Name: Tess
Home: St. Louis
The Week in News
Today during Ben's nap, I had a chance to peruse this week's issue of Newsweek. Let me start by saying I'm tired of the now ubiquitous pictures of disgusting chickens that accompany alarmist stories about the avian flu. If you want to see a truly evil "chicken," rent The Wrong Trousers, a Wallace & Gromit short. If you want an antidote to evil chickens, watch Chicken Run (also by W&G's creators), or sing along to the infectious (in a good way) songs on Sandra Boynton's Philadelphia Chickens CD.
But back to Newsweek. It was interesting to read people debating in the letters whether Mormons are Christians. In parenting news, the article about circumcision made me more ambivalent about our decision not to circumcise Ben; turns out, adult circumcision prevented HIV transmission by as much as 60 percent in one study. The magazine also covers the great pacifier debate ignited by the AAP's new recommendations to give infants pacifiers at bedtime to prevent SIDS. Personally, I agree with the nurse quoted in the article that the recommendations may be unnecessarily broad and may not apply to breastfeeding infants, who wake more frequently to nurse and therefore don't sleep as deeply as formula-fed babies.
Finally, an article covered Google's quest to scan massive numbers of books to make them searchable. The Association of American Publishers is suing to stop Google, citing copyright infringement. I have a hard time seeing, though, how being able to find a few sentences of text online is going to hurt sales or prevent people from buying the books. At first I was skeptical of amazon.com's "search inside the book" feature, but now I use it when I'm working on a book discussion guide and need to find a phrase but can't remember the page number. It's just another example of how computers and the internet are changing the way we interact with information. A few short years ago, I lobbied the high school where I worked to buy the hardback edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, all 20 volumes of it. Now I consult dictionary.com all the time, and I can't remember the last time I consulted my trusty American Heritage Dictionary.
posted by Tess | 2:39 PM
4 Comments:
Thanks for the link to the Mormon article. Very interesting. I shall ponder and perhaps post something on my blog regarding my thoughts of Mormonism claiming to be a Christian denomination.
Jorge is going to leave you with a false sense of security. It doesn't matter what country the studies were preformed in; AIDS is still sexually transmitted the same way. The reason the rates vary is because so does the population. Percentage-wise it would still remain the same. With that said, it was your decision to make. Down the road when the time comes; arm your son with all the correct knowledge he needs to make the safest possible decision for him and his future partners.
AGHHHH!!
Separation of Church and State SIMPLY means that the government (State and Federal) cannot force a universal or mandated religion upon its people. It means you have the freedom to worship the religion you deem appropriate for your faith. It doesn't mean that God doesn't exist. It doesn't mean they can't talk about God. It doesn't mean they can't post the Ten Commandments. There is no such thing as a “moral grey area”. Right abd wrong do not change. Fancy talk can be spewed forth in an attempt to justify it, but it is still wrong (abortion). With that said, Mormons are NOT Christians. There is a very distinctive difference. Anyone who thinks otherwise either needs to take their blinders off or is blatantly lying to you (which is a sin you know). When the Mormons come knocking they are very well prepared to convince you. They are taught to contradict and manipulate the Scriptures that Christians know and give them a new meaning to reflect the Mormon beliefs. The speech and spill you get when you answer your door is a rehearsed formula. If you can get them off that formula you can see for yourself just how inept of a “religion” (and I use that term loosely) that they are. I encourage my fellow Christians to call upon their Pastors, Reverends, and Priests to ask them how to get the “Door to Door LDS Peddlers” off the scripted formula they like to ambush you with. If you give it an actual try, they will never come to your door again. Jesus is the son of God and God is our loving Father and Creator. To truly call yourself a Christian is to love your neighbor (and not just the straight ones) unconditionally, forgive, do NOT pass judgment (aka “Help the Gay not be Gay), and accept Jesus Christ as your Savoir and God as your Father. We can judge a man’s innocence or guilt but we cannot even begin to fathom the plans that God has for their soul. Who’s to say that when you condemn “so and so” for being gay the He who is King will not condemn you for passing judgment? Bottom line, just because we as mortals are not gay does not ensure that we are right and just. My God is very forgiving and loves us all AS LONG as we are very forgiving and we love everyone. Two wrongs never make a right. We cannot bomb an abortion clinic or shout mean and hateful things to those women. We stand the chance of taking someone’s life which is the very thing we are trying to prevent from happening. What can we do instead? Pray and pray hard. Homosexuality is considered to be wrong. Well so is passing judgment, condemning, violence, and hate. What makes the righteous ones who employ these said “tactics” worthy in God’s eyes? They are going against several of his teachings to enforce one of many. Pray for His children, do not condemn them. If and when they want your help they will ask for it.
Everyone is preaching the end of the world lately. I think the world will end one day and yes Jesus will come again. But I am positive we will have destroyed the world and mankind on our own long before that happens. What I am more scared of then anything else is us as a whole. We live in a dangerous world that is fueled and ran by greed. It is a safe assumption that we are in trouble. It could me 40 million years from now or next Tuesday, but yes we are in trouble.
“This is my commandment that you love one another; as I have loved you.” ~God
R. Dodson
Roman Catholic
West Virginia
Where did that come from? Surely not all from your post ;)
BTW, an American study of HIV transmission comparing circ/uncirc men only put the uncirc chances up by .3%. The African study is way off. Sorry, can't find the study, but it was among the research I did when I was pregnant with my first.
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