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Politics and Religion

2015-05-19T18:17:35-06:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Minimum wage update

Last updated on: May 19, 2015 at 6:17 pm By Jane the Actuary

Well, Los Angeles has done it: $15/yr, phased in by 2020, as reported, for instance, at the New York Times, and passed by a 14 – 1 margin, too. That article also links to an editorial claiming that, by means of a “Wage Board,” the state of New York can raise wages for any particular occupation without needing legislation, so long as the board determines that “pay is judged to be too low to support the health or ‘adequate maintenance’... Read more

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2015-05-19T17:45:50-06:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Walker, Rubio, Cruz, Jindal — help me out here!

Last updated on: May 19, 2015 at 5:45 pm By Jane the Actuary

This is getting ridiculous — between the declared and the you-know-its-going-to-happen undeclared GOP candidates, I can’t keep track any longer, and yet I’m not finding one I like. Jindal lost me with his prayer rally. Rubio with the Gang of 8 bill. Cruz — well, I don’t recall what any longer. Walker might be the best of the bunch, but he’s getting to smarmy. I try to tell myself that that’s just the way it is — that candidates who... Read more

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2015-05-19T08:26:19-06:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Responding to Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Last updated on: May 19, 2015 at 8:26 am By Jane the Actuary

I’ve been sitting on this for a while, after hastily writing up my summary of Heretic before returning the book to the library. In the first place, it seems a bit silly to say that Ali is persuasive, since I was predisposed to believe what she wrote and it was in line with my own thinking anyway, having, back in January (pre-patheos) been on a bit of a kick of writing about Islam, from wildly speculating about how a “moderate... Read more

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2015-05-18T18:35:34-06:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

News flash: History doesn’t care

Last updated on: May 18, 2015 at 6:35 pm By Jane the Actuary

Or maybe I should say, “history doesn’t give a rat’s a**”, except that it’s a bit wordier. But every now and again I feel the need to gripe about this. (Here’s my post from last year — and I thought I wrote something similar more recently but I can’t find anything.) But you know you’ve heard this — not just from Obama, that Russia or ISIS is on the “wrong side of history,” for example, but with respect to any... Read more

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2015-05-18T08:27:55-06:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Risk compensation, harm reduction, and morality

Last updated on: May 18, 2015 at 8:27 am By Jane the Actuary

I was thinking about these concepts in connection with a couple things that came in view over the last couple days. “Harm reduction” refers to the concept that we should allow various sorts of risky behavior, and behavior traditionally considered immoral by public consensus, on the belief that it’s less risky than the alternative. So far as I am familiar with the term, it had its origins in needle-swapping and similar programs for drug addicts, intended to protect them from... Read more

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2017-02-23T12:07:48-06:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Were the seeds of Detroit’s downfall built into its very rise?

Last updated on: February 23, 2017 at 12:07 pm By Jane the Actuary

Yeah, cryptic title. I’m trying, anyway, to create the sort of clever, intriguing headlines that suck you all into my posts. The last time I returned from visiting my folks in the Detroit area, I observed (you can read the details here) that Detroit has two sister cities in the population-loss department, as both Cleveland and St. Louis have also lost similar percentages of their population since their peaks in 1950, Cleveland with a loss of 57% and St. Louis... Read more

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Detroit

St. Louis

2015-05-15T22:07:52-06:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Quick Detroit post for the day: the magical Syrians?

Last updated on: May 15, 2015 at 10:07 pm By Jane the Actuary

Remember when Jeb Bush suggested that the cure for what ails Detroit is to import a whole slew of immigrants? This was back in February, at least, that was his most recent mention of this idea, and I bristled at the idea that immigrants were somehow a superior people, more hardworking, educated, and/or entrepreneurial than actual Detroiters themselves, especially since his proposal is not to send in particularly skilled immigrants, but seems to be borne of an idea that any... Read more

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2015-05-15T08:04:50-06:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

From the library: Heretic, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Last updated on: May 15, 2015 at 8:04 am By Jane the Actuary

(I’m going to write this in two parts: for today, a summary of the book; tomorrow I’ll tell you more of what I thought of it.) From the subtitle alone, “Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now,” I was predisposed to agree with this book. (For new readers, here’s my post from January, “Islam needs a ‘Jewish Enlightenment‘”, in which I argued that the model for the development Islam is in need of is the Jewish Enlightenment, the movement that brought about Reform... Read more

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2015-05-14T20:32:26-06:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Is the Pullman National Monument whitewashing history?

Last updated on: May 14, 2015 at 8:32 pm By Jane the Actuary

Or maybe “blackwashing” would be more accurate. Bear with me for some context: The Chicago Tribune had an article today about the Pullman National Monument, in particular, plans to create a mural featuring A. Philip Randolph, the head of the Pullman Sleeping Car Porters’ Union, which reminded me of the peculiarity of this retelling of history, connecting up the Pullman district with the Pullman union, and implying that the latter happened in Pullman rather than, in reality, in New York —... Read more

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2016-10-13T07:52:42-06:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Everyone’s talking about the Pew Study. . .

Last updated on: October 13, 2016 at 7:52 am By Jane the Actuary

that is, the recently-released data that shows a substantial drop in the numbers of people identifying as Christians. What do you think? Here’s the study itself, from the Pew site. And everyone’s got an opinion on this. Except me, it seems. I’ve read claims that the Pew data is bad, that religion is too prescriptive, not prescriptive enough, that the blame is to be laid at the feet of too-easily-divorcing parents, that this is really good news in disguise because... Read more

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secularism

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