And Then There Were Two: Dutch Deputy Prime Minister Calls on Catholic Church to Reform Itself

Maxime Verhagen

Unfortunately for those seeking glimpses of reality-based reporting in the mainstream media, this is not a news item you're likely to be reading about in the American media as Christmas nears.  They're too busy falling over themselves right now to report on a study that supposedly shows the shroud of Turin to be a true snapshot of the crucified savior's face--a story being shopped about by well-heeled right-wing Catholic sources determined to prettify the media image of the Catholic church as the year ends.  And the mainstream media are all too ready to cooperate with those big Catholic $$$$.

The Maccabeats Tell the Hanukkah Story

For Hanukkah: the Maccabeats tell the Hannukah story with verve, style, and humor.  A happy Hanukkah to all.

One Picture, 1,000 Words: Rush Limbaugh Climate-Change Misinformer of Year

Media Matters has just named Rush Limbaugh the climate-change misinformer of the year.  And the site's analysis of Limbaugh's astonishing chain of lies about global warming is worth a read for the picture alone.

Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words.

Declining Empires and Wealth Disparity: Miserere!

That movement to reLatinize the Catholic Mass?  It may not be entirely beside the point:

As this Huffington Post article notes, in a recent article in the Journal of Roman Studies, historians Walter Schiedel and Steven Friesen calculate that the maldistribution of wealth in the U.S. today is actually at a higher level than was the case in the Roman empire as the empire began to fall apart.  As it began to fall apart due to huge disparities between the rich and poor, that is.  We Americans might as well be speaking Latin, because we're becoming the Roman empire in its movement towards decline.

UN Report: LGBT Persons Experience Violence and Discrimination across the Globe

Several days ago, the High Commissioner for Human Rights of the United Nations issued a report (pdf file) surveying the discrimination and oppression to which LGBT human beings are subjected around the world.  As the introduction to the report notes, serious discrimination and outright violence are practiced against LGBT persons and even those perceived as gay or gender-transgressive in many places around the globe:

Shadi Ghadirian's "Qajar": The Ambiguity of Religious Practices (and the Place of Women)

I saw Iranian photographer Shadi Ghadirian's "Qajar" exhibit yesterday at the Los Angeles Museum of Art, and have been thinking since I did so of several of the photos of women with fully veiled faces, one of which I've selected for the graphic above.  In her artist's statement appended to the exhibit (this can be accessed at the link above by clicking on "Statement"), Ghadirian says that her work has focused on and will continue to focus on Iranian women because women in Iran are "dazed."

J.L. Carr's A Month in the Country: The Buberian Dilemma

J.L. Carr, A Month in the Country (1980; repr. NY: New York Review Book, 2000):

I never exchanged a word with the Colonel.  He has no significance at all in what happened during my stay in Oxgodby.  As far as I'm concerned he might just as well have gone around the corner and died.  But that goes for most of us, doesn't it?  We look blankly at each other.  Here I am, here you are.  What are we doing here?  What do you suppose it's all about?  Let's dream on.  Yes, that's my Dad and Mum over there on the piano top.  My eldest boy is on the mantelpiece.  That cushion cover was embroidered by my cousin Sarah only a month before she passed on.  I go to work at eight and come home at five-thirty.  When I retired they'll give me a clock--with my name engraved on the back.  Now you know all about me.  Go away: I've forgotten you already (p. 31).