Most armed country in the world: The U.S. has 90 guns per 100 people
Are U.S. gun rights being trampled? No.
aweful reality…
(via pantslessprogressive)
Source: smallarmssurvey.org
one area especially lacking courage is Bible translation. Many translations do not convey exactly what the original biblical languages—Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek—say. In this way translators avoid shocking people by making the Bible seem like one book with internal consistency, rather than an anthology, exhibiting developments of doctrines and a concomitant inconsistancy. ~Hector Avalos
Process Musings
http://www.processmusings.com/2012/05/one-area-especially-lacking-courage-is-bible-trans/
Augustine presents us with a model of humility and religious toleration, in which those who say that they know who is saved and who is damned, or who judge a ruler or a neighbor solely based on the church he attends, only distance themselves from the City of God, while fracturing and damaging the City of Man.
Kim Paffenroth, on Augustine’s City of God
Quote posted on http://www.processmusings.com/2012/05/augustine-presents-us-with-a-model-of-humility-and/
Joi Ito’s Near-Perfect Explanation of the Next 100 Years
“One hundred years from now, the role of science and technology will be about becoming part of nature rather than trying to control it.”
Full Story: Technology Review
We can see the trends already and it is really an important shift that will have profound implications - the problem is that it is probably deeper transformation than any traditional scientific paradigm shift and might therefore take much longer than humanity can wait.
Source: emergentfutures
Engineer thinks we could build a real Starship Enterprise in 20 years
From the site:
In Star Trek lore, the first Starship Enterprise will be built by the year 2245. But today, an engineer has proposed - and outlined in meticulous detail – building a full-sized, ion-powered version of the Enterprise complete with 1G of gravity on board, and says it could be done with current technology, within 20 years. “We have the technological reach to build the first generation of the spaceship known as the USS Enterprise -– so let’s do it,” writes the curator of the Build The Enterprise website, who goes by the name of BTE Dan.
I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions. But laws and constitutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.
Source: stuntinlikemufasa
Argentina: doing it right. After passing a groundbreaking gender identity law on Wednesday, Argentina, which became the first Latin American country to legalize same-sex marriage, now leads the entire world when it comes to trans rights.
The new law, which was passed by 55-0 and is expected to be signed by president Cristina Fernandez, grants trans people the right to legally change their gender identity without having to get approval from doctors or judges–and, importantly, without having to change their bodies at all first. Not having a valid ID that matches your gender identity is a huge barrier to access to education, employment, health care, you name it. As Kalym Sori, an Argentinian trans man said, “This is why the law of identity is so important. It opens the door to the rest of our rights.”
(via mckeegles)
Source: feministing.com
Source: agoodthinghappened
Zizek on his new book “God in Pain” (paraphrased):
God becomes a narcissist: he wants to be loved… In the Bible Job says: All these catastrophes that fell on me have no meaning… God expresses his perplexity at his own creation. This is the first step out of this pagan view ‘do your duty’ and so on… What dies on the cross is God beyond himself… God no longer can be conceived as ‘we are in shit but at least we have an old guy up there’… Holy Spirit is the egalitarian community bound by love… This was Paul Claudel’s insight: God can’t do anything without us, God has to trust us. This is a message of freedom… Chesterton says, only in Christianity God himself becomes for a moment an atheist… My problem with Dawkins is: there is no insight of how a religion works, about the status of belief. Belief for me is something very mysterious. We live in an era of strictly controlled hedonism. This is not true hedonism. The only true hedonists today are those who take drugs or smoke. I don’t promote that, but just think about it: we believe more than ever, beliefs to function don’t have do be first person beliefs. You have a belief which is nobody’s belief… The children pretend to believe in Santa Clause for their parents… We need to believe that there is someone who believes. The truly Christian gesture is to abandon objectified belief. If in Life is Beautiful it would have turned out that the small boy was (let’s imagine) aware of how the camp really was not just a game, then this would be an example of the truly Christian gesture: that the boy’s show of belief is there only to protect his father from psychological breakdown.
Wonderful video. Must watch
Source: books.google.de
