Date: Saturday, August 13
Time: 1pm - until we clear out
Place: Meewasin Park (off Spadina Cres., near Lenore Drive)
Bring: yourself, anyone else you want (friends/family), your own BBQ/picnic stuff, lawn chairs, games, etc.

"Sometimes I experience God like this Beautiful Nothing," he said. "And it seems then as though the whole point of life is to just rest in it. To contemplate it and love it and eventually disappear into it. And then other times it's just the opposite. God feels like a presence that engorges everything. I come out here, and it seems the divine is running rampant. That the marsh, the whole of Creation, is some dance God is doing, and we're meant to step into it, that's all. Do you know what I mean?"

"The Bush administration in recent days has been lobbying to block legislation supported by Republican senators that would bar the U.S. military from engaging in "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of detainees, from hiding prisoners from the Red Cross, and from using interrogation methods not authorized by a new Army field manual." according to the Washington Post. The legislation, which is being sponsored by John McCain and John Warner, is worth calling your senator over.

The Bush administration has also opposed legislation by Dick Durbin which prevents prisoners from being sent to other nations which are known torture states. This administration has also opposed an independent investigation into the conditions of prisoners at Gitmo and in other US facilities abroad. At what point can we begin to say that the Bush administration, is objectively speaking, pro-torture?

And what does it say about much of the evangelical community that silence or defense has been the response to this news? This is one of the central moral issues which future generations will look back on to see where we stood, as opposed to much the culture war issues which produce so much heat today. The mainline has spoken out on this issue but it's going to take Bush's religious constituency if there is to be an end to such practices.

From here.

History will indeed judge our actions (or inaction) on issues like these.

Me: [laughing hysterically]

Him: I'm really glad you don't have her powers -- 'Cause then you'd be constantly wiggling your nose, getting me into all kinds of trouble.

Him: Why does the husband always have to be a bumbling idiot, and the wife wise?

Me: Archetypes, baby. Archetypes!

Dr. Masaru Emoto discovered that crystals formed in frozen water reveal changes when specific, concentrated thoughts are directed toward them. He found that water from clear springs and water that has been exposed to loving words shows brilliant, complex, and colorful snowflake patterns. In contrast, polluted water, or water exposed to negative thoughts, forms incomplete, asymmetrical patterns with dull colors.

The implications of this research create a new awareness of how we can positively impact the earth and our personal health. The success of his books outside Japan has been remarkable. Dr. Emoto has been called to lecture around the world as a result and has conducted live experiments both in Japan and Europe as well as in the US to show how indeed our thoughts, attitudes, and emotions as humans deeply impact the environment.

There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless. These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy begging for a few paise, walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think, 'Business as usual.' But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story. Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening. These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. They should direct their anger at themselves.

Yann Martel
Life of Pi

• Well, it looks like my PR application is finally being processed in Alberta -- just in time for me to re-apply to extend my Student Authorization (with another couple hundred dollar fee). Good times.

• I've got two pretty lengthy chapters goin' on with my thesis -- the dreaded lit survey and the first analysis chapter (plus an introduction that is working itself into analysis chapters). Tonight I'm starting on the second analysis chapter. I'm also intermittently working on a paper to be published here in September.
  
  Page count: 35+
  Motivation count: ~50% (but plugging away!)

• Tonight I'm off to experience the newest Mexican/Latin restaurant in town with a good friend -- can't wait!

They Whose Souls Burn

Jalal al-Din Rumi

I look not only at tongue and speech;

I look at the spirit and the inward feeling.
I look into the heart to see whether it be lowly...

Enough of phrases and conceits and metaphors!
I want burning, burning...

Light up a fire of love in thy soul,
Burn all thought and expression away!

Moses, they that know the conventions are of one sort;
They whose souls burn are of another.

• Demonstrating "Grannies" get their day in court:
  
  Nine people are fighting trespassing charges after they were cited at a protest last week in which members of the "Tucson Raging Grannies" tried to enlist in the Army. The group is due in City Court on Monday, where members will argue they were not trespassing because they were "serious about enlisting" despite being decades older than the maximum age for recruits.
  
  They were protesting at the military recruitment center, 2303 E. Speedway, on July 13, as they have done on Wednesdays for the last three years, and then went inside to try to enlist, said Betty Schroeder, 74, one of the grannies. "We went in asking to be sent to Iraq so our kids and grandchildren can be sent home, but rather than listening to us, they called the police," she said.

• That group is part of a larger movement, The Raging Grannies.
  
  There's even a group in Saskatoon. Their philosophy:The Raging Grannies are caring older women who use song to protest and raise awareness concerning issues of peace, the environment and social justice. Satirical and serious we are politically conscious but non-partisan. The Raging Grannies dedicate their efforts to children, so that they may live in a peaceful and harmonious world, safe from wars and pollution. Now that's cool.

• Chocolate wars: the real story behind Charlie and the Chocolate Factory -- interesting backstory to Dahl's classic. I still haven't seen the Tim Burton version of the film. Part of me is hesitant because I love the 70's classic so much! Anyone seen it yet? Any good?

• Rick Santorum was a guest on the Daily Show last night. He's the crazy Republican that thinks the state has the right to dictate birth control use for married couples. I'm still trying to figure out how effective Jon Stewart's interview was with him -- he could have nailed him to the wall a couple times, but instead -- he let Santorum himself show what a jerk he is. More on Santorum here.

• and finally, Tattoos for Jesus, featuring a kitschy painting of Jesus sporting a 'too himself. via.

Awwww., originally uploaded by becky b..

Just so everyone can roll their eyes right now and see exactly how honeymoonish we still are, here's the snack Jerry just made me.

Harry! Don't you see? Voldemort himself created his worst enemy, just as tyrants everywhere do! Have you any idea how much tyrants fear the people they oppress? All of them realise, that, one day, amongst their many victims, there is sure to be one who rises against them and strikes back! Voldemort is no different! Always he was on the lookout for the one who would challenge him. He heard the prophecy and he leapt into action, with the result that he not only handpicked the man most likely to finish him, he handed him uniquely deadly weapons!

[...] Harry, despite your privileged insight into Voldemort's world (which, incidentally, is a gift any Death Eater would kill to have), you have never been seduced by the Dark Arts, never, even for a second, shown the slightest desire to become one of Voldemort's followers!

[...]You are protected, in short, by your ability to love! The only protection that can possibly work against the lure of power like Voldemort's! In spite of all the temptation you have endured, all the suffering, you remain pure of heart, just as pure as you were at the age of eleven, when you stared into a mirror that reflected your heart's desire, and it showed you only the way to thwart Lord Voldemort, and not immortality or riches.

• A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula K. LeGuin
• David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens
• and Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding

all part of the Bildungsroman literary genre he's been researching lately.

• Orality and Literacy, by Walter J. Ong
• The Bonesetter's Daughter, by Amy Tan
• and Rhetorical Criticism: Context, Method, and the Book of Jonah by Phyllis Trible

I was really excited about the latter -- I've been to one of Trible's lectures here at the U, and she's way up there on the feminist theologian list.

Funny business, a woman's career, the things you drop on the way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you'll need them again when you get back to being a woman. It's one career all females have in common - being a woman. Sooner or later we've got to work at it no matter how many other careers we've had or wanted. And in the last analysis nothing is any good unless you can look up just before dinner or turn around in bed and there he is. Without that you're not a woman. You're something with a French provincial office or a book full of clippings but you're not a woman. Slow, curtain, the end.*

Lloyd Richards: You've developed a certain cynicism since you've been married to me.
Karen Richards: I developed that cynicism the day I discovered I was different from little boys!

When a study revealed that mercury in childhood vaccines may have caused autism in thousands of kids, the government rushed to conceal the data - and to prevent parents from suing drug companies for their role in the epidemic.

• The last episode of 30 Days (for this season) is out. I recently found Spurlock's fiancee's webpage -- Healthy Chef Alex, and she's written a book I'd like to (eventually) read: The Great American Detox Diet. The book discusses how she got her Supersize Me man back into shape after eating a month's worth of processed crap.

• Speaking of which, Andrew Jones has a post on his cruelty-free diet and what he calls a "theology of the body." Cool stuff.

• And finally, World Historical Cheneys. All characterizations based on this clueless statement of his [regarding the current status of things in Iraq]: "I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency." My favorite:

On Procrastination, originally uploaded by peachicken.

It's a family affliction.

• 1 quiet apartment
• 1 fuzzy fleece blanket & set of jammies
• 1 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince book, read 1/3 through
• 1 thunderstorm omniously lurking outside your window
• 1 grrrl happily avoiding her thesis for the night (after a productive morning)
  

Add all these ingredients and stir. For effect, wait til the power goes out and read by candlelight for that extra Hogwarts-esque feel.

he arrives!, originally uploaded by becky b..

Guess what arrived on my doorstep today? And furthermore, guess what I'll be doing for the next couple of days?

(yay!)

Our generation can end extreme poverty on the planet simply by following through on our promises. The United States (and other high-income countries) has pledged repeatedly to give aid to the poorest countries in the amount of 70 cents for every $100 of our national income. This is known as the "0.7 percent commitment."

Right now the United States gives only 15 cents per $100, less than 1/4 of what we've promised. With the promised amount of aid, the poorest countries could afford immunizations, antimalaria bed nets, fertilizers, irrigation pumps, school meals, rural roads and electricity, and other resources to escape from poverty, disease, and hunger.

As a result, the deaths of millions of children every year would be averted. Farmers in Africa would grow twice as much food per acre, reducing hunger. The amount of violence would also fall sharply, since recent conflicts in Sudan, Liberia, Ethiopia, and elsewhere have been fueled by desperation and hunger. All this can be accomplished for just 70 cents out of every $100 of our income, surely the greatest bargain on the planet.

from The End of Poverty
Jeffery Sachs