tuesday night, appeared before emotional members of her home state delegation this morning. She urged the party to come together while taking a shot at new campaign commercials by Senator John McCain that seek to foster division between Clinton backers and those of Senator Barack Obama, the soon-to-be nominee.

“Let me state what I think about their tactics and these ads,” she said in an appearance at a downtown hotel. “I’m Hillary Rodham Clinton and I do not approve of that message.”

Still, leading Democrats found themselves peppered with questions about whether the convention in the capital of an increasingly important swing state could erase lingering wounds from the primary and join the party together for what figures to be a tough fight with Republicans who will hold their own convention next week in St. Paul, Minn.

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Read more at the NYT 

Priest to hold nun beauty pageant

An Italian priest says he is organising the world's first beauty pageant for nuns to erase a stereotype of them as being old and dour.

Antonio Rungi says The Miss Sister Italy online contest will start on his blog in September.

"Nuns are above all women and beauty is a gift from God," he told Italy's Corriere della Sera newspaper.

He is asking nuns to send their photos to him, saying that internet users will then choose the winner.

Father Rungi stressed that nuns were not being invited to parade in bathing suits, saying it will be up to them whether they pose with the traditional veil or with their heads uncovered.

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see toon at top 

From the New York Times

In February, the Florida Department of Education modified its standards to explicitly require, for the first time, the state’s public schools to teach evolution, calling it “the organizing principle of life science.” Spurred in part by legal rulings against school districts seeking to favor religious versions of natural history, over a dozen other states have also given more emphasis in recent years to what has long been the scientific consensus: that all of the diverse life forms on Earth descended from a common ancestor, through a process of mutation and natural selection, over billions of years.

But in a nation where evangelical Protestantism and other religious traditions stress a literal reading of the biblical description of God’s individually creating each species, students often arrive at school fearing that evolution, and perhaps science itself, is hostile to their faith.

Some come armed with “Ten questions to ask your biology teacher about evolution,” a document circulated on the Internet that highlights supposed weaknesses in evolutionary theory. Others scrawl their opposition on homework assignments. Many just tune out.

With a mandate to teach evolution but little guidance as to how, science teachers are contriving their own ways to turn a culture war into a lesson plan. How they fare may bear on whether a new generation of Americans embraces scientific evidence alongside religious belief.

“If you see something you don’t understand, you have to ask ‘why?’ or ‘how?’ ” Mr. Campbell often admonished his students at Ridgeview High School.

Yet their abiding mistrust in evolution, he feared, jeopardized their belief in the basic power of science to explain the natural world — and their ability to make sense of it themselves.

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From Philip Adams

Optimists, particularly to be found among the theologians of AI, propose that the spread of intelligence throughout the cosmos may triumph over the Second Law – that our collective wisdom, multiplied by our technologies, will stop the Law’s merciless clock and rewind it. Their argument goes like this: that while God didn’t exist and doesn’t exist, we’re bringing him into existence. They predict a vast effulgence of thought spreading from our planet throughout the galaxies, the ultimate techno-fix. While Douglas Adams laughed about things like this, I’ve encountered many who take it (and themselves) very seriously.

Let there be light! Verily the geeks say unto us – the light of our intellects will flood the darkness of space! The suns and planets and galaxies, and anyone or anything that dwells therein, will be part of it. A collective consciousness far larger than the one proposed in my first paragraph is being formed. It is being googled into existence.

We have, of course, been inventing gods for thousands of years. We needed them to solve the puzzle, to soothe the fears. Tribespeople moulded their gods from mud, carved them from wood or painted them in caves. Soon civilisation would cast them in bronze or make them glow with gold. The museums are full of them – the gods that died. Egyptian, Assyrian, Roman, Greek, Aztec, Mayan, Norse, all long past their use-by dates and toppled from their pedestals. Found in dunes and jungles, retrieved from tombs or hauled encrusted with shellfish from the Mediterranean. Once worshipped by vast populations, they are now reduced to tourist attractions. Dim memories in marble.

This new-model god is just the latest.


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Template for peace is inclusion

Paul Keating
August 25, 2008

We are living through one of those rare yet transforming events in history, a shift in the power in the world from West to East. For 500 years Europe dominated the world; now for all its wealth and population it is drifting into relative decline.

Will our understanding of this transformation, and our acceptance of its equity for the greater reaches of mankind, lead us to a position of general preparedness of its inevitability, or will we cavil at it in much the same way as Europe resisted the rise of Bismarck's creation at the end of the 19th century?

We can see, with this the 29th Olympiad, the questioning of China and the resentment at its pretensions about being one of us. Even becoming one of us!

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Gus: I would say we're facing a major turning point in the progression of humanity. Sure, there has been turning points or change points always about for a zillion years, but some twists and turns are more important than others and in my humble opinion, in the next five years, the impact of our decisions are going to be crucially holistic.

We're about to decide what to do with our energy and food supplies, our climate control policies, our social constructs including the financial values of what we want and need. As well we are about to bring a bit more dimensions to our supply and demand market forces by coming to terms with the finite concept inherent to the size of this planet. Thus we will need to readjust our illusions of the international pecking order without destroying the concept of comfort for all. All this at a faster pace and greater importance than ever before, with less and less leeway ever. We need more co-operation and better relationships without trying to "control".

When WWII broke out nearly 70 years ago, there was a bit more than 2 billions humans living on earth. We are now approaching 7 billions. In order to supply this swarm of people, we overtake the habitats of other species and we wipe out the existence of some at a rate of knots. We need to be more careful. We need to be more precious about our wild fellow travellers. Not just by providing zoos that are the disguised epitome of breeding death camps, but by allowing them greater space, free from human intrusion.

As well we need to deal with our self importance in the greater universe. We need to evolve our ability to balance our regulatory constructs with the real natural relative world of evolution — a world that we're destroying faster and faster — rather than using an iffy doomsday spiritual and moralistic prop. Why would a perfect god bother creating an undefined imperfect world just for a few insignificant imperfect creatures to do impertinent things in one of its smallest corners...? God, would she's be stupid mad!... No. We are born from 4 billion years of complex and accidental evolution on a small sidereal stone, itself an accidental structure born from 15 billion years of energy congealing according to its own flaws.

Let's not screw up the next fifty years.

"Change and Hope" has been the message of the Democrats in the USA, yet they still end up their vague message with a vibrant "God Bless America", annulling the best option of understanding the importance of our relative mechanical world. Evolution and science has to help us protect the planet from ourselves without impeding our desires of improvement.

Or we may not care. And it may not matter.

We might just carry on as usual... bickering, pushing, running out of space as we grow. hoping all is best in the best of the worlds, or believing in an almighty that we dare to imagine whether within or in the heavens, until we realise we are our own master of our undefined destiny, on this little insignificant planet...

Let's not screw up the next fifty years. Not so much for errant selves if we do not care... But for the other life-forms that are more perfect than we are, thus not searching for improvements in what they should be... They deserve this care from us, even if they do not expect it. We have the cognition and the ability to do so.

Rupert Cornwell: Obama's choice of VP reveals much about himself

Sunday, 24 August 2008

With Hillary Clinton never seriously in the running, Joe Biden has always been the best option on Barack Obama's vice-presidential shortlist. True, the presence of this 35-year Senate veteran on the Democratic ticket undercuts Mr Obama's claim to be offering a fresh "non-Washington" approach to the country's problems. Nor does Mr Biden bring a trove of electoral college votes. His tiny home state of Delaware offers only three and, with or without him, was already a certainty for the Democrats.

But the pluses far outweigh the minuses. As chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr Biden offers the foreign policy heft Mr Obama lacks. The absence of that has been especially visible during the Russia/Georgia crisis – one reason for John McCain's comeback in the polls. But even if Georgia hadn't erupted, another global flashpoint would have done before the election, focusing attention on the Illinois senator's lack of experience. With Mr Biden he can fend off such criticism far more convincingly.

In other ways, too, the direct, outspoken – if sometimes garrulous – Mr Biden complements the more detached and cerebral Mr Obama. Mr Biden is not just a foreign policy specialist. He is a northeastern Catholic of populist bent who grew up in blue-collar Pennsylvania. As such he should help Mr Obama to connect with the white working-class voters in key swing states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan who went for Hillary Clinton during the primaries, and may be sorely tempted by Mr McCain in the election.

read more at The Independent 

From The American Conservative

...

Moreover, his former colleagues have repeatedly told the media that, as far as they are aware, Ivins didn’t know how to weaponize anthrax. He was a vaccine specialist, not a weaponizer. The assumption is that Ivins kept his weaponizing skills secret from his coworkers. But how did he learn those skills? Perhaps colleagues at Ft. Detrick provided the help in casual conversation. Yet there’s not the slightest indication that during his years at Ft. Detrick Ivins even once asked fellow scientists about weaponizing techniques.

Nor is it clear why Ivins—a registered Democrat—would single out Sens. Patrick Leahy and Tom Daschle to receive lethal letters. Interestingly, both had been critical impediments to passage of the Patriot Act. The first wave of anthrax mail, sent Sept. 18, 2001, targeted major media; the second round, posted Oct. 9, went to Congress. On Oct. 25, amid widespread panic, the act passed. Yet it is improbable that a mad scientist would specialize in such targeted political activity—or that he personally benefited from the repercussions. Many others did, however.

“In the absence of the anthrax attacks, 9/11 could easily have been perceived as a single, isolated event,” Salon’s Glenn Greenwald writes. “It was really the anthrax letters that severely ratcheted up the fear levels and created the climate that would dominate in this country for the next several years … that created the impression that social order itself was genuinely threatened by Islamic radicalism..."

Read more at The American Conservative