Ya know, I would have done this post sooner but I needed a break to update my Facebook status, twitter about, work out my gorgeous body and get my finances in order so I can keep it pimpin’ y’all ‘because being awesome is hard work!
If you don’t see humor in the above attitude or you actually take it seriously, I might suggest you stop admiring yourself for a sec and give a listen to Stephen Colbert’s analysis of some recent articles on America’s obsession with itself and some pertinent footage of Sean Hannity’s slobbering love affair with his country.
A Pakistani Kushti wrestler washes himself after a training at the Champion Khalu Behalwan wrestling club in the Old City of Lahore, Pakistan, Saturday, Aug. 2, 2008. Kushti, an Indo-Pakistani form of wrestling, is several thousand years old and is a national sport in Pakistan. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
President Obama’s proposal last week to lower the United States’ charitable deduction tax for wealthy donors has charities worried that the big givers they rely on so heavily to pull them through tough economic doldrums won’t give so much any more. The current tax deduction on lower and middle income donors is 28% while those making $250,000 or more consistently receive a deduction of 35%. Obama plans to flatten the tax at 28% for all Americans. However, this change would mean that a donation of for example $100,000 would would be taxed for 7,000 more dollars.
President Obama’s ethical imperative as well as my own on this on the subject is as follows:
“I think it’s the right thing to do,” he said of reducing the deduction. “People are still going to be able to make charitable contributions. … Now, if it’s really a charitable contribution, I’m assuming that that shouldn’t be the determining factor as to whether you’re giving that $100 to the homeless shelter down the street.”
To be fair, the concern is justified on the part of charities to think that this percentage reduction may steer donors away from large donations, but last I knew, charity was defined similarly to as it is stated in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Middle English charite, from Anglo-French charité, from Late Latin caritat-, caritas Christian love, from Latin, dearness, from carus dear; akin to Old Irish carae friend, Sanskrit kāma love
Date:
13th century
1: benevolent goodwill toward or love of humanity2 a: generosity and helpfulness especially toward the needy or suffering ; also : aid given to those in need b: an institution engaged in relief of the poor c: public provision for the relief of the needy3 a: a gift for public benevolent purposes b: an institution (as a hospital) founded by such a gift4: lenient judgment of others.
Does charity ever have stipulations or a personal agenda? If it does, can it be called charity at all?
Wax charitably.
Photo by Mona Reeder for the The Dallas Morning News
THE BOTTOM LINE In Texas, a child is born into poverty every 7 minutes. A child is abused or neglected every 10. Numbers such as these define the state as a place where benign neglect is part of business as usual. A scan of statistics shows Texas at or near the bottom of countless rankings: Dead last for the number of people without medical insurance. Home to the 3 poorest counties in the country. At the bottom of the heap in protection of the environment. But, first in capital punishment, 2nd in the size of the income gap between rich and poor, and 2nd for the number of people incarcerated. Behind every set of numbers is the possibility that yet another child will live a lesser existence. Does Texas not know what to do, or does it just not care? Texas has the most teen births and the most repeat teen births in the nation, earning a ranking of 50th in the U.S. Barely one day old, Jasmine Williams sleeps on her mother’s lap as they wait for the baby’s paternal grandmother to come and take custody of her. Her mother, Kimberly Williams, 15, is in TYC custody and correctional officers shackled her feet shortly after giving birth to her baby. Both of Jasmine’s parents were 15 when she was born.
This YouTube member recalls his out-of-body experience as a young child of only ten. He includes all the standard sights of himself looking over himself, watching his mother do crossword puzzles while watching Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show. But as he explores further, he is able to move through his ceiling into his most desired destinations, beaches, mountains and even underneath and on the insides of rocks!
He claims all of this to have the same feeling as being awake but out of his body.
I must confess that having and “OBE” has been a goal of mine which I’ve yet to achieve. Even having heard and seen attempts to scientifically induce these state makes them no less compelling!
Uploaded by YouTube member LivingSucess
Note: The Photo of the Day and Video of the Day return tomorrow.
The folling is an excerpt from the 2001 film Walking Life. It is a rather long-winded version of the question, “Does free will exist?” Is free will just an illusion based on series of past descions? Is it all just one colossal, electrochemical accident? Are human being just Evolution trial an error lab experiment? Some say “Yes.” to all these.
Others maintain a sense of artistry, mechanism, even genius about life - that even in sickness, death and seeming chaos, there is a prime movement, an essential “it” playing out from the deepest recesses of the Universe.
What’s your take?
“In a way, in our contemporary world view, it’s easy to think that science has come to take the place of God. But some philosophical problems remain as troubling as ever. Take the problem of free will. This problem has been around for a long time, since before Aristotle in 350 B.C. St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, these guys all worried about how we can be free if God already knows in advance everything you’re gonna do. Nowadays we know that the world operates according to some fundamental physical laws, and these laws govern the behavior of every object in the world. Now, these laws, because they’re so trustworthy, they enable incredible technological achievements. But look at yourself. We’re just physical systems too, right? We’re just complex arrangements of carbon molecules. We’re mostly water, and our behavior isn’t gonna be an exception to these basic physical laws. So it starts to look like whether its God setting things up in advance and knowing everything you’re gonna do or whether it’s these basic physical laws governing everything, there’s not a lot of room left for freedom.
So now you might be tempted to just ignore the question, ignore the mystery of free will. Say “Oh, well, it’s just an historical anecdote. It’s sophomoric. It’s a question with no answer. Just forget about it.” But the question keeps staring you right in the face. You think about individuality for example, who you are. Who you are is mostly a matter of the free choices that you make. Or take responsibility. You can only be held responsible, you can only be found guilty, or you can only be admired or respected for things you did of your own free will. So the question keeps coming back, and we don’t really have a solution to it. It starts to look like all our decisions are really just a charade.
Think about how it happens. There’s some electrical activity in your brain. Your neurons fire. They send a signal down into your nervous system. It passes along down into your muscle fibers. They twitch. You might, say, reach out your arm. It looks like it’s a free action on your part, but every one of those - every part of that process is actually governed by physical law, chemical laws, electrical laws, and so on. So now it just looks like the Big Bang set up the initial conditions, and the whole rest of human history, and even before, is really just the playing out of subatomic particles according to these basic fundamental physical laws. We think we’re special. We think we have some kind of special dignity, but that now comes under threat. I mean, that’s really challenged by this picture.
So you might be saying, “Well, wait a minute. What about quantum mechanics? I know enough contemporary physical theory to know it’s not really like that. It’s really a probabilistic theory. There’s room. It’s loose. It’s not deterministic.” And that’s going to enable us to understand free will. But if you look at the details, it’s not really going to help because what happens is you have some very small quantum particles, and their behavior is apparently a bit random. They swerve. Their behavior is absurd in the sense that its unpredictable and we can’t understand it based on anything that came before. It just does something out of the blue, according to a probabilistic framework. But is that going to help with freedom? I mean, should our freedom be just a matter of probabilities, just some random swerving in a chaotic system? That starts to seem like it’s worse. I’d rather be a gear in a big deterministic physical machine than just some random swerving. So we can’t just ignore the problem. We have to find room in our contemporary world view for persons with all that that entails; not just bodies, but persons. And that means trying to solve the problem of freedom, finding room for choice and responsibility, and trying to understand individuality.”
Video and transcript uploaded by YouTube member prokofiev678
Note: Photo of the Day and Video of the Day return on Monday.
For Christians the world over, Friday is marked as the Day of Christ’s crucifixion - specifically the Friday before Easter Sunday when Jesus Christ is believed by the faith to have died, to have been buried and to have risen on that fateful Sunday thus bringing all of humanity to eternal life.
But for Muslims, Christ takes on a different role. Like Christians, Muslims see Jesus as a fully-authoritative prophet of God, born of the virgin Mary to bring the divine Truth to the world. His miracles and his various teachings on love, respect, non-materialism, charity and the like are central to both Christianity and Islam. Where the two diverge is on his divinity. In Islam as professed in the Qu’ran, there is no God but God. He neither begets nor is begotten. To Muslims, to say God has an “only begotten son” limits the scope of God and they then ask questions like, “If Jesus is God, why would he pray to himself?” while Christians forever maintain that Jesus and the Father are one.
Futher, in the Qu’ran, it is said that though he was sentenced to death he was spared by God in God’s infinite mercy and that the body found dead on the cross was not that of Jesus- a claim thought to be absurd to those who hold that his death was and is central to their salvation.
This 45 minute presentation documents the various theological differences and as well as the multiple commonalities of both traditions.
Note: All rights to these images remain with The Boston Globe an its third-party affiliates.
For Thursday March 26, 2009
A police officer walks on packages of cocaine in Buenaventura, Colombia’s main seaport on the Pacific coast, Monday, March 23, 2009. Colombian police had seized 3.5 tons of cocaine in a container of vegetable grease bound for Mexico. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)
For Friday March 27, 2009
Seized ammunition is shown during a presentation of suspected members of the Pacifico drug cartel in Mexico city’s airport on March 12, 2009. (REUTERS/Jorge Dan Lopez)
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