MeyerBros

How the hell can you argue with this list of courses and course textbooks for my fall semester? You can’t, so don’t try. It kicks ass.

Narrative Theology - Keith Graber Miller

Theologies of Whiteness - Dean Johnson

Love and Justice - Malinda E. Berry

Can you really argue with that? I’m lovin’ it…

from yahoo news:

Except for the weapons of mass destruction argument, there is some validity in each of Bush’s shifting rationales, said Michael O’Hanlon, a foreign policy scholar at the Brookings Institution who initially supported the war effort.

“And I don’t have any big problems with any of them, analytically. The problem is they can’t change the realities on the ground in Iraq, which is that we’re in the process of beginning to lose,” O’Hanlon said. “It is taking us a long time to realize that, but the war is not headed the way it should be.”

how do you explain the largest nuclear military power in the world with a military budget more than doubling any of it’s allies, let alone (much smaller) enemies, getting heiny-whomped by some ‘insurgent’ (that’s a funny term for the locals, isn’t it?) groups in a ‘rogue nation’ the size of my thumb?

obviously, we’re just not killing hard enough. kill harder!
increase the budget!
yee-ha!

Adbusters has a provocative article entitled: The Secret to Being as Radical as We Want to Be is to Finance the Revolution Ourselves. It got me to thinking. What if the hypothetical Meyerbros design firm found a radical organisation committed to avoiding the grant-making cycle and offered ourselves as a subsidiary. Just a random idea…

there’s a new page up over at www.mnftiu.cc. i love this comic. sometimes i think i should offer to redesign his website for him…

rated R for language and strong thematic elements involving our government.

so i saw Syriana the other night (i should note that i watched most of the movie by myself, because aparently it wasn’t good enough to keep the attention of hannah and kelly for more than 45 minutes). i thought it was a decent movie, but way too complicated to really understand without rewinding a few times. i have to admit that i actually watched 3/4 of the movie, read the wikipedia synopsis, and then finished the movie. i had most of the plotlines and characters correct, but there were a few things i definitely would not have caught without reading the synopsis, even after watching the entire movie. perhaps the characters are a bit stereotyped (especially how all Arabs are presented as puppets of the US). oh, and it criticizes the US, which is why columnist Charles Krauthammer says “Osama bin Laden could not have scripted this film with more conviction.” well, i’d like to see him try anyway.

a new documentary from aaron russo. starts with a question about income tax (turns out there is no law or constitutionality behind it, according to this) and ends up with a documentary on american facism.

crazy.

howard zinn wrote an article in the progressive yesterday calling for an end to nationalism. nationalism is harmless, he says, in a country without power. pride is fine untill you mix in a nuclear arsenal and potential for global domination.

the article gives some history of our nation’s conception of unique-god-chosen-ness - and it’s affect on “outsiders” - from Indians to Mexicans to Filipinos, Afghanies and Iraqis.

nothing new, really, but always worth noting and remembering.

since he throws in a bit about the flag - i’ll add a scott adams note on recent flag developments. ironic - the heavy government restrictions on it’s “symbol of freedom”.

Eduardo Machado is a Cuban (/American) playwright with a lot to say. He gave a pretty gutsy talk a couple weeks ago that I find inspiring, challenging and moving. I am in the midst of finishing up plans for the next New World Arts season, and some of what he said hit me right in the gut.

He weaves together thoughts about immigration, the wall being built on the Mexico border, and his own experiences as a green card-carrying immigrant. His treatment as an “outsider” by a profession (theatre) that I believe should be on the cutting edge of acceptance is appalling. This flows into his thoughts about theatre, about not trying to make audiences happy, and about bravery. He rails against rampant entitlement issues, including the “entitlement” to be trained as a theatre artist - which really just plays into making theatre more corporate-minded.
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(As a newbie, I don’t know when to “write post” and when to “reply.” This started out as a reply in a thread where Carl commented on talking with “value voters” and Eric tried to figure out how Jeb Bush could like X-Men 3 . . . So does some wise person file these things where they belong?)

Sitting by a Christian Zionist on my last flight from Tel Aviv to Newark brought me to the conclusion that all of these conversations with Christians need to start with (or include early on) an honest look at how all Christians who have any use for scripture use scripture, i.e. (1) that we all choose which passages/themes are authoritative for our lives, relativising other passages/themes, (2) that we all use some hermeneutical principle for doing this, and (3) naming that principle is part of knowing ourselves and communicating with others. I think it is worth a LOT to get this on the table, because otherwise politically conservative Christians claim to respect the authority of scripture and discount social progressives as “not believing the Bible.”

So state the themes that seem most important to you. (If, for purposes of this exercise, which involves communicating with self-described Christians, you can find a verse to represent that theme, then you may call it a “Biblical theme.”) Then name the hermeneutic that prioritizes these themes. (For extra fun, name some BIBILICAL themes that you reject, and why: “Paul having a bad patriarchy day” or “who knew we could overpopulate the planet?” or “Oops, there’s that ethnocentric nationalism again!”)
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no need for words:

I’ve been waiting to write my first post on the meyerbros blog about something new and inspiring and all around fabulous. But eventually I realised that my expectations were too high and I’d never get around to doing anything if I didn’t just crank something out. So here’s a tried and true feature that I do semi-regularly over at shoup: mennonot’s news digest. It take’s advantage of one of the things I’ll miss most about London, The Guardian with Breakfast.

From logistics to turning a blind eye: Europe’s role in terror abductions

The big front story today was a very disturbing report from the Council of Europe, laying bare the U.S. use of torture through CIA led extraordinary rendition scheme in Europe, which has apparently been carried out with “the intentional or grossly negligent collusion of the European partners”.
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how do people say these things?

“[God] is the chairman of this party.” (the story)
– Texas GOP leader Tina Benkiser, at state convention

Form that same article: “Lord, your words tell us there’s a sign that this nation is under a curse, when the alien who lives among us grows higher and higher and we grow lower and lower,”
– Rev. Dale Young, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Laredo

Anyone know the exact reference? Can we get a hermeneutic ruling on this one?

And one from Fox News for good measure:

“There’s no scientific proof that global warming even exists. To be honest, it’s a bogus consensus dreamed up by Greens because they hate industry. They hate advancement. They hate technology…Greens will lead us back to the stone ages.” (more on this)
– Fox News analyst Jonathan Hoenig

Did I just hear this right? I think I just heard (on NPR) our President, GWBush, say:

“In our free society, people have the right to choose how they live their lives.”

Yes he did. I just looked it up.

And yes, he then followed that with the logical conclusion about free society:

“…decisions about such a fundamental social institution as marriage should be made by the people.”

Therefore, the logic follows, we need to have a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. This will put the power back in the hands of The People. So they can be free to live the way they want to. So The People can decide what marriage is.

None of the people, of course, are gay. None of the people would support gay marriage. These aren’t the people. The people are the ones who are free to live as they choose and define social institutions freely. Freely = no gay-ness. Anyone who is gay or supports gay rights must be… an animal! One of those beastly, uncivilized ones, like a warthog or a toad. Therefore, we need to have an amendment to protect The People from The Toads. Those same-sex loving toads must not marry. We need to keep the people free.

Amazing how easy it is to string these thoughts together.

Michelle sent me this yesterday. New York Times seems to be covering the issue fairly well.

NYTimes.com: Why the Democratic Ethic of the World Wide Web May Be About to End.

i like this conceptual design site. or what they make, more accurately. the way they break down functional expectations and then rebuild them. very interesting.

in other news: i wrote a peace play because it seemed like the right thing to do. i’m now in the editing phase. the working title is Another Pseudo-Allegory with Angels and Devils and Some Inappropriate Language in Six Parts: A Peace Play (download .rtf file). Thanks to Aristotle for his help with the structure.