September 14, 2007. NEW YORK -- New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick was fined the NFL maximum of $500,000 Thursday and the Patriots were ordered to pay $250,000 for spying on an opponent's defensive signals.
Commissioner Roger Goodell also ordered the team to give up its first-round draft choice next year if it reaches the playoffs this season, or its second- and third-round picks if it misses the postseason.
"This episode represents a calculated and deliberate attempt to avoid long-standing rules designed to encourage fair play and promote honest competition on the playing field," Goodell said in a letter to the Patriots. (Source:ESPN News Service)
I read a newspaper article this morning in which a Latino civil rights organization requested that the media stop broadcasting hate speech and demonizing the Hispanic community. Mentioned among the talk show hosts guilty of such a practice was Glenn Beck, who last June on CNN’s Headline News proposed jokingly that the United States should have a refinery that turns the bodies of Mexican illegal immigrants into a fuel called “Mexinol.” Beck read the ad on his radio show and later also posted the mock ad on his website known as the “Insiders.”
This is the ad:
The Future is now
At Evil Conservative Industries we know four things for certain.
1. The country needs a cheap, alternative fuel source. 2. The human body is 18% carbon. 3. Carbons can be turned into hydrocarbons. 4. We have a butt load of illegal aliens in our country.
ECI is proud to present the fuel of the future….Mexinol.
A clean burning, cheap alternative to gasoline, Mexinol’s future seems unlimited in its potential.
There are other gasoline alternatives available such as Ethanol. However, Mexinol has certain advantages. Ethanol is made from corn. Corn has to be grown, harvested, and processed. With Mexinol, your raw materials come to you in a seemingly never ending stream.
So go ahead and purchase that boat load SUV. There’s plenty of Mexinol for everyone.
After reading the ad and posting it on his website Beck said, “Sometimes the Insiders go too far. I don't think we need to make the illegal aliens into fuel. That would be evil conservative, yeah. I don't even know if that's conservative. That would be psychotic, perhaps? Sociopathic, perhaps?" The next day, however, the ad was posted on the front page of Beck's website under the title "Picture of the Day," with a caption that described the ad as a "brilliant creation."
Those conservative Republican talk show hosts have a strange Nazi type of humor. After suggesting the mass murder of illegal immigrants and turning them into fuel, they later say , “Oh, it was only meant as a joke.” I have a fairly well-honed sense of humor, but after considering the murder of six million Jews and five million non-Jews at the hands of Nazis during the Holocaust, the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, as well as the present genocide in Darfur and other areas of our world, I fail to see the humor in any suggestion, even delivered jokingly, about promoting mass genocide.
Let us suppose the year is 1944, and the Nazi war machine is running low on fuel. The officer in charge of one of the death camps comes up with a brilliant proposal to turn the bodies of Jewish inmates into fuel - called Jewsinol. Hitler thinks it’s a great idea and puts it into practice.
On Beck’s show I can accept partisan hacking, even sexist and racist ranting and raving, but I think there should be a standard that cannot be violated on the public airwaves. In this case, I think Glenn Beck clearly crossed the line. There are some individuals who will say that the ad was meant as satire to indicate the extreme measures that some Americans might use to obtain the energy they need. There are others who will claim the ad should be accepted in the same spirit in which we accept Jonathan Swift's "Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public.”
In 1729, Swift suggested that the Irish, suffering from dire poverty under racist English rule, should eat their young to neatly banish both starvation and overpopulation. His pamphlet provided detailed instructions for the cooking, eating, and tanning of baby flesh -- all while maintaining its jovially official tone and lively argumentation. By combining horrid images of cannibalism with coldly cheerful utilitarianism, Swift created one of the most disturbing and effective satires of all time.
What do you think? Was the Mexinol ad acceptable satire, hate speech, or Nazi-type humor?
Video: News Cartoon on the History of Illegal Immigration
Video: Glenn Beck talks about unneeded states. Now I think this is truly humorous. Glenn, you should stick with this kind of humor.
Our earliest images of men depict them as having an abundance of hair. In ancient times the royal, rich, and powerful people all had a hirsute condition. Defeated male prisoners often had their hair shorn, indicating a loss of status and power. Kings of the warrior kingdom of Assyria were inevitably depicted with long, curled or braided hair and long, curled beards. The relationship between "hair" and "power" was hard to dismiss.
In Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Europe, elaborate hair styles for men were symbols of high status. In some instances the wigs of men were more elaborate than the hair styles of women, while the hair styles of ordinary people were simple and utilitarian.
In modern times, a man’s hair style makes a “social statement.” Movie stars, rock musicians, and television personalities help to popularize men’s hair fashion, particularly for young men.
Men who have thinning hair or who have grown bald are often the butt of many jokes. As a result, in an effort to conceal their baldness, many men resort to the comb-over. Apparently, the comb-over has been practiced for centuries. Over 1900 years ago, the Roman poet Marcus Valerius Martialis wrote, “There is nothing more contemptible than a bald man who pretends to have hair.”
A patent was issued in 1974 for a method of covering a man’s baldness with the hair that remained. This was achieved by the man growing his hair long all the way around his head. The hair would then be sectioned into three parts. The long hair on the right side of the head would be combed up and over the bald spot. Then the back hair would be combed forward and over the bald spot. Finally, the remaining hair on the left side of the head would be combed over the previous two sections of hair, resulting in sort of woven look. That method of covering baldness really never caught on because it looked patently absurd.
So we are left with the traditional comb-over.
Kids, the next time you make fun of a baldheaded guy, you had better be careful. One could make an argument that God is willing to maul children to death if they make fun of a bald guy who just happens to be in God's favor. You think I'm joking, but I'm not. In the book of Second Kings, our hero, the Prophet Elisha, who was quite bald, so it seems, was taunted by a group of young boys. Elisha's response was bitter and cruel:
"...as he was going up by the way, young lads came out from the city and mocked him and said to him, 'Go up, you baldhead; go up you baldhead!' When he looked behind him and saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. Then two female bears came out of the woods and tore up forty-two lads of their number." (2 Kings 2:22-24)
Did God dispatch those forty-two kids for making fun of a baldheaded prophet? Well, what do you think?
Video: A selection of comb-over disasters
Video: Bald Guys Are Cool. Music and comedy performer Wayne Faust offers a tribute to Bald Guys everywhere, and gives them the adoration they so richly deserve.
In the beginning there was a good relationship between humans and the gods or God. Then humans got separated from the gods and God, and it was somebody’s fault. Perhaps somebody disobeyed the gods or God and ate the wrong fruit, said the wrong words, or opened a box they were forbidden to open and released all the evils we find in this world. Thus, the religious or creation myths were born to give an explanation for the relationship of humans to nature and to God or the gods.
A myth is defined as “a traditional, typically ancient story dealing with supernatural beings, ancestors, or heroes that serves as a fundamental type in the worldview of a people, as by explaining aspects of the natural world or delineating the psychology, customs, or ideals of society.” (Source: American Heritage Dictionary). This post will discuss two myths, one written some 400 years after the other.
In Greek mythology, Pandora was the first woman on earth. The Pandora myth of sometime around the 8th century B.C. addresses the question of why there is evil in the world. According to this myth, Pandora opened a jar (commonly referred to as Pandora's box) releasing all the evils of mankind— greed, vanity, slander, envy, pining— leaving only hope inside once she had closed it again.
Zeus ordered Hephaestus, the god of craftsmanship, to create her and he did, using water and earth. The gods endowed her with many talents; Aphrodite gave her beauty, Apollo music, Hermes persuasion, and so forth. Hence her name: Pandora, "all-gifted".
The Pandora myth first appeared, as previously mentioned, sometime around the 8th century B.C., in the epic poem of Hesiad. The god Prometheus gave humans the gift of fire. This angered Zeus, so he decided to give men a punishing gift to compensate for the favor they had been granted. As a result of his command to Hephaestus to create a “beautiful evil”, the first woman was created. Her descendants would forever torture the race of men. In Hesiod’s poem, when gods and mortals looked on Pandora “wonder seized them.” Hesiod continues in his poem:
From her is the race of women and female kind: of her is the deadly race and tribe of women who live amongst mortal men to their great trouble, no helpmeets in hateful poverty, but only in wealth.
In a later poem, Hesiod expands upon the origin of Pandora and widens the scope of the misery she inflicts on mankind. After Pandora is created by Hephaestus, other gods contribute to her completion.
Athena taught her needlework and weaving. Aphrodite “shed grace upon her head and cruel longing and cares that weary the limb. Hermes gave her "a shameful mind and deceitful nature" and the power of speech, putting in her "lies and crafty words."
In this retelling of her story, Pandora's deceitful feminine nature becomes the least of mankind's worries. She brought with her a jar containing "burdensome toil and sickness that brings death to men", diseases, and "a myriad other pains.” Prometheus had warned his brother Epimetheus not to accept any gifts from Zeus. But Epimetheus did not listen; he accepted Pandora, who promptly scattered the contents of her jar. As a result, Hesiod tells us, "the earth and sea are full of evils". One item, however, did not escape the jar - Hope.
Only Hope was left within her unbreakable house, she remained under the lip of the jar, and did not fly away. Before [she could], Pandora replaced the lid of the jar. This was the will of aegis-bearing Zeus the Cloudgatherer.
Hesiod closes with this moral: "Thus it is not possible to escape the mind of Zeus."
Now let us consider the myth of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
The first creation story in the Bible is believed to have been written sometime around 400 years after the Pandora myth. The second Genesis story was set in Mesopotamia. It was written down in 10 B.C. by scribes of the “priestly tradition.” Members of the Church of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) believe that the Garden of Eden was located in present-day Jackson County, Missouri.
In the Garden of Eden story of the Biblical book of Genesis (Gen 2:4-3:26), God molds Adam from the dust of the Earth, then forms Eve from one of Adam's ribs and places them both in the garden, eastward in Eden. "Male and female he created them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, ... " (Genesis 5:2) It may be allegorical, in as much as "Adam" may be a general term, like "Man" and refers to the whole of humankind.
God charges both Adam and Eve to tend the garden in which they live, and specifically commands Adam not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Eve is quizzed by the serpent why she avoids eating of this tree. In the dialogue between the two, Eve elaborates on the commandment not to eat of its fruit. She says that even if she touches the tree she will die. The serpent responds that she will not die, rather she would become like a god, knowing good and evil. Eve then eats from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and persuades Adam to eat from it, too. Then they become aware. God finds them, confronts them, and judges them for disobeying; it is also widely believed that the snake was also the devil in disguise.
It is at this point that “God expels them from Eden“, to keep Adam and Eve from partaking of the Tree of Life. "Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons." God curses the serpent: "upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life;" the woman he punishes with pain in childbirth and with subordination to man: "your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you;" and the man he punishes with a life of toil: "In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground." The story says that God placed cherubim with an omnidirectional "flaming" sword to guard against any future entrance into the garden and access to the Tree of Life.
QUESTIONS: 1. In what ways are the two myths similar? 2. In what ways are the two myths different?
Video: A young woman discusses the Garden of Eden - Did Adam & Eve really deserve to get kicked out of paradise? Does Christianity not want us to have knowledge and truth? She tries to answer these questions; and how the idea of Eve's temptation of Adam and "original sin" influenced society for thousands of years (and still does today).
As the 2008 presidential campaign season continues and the field of candidates vying for their parties' nominations gets winnowed down, voters must continue to focus on the sorts of qualities and traits they desire for the next leader of the United States.
It has been found that all great presidents of the United States have possessed some if not all of the following characteristics:
Vision / charisma - the ability to establish goals for the nation, to enunciate those goals, and inspire the citizens to follow those goals.
Integrity / morality - a steadfast adherence to a strict moral or ethical code.
Intelligence - a superior mind with the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge. Able to use the faculty of thought and reason. Has ability to comprehend the rationale supporting opposing viewpoints.
Experience - the ability to implement the presidents’s vision through the appointment of competent individuals with operational experience to play key roles in the government.
Assertiveness/Strength - aggressive self-assurance and ability to make bold assertions.
Decisiveness - resolute, determined decisions.
Toughness - stamina and staying power.
Honesty - doesn’t lie, steal, or deceive. Adheres to the standards for the presidency. Trustworthy and incorruptible.
Humility - ability to recognize own limitations and mistakes
Accountability - willingness to accept personal responsibility or to account for his or her actions.
Kindness/Compassion - a deep awareness of the suffering of others coupled with the wish to relieve it.
Fairness - can make decisions that overcome the president’s own feelings, prejudices, and desires so as to achieve a proper balance of conflicting interests.
Sense of Humor - ability to perceive, enjoy, or express what is amusing, comical, incongruous, or absurd. Possesses wit or the ability to deal with the apt, clever, and often humorous association of words. Self-deprecating and able to laugh at his or her own shortcomings.
ADDITIONAL DESIRABLE TRAITS ADDED IN THE COMMENTS SECTION:
Flexibility Self-Awareness
QUESTIONS:
1. Which of these attributes do you consider to be most important in a president of the United States? It is highly unlikely that a single individual will possess all of these qualities.
2. Based on the characteristics that you chose as the most important ones, who do you think is the most qualified candidate to become the next president of the United States?
Video: Tim Russert discusses Presidential Qualities
Video: Senator Joe Biden, candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, speaks on the qualities he thinks essential in the next U.S. President
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