Thomas Fuller, San Francisco Bureau Chief - The New York Times
Stephan: Islam, Christianity, and Judaism are all very screwed up about sex and gender issues. So screwed up that in all three cases the patriarchal bias of these religions results in endless sex abuse of women and children, both male and female. I cannot find an exact statistic but it is clear that if your parents are religious and frequently put you in the care of the clergy or church staff of your faith you risk a much higher probability that you will be sexually abused, than if your family is unchurched.
The Baptists are the largest protestant denomination in the U.S. and, like the Roman Catholic Church, they are now facing a crisis of clergy and church staff sexual dysfunction, as this report describes.
The leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention said on Friday that the church was under investigation by the Justice Department for sexual abuse. Credit: Holly Meyer / Associated Press
The leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention, the country’s largest Protestant denomination, said on Friday that the church was under investigation by the Justice Department for sexual abuse and that it would “fully and completely cooperate.”
Church leaders said in a statement that multiple branches of the denomination, which includes seminaries and missionary organizations, were under investigation and that the church was continuing to “grieve and lament past mistakes.”
In May, leaders of the church published a scathing review that said reports of sexual abuse were suppressed by top church officials for two decades.
That investigation, which was conducted by an outside consultant, covered reports of abuse from women and children against male pastors, church employees and officials from 2000 to the present.
One of the report’s most striking revelations was the existence of an internal list of 703 people suspected of abuse that had been compiled by an employee of the denomination’s […]
Marie-Anne Suizzo, Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. - The Conversation
Stephan: I once went with a friend, who was a teacher in France, to lunch in her school. I have never forgotten the meal because it was so superior to any meal I had ever seen in an American school, public or private. It was part of a child's education, part of the French culture. When I asked Helene, why the meals were as they were she told me something similar to what is reported here.
Increasingly, I see American family culture as being in crisis, and becoming a negative generational trend shaping the nation's future. We need to reverse what is happening. We need to educate not indoctrinate, and we need to make fostering wellbeing part of American family culture.
Pleasure at the table, pleasure in life. Credit: Natasha Mileshina, CC BY-NC
One of the most common New Year’s resolutions people make is to lose weight by dieting. The idea is that restricting the pleasures of tasty foods will lead to greater fitness and a finer physique. But if these rewards are so valuable, why is it so hard for us to stick to our resolution? Maybe the problem is that when we try to lose weight, we also lose the pleasure of eating.
What if we could have it all? Keep the pleasure and stick to our resolution? In the US, we tend to compartmentalize pleasure, separating it from our daily chores and relegating it to special times. We have happy hours, not happy days. We have guilty pleasures, as if enjoying chocolate or a favorite movie is a moral failing.
In France, pleasure, or “plaisir,” is not a dirty word. It’s not considered hedonistic to pursue pleasure. Perhaps a better translation of the word is “enjoyment” or even “delight.” Pleasure, in fact, takes the weight of a moral value, because according […]
Stephan: I found this a very interesting bio on Clarence Thomas which gave me some real insight about the most powerful Black man in America.
They would call him Boy. Deb bin call um Boye.
Boy was born in low country on a one-dirt-road-in, one-dirt-road-out patch of mainland just an eleven-mile jaunt from Savannah, Georgia: Pin Point. Boye bin bohn een de loh kuntri on uh one dutt roh’d een uh one dutt roh’d out patch ob de may’n land jess uh leh’bin my’l fum Suhwannuh, Gorgee: Pin Py’nt.
Boy born on a humid, big-moon night in a shanty near the salt marsh. ’E bin bohn on uh hot big-moo’n night een uh shant’ ner’ry de salt masch. Born in a home with a single room of electricity, no running water or inside toilet. Dah boy bohn een uh hoow’s wid dis one room uh lec’trik. Boy coaxed from his mother’s womb by a midwife from another part of Chatham County, and per his mother’s mythology, Boy was too stubborn to cry. Boye slip fum ’e mama to uh midwi’f wha’ lib een uh pah’t ob Chat’um Cun’ty, ’n ’codd’n tuh ’e mah, ’e bin too stubb’n fuh mek wah’tuh come fum ’e yeye. Outside the ramshackle abode where […]
Stephan: Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat, is a living example of the corruption that pervades the American Congress. This is why our government doesn't work properly.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, the Arizona Democrat who single-handedly thwarted her party’s longtime goal of raising taxes on wealthy investors, received nearly $1 million over the past year from private equity professionals, hedge fund managers and venture capitalists whose taxes would have increased under the plan.
For years, Democrats have promised to raise taxes on such investors, who pay a significantly lower rate on their earnings than ordinary workers. But just as they closed in on that goal last week, Sinema forced a series of changes to her party’s $740 billion election-year spending package, eliminating a proposed “carried interest” tax increase on private equity earnings while securing a $35 billion exemption that will spare much of the industry from a separate tax increase other huge corporations now have to pay.
Keith M. Bellizzi , Professor of Human Development and Family Sciences - University of Connecticut - Raw Story
Stephan: Last night I listened to Sean Hannity on the Fox propaganda network. To learn about the trends shaping our future I feel I have to look at MAGAt media. It was amazing. Like all the other people on Fox, I don't know how or, more importantly, why, they do what they do. I know they are paid huge sums of money, but is that it? Are they nothing but high-priced whores? Hannity told one lie after another. Virtually nothing he said was either honest or honorable. He's not stupid; he knows he is lying and doing massive harm to America. And yet he does it anyway. He knows that millions of Americans are in such a fugue of fear, hate, and resentment that they are easily manipulated by the Republican MAGAt hypocrites who seek power and wealth through this manipulation. What I come away with from watching Hannity or Carlson or Bartilloma or the other Fox propagandists is always the same, their complete lack of integrity, and sadly, the inability of about a third of Americans to live in a fact-based reality. Fox is the most watched cable channel in the country.
Human anatomy illustration, central nervous system with a visible brain Credit: Shutterstock
Cognitive psychology and neuroscience studies have found that the exact opposite is often true when it comes to politics: People form opinions based on emotions, such as fear, contempt and anger, rather than relying on facts. New facts often do not change people’s minds.
Your worldview, including beliefs and opinions, starts to form during childhood as you’re socialized within a particular cultural context. It gets reinforced over time by the social groups you keep, the media you consume, even how your brain functions. It influences how you think […]
