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5 things you might not have known about plural marriage
byCasey Griffiths | Sep. 24, 2020
Editor's note: Exactly 130 years ago today, on September 25, 1890, President Wilford Woodruff wrote in his journal that "After Praying to the Lord & feeling inspired by his spirit I have issued . . . [a] Proclamation." That proclamation is now known as the Manifesto and was published in the Doctrine and Covenants as Official Declaration 1. This article originally ran on LDS Living in 2017 and is being shared again for the 130th anniversary of the day Official Declaration 1 was released to the public on September 25.
Throughout the history of the Church, the practice of plural marriage has been viewed at different times with defensiveness, derision, or outright bewilderment. However, recent works produced by scholars working on the Joseph Smith Papers Project, and independent researchers such as Brian and Laura Hales, Kathryn Daynes, and others have helped bring to light some vital facts that help us better understand the nature of this practice. Here are five things you might not have known about plural marriage:
1. Plural marriage was revealed early in the history of the Church.
The 2013 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants notes that some of the principles concerning celestial marriage and plural marriage may have been known "as early as 1831" (Doctrine & Covenants 132 introduction). There is evidence that suggests that Joseph Smith began to ponder the principles surrounding the practice as part of the work that became known as the Joseph Smith Translation of the scriptures. Joseph B. Noble, a Church member who was introduced to plural marriage in Nauvoo, recorded in 1883 that "the Prophet Joseph Smith told him that the doctrine of celestial marriage was revealed to him while he was engaged on the work of translation of the scriptures, but when the communication was first made the Lord stated that the time for the practice of that principle had not arrived." [1] W.W. Phelps, another early Church leader, wrote that Joseph received an unrecorded revelation in 1831 commanding the early Saints to take wives from among the Native Americans "in the same manner that Abraham took Hagar and Katurah [Keturah]." [2]
2. Joseph Smith was visited several times by an angel with a drawn sword.
Fragmentary evidence suggests that Joseph Smith may have entered into his first plural marriage with a young woman named Fanny Alger in Kirtland, Ohio. [3]
Very little is known about this marriage, and the relationship ended after Joseph left Kirtland to move to Missouri. After this initial event, Joseph appears not to have taught about plural marriage until the Church was established in its new headquarters in Nauvoo. According to several people close to the Prophet, he hesitated to enter into or initiate any new plural marriages during that time. Helen Mar Kimball recalled, "Had it not been for the fear of His [the Lord's] displeasure, Joseph would have shrunk from the undertaking." [4]
More than 20 accounts recorded by witnesses relate that Joseph was visited several times by an angel with a drawn sword commanding him to enter into plural marriage. Lorenzo Snow, Eliza R. Snow, Orson Pratt, Zina Huntington, Helen Mar Kimball, Erastus Snow, Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner, Benjamin F. Johnson, and Joseph Lee Robinson all left accounts of the visitation of the angel. [5] Lorenzo Snow related that "in the spring of 1843 he had a long talk with the Prophet Joseph Smith, who fully explained to him the doctrine of plural marriage, and stated that an angel with a drawn sword had visited him and commanded him to go into this principle." [6]
3. Plural marriage became the subject of wide public debate in the 19th century.
The practice of plural marriage was publicly announced in a sermon given by Orson Pratt in the Salt Lake Tabernacle in 1852. Elder Pratt addressed several concerns about the practice, first teaching that "it is not, as many have supposed, a doctrine embraced by them [the Latter-day Saints] to gratify the carnal lusts and feelings of man; that is not the object of the doctrine." Elder Pratt taught that plural marriage was a way "by which a numerous and faithful posterity can be raised up, and taught in the principles of righteousness and truth." Elder Pratt also emphasized that plural marriages were not performed in a random or haphazard way but under the direction of the priesthood as in ancient times. "One man has power to turn the key to inquire of the Lord," he emphasized, "and to say whether I, or these my brethren, or any of the rest of this congregation, or the Saints upon the whole face of the earth may have this blessing." [7]
The practice immediately became the source of international controversy and was widely debated, especially in the United States. Mark Twain once joked that he bested a Mormon elder in a debate over polygamy by quoting Matthew 6:24, which reads, "No man can serve two masters." In reality, a highly publicized debate was held between Elder Orson Pratt and J. P. Newman, the chaplain of the United States Senate. In a verbal sparring match occurring over three days in the Tabernacle in Salt Lake, Elder Pratt matched Newman at every turn as they debated the biblical basis for plural marriage. At the end of the debate, both sides declared victory, though later evaluations favored Elder Pratt's arguments and skills as a debater. One Catholic writer lamented Newman's performance, writing that "whatever his qualifications as chaplain of the Senate or his merits as an orator, [he] proved neither a scripture scholar nor an apt debater." [8]
4. Plural marriage was debated before the United States Supreme Court.
After the public announcement of plural marriage, opposition to the practice was heightened in the United States. At various times in the 1850s, members of both the Republican and the Democratic parties proposed new laws to outlaw the practice. The 1856 Republican platform categorized plural marriage with slavery as the "twin relics of barbarism." [9]
Latter-day Saints viewed marriage as a religious and not a civil ordinance, feeling an obligation to obey the commandments of God over what they saw as unjust federal interference. Feeling their rights were protected under the First Amendment of the Constitution, Church leaders proposed a test case to prove (or disprove) the legality of new laws Congress had passed against plural marriage. The man asked by President Brigham Young in 1875 to represent the Church was 31-year-old George Reynolds. A modest, unassuming young man, Reynolds had served as a secretary to several prominent Church leaders and had married a second wife only a few months before his case was submitted to the federal courts. Instead of the gentlemanly affair Church leaders were hoping for, the trial soon degenerated into a lurid and exploitative display. A low point came the trials when Reynolds's second wife, Amelia, then pregnant with their first child, was dragged before the court and forced to testify against her husband.
During the last years of the 1870s, the Reynolds case made its way through several additional difficult trials, eventually being appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. In July 1879, the Supreme Court upheld Reynolds's conviction. Reynolds willingly submitted himself to spend 18 months living in deplorable conditions in prisons in Nebraska and Utah. Reynolds spent his time in prison preparing the first concordance (an alphabetical list of all the words in a text and the places where each occurs) of the Book of Mormon and was spoken of by his fellow Saints as "a living martyr to the cause of Zion." [10]
5. The Manifesto was only the beginning of the end of plural marriage.
On October 6, 1890, President Wilford Woodruff issued an official declaration, which has become widely known today as the Manifesto (Official Declaration 2). The Manifesto addressed the United States government when it specified, "We are not teaching polygamy, or plural marriage, nor permitting any person to enter into its practice." The Manifesto was sustained by common consent and became "authoritative and binding" upon all Church members living in the United States territories.
This move to end plural marriage, however, raised a number of complicated questions. For example, did the Manifesto have any bearing on plural marriages that already existed? President Woodruff explained, "This Manifesto only refers to future marriages, and does not affect past conditions. I did not, I could not, and would not promise that you would desert your wives and children. This you cannot do in honor." [11]
Some Church members continued to perform plural marriages on a limited basis in Canada and Mexico, where the practice was believed to be legal. Some among the Church hierarchy continued to perform new plural marriages in defiance of the law.
A second manifesto was issued in 1904 by President Joseph F. Smith, which made the solemnization of new plural marriages punishable by excommunication. Two apostles, Matthias Foss Cowley and John W. Taylor, refused to sustain that action and were dropped from the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in October 1905. [12] Beginning in 1908, President Woodruff's Manifesto was appended to the Doctrine and Covenants and has been included in every edition since. [13] Within a generation after the Manifesto, the practice of plural marriage was gone, and it remains a fascinating era in the history of the Church.
Lead image from Wikimedia Commons
*Footnotes listed below
Learn more about plural marriage and many other fascinating topics in the new book What You Don't Know About the 100 Most Important Events in Church History. Now available at Deseret Book stores and deseretbook.com .
[1] Brian C. Hales and Laura H. Hales, Joseph Smith's Polygamy: Toward a Better Understanding (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2015), 31–32.
[3] See "Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo," https://www.lds.org/topics/plural-marriage-in-kirtland-and-nauvoo?lang=eng&old=true (accessed March 24, 2017).
[4] Helen Mar Kimball Whitney, Why We Practice Plural Marriage, 53, quoted in Brian C. Hales, Joseph Smith's Polygamy, Volume 1: History (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2013), 186. Most of these accounts were recorded in the latter half of the 19th century by Church historians interested in the early history of the practice of plural marriage.
[5] Hales, Joseph Smith's Polygamy Volume 1: History,188–191.
[6] Heber J. Grant, Diary, April 1, 1896, quoted in Hales, Joseph Smith's Polygamy, Volume 1: History 188.
[7] Orson Pratt, in Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. (London: Latter-day Saints Book Depot, 1854–86), 1:54, 59–63.
[8] Breck England, The Life and Thought of Orson Pratt (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1985, 245–46.
[9] Sarah Barringer Gordon, The Mormon Question: Polygamy and Constitutional Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 57.
[10] Bruce Van Orden, The Life of George Reynolds, Prisoner for Conscience' Sake (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1992), 87–107.
[11] B. Cameron Hardy, Solemn Covenant: The Mormon Polygamous Passage (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 141.
[12] "The Manifesto and the End of Plural Marriage," Gospel Topics Essay, https://www.lds.org/topics/the-manifesto-and-the-end-of-plural-marriage?lang=eng&old=true, (accessed March 24, 2017).
[13] Richard E. Turley Jr. and William W. Slaughter, How We Got the Doctrine and Covenants (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2012), 105.
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Home/Mobile/Android/OnePlus 6: Full In-Depth Review – Specification, Camera, Performance
OnePlus 6: Full In-Depth Review – Specification, Camera, Performance
OnePlus 6: The 2018 Flagship Killer
OnePlus has finally unveiled this year Flagship Killer.
It's only been six months into OnePlus 5T but what the heck! look at the brand-new OnePlus.
Despite having a device release schedule that would terrify most other manufacturers, Oneplus still manages to come up with popular, exciting new smartphones on a shockingly regular basis.
OnePlus 6 comes well incredibly quickly after the OnePlus 5T, and there is a considerable difference between the two, not just in size but components used in the OnePlus 6.
OnePlus 6 Unboxing: Box Contents
Outside the Black box, there is no markings or anything except the OnePlus Logo, and it shouts Never Settle on the inside of the Box.
The Retail box says OnePlus 6 on the left side, nothing on the top and says the Speed You Need on the right side as well on the back it says the colour variant of the device. The model code of this OnePlus is 6000, and so we got some IMEI stuff and the Qualcomm Snapdragon logo.
In the retail box, we've got the OnePlus 6 device, and then you have your OnePlus documentation created together with the community, all of that some quick tips – Charging Safety Information, Never Settle stickers and a Sim Ejector tool.
Finally, Rest of the stuff is a Dash Adapter, and a standard USB type-C cable stuff that you've seen from OnePlus, so nothing special going on apart from I'm assuming the phone itself, it's pretty unique for some people.
Oneplus went full-on premium on this phone. It's got the beautiful glossy back finish. It will be available in a few variants including the white which everyone is excited.
There is also the mirrored black version of OnePlus 6. This device is a fingerprint magnet which comes on every glass phone. There's also the midnight black OnePlus which has a matte finish well the mirror black OnePlus is glossy it's not very slippery.
The Back design is inspired from the beautiful flagships like the iPhone X or the Galaxy S9. They have used the Gloss with the vertical- Dual Cameras that will rival the camera gods such as the Pixel and the iPhone X and the S9.
The Fingerprint Scanner can be seen on the back below the camera with good separation in between. We got the LED Flash in between, so it's not going to be a pain to use. It also means that there will be no In-display Fingerprint scanner.
OnePlus 6 is one of the few phones remaining on the market to retain the headphone jack. There is a type-c connector as always supports fast charging and became the quickest phone to charge up. We got one speaker at the bottom and one on the front at the earpiece area.
If we look at the side of the phone, it does have a slight camera bump, so it's not entirely flushed in the bottom. Now at the bottom, it says designed by OnePlus. We also got a OnePlus logo as well, and the rest of stuff is clean now.
The Most Controversial thing is the display. OnePlus 6 has a massive 6.3 inches Optic AMOLED display with a notch. So it's giant screen with 1080 x 2280 pixels resolution. The new 19:9 aspect ratio can improve your media experience.
Now the screen is 1080p again. It looks excellent if you have a quality AMOLED display and I think that people have started to care less and less over the years about the display resolution.
You will be able to hide the notch in the settings, and since it's an AMOLED display, it will be pretty well hidden. The chin at the bottom lip is now smaller than the last year's model.
Whether you hate or like, Notch is the future, and everyone is doing it. Huawei, LG and eventually most likely Google is doing it excluding Samsung.
OnePlus absolutely have nailed it once again and you get everything premium following the latest trend.
The OnePlus 6 comes with a 16-megapixel F1.7 and a 20-megapixel F1.7 dual camera setup which is the same as the OnePlus 5T. Now the images are better in low-light circumstances.
OnePlus 6 is also capable of shooting 4k videos at 60 fps and 1080p videos at 240 fps which is indeed nice. It also has support for super slow-mo videos in 720p at 480 fps which is not as good as the super slow-mo in the S9 of the P20 Pro but worth it considering the price and hardware it offers.
On the front, there the 16 megapixels F2.0 camera with Electronic Image Stabilization. The Selfies came out to be sharp and crisp.
There's no portrait mode here right now. OnePlus has promised to bring portrait mode to the front camera in an update shortly after launch.
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OnePlus 6 have Premium flagship grade hardware including the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor. It has 6 GB or 8 GB RAM option along with 64GB, 128GB or 256 GB of storage.
The specs of this phone are probably the most respectable in any Android phone ever. OnePlus has always been known to pack these things with the best specs on the market. They've delivered every OnePlus smartphone with buttery smooth performance.
The main thing that concerns here is the battery. OnePlus 6 has 3300 mAH battery which is the same as the OnePlus 5T. Now Oneplus says that the Snapdragon 845 should save about 10% battery life, but the extra screen size has me worried that it's probably going to drain a little bit faster than the previous OnePlus 5T.
Software & Features
OnePlus 6 comes in Oxygen OS on top of Android 8.1 Oreo. I've always liked Oxygen OS for its stock looks and added features.
You do have the option of trying Android P beta. There are a few minor software tweaks – things like gaming mode which can do things like limiting bandwidth to apps in the background or limiting fps or resolution while you're playing games to save your battery.
There is a software-based face unlock feature. It is going to be lightning quick, but at the same time, it's not going to be the most trusted form of security. The more secured will be the fingerprint scanner.
We also want to point out the control system. Here you can use Android as you would usually do with a swipe up with the home button and the back button. OnePlus has also added a gesture control system, and you'll find that by going in settings buttons and navigation and gestures.
When we turn this ON, it works a little bit like the iPhone X. We're not entirely convinced because it's a bit of a pain to swipe up because you have to be very careful to swipe up from the bottom of the screen to go back. So it's easier when there's a back button, to be honest, but it's still a nice addition.
Since this Phone is all glass, you think that it had wireless charging. Well, It doesn't have wireless charging. OnePlus told us that Dash charge is so much better than wireless charging that they indeed didn't deem it necessary.
This phone isn't IP68 or IP67 rated, so it's not technically water-resistant, but they told us that they did their internal testing to make sure that this thing can survive drops and puddles or even something like the toilet.
The OnePlus 6 price starts at Rs 34,999 ($529, £469) for the 64 GB storage and 6GB RAM
Then the 8GB RAM with 128GB storage costs Rs 39,999 ($579, £519). Then the top variant, i.e., 8GB/256GB is priced at Rs. 44,999 ($629, £569) which is a limited edition Marvel Avengers handset (only for India and China).
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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The Grand Canyon Caverns ( or , ), located just a few miles east of Peach Springs, Arizona, lie  below ground level. They are among the largest dry caverns in the United States. Dry caverns comprise only 3% of caverns in the world. Because of the lack of water, stalagmites and stalactites are rare in the caverns.

During the Mississippian Period, 345 million years ago, the southwestern United States was covered by ocean. Skeletons of sea life settling to the depths, created a mud with a high percentage of calcium. This eventually hardened into the limestone bedrock seen in the caverns today. Over millions of years, the bedrock was pushed up to over  above sea level.

Approximately 35 million years ago, rainfall flowed into the rock, and eroded passages that led to the Colorado River and what is now the Grand Canyon. Millions of years later, the evaporating water left calcium deposits on the walls and floors, creating the formations that can be viewed today.

Contemporary history

In 1927, Walter Peck discovered the caverns by chance. After a failed search for gold, he opened the caverns to travelers and began charging 25 cents admission, which included a view of a purported caveman. In the 1960s the "caveman" was shown to be the remains of two inhabitants of the area, who had died in the winter of 1917–1918. Part of a group of Hualapai Native Americans harvesting and cutting firewood on the caverns' hilltop, they were trapped there for three days by a snowstorm. Two brothers died from influenza, and since the ground was frozen solid with and covered in snow, they were buried in what was thought to be only a  hole, as returning them to their tribal headquarters in Peach Springs risked spreading the flu.

In 1935, the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration made an agreement with Peck to build a new entrance to the Caverns. In 1962, another entrance was built by blasting a  shaft into the limestone and installing a large elevator. At that time the natural entrance was also sealed off at the request of the Hualapai Indians as it was considered a sacred burial place. Near the natural entrance, the skeletal remains of a Paramylodon harlani (Glossotherium harlani) were also found. This giant and extinct ground sloth lived during the Age of Mammals around 11,000 years ago, when the woolly mammoth and saber tooth cat roamed North America.

Peck had named the caverns Yampai Caverns, with the name being changed several times. Up until 1957, they were known as The Coconino Caverns. From 1957 through 1962, they were known as The Dinosaur Caverns. In 1962, they were renamed The Grand Canyon Caverns.

During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the U.S. government designated the caverns as a fallout shelter, with supplies for 2,000 people. These supplies remain in the caverns.

In 1979, a cosmic ray telescope was installed at Grand Canyon Caverns,  below the surface.

Features

The area includes a hotel, (The Grand Canyon Caverns Inn), an RV park, campgrounds, a restaurant, a convenience store, and a  runway.

Geology

Located on the Coconino Plateau, a few miles west of the Aubrey Cliffs that rise to over  above sea level, the Caverns lie within an alluvial plain at an elevation of about . Limestone comprises the majority of the subsurface area of this vicinity of the Coconino Plateau, an area riddled with numerous cavernous veins that run for miles in all directions.

See also
 Grand Canyon Caverns Airport
 Historic Route 66

Notes

External links

Caves of Arizona
Civilian Conservation Corps in Arizona
Grand Canyon
Landforms of Coconino County, Arizona
Show caves in the United States
Tourist attractions in Coconino County, Arizona
Works Progress Administration in Arizona

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Tag Archives: participation
In a post from long ago entitled Humanism in a New Key, I offered an interpretation of post-theism where the re-absorption of higher virtues formerly projected in the deities of religion opens up a new era in our evolving spirituality as a species. If the idea of an external god is understood in terms of an intentional object (i.e., as a construct of our mythopoetic imagination) rather than a metaphysical one (i.e., as a being existing outside and separate from us), this critical step can be welcomed and celebrated.
I don't presume that all theists will embrace the notion, but for many (including myself as a former theist) it can mark the breakthrough to a liberated life.
I find it helpful to view this process in the time-frame of human evolution as it has unfolded over many millenniums. Our species itself emerged in Africa perhaps 200,000 years ago, a late product of the natural evolution of life on Earth. Upon arriving, we proceeded to evolve still further under the shaping influence of culture – a construct system of language, symbols, stories, and technologies that continues to lift us by our own bootstraps.
If the evolution of nature brought about our uniquely complex nervous system and social intelligence, this gear-shift of cultural evolution will lead either to our fulfillment as a species or to our self-destruction. Because human culture is a work in progress, which direction we go remains an open question.
When our theory lacks imagination and insight, the purpose of culture gets reduced to little more than managing nature – our own as well as the natural order around us. In this view, with all its clever innovations and sophisticated methods, culture is just a fancy, interesting, but problematic way of keeping us alive and making copies of our genes – like 'putting lipstick on a pig', as we say. Cultures rise and fall, come and go, but we can only fall and go once from the scene of nature to be gone for good. Religion and science fiction can muse over angels and androids and faraway realms, but our real business is survival on this third rock from the sun.
On the other hand, it could be that our fulfillment as a species depends on something original to culture, something not merely derived from or sublimated out of our nature as highly evolved animals. I call this original element community – or more specifically, genuine community – and I've tried to show in numerous posts how religion plays a key role in its formation. Genuine community is not merely a society of individuals who get along; something much more transformative is going on.
The larger trajectory towards fulfillment is still unfolding after these many thousands of years, and we today stand on a critical threshold where our next step will bring about a breakthrough or (almost just as likely) a breakdown.
There is a debate over whether human evolution will reach its fulfillment with genuine community (as I argue) or instead with the rise of extraordinary individuals who possess super-human powers and abilities. The 'exceptionalists' focus their hopes on such paranormal abilities as levitation, mind-reading, bending spoons, or turning water into wine. They talk of higher consciousness, perfected nature, and immortality, but their specimens are typically from another time and quarter, or else 'presently unavailable' for closer examination.
When serving as a Christian pastor, I was frequently taken by how believers' regard for Jesus as just such an exception kept him safely at a distance and released them of any obligation to be like him. Maybe the possibility was there, but only for the spiritually gifted, not the rest of us.
By shifting our focus to the evolution of community, we don't have the option of worshiping perfection from a distance. As I see it, our advancement as individuals and the formation of genuine community are deeply correlated. Community provides the supportive environment where identity is constructed and personal commitment to the health of the whole is empowered in the individual. The individual then adds his or her creative influence to the community, which continues to foster a still higher realization of wellbeing. Thus a provident community and personal commitment progressively co-elevate the project of human evolution.
My diagram gives an illustration of this laddering dynamic. Again, a provident community instills in the newborn and young child a deep sense that she belongs. As she matures, the youngster is encouraged to participate in the community as a contributing member. And eventually, if all goes well, the young adult will take a responsible role in creating the new reality of an even stronger, more provident community for all.
This would amount to little more than a redundant cycling of new generations taking their place in society, except for the fact that it has been evolving. And the direction of this evolution – despite occasional setbacks and derailments along the way – has been steadily toward what I call the human ideal, by which I mean the fully self-actualized human being.
Like all living things, we humans have a potential locked up in our genes, but also encoded in the memes (symbols, stories, and folk wisdom) of culture, that gradually opens and develops in the direction of our maturity and fulfillment.
Beyond our physical, emotional, and intellectual maturity as individuals, there are still higher aims that have to do with our life together in community. In a recent post I identified five ethical virtues in particular that are recognized across all cultures as representing this human ideal.
My diagram displays these five virtues at the apex of an ascending arrow, which makes the point that this ideal is always 'above and ahead' of us, igniting our aspirations as well as measuring our progress or lack of it.
Theistic religion early on took up the task of focusing human contemplation on the higher virtues of humility, compassion, kindness, generosity, and forgiveness, which it personified in metaphorical figures of deities – humanlike but more perfect, bending their providential powers in the interest of a cohesive community. In myths that were regularly recited and performed in ritual settings of worship, the gods 'characterized' how devotees were expected to behave. (As projections, they could also deify our cruder and more violent tendencies as well.)
First by obedience, and gradually more and more by way of aspiration and endeavoring to be 'like god', the community of believers began to demonstrate the virtues in their interactions and way of life. This inward activation of what had been externally represented marks the evolutionary threshold where theism transforms into post-theism, where god relocates, as it were, from heaven into the heart, becoming the sacred center of an awakened and liberated life.
Posted by tractsofrevolution on November 22, 2017 in Philosophical Underpinnings, Post-theism/New Humanism, The Creative Life
Tags: awakening, belonging, Christianity, compassion, evolution, exceptionalism, forgiveness, generosity, genuine community, God, homo sapiens, human ideal, human virtues, humility, Jesus, kindness, mythological god, participation, personal commitment, post-theism, provident community, religion, responsibility, sacred stories, spirituality, the liberated life, theism
Our Quest for Oneness
Despite the fact that so much of religion tends to divide and antagonize (including terrorize), I've been exploring its essential function as a unifying force in human culture. We take as our starting point the root meaning of the word "religion" itself, deriving from the Latin religare, to link back or reconnect. Whatever distortions or corruptions it has taken on over the centuries, it seems to me that we should check these against the deeper or original intention of religion before we simply reject it out of hand as obsolete, oppressive, and dangerous.
As with everything cultural, religion emerged and evolved over time according to the developmental needs, crises, and opportunities of our species. Stone Age religion certainly looked different from anything we can observe today, though perhaps some strong family resemblance continues in present-day aboriginal societies that still live in close communion with "wild" nature. I've promoted a theory which interprets this development of religion as correlated with three centers of consciousness (or mental locations) that open up in sequence and steadily add to our general picture of what is real and what really matters.
The names of these three centers of consciousness employ familiar terms (body, ego, soul), but with important adjustments from the way they are popularly understood. A primary polarity is represented in body and soul, which simply identify the two directional orientations of human awareness: outward to the sensory-physical realm (body) and inward to the intuitive-mystical realm (soul). These are not "parts of the self" but rather mental locations that open awareness to distinct dimensions of experience.
A popular confusion draws an equation between soul and ego, my third mental location. But in fact ego and soul are not two names for the same thing. Soul, once again, refers to our inward orientation and deep inner life, while ego is our socially constructed center of identity. While I admit that an established center of identity (ego = I) is what makes our primary split in orientation possible in the first place, ego actually inhabits its own realm: the socio-moral arena of life in our tribe.
In the above illustration, the primary polarity of body and soul is indicated by a green connector while ego sits on its own. This makes the point that ego is a construct of culture, both a product and symptom of society, which makes it the wild card in our evolutionary adventure. More on that below.
Religion is thus designed to coordinate these three centers of consciousness (body, soul, ego) and their corresponding realms. Together these centers comprise the animal, spiritual, and personal aspects of a human being. Our development, as individuals and a species, advances sequentially through stages beginning in the body, moving through an ego-dominant period, and deepening all the while into a more inwardly grounded mode of being.
I have designated these general stages of religion as animistic (body-centered), theistic (ego-centered), and post-theistic (soul-centered). Just because development has advanced beyond a stage doesn't mean that the experiences and concerns peculiar to that stage are no longer relevant. On the contrary, those experiences and concerns are taken up and incorporated into the next stage and updated according to its emergent paradigm of meaning.
As the wild card in the set, ego represents a strong element of risk against the eventual fulfillment of this project. In previous posts I have tried to describe the factors that tend to compromise what psychology rightly names "ego strength" – the well-centered self confidence that develops as our needs for safety, love, power and worth are adequately met.
In the best of all possible worlds, we grow up in a family environment where these needs are fulfilled and our personal identity (ego) is securely established. Of course, we don't live in the best of all possible worlds and our caretakers are not perfect. As a consequence, the ego adapts and compensates for the insecurity by defending itself, pretending to be what it's not, and insisting on being the center of reality. Interestingly, but not really surprisingly, theism – as the model of religion that co-evolves with the ego – often portrays its principal deity in corresponding ways, as craving glory, jealous of rivals, and prone to violence in his campaign for supremacy.
Since in previous posts I've deconstructed the perverse influence of ego insecurity on the otherwise respectable and developmentally necessary stage of theism, I want to move now in a completely opposite direction with my analysis. It's easy to commit the mistake of effectively dismissing theism as only a transitional stage (more like a phase) along our way to something better. From my comments on the ego, about the inevitable and worldwide neuroses that pull theism into various dangerous corruptions (sectarianism, exclusionary membership, extremism, and redemptive violence), you might assume I have nothing good to say about either one of them.
On the contrary.
The diagram above shows where theism fits into the evolutionary scheme of religion. Our animal nature of the body connects us (religare) outwardly to the sensory-physical Universe, while our spiritual nature (or what I prefer to call our higher self) links us inwardly to the intuitive-mystical Ground. Both "Universe" and "Ground" are synonyms of sort, each communicating the idea of oneness: Universe as the nuance of totality (the All), and Ground as essence. As I said earlier, this body-soul axis forms the primary polarity in which human beings live. Ego (our wild card variable) tugs development in a horizontal direction, where we find a third nuance of oneness, encountered as the Other.
This, I would say, is the real genius in theism: regarding the present mystery of reality in its specific incarnation as one who stands opposite of me, in a space of absolute difference insofar as the other is deep-down unique and truly an individual (from individuum, the indivisible). In the process of ego development, identity is shaped and challenged in relationship with others who come out to meet us from the dark recess of otherness. We're not talking about the role-plays of social performance that govern so much of our daily interaction, but about the direct encounter between one self and another.
To conceive of God as Other in this sense, as a transcendent and absolute self who comes out to meet us or calls us out of our selves to an encounter, considers the present mystery of reality in terms of a one-to-one relationship. As the Jewish writer Martin Buber explained in his seminal book I and Thou, this faith in reality as arising out of the primal relationship of self and Other frames our whole existence in the dynamics of mutuality, dialogue, estrangement, and reconciliation.
This might encourage us to re-read our Bible as a mythological exploration (of quest, encounter, and response) into reality as the reciprocal adventure of humanity's longing for God and God's outreach to humanity. To simply take the Bible literally and make God into a literal being (i.e., a god) only serves to strip out its internal complexity, leaving nothing more than supposedly factual reports of supernatural events and once-upon-a-time miracles. When this happens, the Bible becomes, in the words of Francis Bacon, "an idol of the tribe." It stops speaking and becomes only words.
What if instead we engaged the Bible as a literary portrait – really a collection of portraits – of the human being as formed in relationship with Holy Otherness, as falling out of union and trying to hide our nakedness from The Gaze, as distracting ourselves in mediocrity or striving for superiority, and at last hearing the call to an awakened life and returning to intimacy with The One who never left us? That would be a very different Bible from the one pumped from most pulpits today, would it not?
As I said at the beginning, our developmental advance from one mental location (and one stage of religion) to the next doesn't mean that we grow up and get past those deeper needs and concerns. Just as theism doesn't (or shouldn't) seek to discredit the animist vision of reality as it sets out to expand on the dynamics of relationship, neither does (or should) post-theism dismiss the genuine insight of I and Thou at the heart of theism as it cultivates a more contemplative engagement with the grounding mystery of Being itself.
Our quest for oneness at each stage turns out to be a chapter (and ongoing theme) in the longer human journey to communion. Whether we celebrate our place in the living Universe, reach out with care to the holy Other, or sink inward to the nameless Ground of our being, we are fulfilling a most enduring and sacred of human quests.
Posted by tractsofrevolution on December 23, 2014 in Philosophical Underpinnings, Post-theism/New Humanism
Tags: animal, animism, Bible, body, communion, contemplation, ego, ego development, ego strength, encounter, ground, identity, mental locations, myth, mythological god, neurosis, oneness, other, participation, personal, post-theism, religion, soul, spiritual, spirituality, stages of religion, standpoints in reality, the social construction of identity, theism, universe
Soul and Reality
In my last post, I introduced the idea of body, ego, and soul as "standpoints in reality" – not as pieces of a human being, but rather as different mental locations where we can take a perspective on things. Body is organismic and biological, providing us a standpoint in the physical realm. Ego is tribal and personal, giving us a standpoint in the social realm. And soul is psychological (from the Greek psyche, soul) and spiritual, offering us a place in the presence of mystery, in the present mystery of reality.
Instead of breaking these aspects of the self into separate and warring opposites – ego against body, body versus soul – seeing them as distinct access points in our experience of reality can help us transcend the arguments over which one is "the real self" and contemplate instead human being in its wholeness. Rather than identifying ego with the soul, and then dissociating both from the body so "I" can elude the finality of death and live forever, we can appreciate how each contributes to the marvel of what it is to be human.
I reflected on how ego develops out of a simple identification with the internal state of the body. "I am happy" or "I am sad" are among the first ways a young child is taught how to declare him- or herself to the world. This affect (pronounced with the accent on the 'a') is where a child's experience of the world is registered: "The dark closet makes me afraid"; "You are making me angry." Behavior is then the output channel of this affect, in the way it motivates the youngster to run and hide, or push and pout.
Many people get stuck at this level of development. They remain in the I-am-angry-and-can't-help-but-push-you-down mode of life. A significant number of them seek out professional help because they are hostages to affect and can't stop doing things that are counterproductive to happiness. A truly helpful counselor will teach the client how to reflect on these powerful affect states. Instead of simply acting out the affect in behavior and only making things worse, the client can learn how to separate identity (ego) from emotion (affect→behavior) and use this freedom to choose more desirable outcomes.
The "liberated ego" can thus become a springboard into still higher experiences, which the wisdom traditions around the planet have named Love, Communion, Being, and Bliss (among others). It's important to understand that these are not merely synonyms for "happiness." The ego wants to be happy, but the soul seeks after something much higher than personal happiness. To get there, ego (I, me, mine) must be transcended, gone beyond. If it stays in charge, the personal self (ego) will be in the way.
As I suggested last time, a shift from the standpoint of ego to that of soul opens the self up to a much greater experience. Engagement with reality at this higher level is not impersonal (as it is for the body) or personal (as it is for the ego), but transpersonal – again, beyond the personal. This is where affect differentiates into feeling and thought. These are the Yin and Yang, respectively, of the soul's experience. Their "tension" is not combative but creative, like the tension in a string that produces a musical tone.
The wisdom traditions refer to these higher faculties of the soul as "heart" and "mind." Once liberated from the urgencies of the body and the self-interest of the ego, heart and mind are free to contemplate the present mystery of reality. If I were to describe in one word what each of these faculties of soul contributes to the experience I would say that mind/thought represents reality and heart/feeling participates in reality. Let's see how this plays out.
Ego, under the direction of the tribe, constructs a world, which is less a representation of reality than it is a projection of what is needed to help us feel safe, loved, capable and worthy. In its service as a faculty of the soul, mind represents reality apart from what I (ego) need it to be. Two favorite ways of representing reality across the wisdom traditions are as "ground" and "universe."
Insofar as mind is dependent on language to name and describe something (the present mystery) that is ineffable, it has offered up these two metaphors for contemplation. Ground is the generative source and deep support that stands underneath all things. Existence – which literally means "to stand out" – properly refers to everything above the ground, so to speak.
The ground itself, then, does not exist in this sense. It is pure being, the internal essence of all things, the be to their ing, the creative power of being-itself. No words can describe it, because language can only qualify what exists and the ground is beneath all qualities. Even the name "ground" must finally be released. In contemplating the mystery as the ground of being, the mystics advise us to stop talking.
As a representation in thought of the real presence of mystery, ground inspires the heart to a certain exquisite kind of feeling. This is not crude emotion, where affect drives behavior. Rather, this feeling registers our participation in the mystery that cannot be named but only surrendered to in complete self-abandonment. In letting go of qualities and attachments, the self can sink into the "solvent" of being itself. The feeling of participation gives way to the bliss of unqualified union or oneness.
Another worldwide representation of reality is universe. This is not to be confused with a term such as "cosmos," which is a more-or-less scientific name for the vast order of things (cosmos is Greek for order) that can be analyzed into galaxies, stars, planets, moons, minerals, elements, atoms and quarks. Universe is another metaphor, like ground, and not merely a designation of order. As metaphor, universe is a concept of pure thought, a representation by the mind of the mystery all around us.
Literally universe means "turned into one," which is precisely what this concept does for the soul. It provides a way of contemplating the comprehensive unity of all things – inclusive, interdependent, balanced, turning as one. The soul seeks after wholeness, and the representation of reality as universe offers a simple – though admittedly infinitely complex – image for contemplation.
Notice how "ground" and "universe" stand at opposite ends of a vertical continuum. Ground is in and down; universe is out and up. Ground is beneath us, whereas universe is all around us. Ground is unqualified being, while universe is qualified to an infinite degree. Finally, ground cannot be said to exist, but the universe is the totality of existence.
Contemplating reality in the representation of universe inspires a different sort of experience for the heart. Participation here does not lead to a feeling of dissolving into pure being or oneness, but rather of being elevated into an expansive community. Whereas the former experience is that of sinking into no-thing, the latter is realizing your connection to everything.
In thought, then, the soul represents the present mystery of reality as ground and universe, as the underlying oneness and overarching all-ness of existence. Depending on which representation is the focus of contemplation, the feeling of participation will be distinct and complementary. This interplay of feeling and thought, of heart and mind, of Yin and Yang, is how the soul touches the mystery and finds salvation.
Posted by tractsofrevolution on September 1, 2013 in The Creative Life
Tags: affect, behavior, being, being-itself, body, community, ego, feeling, ground of being, heart, identity, mind, mystery, mystical, oneness, participation, present mystery of reality, real presence of mystery, representation, salvation, soul, spiritual, Tao, thought, transpersonal, tribe, universe, Yang, Yin


Last week we discussed some MLB Betting Tips related to starting pitching. This week, we'll dive into some MLB Betting Tips related to team offense.
Pitching is rightfully the most accepted starting point for handicapping baseball games, but it can't be the only factor to consider when deciding which teams to back. Teams need to score – not just hold the other team down – in order to win.
As of this writing, there are eleven teams that are hitting under .250 as a club, and those teams have to be weighted as such regardless of who is the opposing pitcher.
The Mariners, Mets, and White Sox make up the bottom three teams in terms of team batting average, and when they send their ace to the mound it's often a good time to fade them at a great price.
Let's look at Chicago's Chris Sale, who is having a fantastic season with an ERA of 3.02 and a WHIP under 1.000, but his lack of run support has hurt him. In his last three starts, the White Sox have lost all three games while being listed as favorites of -130, -190, and -130.
Sale didn't pitch well in his most recent outing, allowing five earned runs in 6 2/3 innings of work, but in the other two starts he gave up two runs in 6 2/3 innings and zero runs over eight innings. Those are decent pitching stats, but his offense could only muster a single run scored in all three games. Fading the White Sox in those starts would have yielded a hefty profit!
There are other factors to consider when comparing team offenses. Some ball parks tend to be advantageous to hitters, such as Colorado, while others are known to be pitcher parks, such as San Diego. Injuries play a big role as well, such as Miami's Giancarlo Stanton, who leads the team in home runs and RBI's.
According to the best sports betting software, batting averages can't be the sole statistic used to judge an offense. San Diego is hitting .244 as a team, and has scored 327 runs this season. Philadelphia is only one point worse, hitting .243 as a team this year, but has scored far fewer runs (260) – a sign of failure to come through with runners in scoring position.
Surprisingly, there isn't a difference comparing AL teams to NL teams despite the AL having the benefit of the designated hitter. Both leagues have an identical .253 batting average, so there isn't a need to account for the DH when handicapping interleague games.
For those wondering, the Detroit Tigers and Kansas City Royals lead the league in team batting average, and if we find those teams matched up against some of the worse hitting teams in the league then we find a huge offensive advantage in those matchups.
Add team offense into your MLB Handicapping routine and see what impact it has on your results! Speaking of sports betting, if you need a top reliable sportsbook that gives you more for your money, 1Vice.ag is currently having their PRE PRE NFL Sales promotion where for the entire month of July, you get Double the Odds on your Super Bowl future bet. Simply put, if the Arizona Cardinals to win the Super Bowl are at +3000, you get them +6000!
We'll be back next week with more MLB Betting Tips.


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Home / Tennis News / Austrian Tennis Star Theim Is Ready for His Comeback From Injury
Austrian Tennis Star Theim Is Ready for His Comeback From Injury
By TennisBalls Staff
Dominic Thiem has not played since Mallorca in June.
Dominic Thiem is set to return from injury in time to compete at the 2022 Australian Open, the Austrian announced on social media Tuesday.
The former World No. 3 has been recovering from a right wrist injury that he sustained at the Mallorca Championships in June. Thiem revealed last month that he would not require surgery on his wrist, which prevented him from defending his US Open title in September, with his recovery stepping up in recent weeks.
"I am very happy to announce that my recovery is going well. The MRI I did today showed that my wrist injury has improved significantly. A couple of weeks ago I started playing with soft balls and was able to switch to normal tennis balls during yesterday's practise session. My team and I strongly believe that I'll be ready to make my comeback to competition later this year.
I'll be returning to competition in December and will be playing the MWTC 2021 in Abu Dhabi – with the objective to return to the tour for the 2022 Australian Open. Needless to say that the vaccine is needed to play both events, and in my case I have already been vaccinated. I saw recently some news about this and I had made it very clear that I would get vaccinated. Hopefully the next time things won't be taken this far as I saw last week…
Last but not least, I would like to thank all of my fans who have been incredibly supportive these last couple of months and I cannot wait to play my first competitive match in a little over a month."
Dominic Thiemfeatured
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Sailor Killed In 1941 At Pearl Harbor To Be Buried In Dallas
Navy Fireman 1st Class Albert U. Kane of Fort Worth was killed during the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency via AP
A 26-year-old sailor from Fort Worth killed during the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor will be buried in Dallas on the 77th anniversary of the attack.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency on Thursday announced services for Navy Fireman 1st Class Albert U. Kane of Fort Worth, Texas, will be held Dec. 7. Burial is planned at Dallas-Fort Worth National Cemetery.
Kane, on Dec. 7, 1941, was assigned to the USS Oklahoma when the battleship was attacked. His unidentified remains were among those buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. A number of remains, associated with the USS Oklahoma, were ordered disinterred in 2015 for DNA testing.
Kane's remains were accounted for Aug. 9.
The federal agency says Kane's family has asked not to be contacted by the media.
Family Of Unaccounted For USS Oklahoma Sailor Wouldn't 'Let Him Go'
By editor • Apr 16, 2015
The Defense Department announced Tuesday that it will exhume the remains of 388 sailors and Marines who were buried as "unknowns." The men were killed when Japanese torpedoes sank the USS Oklahoma on Dec. 7, 1941, during the attacks on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
Pentagon To Exhume Remains Of Sailors From USS Oklahoma
By Krishnadev Calamur • Apr 15, 2015
The Pentagon says it will exhume the remains of 388 sailors and Marines who died on Dec. 7, 1941, in the capsizing of the USS Oklahoma during the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Remembering A Texan's Role In Ending World War II
By Justin Martin • Aug 17, 2015
Kenny Ryan / SMU
This month marks the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Japan. Two atomic bombs named 'Little Boy' and 'Fat Man' were dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 in an effort to end World War II. A Texan, Major James Hopkins, piloted one of the planes on the Nagasaki mission.
Farming Behind Barbed Wire: Japanese-Americans Remember WWII Incarceration
By editor • Feb 19, 2017
At 98, Riichi Fuwa doesn't remember his Social Security number, but he remembers this: "19949. That was my number the government gave me," he said. "19949. You were more number than name."
That was the number that Fuwa was assigned when he was 24 years old, soon after he was forced off his family's farm in Bellingham, Wash., and incarcerated at the Tule Lake camp, just south of the Oregon border in California's Modoc County.
At Pearl Harbor, Obama And Japan's Leader Tout Reconciliation
By Greg Myre • Dec 27, 2016
President Obama and Japanese Minister Shinzo Abe made a historic appearance at Pearl Harbor, 75 years after the surprise attack that prompted U.S. entry into World War II, praising the reconciliation and partnership between their respective nations.
In a somber ceremony Tuesday, the two leaders touted the U.S.-Japan alliance that arose in the aftermath of the bitter conflict and became a "cornerstone of peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region," Obama said.
USS Arizona Memorial At Pearl Harbor Closes Indefinitely Due To Structural Concerns
By Jenny Gathright • May 27, 2018
The USS Arizona Memorial off Honolulu's coast is closed for repairs. Jay Blount, a spokesman for the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument, told Hawaii News Now that the edge where the visitor ramp meets the memorial has fissures on its exterior and the loading ramp is not being properly supported.
5 things you didn't know about the history of the Myers-Briggs system
By Janet Nguyen • Oct 30, 2018
On its path to becoming the most popular personality test in the world, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator aimed to match spies in World War II to specific tasks, evaluated high-level executives at some of America's largest companies, and helped assess famous writers like Truman Capote.


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Productive Q2 sees B2B and B2C expansion for GiG
Tuesday, August 14, 2018 Posted by Michael Lawson
The firm recorded a revenue increase for the quarterly period.
A particularly busy Q2 period for Gaming Innovation Group (GiG) saw the Oslo-listed online gaming firm launch its new sports betting division, expand its German footprint and secure its first US partnership with Hard Rock International.
The firm has also recorded an increase in revenue (up 39% to €36.9 million), but a narrow drop in EBITDA (€1.7 million down from €1.9 million), which was put down to "the strong focus on investments and expansion".
Furthermore, the Malta-headquartered company stressed a commitment to the US market, after New Jersey's Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE) gave the green light to its Hard Rock partnership.
GiG CEO Robin Reed outlined some of the firm's activities and targets moving forward: "We have kept ourselves more than busy with a range of key initiatives: We have consolidated our brand positioning with an increased focus on fewer brands in key markets.
"We have developed our marketing strategy and organisation with a strong focus on agile performance marketing. We have launched the new sportsbook on our flagship brand Rizk.com and our operator Guts is set to go live next week with its V2.0.
"We have high hopes for Thrills which is being relaunched as a 'Pay N Play' casino at the end of this month, and our media department has seen good potential in turning SuperLenny into an affiliate website.
"Finally, we have focused heavily on compliance, introduced a new player safety team with a strong focus on responsible gaming and sustainability. These initiatives are paying off and we have seen healthy KPIs going into Q3.
"With the majority of the heavy-lifting behind us and the strongest season ahead of us, we should see growth in both revenues and profits in the coming quarters, while working towards our goal of becoming the largest full service company to the igaming industry."
Totally Gaming says: GiG has been busy expanding in a number of ways, so the fact the firm has also managed to increase profits is a particularly big achievement. CEO Robin Reed has insisted GiG is on track to meet its end-of-year targets, and who could argue against that given these results?
GiGse
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A grocery haul is a video showing you which groceries I bought. There's a little commentary about what I'll make with the groceries and you get to see everything I bought. I am obsessed with watching grocery haul videos, I can only surmise that it's because I'm so nosey. I find it really interesting to see what everyone else is eating or planning on cooking.
I regularly put grocery haul videos on my YouTube channel and this month it's a rather special Christmas haul because all my Christmas ingredients are included. I'm adding to this post my full meal plan for the month of December too. It's a richer menu than usual because it's decadent December, a month filled with celebrations.


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Oopsie!
2 comments April 11th, 2007at 09:30pm Posted by Eli
Okay, now I'm officially done with the Imus story.
Raise your hand if you're surprised (AP, via TPM and *xyz at FDL):
The White House said Wednesday it had mishandled Republican Party-sponsored e-mail accounts used by nearly two dozen presidential aides, resulting in the loss of an undetermined number of e-mails concerning official White House business.
Congressional investigators looking into the administration's firing of eight federal prosecutors already had the nongovernmental e-mail accounts in their sights because some White House aides used them to help plan the U.S. attorneys' ouster. Democrats were questioning whether the use of the GOP-provided e-mail accounts was proof that the firings were political.
…The announcement of the lost e-mails – a rare admission of error from the Bush White House at a delicate time for the administration's relations with Democratically controlled Capitol Hill – gave new fodder for inquiry on this front."This sounds like the administration's version of the dog ate my homework," said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. "I am deeply disturbed that just when this administration is finally subjected to meaningful oversight, it cannot produce the necessary information."
[RNC spokesman Scott] Stanzel said some e-mails have been lost because the White House lacked clear policies on complying with Presidential Records Act requirements.
Before 2004, for instance, e-mails to and from the accounts were typically automatically deleted every 30 days along with all other RNC e-mails. Even though that was changed in 2004, so that the White House staffers with those accounts were excluded from the RNC's automatic deletion policy, some of their e-mails were lost anyway when individual aides deleted their own files, Stanzel said.
He could not say what had been lost, and said the White House is working to recover as many as they can. The White House has now shut off employees' ability to delete e-mails on the separate accounts, and is briefing staffers on how to better make determinations about when – and when not – to use them, Stanzel said.
So… deleting your e-mail from your RNC mailbox removes it from the server completely, with no backup archival copy anywhere? Fascinating.
Some other thoughts:
Most e-mail exchanges are threadlike, with all previous e-mails and responses included on them. So as long as any e-mails from a thread survive, everything leading up to it should be on that e-mail as well. If there are no partial e-mail chains, then that suggests that entire threads were systematically deleted, which makes the "oopsie" excuse a lot less plausible.
Will there be any visible "holes" where it is apparent that there should have been e-mails about a certain topic, but none are visible? Such omissions would at least provide a general contour of what was being covered up by deliberate deletions.
Entry Filed under: Bush,Corruption/Cronyism,Politics,Republicans,Rove,Wankers
1. Multi Medium » But &hellip | April 12th, 2007 at 11:41 am
[…] Okay, I know I said I was done, but there are a couple of strands of Imus apologia that are really pissing me off. […]
2. Ruth | April 12th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
We are looking for an email Czar, and I suggest Rosemary's baby, aka son of rosemary. The reruns scheduled for the summer season, already.


The tourist guide union announced they will strike for three days on 15, 16 and 17 November, demanding better work conditions and employment opportunities.
The head of the tourist guide syndicate, Mo'taz Al-Sayed, stated in a press conference on Saturday at the union's headquarters that the strike is the guides' last resort after their demands have been repeatedly ignored by Ministry of Tourism, according to state-owned Al-Ahram.
"We've knocked on all doors with our demands, only to be met with silence, even though our demands require no money," Hisham Al-Shattury, secretary general of the tourist guide union, said.
Al-Shattury submitted his resignation from the union on Wednesday and vowed not to take it back until a portion of the guides' demands are met.
The tourist guides are demanding the cancellation of manadatory training they must pay for in order to renew their license.
The high unemployment rate tourist guides have been suffering from for the past year and a half is not supplemented by any monetary assistance by the Ministry of Tourism.
"Tourist guides in Jordan are paid $ 100 per day, our daily wage doesn't exceed EGY 50," Al-Shattury said, adding that the tourist guides' pension amounts to a sum of as little as EGY 200.
They also request amending law number 121 for the year 1983 in a manner fit to grant the union independence from the Ministry of Tourism. At the moment the union is restricted by its affiliation to the ministry.
Hiring only Egyptians as foreign language-speaking tourist guides is also among the demands the guides are calling for through their strike.
The guides are in addition demanding representation in international conferences.
The tourist guides' union in Aswan announced their solidarity with the strike, saying they shall take part in the strike in tourist sites in Edfu, Commumbo, Philae, the missing obelisk, the High Dam, the Nubian temples and Abu Simbil temple, reported independent daily Al-Shorouk.
The tourist guides have been on several protests before, especially after tourism declined following the January 2011 revolution.


Pooja Kumar keeps us Guessing about the Sequel to Viswaroopam – Dailomo.com – Tamil Cinema & Etc.
For the people in cinema industry, especially, the actors and directors, it is an easy job to keep people guessing about the surprise things. Even the young Pooja Kumar, who is the leading lady of Ulaga Nayagan Kamal Hassan's Viswaroopam, does it very well, although she is new to the industry.
There are reports circling in the industry that Kamal Hassan is gearing up with the second edition of his yet to be released flick, Viswaroopam. The reports also claim that Kamal Hassan has already canned a few scenes for the sequel already along with the shooting of the first edition. Quiz about all these reports to Pooja Kumar, she gives us no clues whether these reports are true or false.
When the media reporters asked her regarding the sequel rumor of Viswaroopam, she did not say a binary answer. When asked whether she too got involved in the canning of scenes for the second part of the movie, she simply replied that she is just an actress and has to obey the director and has to act in the scenes which he cans. She added that her work ends with just acting as the director wants and not questioning him. However, she also confused the people saying that even she too is unsure whether Kamal Hassan would use a few scenes, which he shot with her, for the Viswaroopam's sequel.
When the reporters pressed her more on the sequel rumors, she became evasive by saying that she definitely would not like to spoil the mystery behind all those reports, if Kamal Hassan is sure of making a sequel flick.
Now, this is an instance how Pooja Kumar, who is so young in cinema industry, has learnt the art of keeping people guessing about the surprise packages.
For your information, Kamal Hassan's Viswaroopam also stars Andrea Jeremiah and the movie's rushes are already creating huge buzz in the K – Town!


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Like it or not JSON is the data format of the web at the moment. It has found uses in application configuration, taxonomy management and pretty much any domain that used to be handled by XML is now increasingly being taken over by JSON.
While our Hivemind product is first and foremost a web application delivery platform, it doubles as a full-blown Structured Information Manager and Publisher for JSON information. Both technical and non-technical users can use it to create and publish complex structured information without writing code.
Hivemind has a sophisticated Smart Object technology that can be used to create complex objects that are then serialized as JSON.
We're happy to announce the release of Hivemind 2.0. This release is a major UI upgrade with a design that conveys the modern approach to web application development that Hivemind is built for. As always your feedback is appreciated.
It's been two years since there's been a significant development of Hivemind, that is coming to an end. We are going to ratchet up development of the platform and ramp up business activity to get customer acquisition in high gear. To that end we are working on a major UI overhaul of the Hivemind platform.


I imagine that all the recent hubbub about Iceman coming out as gay in this week's #40 issue of All New X-Men (and by hubbub I mean "Oh, Facebook Trending updated itself again") is interesting to comic book fans who grew up reading X-Men comics. Perhaps not because it's astonishing or new or uncanny, but maybe because it represents the return of a plotline that cropped up in a little-remembered Almost Very Special Issue of Uncanny X-Men published in 1994, more than 20 years ago.
After Bendis was "honestly persuasive" on the issue, Alonso took a look at the history of the snow-powered X-Man, passed it up the chain and the decision was made. "That's the whole boring process. He had a good story to tell, and we think it's worth telling," Alonso added.
And for another, this almost happened already in Uncanny X-Men issue #319, written by Scott Lobdell and published way back in 1994.
Even as a kid, I remember thinking that #319 was a weird comic. It took place in this two-issue lull between the Last Big X-Men Crossover (The dreadful "Phalanx Covenant" aka "X-Men Fight the Borg From Star Trek.") and the build-up to the Next Big X-Men Crossover (The Still Awesome To This Day "Age of Apocalypse"). The comic before it, issue #318, concerned itself with mopping up the mess of the Phalanx crossover: checking in on newly battle-scarred characters and shipping Jubilee off to a new school where she couldn't annoy the X-Men anymore. And the next crossover wasn't kicking off until issue #320, leaving the lonely little issue #319 to tell a trio of short character vignettes.
As we find out later in the issue, the subtext of this scene isn't so much "sub" as it is "text." Bobby has brought Rogue to have dinner with his parents, despite the fact that Bobby has never spent any time with Rogue and has never really shown an interest in doing so. Rogue even comments on this during their drive to Bobby's parents' house and the implication is that Rogue is there because she is the most visually "acceptable" woman in the X-Men.
Now that we know how the story rolls out, let's go back to the opening scene. We know that Bobby's father is unaccepting of his son's status as a mutant, but that doesn't seem to be the entire story motivating Bobby to bring Rogue out to Long Island and build a huge ice castle. The story makes it apparent that Bobby even showing up is an attempt by Bobby to mollify his father and fit into his limited worldview, which implies that Bobby has felt obligated to do so throughout his life, regardless of his own feelings. The flashback sequence regarding sand castles is telling in this regard; young Bobby stops building the castle after experiencing his father's disapproval. Present day Bobby, in response, builds an enormous and elaborate ice castle. He feels a deep desire to express his true self at the beginning and at the end of the story in this issue, although he seems to need Rogue's support to feel brave enough to do so.
Does this mean that Bobby's sense of difference extends beyond his status as a mutant and into his sexuality? This isn't stated outright, and I can't speak in regards to the intentions of this issue's writer, Scott Lobdell, but the presence of Rogue is telling. Why wouldn't Bobby ask Jean along on this trip? Jean Grey is a woman he has been friends with throughout his entire tenure in the X-Men, after all. Why wouldn't he ask Storm, who at the time was mentoring Bobby in his powers and was more than capable of standing up to racists? Why would Bobby ask Rogue, a teammate that he never really talks to? Is it because she's an attractive woman with an obvious, downright medical, reason to avoid human contact, providing a handy excuse for why Bobby wouldn't attempt to touch her?
To me, the story is implying that Bobby is hoping that Rogue will act as his "beard." He expresses himself fully around her in the beginning of the story, brings Rogue to his family so she can see firsthand the limits he must live within—and so Bobby's family can see him with a woman—and relies on her for emotional support afterwards.
Bryan Singer has spoken publicly that he feels that the experience of being gay and coming out is analogous to how mutants must feel in the X-Men universe when they "come out," and that the above scene is inspired by that. In fact, pointing out this general parallel between homosexuality and the X-Men is what convinced Ian McKellen to play Magneto.
By the end of issue #319, although Bobby makes no statements regarding his sexuality, he nevertheless declares himself ready to leave his father's limited worldview behind and to start expressing himself more fully. Unfortunately, the X-Men universe gets reset only three issues later, and when it goes back to normal six months after that, Iceman's storyline shifts focus to Rogue and some boring secret she's keeping about Gambit, so Bobby's sexuality doesn't really get explored any further.
So as we see, and as Axel Alonso and Bendis most likely discussed before publishing All New X-Men #40, the development of Bobby's sexuality doesn't come out of nowhere. Repression was built into Iceman's character at least two decades ago, and there have been other hints throughout the years, as well. Iceman has, for instance, dated not one but two shapeshifters that have spent some of their time onscreen as men. Taken together, these instances create a pattern that suggests that Iceman is, if not homosexual, at least explorative with his sexuality. All New X-Men #40, therefore, remains respectful of the history established for Iceman as a character while exploring new facets of that character. This kind of approach often makes for great, iconic stories.
But comics are ever-changing in their continuity, and there appears to be a big reset button of sorts on the horizon for the Marvel Universe, so will this stick? Maybe! Or maybe there's more to come. As Bendis and Axel tease, the story only really gets going in May's Uncanny X-Men #600.
Chris Lough writes for Tor.com and can remember buying Uncanny #300 in a mall. Remember malls? Whatever happened to those things?