... wow!
২১ আগস্ট, ২০১০
One third of Britons take a teddy bear to bed.
And 25% of men take teddy with them when they travel.
ADDED: This post brought back a long-lost memory. When I was a child, I wanted to be the child that takes a stuffed animal or doll to bed. I had a mental "ideal girl" image in mind. I tried... and failed. I couldn't put up with it. I liked to sleep on my stomach and extend my hands flat under the pillow, and I cared a lot about the underside of the pillow being very cool. I used to turn the pillow over to get the cool side facing down.
Corrine Sweet, a psychologist, said cuddling a teddy bear was an "important part of our national psyche... it evokes a sense of peace, security and comfort. It’s human nature to crave these feelings from childhood to adult life. It’s not surprising, then, that taking a teddy bear on a business trip is popular. As a bedtime bear evokes feelings of home, warmth, and can help you nod off – just like in babyhood.”So... it's a special British thing?
The study also found that the traditional teddy bear was the most popular cuddly toy among adults, with Winnie the Pooh second and Paddington Bear third.
ADDED: This post brought back a long-lost memory. When I was a child, I wanted to be the child that takes a stuffed animal or doll to bed. I had a mental "ideal girl" image in mind. I tried... and failed. I couldn't put up with it. I liked to sleep on my stomach and extend my hands flat under the pillow, and I cared a lot about the underside of the pillow being very cool. I used to turn the pillow over to get the cool side facing down.
Ted Olson...
... "softened"? By his new wife? I find it hard to believe. But if he gets a new haircut and new glasses, then I might believe.
"It’s a sad commentary that it even has to be stated what faith the president observes, as if it should matter whether he follows Christianity, or any religion at all."
"What if he were a Muslim? What if he were an atheist? Why should that matter? And let’s not forget that some of the same critics who insist that Obama is a Muslim criticized him for going to a Christian church where prayed for 20 years, got married, and baptized his children.”
Tobin Harshaw quotes Alan Colmes, and let me respond in list form:
1. Who are the critics who insist that Obama is a Muslim? The poll just said 20% of Americans believe Obama is a Muslim. That doesn't mean they "insist" that he is or that they are "critics." Isn't it funny when commentator puzzling over how Americans can believe such things displays his own propensity to leap to conclusions beyond what the evidence supports?
2. It would matter if Obama is really a Muslim or an atheist, because it would mean that he'd lied about religion — for political advantage. If you want to find out more generally whether Americans are willing to accept non-Christian candidates, show me how they respond to a candidate who doesn't purport to be a Christian. The candidate's fear of discrimination — if that's what happened — isn't fairly used to tar Americans as intolerant.
3. There's nothing inconsistent with thinking Obama is a Muslim and criticizing him for going to a Christian church for 20 years. The criticism about the church had to do with the preaching of Jeremiah Wright, which offended and outraged a lot of people during the 2008 campaign. Obama himself chose to denounce him and separate himself from Wright's church (Trinity).
4. Does Obama's past association with Trinity Church prove that he was (and is) a Christian? My source is "Dreams from My Father," chapter 14. While working as a community organizer, Obama was told that it would "help [his] mission if [he] had a church home" and that Jeremiah Wright "might be worth talking to" because "his message seemed to appeal to young people like [him]." Obama wrote that "not all of what these people [who went to Trinity] sought was strictly religious... it wasn't just Jesus they were coming home to." He was told that "if you joined the church you could help us start a community program," and he didn't want to "confess that [he] could no longer distinguish between faith and mere folly." He was, he writes, "a reluctant skeptic." Thereafter, he attends a church service and hears Wright give a sermon titled "The Audacity of Hope" (which would, of course, be the title of Obama's second book). He describes how moved he was by the service, but what moves him is the others around him as they respond to a sermon about black culture and history. He never says he felt the presence of God or accepted Jesus as his savior or anything that suggests he let go of his skepticism. Obama's own book makes him look like an agnostic (or an atheist). He respects religion because he responds to the people who believe, and he seems oriented toward leveraging the religious beliefs of the people for worldly, political ends.
Tobin Harshaw quotes Alan Colmes, and let me respond in list form:
1. Who are the critics who insist that Obama is a Muslim? The poll just said 20% of Americans believe Obama is a Muslim. That doesn't mean they "insist" that he is or that they are "critics." Isn't it funny when commentator puzzling over how Americans can believe such things displays his own propensity to leap to conclusions beyond what the evidence supports?
2. It would matter if Obama is really a Muslim or an atheist, because it would mean that he'd lied about religion — for political advantage. If you want to find out more generally whether Americans are willing to accept non-Christian candidates, show me how they respond to a candidate who doesn't purport to be a Christian. The candidate's fear of discrimination — if that's what happened — isn't fairly used to tar Americans as intolerant.
3. There's nothing inconsistent with thinking Obama is a Muslim and criticizing him for going to a Christian church for 20 years. The criticism about the church had to do with the preaching of Jeremiah Wright, which offended and outraged a lot of people during the 2008 campaign. Obama himself chose to denounce him and separate himself from Wright's church (Trinity).
4. Does Obama's past association with Trinity Church prove that he was (and is) a Christian? My source is "Dreams from My Father," chapter 14. While working as a community organizer, Obama was told that it would "help [his] mission if [he] had a church home" and that Jeremiah Wright "might be worth talking to" because "his message seemed to appeal to young people like [him]." Obama wrote that "not all of what these people [who went to Trinity] sought was strictly religious... it wasn't just Jesus they were coming home to." He was told that "if you joined the church you could help us start a community program," and he didn't want to "confess that [he] could no longer distinguish between faith and mere folly." He was, he writes, "a reluctant skeptic." Thereafter, he attends a church service and hears Wright give a sermon titled "The Audacity of Hope" (which would, of course, be the title of Obama's second book). He describes how moved he was by the service, but what moves him is the others around him as they respond to a sermon about black culture and history. He never says he felt the presence of God or accepted Jesus as his savior or anything that suggests he let go of his skepticism. Obama's own book makes him look like an agnostic (or an atheist). He respects religion because he responds to the people who believe, and he seems oriented toward leveraging the religious beliefs of the people for worldly, political ends.
"For a teenage boy who is fasting during Ramadan on a hot August afternoon, temptations abound. Ice cream. Water. Basketball."
The NYT has an upbeat article about NY teens who observe Ramadan.
The Good Habits of an Ideal Boy.
Titus emails this photo of a poster on a shop door in Brattleboro, Vermont.
(Click photo to enlarge and read.)
"A mosque at the edge of Ground Zero would be much more than a house of worship; it would be a symbol, interpreted differently by different audiences."
"For some it would be the ultimate expression of the freedom of religion we enjoy in America; for others, a searing reminder of terrible deaths at the hands of murderers calling themselves Muslims. I suspect that the terrorists might celebrate its presence as a twisted victory over our society's freedoms. Rauf and his congregation are certainly free to locate their mosque near Ground Zero. But I hope and pray that they will show uncommon courtesy and decide not to."
Karen Hughes weighs in on the mosque controversy.
Karen Hughes weighs in on the mosque controversy.
What do you egg-spect?
What a waste! I always assume raw eggs are tainted with salmonella and handle them accordingly. Cook them. Wash your hands!
Haiti's constitution rules out a Wyclef Jean presidency.
He's Haitian, but the constitution requires presidential candidates to have lived in the country for the past 5 years.
The musician had argued that his appointment as a roving ambassador for Haiti in 2007 exempted him from the residency requirement.Apparently, textualism beat out fancier notions of interpretation. No "active liberty" or whatever?
Was Art Nouveau "the clumsy process of trying to 'dress up' the inorganic forms of modern construction in the false clothing of the natural world"?
That's what Walter Benjamin thought.
If Benjamin was right about Art Nouveau in general, then Jean Carriès was a dissenter from the movement who refused to play along with the lie. Carriès did not carry the prettifying gene. He had an eye for the monstrous, for the contortions of nature and its abnormalities. If Carriès accepted the idea that the modern city is an extension of the natural world, he did so with the proviso that the extension was a malignant tumor.The dissent from the lie looked like this:
"Looking for confidential minded person that is a people person and well manicured."
"We do some work with the adult entertainment business so it is not for everyone. Looking for the classic super manicured secretary at a younger progressive firm."
A Craigslist ad... in need of interpretation.
What's with the double use of "manicured"? Are we to think of something like this (SFW!)?
A Craigslist ad... in need of interpretation.
What's with the double use of "manicured"? Are we to think of something like this (SFW!)?
A dubious album cover.
Via Roger Ebert's twitpic page, which is also the source of the previous 2 posts.
I remember when most girls tried to get their hair to do that. It's not easy, and it takes nerve — or possibly help from Jesus — to tease your hair that big. Funny... it was considered wrong back then — in the early 60s — to tease your hair. There were all sorts of warnings, notably that your hair would fall out, but also that insects would grow in it.
I remember one particularly harrowing — hair-rowing — story about a girl who kept teasing her hair, day after day, teasing and spraying, without washing it. One day, at school, blood suddenly began streaming down her face. Then, she died! Her hair detached from her head in one big clump. Somebody picked it up and then, in horror, threw it against the wall. Thousands of roaches ran out of it!
Think about that when you're teasing your hair. This was back in the days before the coining of the term "urban legend." It would give you pause. Most of us went for a relatively subtle "bump"...
... and denied that we achieved it through teasing.
Anyway, The Faith Tones... What I don't get is... Christian music, but they don't look wholesome. Maybe I'm still scarred from the adolescent lessons about hair-teasing. It would make boys think you were a bad girl. Is this the way to present yourself to Jesus? Sincerely? I couldn't find any Faith Tones music on Amazon or iTunes. They seem to exist entirely as an internet meme, based on mocking this album cover.
Are The Faith Tones themselves an urban legend? Or — alternate theory — is this album cover the work of the devil, who is tempting you to laugh at religion?
এতে সদস্যতা:
পোস্টগুলি (Atom)
পোস্টগুলি
