dotshell.net posts about what happened when he tried to put up a Jain poster with a swastika on it.

Perhaps a planet dies so slowly that it isn’t noticed. Is there a point of no return? These time lapse images from space show the disappearing Aral Sea.

OGMA releases his his first album. His ecstatic music can be heard on myspace.

One year ago I blogged about Pogo’s youtube video “Alice” - here’s an insightful post about his music on Poemocracy thanks to Our Future Environment for sending this to me.

You can download Pogo’s amazing creations on last.fm.

Karla Tonella has constructed an online document where she is looking at Earth2, an NBC television series from the 1990s.

“Set 200 years in the future when the depleted Earth(1) is mostly uninhabitable, this series turns us back on ourselves to reconsider our relationship to our own planet, indigenous peoples and other species. While post-colonial and frontier metaphors abound, it is the metaphysical themes and the unique semi-sentient planet that set this program apart from other science fiction and adventure series. I will argue that the series uses archetypal figures and mythic themes to promote ideas of connectedness and wholeness as found in popular conceptions of the scientific theory known as the Gaia hypothesis.”

Continue reading…

“Titled “The Pope Meets You on Facebook,” the new Pope2You application lets people send and receive “virtual postcards” of Pope Benedict along with inspiring text culled from the pope’s various speeches and messages.”

Via Cult of Mac, via Catholic News.

I asked the writer to recount their experience of visiting a “contemporary” church in Arkansas, Easter 2009. The photograph they showed me of the coffee shop was so interesting, I wanted to know more. Here is what they sent me:

The last time I went to church it was in a bar in Brooklyn. Yesterday I went to a “contemporary” protestant “non-denominational” church in Arkansas with my mom.

This church is fairly new but the “style” is inceasingly popular in the southern United States. There is considerable debate about the goals and outcomes of such churches: “… I see a blatant capitulation to consumerism in much of this direction. Many experts in this movement do not hesitate to call their techniques “marketing methods,” but this approach breeds an unhealthy individualistic consumerism, which is already pervasive throughout the culture, when Christian leaders treat church growth as the primary activity of the Lord’s Day, and the congregational worship service as a virtual business undertaking aimed at getting consumers to “buy the product.” (John Mark Ministries)

(The “coffee shop”)

My first reaction to the physical architecture of the church is that it looks like a mall. The main entrance is a coffee shop aimed at creating a social space. I learned later in the service that new guests can trade in their comment/registration card for a hazelnut latte.

The congregation seems to be comfortable in such a mall culture. Many women have trendy, tight fitting dresses, 13 year-olds wear high heels, men and women have bleached hair and tanned skin, and the male uniform seems to be khakis and blue shirts. All of this combined to make me feel terribly uncomfortable.

The service begins with 20 minutes of rock music. The band has a drum set, an electric keyboard, a lead singer/guitarist, a bass player, a back-up singer/tambourine player, and an acoustic/electric guitarist. My grandmother regularly complains about them.

The pastor’s message included a warning to avoid “humanistic” ways that lead one to buy in excess and focus on “the flesh”. If one is “with Christ” then one will focus on internal, spiritual goals rather than the “humanistic”. During the closing prayer the keyboard player played instrumental inspiring music that increased in volume and tempo as the prayer closed. As the prayer ended the projected screen had swirling colors similar to itunes visualizer.

“At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

From the plurality decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF SOUTHEASTERN PA. V. CASEY, 505 U.S. 833 (1992). Could this set a precedent for an argument about a right to choose a state of consciousness, aka a right to mental privacy?

From Elizabeth Housley. This is amazing.

This video, which was sent to me by Alberto Duarte of City College, CUNY - depicts the genesis of a new life form following the interaction of nature and a megalithic structure.

Venetian Snares - Szamar Madar from David OReilly on Vimeo.

Doug Padgett writes on the “General Characteristics of Contemporary Anthropology of Religion.” here.

1. Contemporary anthropology of religion sympathizes with the “practicalities” (William James’s word) of religious experience: religion on the ground, in the populace, and the tensions felt there between official, institutional notions and the polytheistic, even inclusive atmosphere of majority religious life. This is partially a result of anthropology’s historical emphasis on “non-literate,” “primitive” religious life, i.e., religion that does not resemble Western European Christianity and/or Judaism in any apparent way. Anthropology of religion thus tends to emphasize the local particularities of religious life–spirit worship, saint cults, possession–as opposed to the idealizations of religious specialists, world renunciants, or sophisticated religious ethics and scholasticism

2. Contemporary anthropology of religion is methodologically and theoretically diverse. Because anthropological subdisciplines share common intellectual roots, there are as many ways of doing anthropology of religion as there are of doing any other sort. Followers of Durkheim, Weber, Marxists, Freudians, structuralists, structural-functionalists, and those influenced by more recent theorists, have found–and still find–their own ways of interpreting religion.

3. Contemporary anthropology of religion attempts to overcome the prejudicial, Western-biased understandings of religion found in flawed but still valuable works such as those by Evans-Pritchard, Malinowski, Tylor, and Levi-Strauss. In the sixties, their concrete and totalizing definitions of religion began to be replaced by more fluid, contingent working definitions. Clifford Geertz, for example, understand religion to be a system of symbols that are uniquely realistic to practitioners in various ways. Melford Spiro, on the other hand, as an answer to Durkheim specifically, convincingly reduced religion to those acts and experiences that involve dealings with the superhuman. Both of these have been under fire for some years, though both maintain their utility

4. Finally, and most anthropologically, I believe, contemporary anthropology of religion emphasizes place. Place is what, in fact, sets anthropology of religion apart from “religious studies” and is also, perhaps, the greatest contribution of the anthropology of religion to contemporary religious studies. Anthropologists of religion in anthropology and in religious studies have consistently articulated a deep knowledge of place as an antidote to the sometimes facile, superficial approach of “comparative religion.”

Doug Padgett writes on the “General Characteristics of Contemporary Anthropology of Religion.” here.

1. Contemporary anthropology of religion sympathizes with the “practicalities” (William James’s word) of religious experience: religion on the ground, in the populace, and the tensions felt there between official, institutional notions and the polytheistic, even inclusive atmosphere of majority religious life. This is partially a result of anthropology’s historical emphasis on “non-literate,” “primitive” religious life, i.e., religion that does not resemble Western European Christianity and/or Judaism in any apparent way. Anthropology of religion thus tends to emphasize the local particularities of religious life–spirit worship, saint cults, possession–as opposed to the idealizations of religious specialists, world renunciants, or sophisticated religious ethics and scholasticism

2. Contemporary anthropology of religion is methodologically and theoretically diverse. Because anthropological subdisciplines share common intellectual roots, there are as many ways of doing anthropology of religion as there are of doing any other sort. Followers of Durkheim, Weber, Marxists, Freudians, structuralists, structural-functionalists, and those influenced by more recent theorists, have found–and still find–their own ways of interpreting religion.

3. Contemporary anthropology of religion attempts to overcome the prejudicial, Western-biased understandings of religion found in flawed but still valuable works such as those by Evans-Pritchard, Malinowski, Tylor, and Levi-Strauss. In the sixties, their concrete and totalizing definitions of religion began to be replaced by more fluid, contingent working definitions. Clifford Geertz, for example, understand religion to be a system of symbols that are uniquely realistic to practitioners in various ways. Melford Spiro, on the other hand, as an answer to Durkheim specifically, convincingly reduced religion to those acts and experiences that involve dealings with the superhuman. Both of these have been under fire for some years, though both maintain their utility

4. Finally, and most anthropologically, I believe, contemporary anthropology of religion emphasizes place. Place is what, in fact, sets anthropology of religion apart from “religious studies” and is also, perhaps, the greatest contribution of the anthropology of religion to contemporary religious studies. Anthropologists of religion in anthropology and in religious studies have consistently articulated a deep knowledge of place as an antidote to the sometimes facile, superficial approach of “comparative religion.”

“The dignity of living beings with regard to plants. Moral consideration of plants for their own sake.” (PDF Download)

From the Swiss Federal Ethics Comittee on Non-Human Biotechnology.

“The dignity of living beings with regard to plants. Moral consideration of plants for their own sake.” (PDF Download)

From the Swiss Federal Ethics Comittee on Non-Human Biotechnology.

Using a tactic that was also used by the military dictatorship in Burma, New York University has cut off internet access to students who are occupying the school.

This is another example of corporate powers disabling network access to prevent social justice. Hopefully, some students in the occupation have access to the network via 3G networks or other means and can continue to communicate.

Are there thoughts that are not permitted by the software of the brain?

Human rights depend on Animal rights. We can never have liberation of humankind without the same for all of animalkind. So long as we enslave, we will never be free.

If your browser isn’t functioning well, get an upgrade. New Version Culture.

This slide was presented in an Astronomy course today.
There is so much wrong with this slide. Anyone?

In “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture,” Geertz argues that it is not “ignorance as to how cognition works” that prevents understanding of another culture but rather “lack of familiarity with the imaginative universe within which their acts are signs.”

Practicing the comprehension of alternative imaginative universes is, therefore, the ultimate preparation for cultural anthropology. Enter speculative fiction, mythology, fantasy and role play.

It’s worth noting something about Geertz’s idea of religion:

“A system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.”

(Kunin, Seth D. “Religion; the modern theories” University of Edinburgh 2003)