Saturday blogwatch
Van Jones: A Hero Returns: Dellums Will Run For Oakland Mayor
The Velveteen Rabbi on Jewish feminist blogs.
Graham at Leaving Munster has an interesting take on Jesus and divorce:
When our modern versions of the Bible record that Jesus was asked whether it is lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason they potentially cover-up a vital missing element in the conversation. The Pharisees asked Jesus a specific question about something called ‘any-cause’ divorce: “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for ‘Any Cause’?”
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Contrary to how it may appear at first glance, when Jesus denied the validity of all divorces “except for ‘Indecency’” this did not imply that ‘Indecency’ – meaning adultery – was the only allowable ground. The Shammaites used exactly the same phrase, yet they also allowed other types of divorce. They simply meant that in Deuteronomy 24:1 there is no other ground for divorce being discussed except for ‘Indecency’”. They clearly did not mean that there is no ground for divorce in all Scripture, except ‘Indecency’ – as they themselves allowed others. It is unfathomable that Jesus meant something completely different, when he used the same words in the same context, to the same group of people.
Jeanne d’Arc defends the value of things we can’t own as individuals in The pursuit of happiness.
It’s simply not true that the more people personally own, the better off they are.
I’ve been thinking about why I live where I do.
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We looked at houses near where we lived, Santa Maria, and San Luis Obispo — two enormously different small cities. Friends in Santa Maria thought we were absolutely nuts to be looking in San Luis Obispo, mainly because, supposedly, you could buy a big house in Santa Maria for what a shack would cost in SLO. That didn’t turn out to be true. We found that the big difference was land. For the same price in Santa Maria you’d have a whole bunch of grass in the front (just enough to make someone like me feel guilty in this drought-ridden region) and a park in the back. In SLO, an average-sized and priced house gives you a backyard you can barely turn around in. Goodness, people told me, don’t you care if your kids have room to run and climb?Well, sure. But the thing is, we live within easy walking distance of two good parks — one to the east and one to the west. We have a hill with a hiking path starting a few blocks away, and a creek nearby that my son, when he came here as a 12-year-old, thought was the world’s greatest place to explore. This — if you look past the rooftops nearby — is roughly the view outside my daughter’s bedroom window. She leaves her blinds open at night so that it will be the first thing she sees when she wakes up. Her school is at the foot of that hill, and her class gets to climb it and have outdoor school once a week, weather permitting.
None of that belongs to us. We can’t buy it or sell it….
Jacob Sullum of Reason on Does Pot Lead to Suicide for Supreme Court Justices?
Vague Commerce Clause precedents give free rein to personal preferences. Via How Appealing.
Wired on a new computer program that predicts earthquakes:
Methods that accurately predict quakes after the fact have nearly always failed to predict future quakes, said seismologist Jim Dewey of the Earthquake Hazards Program at the U.S. Geological Survey.
And those that appear to work once or twice — like one developed by UCLA’s Vladmir Keilis Borok — fail on their next big prediction.
Dewey summarized decades of effort to predict quakes as “periods of optimism followed by disillusionment.”
But earthquake satellites may soon change that.
Bruce Schneier, writing at Wired, on A Real Remedy for Phishers.
UPDATE: Michael Levine at Balkanization analyzes how a group of fourteen Senators are influencing Bush’s Supreme Court nominations. And here’s Lauren on Miers and Feminism: A Mixed Record.
Lee recommends a First Things article on the Sudan.
Jim Henley notes that Attention Must Be Paid to where the Defense Appropriations Bill, now containing anti-torture provisions, is headed. Really useful post on what’s happening as the bill heads to a conference committee to resolve House-Senate differences.
Karen Street discusses how she evaluates scientific information (particularly related to the environment) in Really, who can you trust?