What really worries me is a basic fact, borne out by history. Deep and continuing economic stresses bring out demagogues, xenophobes, racists, and opportunists who channel people’s fears and anxieties into resentments against other people. If this awful economy goes on much longer, the extreme right could meet the extreme left in a place called “I’m mad as hell and am not gonna take it any more,” and form a third party that attracts everyone who feels disempowered and dumped on — and who want to blame someone else for what’s happened to them. Then, watch out.

First, on the right hand bar (about half way down), there’s a segment called “stuff I thought you might like”- every time I read something I think people will find interesting, I share it in google reader, and it shows up there.

Don’t want to have to load my page and scroll around to see the last 5 items? Here’s a page that you can use to browse them all, and here’s the RSS feed (for you other feed readers out there!)

In case you’re wondering, I share maybe two or three interesting things a day, and they’re 99% hunter related. I follow every single hunter blogger I’ve found, and I share the best stuff, saving my followers the trouble of poring over their news readers every day :)

Edit: in case any of the bloggers I read (and share) read this, note that I only tend to share items that are fully visible in RSS, with a few exceptions.

Our real enemy is not the ones living in a distant land whose names or policies we don’t understand. The real enemy is a system that wages war when it’s profitable, the CEOs who lay us off our jobs when it’s profitable, the insurance companies who deny us health care when it’s profitable, the banks who take away our homes when it’s profitable. Our enemies are not several thousand miles away. They are right here in front of us.

Found at Left I.

I think he means incense.

Happy Smallpox Blanket Day, or something like that …

I shit you not.

Here’s a tip, kiddies: don’t go into teaching unless you have thick skin, because you’re going to take hits from all sides—from the administration, the other faculty, the bad students, the good students …

Tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow will be better.

Except that I’m not prepared for tomorrow’s lectures yet and I’m not through my stack of papers to grade. Damn.

Maybe tomorrow won’t be better.

My best buds are probably going to be the victims of some drunk dialing tonight: “Hey man, I don’t suck, do I? You’d tell me if I did, right?”

Apparently,

• all Hindus are Indian, or all Indians are Hindus
• all Hindus believe in reincarnation
• all Buddhists are Chinese, or all Chinese are Buddhists
• all Buddhists believe in reincarnation
• all Muslims are hummus-eating Arabs
• all Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses are annoying
• all Mormons are “backwards” idiots who think underwear is “magic”
• Christianity is the plain, standard, “generic” religion
• all Scientologists are rich

Apart from the last, all of these are false and potentially dangerous stereotypes. (And maybe the last one is false too—I just don’t know.) The idea that Christianity is the plain, bread-and-butter, normal religion is to pass it off as universal and to deny its particularity—that one bothers me the most.

Apparently “Breast Awareness Month” was received with a lot of laughter.

Just because people are experiencing things doesn’t mean they have any insight into them, a fact the talk shows (a trend that has reached the cancerous uncontrolled growth stage and should shortly exhaust its food supply) should have figured out by now.

On Nov. 1, a law in Oklahoma will go into effect that will collect personal details about every single abortion performed in the state and post them on a public website.

I’m speechless. I cannot imagine any ideology in which this makes sense.

I love my son and his father is my best friend. So anyone who is praying for my family to get broken up by him getting time in prison needs to take a look at their own heart and remember that ALL SINS ARE EQUAL IN THE EYES OF GOD!

I also have a widget on the right hand side for articles I share through google reader.

Perfect!! Another historic low!!

USPS New 44-Cent Stamp!!! Celebrates Muslim holiday.

If  there is only ONE thing you forward  today…. let it be  this!

REMEMBER  the MUSLIM bombing of Pan Am Flight 103!

REMEMBER  the MUSLIM bombing of the World Trade Center in  1993!

REMEMBER  the MUSLIM bombing of the Marine Barracks in Lebanon !

REMEMBER  the MUSLIM bombing of the military Barracks in Saudi Arabia !

REMEMBER  the MUSLIM bombing of the American Embassies in Africa !

REMEMBER  the MUSLIM bombing of the USS COLE!

REMEMBER  the MUSLIM attack on 9/11/2001!

REMEMBER  all the AMERICAN lives that were lost in those  vicious MUSLIM attacks!

Now  President Obama has directed the United States Postal Service to REMEMBER and  HONOR the EID MUSLIM holiday season with a new  commemorative 44 Cent First Class Holiday Postage Stamp.

REMEMBER  to adamantly & vocally BOYCOTT this  stamp, when you are purchasing your stamps at the post office.

All  you have to say is “No thank  you, I do not want that Muslim Stamp on my  letters!”

To use  this stamp would be a slap in the face to all  those AMERICANS who died at the hands of those  whom this stamp honors.

REMEMBER ~ pass this  along to every Patriotic  AMERICAN that you know and lets get the word  out !!!

Here is  something to chew on …

They (MUSLIMS) don’t even believe in Christ, & they’re  getting their own Christmas stamp! BUT,  don’t dare to dream of posting the ten commandments  on federal property! This is truly UNBELIEVABLE !!!

To risk stating the obvious:

1. The Muslims who performed the acts listed are not representative of all Muslims, any more than the Christians who launched the Crusades are representative of all Christians.
2. Eid is not Christmas, so this isn’t a Christmas stamp.
3. While Christians might not be able to get a ten commandments stamp, they have had and continue to have Christmas stamps.
4. This stamp was not ordered by Obama.
5. It is not true, as this wrongly implies, that “American” or “American Patriot” and “Muslim” are mutually exclusive identities.

Both American wars on Iraq have been surrounded by conspiracy theory types who say, “it’s really about oil!“

Consider, for instance, the following claim, which was issued concerning the first conflict:

Vital economic interests are at stake …. Iraq itself controls some 10 percent of the world’s proven oil resources. Iraq plus Kuwait controls twice that. An Iraq permitted to swallow Kuwait would have the economic and military power, as well as the arrogance, to intimidate and coerce its neighbors—neighbors who control the lion’s share of the world’s remaining oil reserves.

So, who’s the conspiracty theory nut who said this? Who thinks the reason behind the war is really oil, oil, and oil?

None other than George H.W. Bush, who went on to say:

We cannot permit a resources so vital to be dominated by one so ruthless. And we wont.

His position was that the quality of our health care would go down with the proposed changes. By contrast, I took the position that even if the quality of health care for some in the US would decrease with the changes–something of which I am not entirely convinced, but I’ll admit it is entirely possible–I was nevertheless willing to support the changes in order to help the Americans who are completely uninsured.

His response? Apparently I am filled with “envy and hate.” I’d love to see anyone explain that one!

Fiction:

• A few Dean Koontz novels
• Several Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child books, including a few of their Pendergast novels, which I really enjoy
• Martin Millar’s Lonely Werewolf Girl, which was a riot, as well as his The Good Fairies of New York, which was okay
• A couple of Christopher Moore books (I hated Coyote Blue, but I’m loving Island of the Sequined Love Nun)
• David Sedaris’ When You Are Engulfed in Flames, which had me laughing out loud many many times

Nonfiction:

• Erving Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, which is awesome
• An Invitation to Social Construction, by Kenneth Gergen, who is not enough of a philosopher to write rigorously about this topic
• Bruce Lincoln’s Emerging from the Chrysalis and Death, War, and Sacrifice, both of which are super awesome–I’ve also been re-reading (or skimming through) some of his other books I’ve already read
• I’ve been re-reading a number of things by Foucault
• I’ve been re-reading a number of things by Bourdieu, and reading Distinction from scratch
• Wayne Proudfoot’s Religious Experience
• Judith Lorber’s Paradoxes of Gender, which is already one of my all-time favorite books on sex and gender
• Lee Braver’s A Thing of This World, which is an incredibly well-written history of continental philosphy from Kant to Derrida, focusing on the topic of what analytic philosophers call “realism”
• I just started Durkheim’s The Rules of Sociological Method
• I haven’t gotten to it yet, but I hope I have time to read Norbert Elias’ The Civlizing Process before the summer is over

Okay, I’ll tag a few others: anyone over at The Dunedin School, Brad at Brad’s Words, Alderson at Directionless Bones, and what’s-his-name over at Vulgar Marxism. I’d love to hear what you all are reading this summer!