Christianity « Tikkunista!

10. Easter, Passover, and Holy Week

Apr-13-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Back when I taught World Religions, my students always had one key question: which major religion has the most holidays? But in a week when Passover and Easter were both celebrated (though usually by different people) we offer both some traditional enjoyable photos…after some untraditionally challenging thoughts. The heartwrenching David Sylvester piece is a must read.

* Were Jews ever really slaves in Egypt, or is Passover a myth? Haaretz

We are so quick to point out the obvious lies about Jews and Israel that come out in Egypt – the Sinai Governors claims that the Mossad released a shark into the Red Sea to kill Egyptians, or, as I once read in a newspaper whilst on holiday in Cairo, the tale of the magnetic belt buckles that Jews were selling cheap in Egypt that would sterilize men on contact – yet we so rarely examine our own misconceptions about the nature of our history with the Egyptian nation.

…It is hard to believe that 600,000 families (which would mean about two million people) crossed the entire Sinai without leaving one shard of pottery (the archeologist’s best friend) with Hebrew writing on it. It is remarkable that Egyptian records make no mention of the sudden migration of what would have been nearly a quarter of their population, nor has any evidence been found for any of the expected effects of such an exodus; such as economic downturn or labor shortages. Furthermore, there is no evidence in Israel that shows a sudden influx of people from another culture at that time. No rapid departure from traditional pottery has been seen, no record or story of a surge in population.

*Some Thoughts on Passover 5772 Rabbi Brant Shalom Rav

This Pesach I’m thinking about exceedingly radical message at the heart of the story we’ll retell around the seder table tonight. I’m thinking in particular about what the story tells us about power, about the ways the powerful wield their power against the less powerful, and about the inevitability of corrupt power’s eventual fall. And I’m thinking about what is possibly the most radical message of all: that there is a Power greater, yes even greater than human power.

…There’s no getting around the fact that our seder story is not a neat, tidy or particularly pleasant story. That’s because – as we all know too well – the powerful never give up their power without a fight. No one ever made this point better or more eloquently than Frederick Douglass when he said in 1857….

* No More Cheap and Easy Easters David Sylvester Tikkun Daily Blog

Perhaps you think I exaggerate when I say that we live suspended over this abyss of horror every day of our lives, an abyss that can crack open at any second during the most mundane moments of our lives?

Katleen Ping fell into the abyss last Monday at 10:30 a.m. Was she talking on the telephone, as she worked at the front desk, perhaps tossing a post-it note into the trash by her desk, wondering what the noise was outside her door? Did she experience a moment of peace when she faced her Good Friday? What will Easter mean to her four-year-old son? Or Grace Kim, a 23-year-old nursing student….These are two of the seven people who were murdered this Tuesday at Oikos University in Oakland, the sister campus of a school in Mountain View where I teach English as a second language. Many people at my school knew Katleen and Grace. Two of my former Mountain View students attend Oikos. (One escaped, the other mercifully absent on Monday.)

Suddenly, the tiniest, most anonymous school in the Bay Area was emblazoned across the front pages of newspapers around the world. As you probably know, a former student entered the classroom, ordered his classmates to line up and executed seven and wounded three with a semi-automatic handgun. On Tuesday, the next morning, my students and I passed around the front pages of the Oakland Tribune and the San Francisco Chronicle. Students read them over, gazed away, shook their heads and looked up at me, the teacher….

* Easter and Holy Week The Big Picture

* Easter Eggs TotallyCoolPix

Did you know that Easter eggs came in all shapes and sizes? If so, you’re wrong. Easter eggs only come in one shape: ovoid. They do come in all sizes and colours though, and we have the pictures to prove it.

Feb. 3rd, 2012 :: Year 9, Issue 5

Feb-03-2012 | Comments (1)

1. Followups

Bird’s Eye: All the followups have to do with extremes. We start with an In Focus photo spread on this week’s “Tough Guy” competition, another extreme sport many readers will not feel the need to partake of. But all readers partake in the debate on Foxconn, maker of the computers on which you read this. We link to a fine debate on Reddit: the excerpted quote is the top comment and makes a strong argument for Foxconn as a positive role in China. Many respondents don’t agree…. Continuing with our Apocalypse Soon investigation. we link to the recently web-restored Apocamon a comic adaptation of the Book of Revelations as performed by Pokemon. And following last week’s brain feature, we look at the ethics of upsizing your intelligence.

* Tough Guy 2012 In Focus – The Atlantic

Billed as “the toughest race in the world,” the Tough Guy 2012 competition took place yesterday in Perton, England. Every year, thousands of men and women tackle the course, which is described on the Tough Guy website as eight country miles filled with freezing mud and “barbed wire, cuts, scrapes, burns, dehydration, hypothermia, acrophobia, claustrophobia, electric shocks, sprains, twists, joint dislocation and broken bones.” Gathered here are some images of the fun had by the tough competitors in this year’s event.

* Foxconn And Workers Rights Reddit comment

“In a poor country like ours, the alternative to low-paid jobs isn’t well-paid ones, it’s no jobs at all.”-Jesús Heroles, Fmr. Mexican Ambassador to the US

I’m not going to lie, Foxconn doesn’t sound like a terribly fun place to work. That being said, it’s crucial to note that Foxconn employees are not slaves. Every employee is there of their own accord and is perfectly free to leave whenever they want (in fact, Foxconn has a 30-40% turnover rate). That’s critically important to realise. It’s important because the fact that someone would choose to work at Foxconn means that it’s better than any other option they have. Remember that for the vast majority of Foxconn workers, the alternative is farming rice in a country where there’s 1 tractor for every 200 farmers. It should be axiomatic that if a person is offered a choice, they will take the option that improves their life. Unless you’re of the opinion that all people to the East of the Himalayas are stricken with some kind of mass delusion, the fact that people are wilfully choosing to work at Foxconn should be indisputable evidence that Foxconn is having a positive effect on their lives.

* Apocamon: The Final Judgement (NSFW) Written by St. John the Divine, Illustrated by Patrick Farley

Warning: Some people will find this offensive and rude; others will find it very funny. Caveat lector.

* The Ethics Of Brain Boosting Oxford University

Recent research in Oxford and elsewhere has shown that one type of brain stimulation in particular, called transcranial direct current stimulation or TDCS, can be used to improve language and maths abilities, memory, problem solving, attention, even movement.

Critically, this is not just helping to restore function in those with impaired abilities. TDCS can be used to enhance healthy people’s mental capacities. Indeed, most of the research so far has been carried out in healthy adults.

TDCS uses electrodes placed on the outside of the head to pass tiny currents across regions of the brain for 20 minutes or so. The currents of 1–2 mA make it easier for neurons in these brain regions to fire. It is thought that this enhances the making and strengthening of connections involved in learning and memory. The technique is painless, all indications at the moment are that it is safe, and the effects can last over the long term.

12. Quote of the Week

Dec-02-2011 | Comments (0)

“You think you are doing it for stretching, but it leads to Hinduism.”

The Vatican’s chief exorcist, Father Gabriele Amorth, on the dangers of yoga.

7. Apocalypse Real Soon

May-13-2011 | Comments (1)

Bird’s Eye: Saturday, May 21st, 2011 will be the end of the world, (unless it isn’t). We start with a picture of the Apocalypse Van, get an update from the Post on the theory behind the prediction, and look at a brilliant business model aimed at those who are worried about the pets who will be left behind. If you have been getting behind in your reading on the Book of Revelations, Apocamon will provide a quick update: it’s a flash cartoon of the Book as performed by Pokemon figures. Not pc, but very funny. Recommended apocalyptic drinks: beer “Le fin du Monde”; wine anything from Francis Ford Coppola’s winery.

* Judgement Day 5/21/11 photo

* Doomsday Approaches The Washington Post

The unexpected and potentially rotten news that the world will end on May 21 rolled into the District on Thursday morning, plastered on a caravan of five recreational vehicles that parked near the Washington Monument.

“Have you heard the awesome news?” the side of the RVs asked, in big bold letters. “The End of the World is Almost Here!”

…And for many Christians, it is a core part of their beliefs. About 41 percent of Americans think that Jesus will return before 2050, according to a 2010 poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. The man pushing the current forecast is Harold Camping, an 89-year-old Christian fundamentalist radio host and co-founder of the Family Radio network, which broadcasts on dozens of stations across the country. His group has sponsored the end-of-the-world caravan and plastered cities, including Washington, with billboards and signs.

* After The Rapture Pet Care Youtube

When all the Christians on the planet disappear, there will certainly be massive confusion. However, the majority of people will still be on earth, and communications will be their first priority to maintain. Therefore, I believe it will not be a problem to coordinate activities to rescue and care for your pets….

7. Oh Brave New Internet!

Mar-18-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: As the Internet is nothing if not postmodern, we start with a look at why the internet is dead. Then we offer some useful internet sites. “When Is…” tells the dates for Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, and American holidays in years to come. (Halloween is apparently an American holiday, you may be surprised to learn.) We offer a site on which you can listen to a half hour of rain and thunder (excellent white noise to drown out distractions) and a site on which you can watch time-lapse photography of flowers moving, to celebrate the imminent arrival of spring (for our Northern hemisphere readers).

* The Internet is Over The Guardian

“Big ideas are like locomotives,” says Tim O’Reilly, a computer book publisher legendary among geeks, embarking on one of the grand metaphors to which the headline speakers at SXSW seem invariably prone. “They pull a train, and the train’s gotta be going somewhere lots of people want to go.” The big idea O’Reilly is touting is “sensor-driven collective intelligence”, but since he coined the term “Web 2.0″, he seems resigned to people labelling this new phase “Web 3.0″. If Web 2.0 was the moment when the collaborative promise of the internet seemed finally to be realised – with ordinary users creating instead of just consuming, on sites from Flickr to Facebook to Wikipedia – Web 3.0 is the moment they forget they’re doing it. When the GPS system in your phone or iPad can relay your location to any site or device you like, when Facebook uses facial recognition on photographs posted there, when your financial transactions are tracked, and when the location of your car can influence a constantly changing, sensor-driven congestion-charging scheme, all in real time, something has qualitatively changed. You’re still creating the web, but without the conscious need to do so. “Our phones and cameras are being turned into eyes and ears for applications,” O’Reilly has written. “Motion and location sensors tell where we are, what we’re looking at, and how fast we’re moving . . . Increasingly, the web is the world – everything and everyone in the world casts an ‘information shadow’, an aura of data, which when captured and processed intelligently, offers extraordinary opportunity and mind-bending implications.”

Alarming ones, too, of course, if you don’t know exactly what’s being shared with whom. Walking past a bank of plasma screens in Austin that were sputtering out tweets from the festival, I saw the claim from Marissa Mayer, a Google vice-president, that credit card companies can predict with 98% accuracy, two years in advance, when a couple is going to divorce, based on spending patterns alone. She meant this to be reassuring: Google, she explained, didn’t engage in such covert data-mining. (Deep inside, I admit, I wasn’t reassured. But then Mayer probably already knew that.)

* When Is – Dates of Religious and Civil Holidays Around the World

* Rainy Mood

* Moving Flowers (youtube 9 minutes)

11. Quote of the Week

Jan-21-2011 | Comments (0)

“Obama is not a brown-skinned anti-war socialist who gives away free healthcare. You’re thinking of Jesus.” John Fugelsang

9. Christmas, Anti-Christmas, and In–Between

Dec-24-2010 | Comments (0)

Reindeer’s Eye: Even to those of us whose goal is simply to put the Saturn back in Saturnalia, there is a lot of Christmas around. For weeks the links have been accumulating, and now you get to check them out. Some are traditional, some are positive, some are neither. Categorization is left as an exercise to our readers.

* Krampus – Santa Claus’ Secret Weapon Kuriositas Art Collage

Krampus is an incubus who accompanies Santa Claus, but does not follow the old man’s prerogative of present giving. An incubus is a demon in male form which visits sleepers and lies upon them (the word comes from the Latin ‘incubo’ which is to lie on top). The Krampus is not your common or garden night rapist, however: his brief is to punish the children who have misbehaved during the year.

* Beginning to look a lot like Christmas The Big Picture

* O little town of Bethlehem alternative card

* Christmas Card 2010 39 Degrees North Vimeo

Here’s our adaptation of a wonderful poem by the fantastic Neil Gaiman.

* Hark! Walmart Flash Mob Youtube video (Thanks, Diana!)

* Bah humbug: Darkly funny Christmas tales from Britain’s best writers The Independent

Inflation, recession and gloom: you don’t have to be Scrooge to say ‘Bah humbug’ this year. But even the biggest Christmas curmudgeon will find something to raise the festive spirit in these pages, as AL Kennedy, Ali Smith, Sue Townsend, Neil Gaiman, Sebastian Barry and a host of our favourite writers share what the big day means to them. To kick off, Will Self remembers a perfect Christmas – with none of the trimmings

8. Mind-blown Religion

Dec-10-2010 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Some things are just so over the top, beyond the pale, high woo factor… that they provoke serious laughter. Here’s a set for your amusement. Or perhaps to buy into if you’re so inclined. Warning: Tikkunista will not refund any money spent for these items.

* Walmart Ad (Thanks, Frank)

* Jesus is Coming Back on May 21st, 2011

* Learn to Time-travel by Swimming with Dolphins

1. Actions

Sep-10-2010 | Comments (0)

Beit Zatoun Photo Exhibit: Hyphen Islam-Christianity

Imagine a much older country on the other side of the planet where 19 religious communities are at home on a territory only 1/10 the size of Southwest Ontario….Be our guest for a guided tour by the artist who brings her native country in 100 stunning photographs. From 7:30pm – 9:00pm, Sep 11 to Oct 3 612 Markham Street (by Bathurst subway)

8. Religion: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

Sep-10-2010 | Comments (0)

Bird’s-Eye: You can assign the appropriate category: we just offer the data, starting with two lovely Guardian Eyewitness photos of religious festivals, then moving on into a study linking degree of religious following to national income levels, and guess which country is different from all the rest? Then two humourous spins on burning Qurans (’cos if we don’t laugh, we’ll cry) and the strange end of the stick: Mormons promise to no longer baptize Jews who died in the Holocaust, and a Jewish student who draws swastikas on her dorm door so she can complain about anti-Semitism to the university. That counts as a fail, we believe.

* Eyewitness Muslim Ramadan, and Hindu Krishna Janmashtami

* Religious Outlier New York Times

According to a new Gallup poll, richer countries in general are less religious. But that doesn’t seem to be true of the United States.

* Burn a Qur’an Day Fails Miserably – Maniac Muslim

A fringe Christian group from Florida is dismayed at how poorly their planned Burn a Quran Day ended up turning out. “This was the worst book burning event in history,” said book burning enthusiast Jen Kennedy, “Almost as bad as the time we burned ‘Book Burning for Dummies’”

* Fake Commercial For “Burn A Quran Day” - Boing Boing

* Fewer Jews In Mormon Heaven USA Today

The Mormon church says it has changed its genealogical database to better prevent the names of Jewish Holocaust victims from being submitted for posthumous baptism by proxy.

* Jewish Student Caught Painting Swastikas On Her Own Door Then Claiming Anti-Semitic Attack Youtube

5. GLBT Pride, and Shame

Jul-02-2010 | Comments (0)

Bird’s-Eye: As the 30th annual Pride Day takes place this weekend in Toronto, we look at pride and shame around alternative sexual modalities.

* I Hugged a Man in His Underwear. And I am Proud.

I spent the day at Chicago’s Pride Parade. Some friends and I, with The Marin Foundation, wore shirts with “I’m Sorry” written on it. We had signs that said, “I’m sorry that Christians judge you,” “I’m sorry the way churches have treated you,” “I used to be a bible-banging homophobe, sorry.” We wanted to be an alternative Christian voice from the protestors that were there speaking hate into megaphones.

What I loved most about the day is when people “got it.” I loved watching people’s faces as they saw our shirts, read the signs, and looked back at us. Responses were incredible….

* Doctor Treating Pregnant Women With Experimental Drug To Prevent Lesbianism The Stranger

Pediatric endocrinologist Maria New—of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Florida International University—isn’t just trying to prevent lesbianism by treating pregnant women with an experimental hormone. She’s also trying to prevent the births of girls who display an “abnormal” disinterest in babies, don’t want to play with girls’ toys or become mothers, and whose “career preferences” are deemed too “masculine.” Unbelievable

* Iceland PM Ties Knot As Gay Marriage Legalized Asia One News

Iceland Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir married her long-time partner on Sunday as a new law legalising homosexual marriages came into force. Sigurdardottir, in her late 60s, formally married writer Jonina Leosdottir after the couple submitted a demand for their civil union to be transformed into a marriage, the RUV broadcaster said.

Iceland’s parliament on June 12 unanimously adopted legislation allowing gay marriage, in a law that came into force on Sunday.

5. The Canadian Tea Party

May-21-2010 | Comments (0)

Bird’s-Eye: Increasingly, the world-view that drives the Tea Party in the US is crossing the border into Canada. Under Stephen Harper there has been a radical shift to the right. Marci MacDonald’s new book on the rise of “Christian Nationalism” highlights this, and she expands on her ideas in the two interviews we link to. As well, ex-pat Mallick bemoans how Canada looks abroad, and we juxtapose the curious decline of Canada’s centrist churches while the fundamentalist voices grow louder.

* Harper’s Christian Right Wing The Tyee

As Marci MacDonald points out in her new book, The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada, if you don’t take these people seriously you may be quietly contributing to the demise of democracy and all the social democratic programs it has created in the past 50 years. (See her 2006 article on the subject here.)

Stephen Harper takes them very seriously, to the point where he has encouraged and facilitated the rapid build-up of a powerful Christian right political machine on Parliament Hill and beyond, a machine that is getting its way more and more with the Conservative government. The way McDonald explains it, Harper suffered a serious erosion of support from the neo-liberal crowd when in 2008 he buckled to NDP and Liberal pressure to spend billions to stave off a serious recession — and brought the country its worst deficit situation in decades. To replace that part of his core vote, Harper had to reinforce and activate the other half: the Christian right. Attacks on science; excluding abortion from his maternal health program overseas; an escalation of his assault on women’s equality; more attacks on human rights institutions; the continuing get-tough-on-crime agenda (including a new law eliminating the concept of a “pardon”); a bare-knuckled assault on the godless CBC; the most fierce pro-Israeli policy of any Western country and his general contempt for the institutions of democracy all play to this extremist Christian constituency.

Editor’s Note: You can read interviews with Marci MacDonald in both The Walrus and on Rabble.ca

* A British Perspective on Canada Heather Mallick Guardian

Right now, Canada sucks, and all because we have a hung Parliament and no one’s done anything about it for years. We are ruled by Stephen Harper, a hard-right hick with a grudge who after serial elections cannot get a clear mandate from the voters…. Canada has a Conservative minority government right now that does have a core belief. It’s that Canadians deserve a good stomping, all of them. Conservatives can’t stand people, particularly if they’re female, or second-generation Canadian, or educated, or principled, or not from Alberta, which is the home of the hard-right belly-bulging middle-aged Tory male. Watch them at the G8, ostensibly fighting for women’s health internationally while blocking abortions for raped Congolese.

* Predeceased by their churches London Free Press

Deconsecrated, dissolved, disbanded, amalgamated — Christian churches from traditionally mainstream denominations are closing by the hundreds across Canada in a wave that shows little sign of receding. And it’s not only rural churches such as St. Patrick’s that are shutting down in an area of Southwestern Ontario where farms are increasing in size and families disappearing from the land. Small-town, suburban and inner-city churches are also closing and putting their buildings up for sale.

The United Church, Canada’s largest Protestant denomination, is now closing about one church a week. In the past decade, it has shut more than 400 churches. “We do have too many churches for the number of customers, to put it in purely secular terms,” said Rev. David McKane of First St. Andrews United Church in London.

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