Poetry

This quotation from Billy Collins and Garrison Keillor was on The Writer's Almanac last week. It amused me, so I thought it would be an interesting departure from politics.

He thinks that too much modern poetry lacks humor. He said, "It's the fault of the Romantics, who eliminated humor from poetry. Shakespeare's hilarious, Chaucer's hilarious. [Then] the Romantics killed off humor, and they also eliminated sex, things which were replaced by landscape. I thought that was a pretty bad trade-off, so I'm trying to write about humor and landscape, and occasionally sex."

Darn those Romantics anyway.

Education for Afghan Women

I don't know how closely most of you have been following The Opinion Journal's coverage of the Yale fiasco concerning admission of a former Taliban spokesman, but I have been very intrigued by it. Apparently, not only has Yale admitted a former member of the Taliban, but they have refused a request to give a place to an Afghan woman. I fully admit that I do not know all of the details of this case, but it seems awfully ridiculous to me. See the editorial piece here.

The request to Yale for admission of an Afghan woman was made by a group called The Initiative to Educate Afghan Women. See their website here. Anyway, from what I can tell it seems like a really great program. Women who are ready for college are matched with institutions that are willing to give them a scholarship. Each summer they are required to return to Afghanistan to work in rebuilding the country, and after graduation they are expected to return to join the country's educated citizens in leading government, education, journalism, etc. Think we could talk HC into giving an Afghan woman a place?

Outrageous!

I haven't been following the immigration legislation as closely as I ought, but the general vibe I've been getting is that it is bad, or inadequate at best. This little bit of info made me realize it's even worse than I thought:

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed legislation that would make it a felony to be in the U.S. illegally, impose new penalties on employers who hire illegal immigrants, require churches to check the legal status of people they help, and erect fences along one-third of the U.S.-Mexican border.

Are you kidding me?! Requiring churches to check the legal status of the people they help? Someone refresh my memory, because I didn't think law enforcement was really something the church helped the government with here in the U.S. And maybe my version of the bible is outdated or something, but I thought it said to help the oppressed, not help the people with green cards.

What do you know about Iran? (Part I in a multipart series)

Happy belated Noruz! That’s the Iranian New Year, and its celebration predates Islam. The mullahs (ruling clerics in the Islamic Republic of Iran) hate that. But too many people celebrate for them to do much about it. Some claim that this is a sign of the impotence of the current regime. Others say it shows that the mullahs are easing up. From what I’ve learned of Iran in the last few years, that second group of folks is probably dead wrong.

Anyway, there’s a reason for the title of this post: I really don’t know what other people know about Iran. So I’m going to share a bunch of information, and you may know it already. But I hope maybe you can glean something new. And maybe we can figure out some helpful action to take together. For now I’ll stick with some historical/cultural information. We’ll do nukes and the current political situation later.

Let’s start with the basics: Iranians are not Arabs. Period. Okay, well maybe there’s technically a whopping 3% of Iranians that are Arab. Persians make up the majority of the people (just over half). That’s right, Persians. Cyrus the Great and Bible times and all that. That people group has survived the millennia to dominate modern day Iran in terms of number of people and in terms of culture. The largest minority group is the Azeris (same ethnic group as folks in Azerbaijan). They make up around a quarter of the population, although some estimates are much higher.

The official numbers say that 89% of Iranians are Shi’a Muslims. To put this in perspective, Iraq is the only other nation in the Middle East (maybe in the world) with a majority Shi’ite population. Most Muslims worldwide are Sunnis. The import of all this? Iran is culturally and religiously unique in the Middle East. (I should note at this time that when I was interviewing people in Washington, several of them, including at least one who still had family in Iran, indicated that the 89% figure might be high. One said he thought Zoroastrianism was on the rise. The general consensus was that many Iranians were only nominally Muslims. According to one study, as few as 12% of Iranians pray five times daily—one of the pillars of Islamic practice.)

The Islamic Revolution occurred in 1979, putting the current regime in place and ousting the Shah (monarch), who lived in exile until his death in 1980. This Shah was pro-western, friendly with the United States, and viewed as anti-Islamic by some Iranians. He instituted some reforms and the economy did well during his rule, but he was accused of favoring some classes of people over others and of violating the Iranian constitution. Ayatollah Khomeini led a populist movement from exile (in Iraq and later France) and became the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Many Iranians have become disillusioned with the government that was supposed to respect Islam and all people, but has instead been an oppressive regime that has driven many into poverty. Unemployment is currently at 11%. An astonishing 40% live below the poverty line. Clearly, the IRI has some problems. In addition, the median age is only 24, meaning that most Iranians weren’t born when the Islamic Revolution took place. They never lived under the Shah, and can’t relate to the ideology that said life would be better under the Islamic Republic. I mean, if you lived in these conditions, would YOU believe it? Something to mull over.

I think this should at least partially set the stage/give some context to what’s going on now. But it’s worth noting here (as I will reiterate multiple times) that use of the military in Iran is not a viable option. But I’ll try to talk more about that next time.

Polkinghorne And Others

I was wandering around the internet and found possibly the neatest thing I've ever seen on Slate. They interviewed philosophers, scientists etc about philosophy, science, religion and where they intersect. There are sections with Polkinghorne, Peacocke and Ward. Enjoy!


Click Here!

Spring Break Rocks!

Especially in my group. Considering how loose everything has been since Monday I really have gotten an astonishing amount of work done, not to say I've been terribly productive, but I have managed to get at least a bit done every day. However, today was an event.

There were four of us in the office and our advisor was gone. We got a bit done in the morning, but the afternoon was the entertaining part. Around three we were standing around talking and the guys were throwing their bouncy ball back and forth when they decided to play a game of "thesis ball." The rules are really quite simple. The batter takes swings with a thesis at a bouncy ball that has been hurled at him in an attempt to wing the ball into the lab across the hall, dislodge ceiling tiles, knock books off shelves and generally wreak havoc. The game was called when the thesis was accidentally hurled halfway across the room, hitting a filing cabinet and my arm before falling to the floor.

After "thesis ball" was called due to incompetence we adjourned to the lab across the hall for a game of euchre. Did I mention that we played on a two ton laser table that was floating on nitrogen? I chipped three nails on the screw holes in that table. About half way through the first game something we had been wondering about happened. Our advisor walked in. (during the best hand I had the entire time) He had just gotten back from his trip to a conference out east. After a quick moment of what could have been astonishment, he laughed at us and proceeded to tell us about an idea he had/talked about at the conference and then told us to go back to the game.

I love my group. It rocks.

After the game we got back to work, and I think I may have actually made a bit of progress on a couple of things, so that's happy. Unfortunately, I've still got a looong way to go.

Since we haven't posted in a while

I thought I'd take the task upon myself. Please be aware that this will not be an intellectual post, and may not even be all that interesting, not like Joni's Iran post would be at any rate.

This morning I had a startling realization. I turned on the TV to see if the storms we had last night had really blown over and accidently landed on Martha Stewart. (cringes in anguish) Apparently, she believes that minerals are not chemicals. Freak! I can't wait to tell the inorganic chemists that they're not working with chemicals. And to think that they've been deluded for so long. Thanks Martha!

Yesterday I did possibly one of rudest things I've ever done in my life. We had a fill in preacher because our beloved Pastor D was recovering from back surgery. I actually walked out on that sermon. I have never done that before, not even when they started blasting open theism at HBC. When he started in on "unbelieving evolutionists" I decided that it would be better to just walk out than sit there and seethe. I respect his right to believe that; I even respect his right to say it, but he cannot make me listen to it. And people wonder why there are so many atheists in science. They're driven into it by sermons that tell them they don't believe in God. Anyway, I ended up in the nursery talking to a couple of very nice church ladies and met an adorable baby. So all's well that ends well. :-) In other news, my Sunday School class is finally almost done with the study on disciplining children. Here's hoping they pick something better next time.