Posted 7/20/2002 01:46:39 PM
India's children of Israel find their roots

RASHMEE Z AHMED

TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ SATURDAY, JULY 20, 2002 9:14:27 PM ]

LONDON: More than 2,000 years after they first claimed to have set foot in India, the mystery of the world's most obscure Jewish community - the Marathi-speaking Bene Israel - may finally have been solved with genetic carbon-dating revealing they carry the unusual Moses gene that would make them, literally, the original children of Israel.

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Posted 7/19/2002 12:20:47 AM

S.2633

Posted 7/17/2002 09:44:38 AM
one instance of difference between the metaphysician and the paratheologist: the metaphysician believes that there is a right context that gives one interpretive access to meta-reality.... that True truth is available in the right context...

Posted 7/16/2002 07:23:11 PM
Marketing threatens humanity like nothing else. Terrorism and disease pale by comparison, as those are obvious evils which, ironically, are easily erased with marketing. Marketing is covert in its pervasive diablerie. It cloaks itself carefully in good intention and assistance while secretly appealing to our most basic instincts. We don't see marketing. Well-applied marketing is like well-applied makeup. It inveigles us with its apparent honesty, alluring us to the cruel and foul. We are powerless against its wiles....

-from the blog of Gene Kan one month before his death

Posted 7/16/2002 03:58:22 PM
i made the "cover" of next-wave this month...
along with relaps, senator, flossdog and kaus.
that big royalty check should come in handy... uh, yeah.
the pic is from last year, btw.

Posted 7/16/2002 03:34:41 PM

Posted 7/16/2002 03:31:46 PM
aporia
worship at the door of the ineffable

Posted 7/16/2002 03:39:32 AM

Posted 7/16/2002 03:31:10 AM
can't sleep.

so i watched almost famous. wow.

Posted 7/15/2002 01:35:40 AM
I see nothing of what I once saw. Scholarship has become pale - I feel only one thing: I must act. Everything else feels like a comedy. I feel like I am play-acting; as long as I have not accepted this reality, my whole life is a comedy.

-from the private letters between albert schweitzer and helene bresslay

All the girls adored Schweitzer, we are told. But Hélène, with her practicality and zeal, had more to offer him than most. She offered him criticism instead of flattery. At the dinner party at which it seems they met she asked, "What gives you the courage to go into the pulpit every Sunday and preach in that awful Alsatian dialect? The accent's ugly and the grammar's dreadful."

So began an extraordinary secret relationship, conducted for ten years almost entirely by letters...

from here.

Posted 7/15/2002 12:31:36 AM
i was having a discussion with a friend from india over the weekend. we were discussing the current political climate in pakistan over crepes and a blt at cafe brazil. the recent amendments to the pakistani constitution proposed by gen. musharaf that would allow him to dissolve democratically elected bodies and depose officials all the way up to prime minister was the impetus for this conversation. we reminisced about gen. zia al-haqq and wondered about the disappointment that many of the early supporters of musharaf must now be feeling.

what seems to drive these movements from the seemingly necessary military cleansing of democratic dictatorships in fledgling democracies such as pakistan to an establishment of a military dictatorship is the total charade that passes as the separation of powers in these political cultures. when a judicial branch must fear for its life it is not independent. at one point in our discussion i suggested that start up democracies or democratic systems in flux and chaos should immediately set up a system that isolates its judiciary in a safe non-allied nation (read: switzerland). this would preclude the political shenanigans of otherwise laudable leaders such as musharaf and would potentially act as a model for the creative intermediate steps that might be necessary for some political cultures to move to a safe, functional democracy.

i hope that makes some sense. i am writing as i fall asleep...

Posted 7/14/2002 03:39:52 PM

Posted 7/14/2002 01:59:58 PM
In America one sees a good deal of Christianity, but it does not address the spiritual needs of the people. Just as salty seawater cannot quench thirst, much of American religion cannot satisfy a spiritually thirsty person because it is saturated with materialism. Although America is a "Christian" nation and there are many sincere Christians in America, the majority of the people there have no faith. There, where it is so easy to have religion, where religion is offered on every side and no one is persecuted for their beliefs, life should be peaceful. Instead, there is a mad rush and hustle and bustle after money and comfort and pleasure. In India, many Christians suffer bitter persecution but continue to find happiness in their new faith. Because it is so easy to have faith in America, people do not appreciate what a comfort there is in faith.

Excerpted from Wisdom of the Sadhu by Sadhu Sundar Singh via Jordon Cooper

More on Sadhu Sundar Singh (d.1929).