Month: May 2010

Echoing several Dish readers, Bernstein argues that DADT repeal was in the cards all along:

By keeping a low public profile on issues that were not yet ripe — by which I mean ready for actual meaningful action, such as a mark-up or a floor vote, not in the more abstract sense — Obama is able to see which issues really do have constituencies who care, one way or another. Perhaps if advocates of repeal had put most of their energy into other issues, and perhaps if outcry among pro-ban groups had been louder, Obama might have changed course. But it seems to me pretty obvious that repeal has been his intended course from the beginning.

College Humor compiled a list of questions left unanswered in the Lost finale:

(Hat tip: Kottke)

After a harrowing dip this morning, the market recovered in late trading. Buttonwood's reason for hope:

As a naturally gloomy soul, it is always good to hear the other side of the argument. I talked to a big hedge fund today, with $15 billion under management. It thought the fears were overblown. Companies were generating good profits and cashflow. There was plenty of liquidity sloshing around and where was it likely to go? Not into government bonds at current yields, nor into property where there is excess supply, Equities, now back at levels seen in 1998, were the obvious beneficiary, they believed.

A woman smells a flower in the rose garden at the annual Chelsea flower show on May 25, 2010 in London, England. The Royal Horticultural Society flagship flower show has been held at the Royal Hospital in Chelsea since 1913. Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images.

A milestone worth noting:

For the first time since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, there are more U.S. troops deployed in Afghanistan than Iraq — 94,000 compared with 92,000 (BBC, AP, AFP, Tel). The total number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan is expected to reach 98,000 later this year, and has roughly tripled under the Obama administration.

Edge holds a forum on the meaning of the synthetic cell breakthrough. Daniel Dennet imagines a possible future:

Once the techniques honed by Venter and his team become widely known, will it be utterly beyond the capabilities and budgets of, say, well-trained biology majors to develop their own artificial life forms? That is not at all clear. What good will it do to have international agreements about the obligations of laboratories to equip their creations with default-apoptosis machinery if there are thousands of free-lancers engaging in bio-hacking? The price we will pay for this huge amplification of our technological prowess is probably an equal and opposite vulnerability. Welcome to the fast lane, humanity.

A reader writes:

I think it is that very paradox of "fully God and fully man" that keeps me Christian.

For me, it is immensely comforting to think that God took into Himself all the complexity and paradox of being human. And in the process suffering what was surely one of the most inhuman and unjust deaths possible for a human. For me, this is an answer to to dilemma of suffering and free will (whether it satisfies everyone else or not). God created the possibility of human cruelty by giving us free will, yet He was willing to suffer the consequences of that cruelty and injustice Himself – and by transcending the worst humans can do. So he opens the way for us to transcend that cruelty also.

The Epistle to the Philippians 2:5-8 states it most clearly:

"Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross."

I find that this passage is the essence of what keeps me a Christian.

I can't explain why Creation must include suffering and human evil as a necessary part of existence. But I see Christianity telling me that God was willing to take all of this mess and ambiguity and injustice into himself by becoming human.

For me, another expression of this same idea comes through the St. Thomas Aquinas's words from the Panis Angelicus: "The bread of angels becomes the bread of man . . . What a marvel! The poor, the servant and the humble / May consume their Lord."

And yet the Christian story does not end with the death and humiliation of God in Christ. Philippians continues:

"Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

To me, the same idea is stated differently (and applied to us, rather than Christ) in St. Francis' prayer:

"For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life."

I suppose this idea of the ultimate triumph of selfless love is not exclusively Christian, but because it is central to the Christian Gospel, I remain a Christian.

(Painting: The Supper At Emmaus, Rembrandt, 1628.)

A Rubicon is crossed, of sorts:

While public attitudes haven’t moved consistently in gays’ and lesbians’ favor every year, the general trend is clearly in that direction. This year, the shift is apparent in a record-high level of the public seeing gay and lesbian relations as morally acceptable. Meanwhile, support for legalizing gay marriage, and for the legality of gay and lesbian relations more generally, is near record highs.

A large part of the increase comes from men, not women. The religious grouping with the biggest increase in moral acceptance: Catholics, with a 16 point gain in tolerance since the hierarchy decided to demonize gays and banish them from the seminaries. Keep it up, your Holiness. And the issue of homosexuality isolates Republicans from Independents more than any other issue I’ve seen: 61 percent of Independents and Democrats alike see gay relationships as morally acceptable; only 35 percent of Republicans do. And the moderates are changing twice as quickly as Republicans.

Beat this one:

So many more here.