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Tue, 26 Feb 2008 08:35:25 GMT

clipped by: mickfinn

Clip Source: freshome.com

Tags: what shall i put on what?

Materiaiism Hurting Children

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 09:15:45 GMT

clipped by: abailart

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Most adults in the UK believe that children's well-being is being damaged because childhood has become too commercial, a lifestyle poll has found.

Some 89% of adults in the GfK NOP survey of 1,255 people believed today's children were more materialistic than previous generations.

The poll is one of the contributions to a continuing inquiry into childhood.

The Children's Society said adults had to "take responsibility for the current level of marketing to children".

Bob Reitemeier, chief executive of the society, said: "A crucial question raised by the inquiry is whether childhood should be a space where developing minds are free from concentrated sales techniques.

Professor Philip Graham, Emeritus Professor of Child Psychiatry at the Institute of Child Health in London, said: "One factor that may be leading to rising mental health problems is the increasing degree to which children and young people are preoccupied with possessions

Tags: materialism, childhood, human values

Evidence is not Relevant to Seeing Angels

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 09:11:46 GMT

clipped by: abailart

Clip Source: richarddawkins.net

Why is Stanley Fish so much smarter than Richard Dawkins? That question occurred to me last week, while attending a lecture at which Fish, the well-known literary and legal theorist, did the thing he always does, which is to make the following point over and over again:

"No believer will find his faith shaken by evidence that is evidence only in the light of assumptions he does not share and considers flatly wrong."

What, for Dawkins, would constitute evidence of God's existence? Suppose an angel of the Lord were to appear before Dawkins, even as he was delivering another lecture on the delusion that God exists. Would such an experience change Dawkins' views?

Fish has spent his whole career pointing out why it wouldn't: not because of the nature of angels, but because of the nature of interpretation. As long as Dawkins remains who he is now, he will remain incapable of seeing an angel of the Lord.

Tags: dawkins, faith, spirit

Different States

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 07:24:59 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman
clipper's remarks: How would you fancy being a Polypotamian

Clip Source: strangemaps.wordpress.com

No one seems to regret that Thomas Jefferson’s plan for the division of the Northwest Territory into ten new states was shelved. The proposed names were just too silly, writes 19th-century Jefferson-biographer John T. Morse, Jr.:

The names suggested for these ten States are a peculiar mixture of Latin and Indian, and while a semblance of some of the names still remains in two cases, in all others it is so absolutely forgotten that the very fact has ceased to be known by many close students of American history.

In 1787, the fledgling new republic for the first time expanded beyond the borders of the original 13 states

Sylvania would have covered much of present-day Minnesota, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and some of northern Wisconsin.

Michigania would have incorporated most of Wisconsin, but nothing of Michigan

The northern part of modern-day Illinois would have been the state of Assenispia, after the Assenisipi River, also known as the Rock River

Polypotamia (‘Land of Many Rivers’)