Guns kill people
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4210558.stm For the first time in 13 years Brazil has seen a fall in the number of deaths caused by firearms. Last year 36,000 people were killed by guns - a drop of 8% from 2003, according to the health ministry. The government says the change is due to innovative disarmament measures, including a gun buy-back scheme. The figures were released on Friday, seven weeks before a national referendum on whether to ban outright the sale of guns. -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ The three chief virtues of a programmer are: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris - Larry Wall ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Gas Prices
Public good is a technical term with a clear meaning. Right but not relevant, and dangerous to the polity. An example of a `public good' in jargon language is a street sign at which many people can look (i.e. is `non-rivalrous', to use jargon) and at which looking is hard to prevent (i.e. is `non-excludable', also to use jargon). But this list is more likely to use the concepts of the preamble to the US Constitution: ... provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare ... In that document, the notions of the `common defense' and the `general welfare' provide a definition of what is good for the public. (Justice, tranquility, and liberty are also listed.) When gasoline and other fuels are required for cars used for evacuation and for hospitals, then a lack of gasoline and other fuels becomes a danger that an official sworn to `provide for the common defense' and `promote the general welfare' should handle. It is harmful to disguise this. The danger is that less will be done about officials who fail to `provide for the common defense' than should be done. The US government's weather service predicted last Saturday, 28 Aug 2005, that New Orleans would be hit by a level 4 or higher hurricane. The prediction was not 100% accurate in that the hurricane went a little beside New Orleans. But the other predictions, made long before, that such a level hurricane (or less probably, but still possibly, lower level hurricanes) would lead to levies breaking was correct. There is a nice distinction between the concepts of `typical' and `normal' that is based on time scale: `Typically', New Orleans is not hit or nearly hit by hurricanes. `Normally', New Orleans is hit or nearly hit once in a while. The latter is what emergency management is about: figuring out on late Saturday, 28 Aug 2005, what to do if both the US government hurricane path prediction is correct or somewhat correct and if the US government's and other organization's flooding prediction is correct or somewhat correct. The emergency management policies are not new. After all, in the United States people in public have talked about a mass exodus from and the destruction of US cities since nuclear, chemical, and biological weapon systems became a threat. And people have talked about the dangers of hurricanes even longer. A job of people in government is to protect, preserve, prepare, and provide food, water, shelter, fuel and more. That action is a public good and those supplies are good for the relevant public. -- Robert J. Chassell [EMAIL PROTECTED] GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8 http://www.rattlesnake.com http://www.teak.cc ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Dictionary Fun!
In a previous post, WarrenO bid me to look up the word vestigial. Websters 2nd unabridged definition is very short. *adverb- of, pertaining to, or of the nature of a vestige .* Du, gee professor! Whadda i du now? On the way there though, I discovered an interesting term; whim. Whim. [short for whim-wham, a trinket] 1. a sudden turn or start of the mind; a capricious notion; as, everyman has his whims. 2. a hoisting device operated by horsepower, to wind a rope and draw a bucket from a mine. The rope is passed over a pulley and around a drum on a vertical shaft provided with a crossbar, to which a pair of traces are connected. (presumably, a horse or some other animal-nature is pressed into drawing the traces.) MeMyself: I would use a Whim in the mining of nanotreasure trinkets. Ain't synchronicity wonderfull? (incidentally, synchronicity is not a word found in Websters 2nd Unabridged, but it IS found in the Wikipedia.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity Leonard Matusik [EMAIL PROTECTED] __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: Guns kill people
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of William T Goodall Sent: September 3, 2005 5:19 AM To: Brin-L Subject: Guns kill people http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4210558.stm For the first time in 13 years Brazil has seen a fall in the number of deaths caused by firearms. Last year 36,000 people were killed by guns - a drop of 8% from 2003, according to the health ministry. The government says the change is due to innovative disarmament measures, including a gun buy-back scheme. The figures were released on Friday, seven weeks before a national referendum on whether to ban outright the sale of guns. -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ The three chief virtues of a programmer are: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris - Larry Wall ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l ok I have to say it Guns don't kill people, people kill people. Nick high noon Lidster ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: FLCL and Paranoia Agent
From: Steve Sloan [EMAIL PROTECTED] Is Justice League Unlimited dead? Or maybe the team that's been making these shows since Batman: The Animated Series? I say that, because the last episode sure looked like a goodbye. Season 3 episodes begin on sept 17 at 10pm east 9pm cent. And 2 more the following week. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Doom That Came To N'Warlins - II
Robert Seeberger wrote: We have this great human disaster that is occuring, and people here seem to be much happier to discuss how much gas will cost them because of this inconvenient storm or beat their political drums. Damn the yuppification of America! No one talks about the human misery that *should* be the focus of our attention. Are you _aware_ of the dimensions of the disaster? tv.br is showing hordes of homeless people, images that we usually associate with War in Africa, Flood in India or Earthquake in China. And they hinted that the press is not allowed to get into the disaster area... Alberto Monteiro ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Guns kill people
William T Goodall quoted: For the first time in 13 years Brazil has seen a fall in the number of deaths caused by firearms. Last year 36,000 people were killed by guns - a drop of 8% from 2003, according to the health ministry. The government says the change is due to innovative disarmament measures, including a gun buy-back scheme. The figures were released on Friday, seven weeks before a national referendum on whether to ban outright the sale of guns. You are kidding, right? It's an increadibly stupid that gov.br claims that this drop is due to disarmament instead of economical recovery. But then gov.br is falling to pieces. Alberto Monteiro ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Doom That Came To N'Warlins - II
- Original Message - From: Alberto Monteiro [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Friday, September 02, 2005 10:58 PM Subject: Re: The Doom That Came To N'Warlins - II Are you _aware_ of the dimensions of the disaster? tv.br is showing hordes of homeless people, images that we usually associate with War in Africa, Flood in India or Earthquake in China. The population of New Orleans was about half a million. I'm not sure how many of these houses were not flooded, but it is reasonable to assume that half a million gives a rough number of the people who cannot or should not live in their houses/apartments as a result of Katrina. Most of these people have found alternate housing outside of the flooded area by Monday/Tuesday. Most of these are with family, friends, or are staying in motels that they drove to. Clearly, not everyone could make it out. The folks that couldn't are the ones we are seeing on the news. From what I can tell, there were about 20k at the Superdome and about 10k-15k at the Civics Center...plus a number of others scattered across the city. The numbers rescuded from rooftops, etc., was about 3k, I think. It might be as big as 5k. The number who are still in New Orleans, but not at either of these locations is not known. I do know that folks are still going to the Superdome to get busses out of New Orleans as of this morning...which has kept that number constant. I'd guess that there would be about 10k-20k still left in the city, who were not included in the numbers at the Superdome or the Civics Center. For the most part, that's still a guess. And they hinted that the press is not allowed to get into the disaster area... That is true only in the most limited sense. Reporters were allowed free reign throughout the city. Indeed, CNN informed the head of FEMA about the thousands at the Civics Center during an interview. The sniping did limit their movements, they were not going in areas where they thought they stood a good chance of being shot; but that wasn't a matter of governmental policy. As far as I know, they were not allowed on the floor of the Superdome, but were allowed to go inside and photograph it from the seatsI saw that. I saw nothing inside the Civics Center, but I'm not sure if reporters were not allowed, or were just afraid to go in. I heard a report that it was being controlled by bands of armed thugs. I do know that 100 police officers retreated from there when fired upon. They were unwilling to return fire for fear of hitting the innocent. Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Rev. Jesse Jackson - Hate Monger
Just when I read something else about the hurricane and think that I can't be more surprised or shocked, I run across crap like this. I guess I'm not necessarily surprised that Jesse Jackson finds a way to make this a racial issue, but I'm disappointed. Gary Jesse Jackson: Certainly I think the issue of race as a factor will not go away from this equation, the Rev. Jesse Jackson told CNN on Friday. We have great tolerance for black suffering and black marginalization, he added. And today those who are suffering the most, in fact, in New Orleans certainly are black people. Jackson, who was in New Orleans helping with the relief effort, described appalling conditions: Today I saw 5,000 African-Americans on the I-10 causeway desperate, perishing, dehydrated, babies dying, he said. It looked like Africans in the hull of a slave ship. It was so ugly and so obvious. http://tinyurl.com/c392x http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/03/katrina.impact/index.html ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Rev. Jesse Jackson - Hate Monger
- Original Message - From: Gary Nunn [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Brin Mail List brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Saturday, September 03, 2005 11:17 AM Subject: Rev. Jesse Jackson - Hate Monger Just when I read something else about the hurricane and think that I can't be more surprised or shocked, I run across crap like this. I guess I'm not necessarily surprised that Jesse Jackson finds a way to make this a racial issue, but I'm disappointed. FWIW, I've heard it from the victims before I heard it from Jackson. I think that the Congressional Black Caucus's chairman was far more accurate than Jackson, when he said that poor people were the most vulnerable when a natural disaster like this hits. Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Kookery post-Katrina
This from a Mad Arab, claiming Katrina is God's judgment on the US for its ills: http://memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD97705 This from a Mad Caucasian, claiming Katrina is God's judgment on the US for its ills: http://www.repentamerica.com/pr_hurricanekatrina.html Let him who has ears hear; let him who has eyes see. -- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress The Seven-Year Mirror http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
DeptHomSec to Red Cross: Go Away.
Homeland Security won't let Red Cross deliver food Saturday, September 03, 2005 By Ann Rodgers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette As the National Guard delivered food to the New Orleans convention center yesterday, American Red Cross officials said that federal emergency management authorities would not allow them to do the same. http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05246/565143.stm -- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress The Seven-Year Mirror http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Sources of Drug Innovation
Dan Minette [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Deborah Harrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] You are not taking into account the advances made by universities and publicly-funded institutes. For-profit drug companies *are not* the only or even primary sources of drug innovation. So, if we looked, we'd see that most of the drug patents are held by governments and universities? Or are you talking about something different when you speak of innovation. Correct: drug _development_ is without question the purview of the pharmas (as I stated in a post a while ago, but that _was_ a ways back!). Drug _discovery_ comes from multiple sources, sometimes quite accidentally (frex a herpetologist working with a snake venom). I'll see if I can find some articles again. Drug uses can also come from outside the company; these are termed off-label and frequently are incidentally noted by doctors or researchers working with various drugs. From such off-label properties a company might work out another chemical variant of the drug that emphasizes the 'new' property. I have a number of friends who work developing drugs. They work and worked for small and large companies. I know folks who do fundamental research who work for the government, but I do not recall the government being in the drug developement business. If this sample is non-representative, then I'd appreciate some information on how the drugs that governments have developed, and how the prices of those are determined. Once again, it isn't profit I'm against, but excessive profiteering and protectionism (as in the recent Medicare bill which denies the gov't. any right to bargaining for lower drug prices, and blocking drugs from other Western or Western-equivalent countries, eg Canada, Germany, Japan). The pharm industries' _advertising budget_ is larger than RD allocations(previously cited articles). The one exception I can see might be vacinesbut that can partially be explained by the overwhelming risk associated with developing vaccines. Yes, that is a problem. Debbi Once Again Grateful For Naproxefen Maru :) Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Gas Prices
Robert J. Chassell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Public good is a technical term with a clear meaning. Right but not relevant, and dangerous to the polity. snip But this list is more likely to use the concepts of the preamble to the US Constitution: ... provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare ... In that document, the notions of the `common defense' and the `general welfare' provide a definition of what is good for the public. (Justice, tranquility, and liberty are also listed.) When gasoline and other fuels are required for cars used for evacuation and for hospitals, then a lack of gasoline and other fuels becomes a danger that an official sworn to `provide for the common defense' and `promote the general welfare' should handle. It is harmful to disguise this. The danger is that less will be done about officials who fail to `provide for the common defense' than should be done. snip A job of people in government is to protect, preserve, prepare, and provide food, water, shelter, fuel and more. That action is a public good and those supplies are good for the relevant public. Dang it, Bob, you took my perfectly good intuitive, emotional response and showed why it is in fact a rational and reasoned position...have you no sense of macho decency?!? But seriously, as usual, very good points. :) Debbi Good Gut, But Some Expressive Aphasia Maru Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Fundamentalism (was: Abstinence Only Sex Ed)
From: Julia Thompson [EMAIL PROTECTED] (I think) And you have given me the perfect opening for offering up this link: http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/05-4om/Duncan.html (It's 2 pages, link to second page at the bottom of the first page.) ...Though it may shock those who equate fundamentalism and Christianity, ninety years ago the term fundamentalist did not exist. The term was coined by an American Protestant splinter-group which, in 1920, proclaimed that adhering to the literal inerrancy of the Bible was the true Christian faith. The current size of this group does not change the aberrance of its stance: deification of the mere words of the Bible, in light of every scripture-based wisdom tradition including Christianity's two-thousand-year-old own, is not just naiveté: it is idolatry... ...There is, for most humans born on earth, just one mother tongue, and a given tongue at a given time consists of only so many words. These words can absorb only so many abuses before they cease to mean. America's spiritual vocabularywith its huge defining terms such as God, soul, sacrifice, mysticism, faith, salvation, grace, redemptionhas been enduring a series of abuses so constricting that the damage may last for centuries. Too many of us have tried to sidestep this damage by simply rejecting the terminology. But the defamation of a religious vocabulary cannot be undone by turning away: the harm is undone when we work to reopen each word's true history, nuance and depth. Holy words need stewardship as surely as do gardens, orchards or ecosystems. When lovingly tended, such words surround us with spaciousness and mystery the way a sacred grove surrounds us with peace and oxygenated air. But when we abandon our holy words and fail to replace them, we end up living in a spiritual clearcut... ...The God of politically-organized fundamentalism, as advertised daily by a vast array of media, is a Supramundane Caucasian Male as furious with humanity's failure to live by a few lines from Leviticus as He is oblivious to the Christian right's failure to live the compassion of the gospels and earth-stewardship of both testaments. As surely as I feel love and need for food and water, I feel love and need for God. But these feelings have nothing to do with Supramundane Males planning torments for those who don't abide by neocon moral values. I hold the evangelical truth of our situation to be that contemporary politicized fundamentalists, including first and foremost those aimed at Empire and Armageddon, need us non-fundamentalists, mystics, ecosystem activists, unprogrammable artists, agnostic humanitarians, incorrigible writers, truth-telling musicians, incorruptible scientists, organic gardeners, slow food farmers, gay restaurateurs, wilderness visionaries, pagan preachers of sustainability, compassion-driven entrepreneurs, heartbroken Muslims, grief-stricken children, loving believers, loving disbelievers, peace-marching millions, and the One who loves us all in such a huge way that it is not going too far to say: they need us for their salvation. As Mark Twain pointed out over a century ago, the only truly prominent community that fundamentalists have so far established in any world, real or imaginary, is hell. Well, I haven't got much to add to this article except for an 'amen!' (Hmm, although if the term 'fundamentalist' is so new, how did MT comment on it a hundred years ago?) Thanks for posting it. Debbi Carbon-Based Life Form Indeed Maru ;) Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Sources of Drug Innovation
- Original Message - From: Deborah Harrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Saturday, September 03, 2005 2:50 PM Subject: Re: Sources of Drug Innovation Dan Minette [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Deborah Harrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] You are not taking into account the advances made by universities and publicly-funded institutes. For-profit drug companies *are not* the only or even primary sources of drug innovation. So, if we looked, we'd see that most of the drug patents are held by governments and universities? Or are you talking about something different when you speak of innovation. Correct: drug _development_ is without question the purview of the pharmas (as I stated in a post a while ago, but that _was_ a ways back!). Drug _discovery_ comes from multiple sources, sometimes quite accidentally (frex a herpetologist working with a snake venom). I'll see if I can find some articles again. Drug uses can also come from outside the company; these are termed off-label and frequently are incidentally noted by doctors or researchers working with various drugs. From such off-label properties a company might work out another chemical variant of the drug that emphasizes the 'new' property. How sure of you of this? I asked a friend of mine at church who was a principal investigator for a small startup company that was working on an AIDs drug. He said that only about 5% of drugs are developed from non-traditional sources, such as herbs or the example you gave. Fundamental research has been and is being done at universities and government facilities. That gives a framework in which to develop drugsforms a source for ideas. That is an extremely valuable function, and one that the government and universaties appear to be uniquely qualified for. I have a number of friends who work developing drugs. They work and worked for small and large companies. I know folks who do fundamental research who work for the government, but I do not recall the government being in the drug developement business. If this sample is non-representative, then I'd appreciate some information on how the drugs that governments have developed, and how the prices of those are determined. Once again, it isn't profit I'm against, but excessive profiteering and protectionism (as in the recent Medicare bill which denies the gov't. any right to bargaining for lower drug prices, and blocking drugs from other Western or Western-equivalent countries, eg Canada, Germany, Japan). The pharm industries' _advertising budget_ is larger than RD allocations(previously cited articles). Sure it is. But, this will be a delicate problem to fix. US consumers are paying for drug development for the whole world. Even foreign companies have their bread and butter profits in the US. If prices are lowered, and the ecconomic benefits for developing drugs is decreased, then companies will have less incentive for RD. I know from my friends that tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars and years of effort can be put into a promising drug...only to have it fail unexpectedly in the last round of testsdue to a surprising dangerous side effect. The only thing that presently offsets this risk is the chance of a big reward. That's why small drug companies still exist: they can attract venture capital that is willing to take finite high risks for high rewards. (This is different from vacines where the risks are open ended instead of finite). If the potential for high reward isn't there, then venture capital money will dry up. What you are complaining about, companies being more interested in touting small variations of established drugs as the latest and greatest thing than developing totally innovative drugs is a reflection of this problem. It is far easier to find a variant off a known drug than it is to stake out totally new ground. Patents can be granted for these drugs. Not only that, they can be granted in a manner that doesn't have to accept dependance on earlier patents, even though they were very helpful in development. The conclusion I reached when serving on a patent committee is that the examiners are not ordinarily skilled in the art, so they do not have the expertise to see the difference between an real innovation and something that is not quite obvious from earlier work, but still not much of an innovation. If we do cut US prices down to foreign prices, I'd expect that the logical response would be to cut RD on drugs anywhere from 50% to 80% (leaving 50% to 20%). This would be concentrated on the surest bets: the me too drugs. This would leave the government to develop most new drugs. The problem I have with this is that, while government grants are the best tool for basic science, the government has a terrible track record when it comes to practical innovation. In my own field, during the oil crisis, there
Re: Rev. Jesse Jackson - Hate Monger
At 11:17 AM Saturday 9/3/2005, Gary Nunn wrote: Just when I read something else about the hurricane and think that I can't be more surprised or shocked, I run across crap like this. I guess I'm not necessarily surprised that Jesse Jackson finds a way to make this a racial issue, but I'm disappointed. Gary Jesse Jackson: Certainly I think the issue of race as a factor will not go away from this equation, the Rev. Jesse Jackson told CNN on Friday. We have great tolerance for black suffering and black marginalization, he added. And today those who are suffering the most, in fact, in New Orleans certainly are black people. Jackson, who was in New Orleans helping with the relief effort, described appalling conditions: Today I saw 5,000 African-Americans on the I-10 causeway desperate, perishing, dehydrated, babies dying, he said. It looked like Africans in the hull of a slave ship. It was so ugly and so obvious. ...as are these comments from Rev. Jackson. -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Gas Prices
In a message dated 9/2/2005 10:49:31 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: But, if there is a shortage, and prices are kept constant, what, besides rationing or gas lines, would reduce demand to the level of supply? This isn't a rhetorical question, I can't think of another mechanism that would work quickly and efficiently. I see your point but their might need to be some response. Set up carl pools; add bus lines; some support ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Gas Prices
- Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Saturday, September 03, 2005 6:02 PM Subject: Re: Gas Prices In a message dated 9/2/2005 10:49:31 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: But, if there is a shortage, and prices are kept constant, what, besides rationing or gas lines, would reduce demand to the level of supply? This isn't a rhetorical question, I can't think of another mechanism that would work quickly and efficiently. I see your point but their might need to be some response. Set up carl pools; add bus lines; some support Certainly. I could even make a free market argument that the time/cost tradeoff favors busses and car pools more as gas prices rise. :-) Indeed, I'd argue that we should have been taxing gas at a rate closer to the European rate in order to encourage consumption. Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Fundamentalism (was: Abstinence Only Sex Ed)
On Sep 3, 2005, at 1:42 PM, Deborah Harrell wrote: ...Though it may shock those who equate fundamentalism and Christianity, ninety years ago the term fundamentalist did not exist. The term was coined by an American Protestant splinter-group which, in 1920, proclaimed that adhering to the literal inerrancy of the Bible was the true Christian faith. The current size of this group does not change the aberrance of its stance: deification of the mere words of the Bible, in light of every scripture-based wisdom tradition including Christianity's two-thousand-year-old own, is not just naiveté: it is idolatry... Thus have I struggled with many of my Christian brothers and sisters over the years... And then there's the idolatrous insistence that changing the US constitution to prevent or enforce this or that evil or good (homosexual marriage, school prayer ...). I try to remind them that your God is that which you think will save you, so if you think that changing the US Constitution will save souls, you're idolizing it. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalism) gives a little more detail on the origin of the word: The term itself is borrowed from the title of a set of books published by the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (now Biola University) called The Fundamentals. This series of essays came to be representative of the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy which appeared early in the 20th century within the Protestant churches of the United States, and continued in earnest through the 1920s. The pattern of the conflict between Fundamentalism and Modernism in Protestant Christianity has remarkable parallels in other religious communities, and in its use as a description of these corresponding aspects in otherwise diverse religious movements the term fundamentalist has become more than only a term either of self-description or of derogatory contempt. Fundamentalism is therefore a movement through which the adherents attempt to rescue religious identity from absorption into modern, Western culture, where this absorption appears to the enclave to have made irreversible progress in the wider religious community, necessitating the assertion of a separate identity based upon the fundamental or founding principles of the religion. (I can almost hear the Good Doctor's rant on romanticism vs. enlightenment.) As for Mark Twain, it may well be a more modern writer has put the word into his mouth: Twain railed against what we would today call fundamentalism in such writings as Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven. But I don't know that Twain used the F-word himself. Dave ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
And now for something completely different…
Just caught the latest Burger King ad featuring a return of Dr. Angus. Am I the only one who finds this guy so creepy that, even if I were a practicing carnivore, I'd refuse to buy the product he advertises? I mean, the last thing I want to do is identify in any way with this loser. I know he's a fictional character. That, when you think about it, makes him even *more* disturbing. A little like if Olive Garden started selling a Lecter lunch made up of liver, fava beans and table wine. -- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress The Seven-Year Mirror http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
