Tolerance

Mar72019 by jrcowlesNo Comments

“Not With A Bang But A Whimper” — The Glamp Of The Saints

Abrahamic Traditions, activism, autonomy, awareness, bible, bigotry, book review, Challenge, Change, Character of God, Christianity, Church, citizenship, conflict, conservatism, constitution, contemplation, courage, Creation, critical judgment, culture, Current Events, Discernment, election year, Enlightenment, Fascism, Fear, Food, hate, Hospitality, Human Condition, hunger, Ideology, immigration, injustice, Jean Raspail, Minorities, multiculturalism, Nihilism, Pain and Suffering, postmodernism, progressive politics, racism, Refugee's, Religion, resentment, Secularity, T. S. Eliot, The Camp of the Saints, Tolerance, Trump, Uncategorized, violence, Welcoming the other

Glamping ... And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison, and will go out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, and will gather them together for the battle; the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went up over the breadth of the earth and encompassed the camp of the saints, and the beloved city. -- Revelation chapter 20:7-9a It is unfortunate that the most prescient book ever written about the present mass migration of immigrants from the Third World to the First, especially to the US from Mexico and Central America and to Europe from the Levant, is out of print and therefore unavailable: Jean Raspail’s eerily prophetic The Camp of the Saints (hereafter Camp). (The Amazon link says simply t

Jan312019 by jrcowlesNo Comments

Jumping The Brexit Shark

"Life" Issues, activism, autonomy, awareness, betrayal, bigotry, Brexit, Change, citizenship, civics, community, conflict, conservatism, critical judgment, culture, Current Events, Economy, Equality, EU, Fear, hate, history, Ideology, inclusive, Islam, movement, multiculturalism, Muslims, political rhetoric, polyvocality, postmodernism, racism, Religion, Secularity, social justice, Tolerance, Uncategorized, Welcoming the other

For the last several weeks, I have been following the news out of the UK about the Parliament’s vote on PM Theresa May’s foredoomed plan for Brexit, including one installment of “Prime Minister’s questions,” which, for obvious reasons, centered on the still-falling debris from the May government’s unprecedented 230-vote blow-up of Mrs. May's Brexit deal. It had all the tragic dignity of, say, Sophocles’ Oedipus trilogy: you know what is going to happen, but for that very reason, you simply cannot bring yourself to avert your gaze. I was all the more horrified because, knowing the Parliament vote was imminent and that it would be followed by the 29 March deadline imposed by Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, I had begun some weeks before to read about the European Union (EU), Brexit, and

Jan102019 by jrcowlesNo Comments

Jock Straps, Jesus, And Junior High

"Life" Issues, affirmation/s, awareness, bigotry, body, Challenge, Change, Christianity, conflict, conservatism, critical judgment, culture, Discernment, Education, emancipation, Equality, Fascism, hate, Hope, Ideology, Lipophilia, Lipophobia, Religion, resentment, social justice, Tolerance, transformation, Uncategorized

Over the last several years, there has been a lot of chatter in the media about the obesity epidemic afflicting the United States, especially young teenagers of junior-high age. I will not rehearse the linked statistics here: you probably know them better than I, since, unlike your faithful Skeptic-In-Residence, most of my “Skeptic’s” readers are parents. (However, in fairness, I do have a PhD in being a kid ... a fat kid in particular. So I do have some modest competence to say what I say below.) I have even written humorously here and, somewhat humorously, here about my own struggles with weight, body image, and exercise. But this is really no laughing matter. Now, as far as the biological, somatic, and nutritional dimensions of the problem are concerned, basically no one is laugh