Support the Truth in Initiatives Campaign

The Courage Campaign | A new era for California Progressive politics is organizing an initiative that would require

A Statement by the Legislative Analyst of 25 words or less that describes the nature and interests of the principal financial support or opposition to each future ballot measure, including cumulative contributions to all campaign committees and independent expenditures. Such descriptions will be based on the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). Examples include, “Pharmaceutical Industry,” “Insurance Industry,” etc.

I'm supporting them.

Standard Tests for Colleges?

From New York Times.

A higher education commission named by the Bush administration is examining whether standardized testing should be expanded into universities and colleges to prove that students are learning and to allow easier comparisons on quality. …

[P]ublic reporting of collegiate learning as measured through testing "would be greatly beneficial to the students, parents, taxpayers and employers" and that he would like to create a national database that includes measures of learning. "It would be a shame for the academy to say, 'We can't tell you what it is; you have to trust us,' " [Charles Miller, a business executive who is the commission's chairman] said. …

Kati Haycock, a commissioner who is director of the Education Trust in Washington, which has supported standardized testing, said in an e-mail message: "Any honest look at the new adult literacy level data for recent college grads leaves you very queasy. And the racial gaps are unconscionable. So doing something on the assessment side is probably important. The question is what and when."

Jonathan Grayer, another commissioner, who is chief executive of the test-coaching company Kaplan Inc., said that with so many students in college and so many tax dollars being spent, "it is important for us to seek some type of knowledge about how much learning is going on." …

"The unanswered question in higher education is: How good is the product?" said Robert Zemsky, a commission member who is a professor of education at the University of Pennsylvania. "A growing number of people are beginning to want answers. What higher education is about to learn is that they can't play the 'trust me' game anymore."

Part of what is driving the demand for accountability is money. Ms. Spellings [Secretary of Education] has said that about one-third of the annual investment in higher education comes from the federal government and that officials know very little about what they are getting in return.

In my department (Computer Science) at Cal State, Los Angeles, we have been spending an inordinate amount of time preparing for accreditation. A simple test would be much better.

Love yourself

From tricycle.com.

The practice of metta, uncovering the force of love that can uproot fear, anger, and guilt, begins with befriending ourselves. The foundation of metta practice is to know how to be our own friend. According to the Buddha, 'You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.' How few of us embrace ourselves in this way! With metta practice we uncover the possibility of truly respecting ourselves. We discover, as Walt Whitman put it, 'I am larger and better than I thought. I did not think I held so much goodness.' --Sharon Salzberg, Lovingkindness

U.S. opening some private mail

From CNN.com

U.S. officials are opening personal mail that arrives from abroad when they deem it necessary to protect the country from terrorism, a Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman said Monday.

This was reported a month ago. I hadn't heard it.

"Jesus, The Teenage Years"

A Google ad for a poster called "Jesus, The Teenage Years" showed up on my blog—presumably because of my post about Lorenzo Albacete three posts down. (The Google ads are in the sidebar on the right. Scroll down to see them. This one may be there now.)

I assume it is intended to be pro-Christian. (I believe it is intended to help Christian parents who have teenage children.) But I can imagine that some Christians would be offended. Is this offensive? It's not critical in the same way that the cartoons showing Muhammad are critical. But it does show Jesus with a belly tattoo, a shaved head, and something of a self-satisfied teenage smirk.

Would Moslems be offended by a comparable poster depicting "Muhammad, the Teeneage Years?"

According to the web site

The bible says nothing about Jesus from the time he was 13 until he was 28. Its pretty clear, though, that Jesus experienced the same challenges that any child would face while growing up.

What were his struggles like when his body was developing and he became aware of sex?

What was Jesus schooling like?

Since the Bible is silent on Jesus' teenage years, we get to think for ourselves about what he was like.

I wonder what traditional theologians would say.

More on faith as a source of knowledge

Two posts down, I discussed Lorenzo Albacete's op-ed piece in the NY Times in which he discussed the problem with taking faith to be a source of knowledge about the world. The intelligent design debate is a good illustration. And now some intelligent design advocates seem to be seeing the problem as well. There is a bill in the Utah legislature that would require a disclaimer at the start of lessons about evolution. Surprisingly in a state as religious and conservative as Utah, the bill is running into problems. It has passed the state senate, but leaders of both parties in the house have come out against it.

Stephen H. Urquhart, a Republican from southern Utah whose job as majority whip is to line up votes in his party … announced last week that he would vote against the bill.

"I don't think God has an argument with science," said Mr. Urquhart, who was a biology major in college and now practices law. …

Opponents of the bill, including State Senator Peter C. Knudson, the Republican majority leader, openly laugh at talk [that claims that the bill is not about religion].

"Of course it's about religion," Mr. Knudson said.

Of course, not everyone agrees that we should keep religion out of science. According to the article,

Missouri's legislature is considering a bill requiring "critical analysis" in teaching evolution. An Indiana lawmaker has called evolution a type of religion and proposed a bill banning textbooks that contain "fraudulent information."

But Utah is a state of Mormans, which is not the majority religion in this country. That makes them a bit more cautious.

Enthusiasm for [school prayer] has been muted or ambivalent, said Kirk Jowers, a professor of political science and director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah. Professor Jowers pointed to the awareness among Mormons of their religion's minority status in the nation and world.

"It was kind of a realization that if you push to have prayer in school, then outside of Utah, the prayer would not typically be a Mormon's prayer, so is that road you want go down?" Professor Jowers said.

Amazing how one becomes more aware of the dangers of majority totalitarianism when one isn't in the majority.

Coin constructions

Here are some amazing coin constructions.

Knowledge and Love

In an op-ed piece in the New York Times, Lorenzo Albacete, a Roman Catholic priest whom I admire, plays spin doctor to Pope Benedict XVI's recent encyclical on love.

First he does a fine job of laying out the position of those who fear religion.

Benedict's conversations with nonbelievers have convinced him that their major concern about Christianity is not its 'other-worldiness' but the very opposite. For them, what makes Christianity potentially dangerous as a source of conflict and intolerance in a pluralistic society is its insistence that faith is reasonable — that is, that it is the source of knowledge about this world and that, therefore, its teaching should apply to all, believers and nonbelievers alike.

The Christian faith faced a similar criticism before, Benedict has argued, when it first came into contact with the religious and philosophical world of the Roman Empire. The Roman world celebrated religious pluralism and was willing to welcome Christianity as an ethical or 'spiritual' option, but not as a source of truth about this world — that was considered to be the realm of the philosophers.

At that time, Christianity would not accept a place with the religions of the empire. It saw itself as a philosophy, as a path to knowledge about reality, and not primarily as a source of spiritual or ethical inspiration. The problem was that it claimed to be the only path to full knowledge about the meaning and purpose of life.

Indeed, throughout history Christians have used this claim to justify their intolerance of other views, even turning to violence in order to affirm and defend their idea of what is true. The events of Sept. 11, 2001, reminded us that this unhappy tendency was not limited to the Christian faith, but seems inherent in religious belief. If a god offers absolute truth, then those who disagree with that god's teachings are enemies of the truth, and thus harmful to society. It makes no difference whether the intolerance comes from a Christian god, who punishes countries and cities with natural disasters, or a Muslim god, who encourages terrorists to kill the innocent.

Right on target.

But then less convincingly he argues that the encyclical should be reassuring.

Hence the pope's insistence on the importance of emphasizing that God is, above all, love, and that love and truth are inseparable. "In a world where the name of God is sometimes associated with vengeance or even a duty of hatred, this message is both timely and significant," he wrote. "For this reason I wish in my first encyclical to speak of the love which God lavishes upon us, and which we in turn must share with others."

Albacete clearly sees the problem with a religion that insists that faith "is the source of knowledge about this world." But it's not at all clear to me that Benedict XVI agrees with this diagnosis.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Albacete wrote this piece not only as an attempt to present Benedict XVI's encyclical to the world as secular-friendly but also as an appeal to Benedict XVI himself, urging him to confirm the position that he doesn't hold faith to be a source of knowledge about the world. I doubt that Benedict XVI will respond positively to that appeal. I hope I'm wrong.

I also hope that other religious leaders would respond positively to Albacete's message. I'm not optimistic that many will.

On offensive cartoons of Muhammad

From the New York Times.

In response to criticism of offensive cartoons of Muhammad, State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, reading the government's statement on the controversy, said, 'Anti-Muslim images are as unacceptable as anti-Semitic images,' which are routinely published in the Arab press, 'as anti-Christian images, or any other religious belief.'

Still, the United States defended the right of the Danish and French newspapers to publish the cartoons. 'We vigorously defend the right of individuals to express points of view,' Mr. McCormack added."

I agree on all counts.

I also agree that it would be better for everyone if we lowered our voices a bit.

I also think the Bush administration should do more to support free speech at home. For example Cindy Sheehan and Beverly Young were both removed from the capital visitors gallery where they had come to listen to Bush's speech. Their offense? They wore anti- and pro- Bush T-shirts. (The Capital Police chief has since taken responsibility. I suspect it goes higher than that. See also the recent uproar about the Bush administration's effort to silence NASA scientists about global warming.)

I also wish the Muslim world would refrain from its practice of anti-Jewish name-calling. Perhaps this experience will help them understand how it feels to be on the receiving end of that sort of thing.

Arianna Huffington: How the Democratic should have responded to Bush

Arianna Huffington has a nice blog post that talks about Jack Murtha's reply to Bush.

Murtha's response, presented at a press conference today and in a letter sent to President Bush, contains a very specific, four-point strategy for changing course in Iraq and 'reinvigorating our global anti-terrorism strategy.'

Bush had said, "Hindsight alone is not wisdom, and second-guessing is not a strategy." Murtha replied, "Hindsight alone may not be wisdom -- but refusing to learn from past mistakes is not wisdom either." The rest of what he says makes sense also. And it is very credible.

Last night on Hardball, Chris Matthews asked Joe Biden to explain how it is that the American people are "worried about abuse of this NSA spying at home," "want to bring the troops home," and "don't think [the war] was worth it to fight... And yet, when you ask them 'Who do you trust on terrorism and security,' they say the president, who seems to lose on each particular, but somehow wins on the general question of security."

Biden blamed it on the lack of a clear Democratic leader.