http://www.linktv.org/programs/dalai

A Link TV exclusive documentary that presents highlights of an extraordinary day-long ethics conference, featuring the Dalai Lama in conversation with some of the nation’s leading activists. A co-production of Tibet House U.S. in New York and Link TV, the program brings together for the first time ever one of the world’s most important spiritual leaders with renowned journalists, economists, environmentalists, and politicians to discuss the ethical dilemmas of the new millennium.

With allegations of government subterfuge, corporate malfeasance scandals and a devastating global warming crisis dominating the headlines, this unprecedented television program gives millions of Americans a rare glimpse into the enlightening ethical teachings, peaceful nature, and often surprising humor of the Dalai Lama.

Washington | May 10

AP - Department of justice files lawsuit against Arpaio over claims his immigration patrols in Arizona amounted to racial profiling.

Federal authorities have sued Joe Arpaio, America's self-proclaimed toughest sheriff, after months of negotiations failed to yield an agreement to settle allegations that his Arizona police department racially profiled Latinos.

The US department of justice officials said the agency filed a lawsuit only once before in the 18-year history of its police reform work. The lawsuit escalates the standoff with Sheriff Arpaio, and puts the dispute on track to be decided by a federal judge.

h/t Jack Cluth

William Booth | Mexico City | May 5

WaPo - Criticism of the leader of the Catholic Church in Cuba, who has been negotiating with the communist government to expand religious and political freedom, intensified last week when the head of Radio and TV Marti called the archbishop of Havana a lackey who is colluding with an oppressive regime.

The stinging editorial against Cardinal Jaime Ortega — signed by Radio and TV Marti’s director, Carlos Garcia-Perez — is significant because Marti is a U.S. government agency, with its board of directors appointed by the White House and its policies coordinated with the State Department to direct messages to Cubans.

Reuters, By Chris Michaud, May 1

New York - Nearly 15 percent of people worldwide believe the world will end during their lifetime and 10 percent think the Mayan calendar could signify it will happen in 2012, according to a new poll.

The end of the Mayan calendar, which spans about 5,125 years, on December 21, 2012 has sparked interpretations and suggestions that it marks the end of the world.

"Whether they think it will come to an end through the hands of God, or a natural disaster or a political event, whatever the reason, one in seven thinks the end of the world is coming," said Keren Gottfried, research manager at Ipsos Global Public Affairs which conducted the poll for Reuters.

Napp Nazworth | May 2

Christian Post - A decennial census of U.S. religions in America was released Tuesday by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies (ASARB). The results show a dramatic increase in the number of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, and Muslims, a modest increase in the number of evangelical Protestants, and a drop in the number of Catholics and mainline Protestants.

Muslims saw the greatest growth rate among the five main religious groups studied. Their numbers increased by 66.7 percent in the 2010 census from a decade earlier. Latter-day Saints saw the next highest growth at 45.5 percent, followed by evangelical Protestants at only 1.7 percent. The number of Catholics decreased by five percent and the number of mainline Protestants decreased by 12.8 percent.

Notably, when combined, nondenominational and independent churches are now the largest faith group, with over 12 million adherents, according to the report.

New York Times, By Patricia Leigh Brown, May 1

HamTramck, MI — The prom countdown was nearly complete, the do-it-yourself Greek columns, pink and white tulle bows and plastic flutes with the “Once Upon a Dream” logo awaiting the evening of evenings.

But as she looked at her reflection in the mirror, her one-shoulder lavender gown matching the elaborate hijab that framed her face in a cascade of flowers — a style learned on YouTube — Tharima Ahmed knew that what lay ahead was more than simply a prom.

As organizer of Hamtramck High School’s first all-girl prom, which conforms to religious beliefs forbidding dating, dancing with boys or appearing without a head scarf in front of males, Tharima, 17, was forging a new rite of passage for every teenage Muslim girl who had ever spent prom night at home, wistfully watching the limousines roll by.

Rolling Stone, By Rick Perlstein, April 25

Once upon a time, in early 2004, I attended one of hundreds of "Parties for the President" organized nationwide for grassroots volunteers who wanted to help reelected George W. Bush, at a modest middle class home in Portland, Oregon. At one point, a nice old lady politely pressed into my hand a grubby little self-published pamphlet she had come upon, purporting to prove that Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry had faked the heroics that had won him three purple hearts in Vietnam. I added it to my mental store of the night's absurdities that I expected to hear rattling across the wingnutosphere the entire fall: "I still believe there are weapons of mass destruction"; "There is an agenda—to get rid of God in this country"; "John Kerry attended a party in which there was bad language!" What I didn't expect was to see Kerry's war-hero cred earnestly debated night after night on CNN. Then came August and "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" — and that little old lady's fever dream began dominating the media discussion of the campaign, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Christian Feminism

10. A man’s place is in the army.

9. For men who have children, their duties might distract them from the responsibilities of being a parent.

8. Their physical build indicates that men are more suited to tasks such as chopping down trees and wrestling mountain lions. It would be “unnatural” for them to do other forms of work.

7. Man was created before woman. It is therefore obvious that man was a prototype. Thus, they represent an experiment, rather than the crowning achievement of creation.

:D more at link, h/t Susie

Mark Frauenfelder | Apr 26 | Boing Boing

Q: If a baseball and bat cost $110, and the bat costs $100 more than the ball, how much does the ball cost?

stole from Nate..again :), answer at link

Garry Wills has a superb piece in the New York Review of Books about the Vatican's recent attack (h/t Ed Kilgore) on the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (the administrative organization that represents Catholic nuns and lay sisters) for focusing too much on helping the poor and the sick, and not enough on opposing abortion, birth control, LGBT rights, and male-only ordination.

Muriel Kane | Apr 22

Raw Story - Sweden’s Missionary Church of Kopimism, which was founded in the fall of 2010 and granted official recognition by the Swedish government this past January, has already established branches in eighteen countries, including the United States. Now the upstart religion is begining to attract mainstream attention.

Kopimism is currently featured in a story in US News and World Report, somewhat misleadingly titled “Kopimism, Sweden’s Pirate Religion, Begins to Plunder America.” Christopher Carmean, the founder of the U.S. branch, told US News, “Data is what we are made of, data is what defines our life, and data is how we express ourselves. … Attempts to hinder sharing are antithetical to our data-driven existence.”

The Church of Kopimism comes across partly as a spoof of organized relition similar to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, partly as an attempt to gain support for its desire to do away with most copyright laws, and partly completely in earnest.

As one Kopimist recently put it, “Not to belittle mainstream religion, but why is it okay to worship some bearded guy on a throne in the sky, but not this?”

According to its Swedish founder, 20-year-old philosophy student Isak Gerson, adherents of Komimism “believe that information is holy and that the act of copying is holy.

Gerson told New Scientist that because the Swedish “authorities were quite dogmatic with their formalities,” it took three tries for his group to be recognized as a church. They finally had to convince the government that they regard the copying of information as an act of worship and “CTRL+V” and “CTRL+C” as sacred symbols.

If you study religion rather than or in addition to studying the Bible you discover that there are a number of stories similar to those found in the Bible. You find even more if you study mythology. By myth I do not mean a widely held but false belief such as “urban legend.” I mean universal stories that help us understand who we are, where we came from, and what that means. For a long time I avoided knowing about myths for fear that a myth might have the same plot as the Gospel of Mark. If Horus was crucified, buried, and resurrected on the third day, wouldn’t that lessen the story of Jesus? Like others I eventually faced that fear and found faith in the story.

Seattle PI - The congregation at Seattle’s Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church gave the Rev. Tim Clark a standing ovation Sunday when he announced that the parish would not gather signatures for a referendum to repeal same-sex marriage.

The parish became the sixth in Seattle to opt out of the petition drive for Referendum 74 that has been endorsed and foisted on parishes by Archbishop J. Peter Sartain.

“I am happy to report that Our Lady of the Lake parishoners have been overwhelmingly and, thus far, unanimously supportive of the decision I made NOT to gather signatures in support of this Referendum,” Clark wrote in response to an e-mail.

“The standing ovation experienced during one of the Masses says less about me and much more about the health of this parish. I only wished the archbishop could have experienced the sustained applause — the ‘sensus fidelium’ — of the people. He needs to listen to this ‘voice.’ That is my prayer.”

New York Times Motherlode Blog, By Karen Le Billon, April 13

Consider this: Our children are three times more likely to be overweight than French children. In fact, we lead the world in producing overweight children, but the French have one of the lowest rates of overweight children in the developed world.

The causes of obesity are complex (lifestyle, physical activity, poverty, food insecurity, genetics and obesogenic chemicals all play a role). But what we eat is undoubtedly a factor. Because of poor eating habits, the current generation of American children will suffer far more health problems — and perhaps have a shorter life expectancy — than their parents. We may be teaching our kids to eat themselves into an early grave.

The New Yorker, By Rollo Romig, April 6

Jesus didn’t die on the cross. He was born of a virgin, but he isn’t the son of God. He did not redeem the sins of humankind. He healed the sick, gave sight to the blind, and raised the dead. He spoke complete sentences even as an infant in the cradle, announcing to his mother, Mary, that God had granted him the scripture and made him a prophet. Jesus is neither almighty nor eternal. Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus is a Muslim.

This is the Jesus of the Koran. Ninety-three of its verses refer to him—more than any other prophet save Muhammad—and the Koranic account of Jesus’ life harmonizes with the Gospels in more particulars than even many Muslims realize. My wife is a Muslim with years of madrassa education behind her, but when I mentioned Jesus’ virgin birth to her she was skeptical. “Does the Koran really say that?” she asked. I started to look it up, but five seconds later she waved me off. “Don’t bother,” she said, “I found it on Wikipedia.” And so it was written.

The Independent, By Charlotte Rachael Proudman, April 2

Today I received another telephone call from a young Muslim woman, Nasrin, who pleaded with me to help her obtain an Islamic divorce. After fleeing a forced marriage characterised by rape and physical violence, Nasrin applied for an Islamic divorce from a Sharia council; that was almost 10 years ago now. Despite countless emails, letters and telephone calls to the Sharia council as well as joint mediation and reconciliation meetings, the Sharia council refuse to provide Nasrin with an Islamic divorce. Why? Because of Nasrin’s sex. An Imam at the Sharia council told Nasrin that her gender prevents her from unilaterally divorcing her husband, instead the Imam told her to return to her husband, perform her wifely duties and maintain the abusive marriage that she was forced into.

Having represented Muslim women pro bono at Sharia law bodies across the UK to obtain Islamic divorces, I am all too aware of the gender discriminatory experience many Muslim women suffer at some Sharia councils and Muslim Arbitration Tribunals (‘Sharia law bodies’). Unfortunately their experiences have not been highlighted by the media. Instead some Sharia law bodies have been misrepresented by the media as being transparent, voluntary and operating in accordance with human rights and equality legislation. This is not the case.

Zoë Blackler | New York | March 29

The Guardian - Critics say Charles Hynes has failed to wrest control from rabbis who refuse to co-operate with secular authorities

A systemic cover-up of child sexual abuse in Brooklyn's ultra-Orthodox Jewish enclaves continues to obstruct justice for young victims, despite claims by religious leaders and the Brooklyn district attorney that the problem is in hand.

A long-standing culture of non-cooperation with secular justice by Brooklyn's ultra-Orthodox Jews keeps many child sex offenders out of the courts and at large in their communities.

Victim advocates say Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes has failed to wrest control from rabbinic leaders, who continue to hamper efforts to uncover abuse. Hynes' recent claim to have radically increased prosecution rates for these crimes has drawn scorn from critics.

Ron Scherer | March 29

CSM - He calls himself a “simple Buddhist monk.”

But his biographers and religion experts say the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is way more than that. A monk, yes. But, also an exiled spiritual and temporal leader of 6 million Tibetan Buddhists, a philosopher-scientist, an author, and a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

And, on Thursday, the Dalai Lama received yet another honor: the 2012 Templeton Prize, which honors a living person who has made exceptional contributions to affirming life’s spiritual dimension.

John Noble Wilford | March 28

NYT - Now it seems that Lucy shared eastern Africa with another prehuman species, one that may have spent more time in trees than on the ground.

A 3.4-million-year-old fossil foot found in Ethiopia appears to settle the long-disputed question of whether there was only a single line of hominins — species more closely related to humans than to chimpanzees — between four million and three million years ago. The fossil record for that period had been virtually limited to the species Australopithecus afarensis, made famous by the 3.2-million-year-old Lucy skeleton.

Of perhaps more importance, scientists report in the journal Nature, published online Wednesday, the newfound foot not only belonged to a different species but had evolved a distinctive mode of locomotion, which scientists described as “equivocal.” It clung to the trees and never adapted to terrestrial mobility outright.

There's a theme in my thinking with respect to this nation that, eventually, some large-scale changes are going to occur, and that they might occur suddenly and perhaps even violently.

American culture is based on three things: democracy, faith, and capitalism.

There's a basic disconnect in there. Those three things are, jointly and separately, untenably conflicted. Somethings have got to give, because it's within the human nature that one of those things aligns.

A basic drive of humanity is self-protection: food, clothing, shelter are all manifestations of our primal drive to survive. To believe that, somehow, that urge ends just because we satisfy those basic needs flies in the face of modern marketing, Maslow's theory notwithstanding.

Kabul | March 28

BBC - Hundreds of Afghan women are in jail for "moral crimes", including running away and extra-marital sex, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said.

In a report, it said that women were punished for fleeing domestic abuse and violence while some rape victims were also imprisoned.

Sex outside marriage - even when the woman is forced - is considered adultery, another "moral crime".

The I Had to Run Away report was released in Kabul on Wednesday.

Madrid | March 22

RT - Madrid’s high-class escorts have found a way to regulate the Spanish banking sector. The ladies want to have their say in the economy by withholding sexual pleasures from bank employees.

The largest trade association for luxury escorts in the Spanish capital has gone on a general and indefinite strike on sexual services for bankers until they go back to providing credits to Spanish families, small- and medium-size enterprises and companies.

It all started with one of the ladies who forced one of her clients to grant a line credit and a loan simply by halting her sexual services until he “fulfills his responsibility to society.”

A human being is a part of a whole, called by us the 'universe', a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.

Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation, and a foundation for inner security.