Hope
I want to live in a land called Paradise
(Hat tip to Will Shetterly.)
A year of Quaker meeting in Second Life
My Second-Life alter ego has posted some photos to mark A year of Quaker meeting in SL.
It was a year ago that we held our first Quaker meeting for worship in Second Life, and here we are, still meeting weekly, with a midweek meeting at a more Euro-friendly time getting started, and a beautiful meetinghouse.
Showing up hatred
“The Westboro Baptist Church, of Topeka, Kansas, is a hate group masquerading as a Christian church.” Thus the Kansas-based organizers of The Million Fag March describe one of America’s most notorious hate mongers.
What you need to know
Date: March 30, 2008
Time: 11:00 AMWhere: Westboro Baptist Church, Topeka, KS
Requirements: This is not a “gay-only” event. Just come with the ability to send a message to the WBC and Fred Phelps that intolerance is unacceptable.
Beauty from sorrow
One of the people I’m coming to know in that funny, online, “I’ve never met them” way is Tateru Nino, a fellow denizen of Second Life and Twitter (who happens to live in Australia). She’s a prolific blogger and writer, ready with insightful commentary about the unfolding metaverse. She has posted a lovely essay prompted by the death of her father: Remembering.
It’s a funny thing, memory. Well, my memory is. I remember that I was at places, knew people, did things. Except I remember them like they were something that someone told me. Not like I was the person who was there. Most of those memories are gone now, anyway. A year or two years or three, and there’s just vague fragments, like a half-remembered story or a distant dream — yet somehow, I still remember pretty much everything I ever learned.
Can You Forgive Her?
I continue my Anthony Trollope kick, this time starting the Palliser series of novels. Can You Forgive Her? is a rhetorical question that quite obviously is intended to be answered, “of course.” But I found Alice Vavasor to be tediously headstrong as well as foolish. I suppose it is to be expected when one is reading a soap opera.
Washington State Democrats — Caucus Results by Jurisdiction
Oh my God. Clinton won only one jurisdiction in the entire state of Washington: Washington State Democrats — Caucus Results by Jurisdiction
Not equivalent
The Wall Street Journal has an article on Mormon reaction to anti-Mormon feeling raised by Mitt Romney’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination:
“I don’t think that any of us had any idea how much anti-Mormon stuff was out there,” said Armand Mauss, a Mormon sociologist who has written extensively about church culture, in an interview last week. “The Romney campaign has given the church a wake-up call. There is the equivalent of anti-Semitism still out there.”
I’m sorry, but what we’ve seen is not the equivalent of anti-Semitism. It is prejudice, and unfair questions and accusations based on ignorance or hatred, but I simply can’t see it as equivalent to anti-Semitism.
Quiz: An artist or an ape?
Some of the images displayed below are masterpieces of abstract art, created by great artists. The rest were painted by an ape. Can you tell which is which?
Like Andrew Sullivan and Joe Irvin, I scored 83%.