Category Archives: Social Commentary

February 7, 2011 · 9:07 am

Southern accent in danger? Raleigh News and Observer.com

Interesting…

A new dialect is forming in Raleigh, and Scarlett O’Hara it ain’t.

There’s a gradual shift toward a less distinctive regional accent, and our vowel sounds are leading the way.

“Language is always changing, always in flux,” said Robin Dodsworth, an associate linguistics professor at N.C. State University. “Over time in Raleigh, the Southern variant is disappearing.”

Since 2008, Dodsworth has collected recordings of native Raleighites, analyzing their vowel sounds to uncover how the local accent has changed through time.

The major difference is in something linguists call the “Southern vowel shift,” the way of speaking that makes words like “bait” sound more like “bet,” and turns “bed” into a two-syllable word. Those Southern quirks of speech are less noticeable with each generation Dodsworth interviews.

You could try blaming the influx of Yankees over the past couple decades, but the regional quirks of, say, New York- or Chicago-area speech patterns aren’t being picked up locally, Dodsworth said. Rather, the Raleigh dialect is becoming less traditionally “Southern,” smoothing out into an accent that is recognizably American but difficult to place.

via Southern accent in danger? – Education – NewsObserver.com.

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Filed under Greensboro, Social Commentary, Style, The South

February 6, 2011 · 8:04 pm

Ethan Nichtern: Mindful Social Networking: Going Online Without Losing Your Mind

Interesting…

I struggle with the fact that I spend so much time on line, but justify it by having given up television and making the shift towards exploring writing and commentary as a possible side job at some point in the future.

Being a Libra, I’m in a constant struggle for balance anyway…

And we are really good at justification of questionable behavior…

 

The Social Network is an amazing phenomenon, an amazing opportunity to see the truth of interdependence, that none of our lives occur in an isolated vacuum. Social networking is also, possibly, the most widespread addiction on our planet right now, sucking billions of hours we’ll never get back again. On a recent meditation retreat, I asked assembled students to share their favorite “evasive maneuvers” from the present moment, the ways we all hide out from having to be here with the direct simplicity of right now. People said all kinds of funny and not so funny things. In a discussion group later in the weekend, one student wondered why nobody had brought up Twitter and Facebook. Another student joked “Ethan asked us what our individual evasive maneuvers were, not our shared ones. Everyone’s addicted to Facebook. That just goes without saying at this point.”

From the Buddhist standpoint, the best framework to analyze social networking is a concept called “coemergence.” Coemergence refers to the ability of any particular phenomenon or experience to manifest as either wisdom or confusion, helpful or harmful, a weapon or a prison. From this standpoint (which is sometimes considered an advanced framework for working with meditation practice), phenomena are in themselves neither positive nor negative, but they only become helpful or harmful according to how the mind attends to them and fixates upon them. Enter the social network. Is it the greatest tool for connection and camaraderie the world has ever seen? Or is it a dangerous time-suck, isolating us in bubbles of anxious voyeurism? Well, it’s both.

What make the distinction? Whether or not you view your time online as a practice or an escape makes all the difference in the world. At the same time, recognizing the truth of coemergence is a great way to develop compassion and overcome guilt about our actions. Even Mark Zuckerberg himself seems like quite the coemergent dude.

via Ethan Nichtern: Mindful Social Networking: Going Online Without Losing Your Mind.

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Filed under Social Commentary, Yoga

February 6, 2011 · 1:14 pm

I Don’t Understand the Super Bowl…

I don’t get it…the Super Bowl?

I kind of understand College and High School sports, but I’ve never understood people gathering around the TV or in a stadium to watch over-paid millionaires attempt to destroy each other in order to make more money.

Don’t we see enough of this in Corporate American news every day?

If we are going to do this as national entertainment, we should just be honest and  do it right, like the Romans.

Let’s throw a few financial felons or corrupt politicians who helped crash the economy into a pit with a few lions and let’s see what happens.

That, I could get into….

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Filed under Entertainment, Politics, Scott's Commentary, Social Commentary

January 27, 2011 · 8:37 am

I See London, I See…Sanely Sourced Fish and Chips?!

Interesting…

The Brits seem to be getting behind the Sustainable Foods Movement.

Of course, Europe is so far ahead of us already on the Local Foods movement…

It will take longer here since Monsanto has taken over our government…

The English grind their picket-fence teeth through one billon pounds of fish each year, according to AOL News.

That massive consumption doesn’t bode well for the gilled residents of London, where hundreds of thousands of sport fans are expected to descend for the 2012 Olympic games. Aside from filling stadiums, the Olympic tourists can be counted on to gorge on the native fried finger-food delicacy.

In the 20th century, U.K. fishery stocks declined by 94 percent. Many wonder if the nation’s staple hangover cure can endure, of if the fish will all be gone. The Games don’t make chances for survival look any rosier.

That’s why the Sustainable Fish City initiative wants all of London to commit to sanely sourced fish—not just for dishes served at the Olympic Games (the initiative accomplished that much already), but for all fish portions throughout the city.

Attainable? We’ll see. It’s an ambitious goal, but the outlook is positive.

via I See London, I See…Sanely Sourced Fish and Chips?! | TakePart – Inspiration to Action.

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Filed under Food, Social Commentary

January 26, 2011 · 10:07 pm

Do We Really Need More College Grads?

This opinion piece by Matthew Biberman on AOL is really thought provoking and worth looking at…

Here are a couple of excerpts and a link, which I encourage you to use, to the full article:

 

First, the problem. The issue is not just that we need to hand out more college diplomas. What we need to do is produce an adult population that is more educated and more employable, and the troubling fact is that many students in college today come away from the experience without having learned much of anything.

In their new book “Academically Adrift,” researchers Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa have provided us with a sobering picture of higher education in America today. According to their findings, after two years of college, 45 percent of students fail to show any improvement in “critical thinking, complex reasoning” or “written analysis.”

All is not gloom and doom. Arum and Roksa then go on to note that the number of students showing no improvement drops to only 36 percent when the study was repeated with seniors.

I would suggest that we accept these numbers but then fashion a different lesson from them. The message we take away should not be that colleges are failing half of the students who are there.

 

The deeper truth is that many of these failing students simply should not be in college in the first place.

Why? Because they’ve been waived through high school. And now colleges — which really should turn these students away — are eagerly accepting them in order to bank their tuition dollars. Indeed, given the reality of the current recession, student enrollments at many American public institutions are now being capped not by entrance requirements but rather by fire marshals.

 

 

 

 

AND:

 

 

 

 

Why? Because college isn’t for everybody, and college doesn’t offer the training necessary to do everything. In fact, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 17 million college graduates have jobs that don’t require a college education. (There are more than 100,000 janitors with at least a bachelor’s degree.)

At some point, students have to decide to do something, and the ethical thing to do here would be to make them cross this bridge before we saddle them with an insane amount of college tuition debt.

The point I am driving at is that real solutions will only materialize after we acknowledge that a large chunk of that 45 percent not learning at college should not be there.

Even more sadly, these students wouldn’t be wasting their time and money if their high schools had encouraged them to consider pursuing additional education outside of going the conventional, liberal arts college route.

But for that to happen, we need to change our approach to the problem.

Obama should have talked less in generalities and more in specifics. He should have told us that our high schools need to offer more vocational training and that these sorts of programs need to continue in community colleges.

If he can get a standing ovation for telling children at home that they need to help Uncle Sam and become a teacher, he could have mentioned a few other jobs that are just as rewarding. We need mechanics, and electricians, plumbers and builders too.

 

 

As I said, thought provoking…

MORE:  http://www.aolnews.com/2011/01/26/opinion-do-we-really-need-more-college-graduates/

 

 

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Filed under Education, Pets, Social Commentary

January 26, 2011 · 9:30 pm

Is Evangelical Christianity Having a Great Gay Awakening?

My friend Renee sent me this and introduced me to Sojourner’s Magazine where this article appears.

I must say, it is making me revise my views about organized religion and admit there are some Christians who are not as judgmental, self righteous and self-absorbed as I thought…

Kind of a weird journey for this New Age Spiritual,agnostic, psuedo-Buddhist,  Jewish Wannabe, Gay Man who was raised in- and detests- the judgmental Southern Baptist Church and the Right Wing Political Evangelical’s message of hate….

I’m going to try to be more open-minded as I ask others to be…

It’s easy when Christians start saying some of the same things I do…

From Cathleen Falsani at Sojourners.com:

Some of my dearest friends are gay.

Most of my dearest friends are Christians.

And more than a few of my dearest friends are gay Christians.

As an evangelical, that last part is not something that, traditionally and culturally, I’m supposed to say out loud. For most of my life, I’ve been taught that it’s impossible to be both openly gay and authentically Christian.

When a number of my friends “came out” shortly after our graduation from Wheaton College in the early ’90s, first I panicked, and then I prayed.

What would Jesus do? I asked myself (and God).

According to biblical accounts, Jesus said very little, if anything, about homosexuality. But he spent loads of time talking, preaching, teaching and issuing commandments about love.

That was my answer: Love them. Unconditionally, without caveats or exceptions.

I wasn’t sure whether homosexuality actually was a sin. But I was certain I was commanded to love.

For 20 years, that answer was workable, if incomplete. Lately, though, it’s been nagging at me. Some of my gay friends are married, have children, and have been with their partners and spouses as long as I’ve been with my husband.

Loving them is easy. Finding clear theological answers to questions about homosexuality has been decidedly not so.

That’s why I’m grateful for a growing number of evangelical leaders who are bravely offering a different answer.

In his new book Fall to Grace: A Revolution of God, Self and Society, Jay Bakker, the son of Jim Bakker and the late Tammy Faye Messner, gives clear and compelling answers to my nagging questions.

Simply put, homosexuality is not a sin, says Bakker, 35, pastor of Revolution NYC, a Brooklyn evangelical congregation that meets in a bar.

Bakker, who is straight and divorced, crafts his argument using the same “clobber scriptures” (as he calls them) that are so often wielded to condemn homosexuals.

“The simple fact is that Old Testament references in Leviticus do treat homosexuality as a sin … a capital offense even,” Bakker writes. “But before you say, ‘I told you so,’ consider this: Eating shellfish, cutting your sideburns and getting tattoos were equally prohibited by ancient religious law.

“The truth is that the Bible endorses all sorts of attitudes and behaviors that we find unacceptable (and illegal) today and decries others that we recognize as no big deal.”

Leviticus prohibits interracial marriage, endorses slavery and forbids women to wear trousers. Deuteronomy calls for brides who are found not to be virgins to be stoned to death, and for adulterers to be summarily executed.

“The church has always been late,” Bakker told me in an interview this week. “We were late on slavery. We were late on civil rights. And now we’re late on this.”

More:  http://blog.sojo.net/2011/01/25/is-evangelical-christianity-having-a-great-gay-awakening/

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Filed under Gay, Religion, Social Commentary

January 26, 2011 · 8:34 pm

Revisiting The Renaissance In ‘Harlem Is Nowhere’ : NPR

This sounds fascinating…

Also from NPR:

Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts has had Harlem on her mind since she was a high school student in Houston reading the work of Jean Toomer, Ann Petry, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes and others. In 2002, a recent Harvard graduate, she moved into an apartment without a kitchen on 130th near Lenox. Her first book, Harlem Is Nowhere, is a tender, improvisational memoir of several years spent exploring the myths of this capital of African America and the realities of its 21st-century incarnation.

Rhodes-Pitts spends hours in a branch library on 135th Street, reading of the beginnings of Harlem as a farm suburb settled in the 1880s, its transformation in 1905 when the black migrations from the South began to fill its borders, and the point in 1925 when Alain Locke defined Harlem as a physical center that “focuses a people,” and set the stage for the Harlem Renaissance. She goes on a walking tour with tourists, attends community meetings about rezoning and muses on African street vendors, empty lots, chalk messages scribbled on sidewalks and relics of times past, like James Van Der Zee’s formal Depression-era photographs and the overstuffed scrapbooks of the early 20th-century eccentric Alexander Gumby.

From an older woman named Ms. Minnie, who lives in her building, she learns how to be a caring neighbor. Ms. Minnie is from a black town in South Carolina and at one point confides that her maiden name was Sojourner. “She looked me squarely in the eye before continuing,” Rhodes-Pitts writes. “That’s not a slave name.”

The author borrows her title from Ralph Ellison’s essay about post World War II Harlem as a metaphoric space in which “the major energy of the imagination goes not into creating works of art, but to overcome the frustration of social discrimination.”

More:   Revisiting The Renaissance In ‘Harlem Is Nowhere’ : NPR.

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Filed under Books, History, New York, Race, Social Commentary

January 25, 2011 · 6:33 pm

Martin Thielen: What’s the Least You Can Believe and Still Be a Christian?

Very interesting article from HuffingtonPost.com.

Click the link at the bottom for the full story…

When I first met Danny, he said, “Preacher, you need to know that I’m an atheist. I don’t believe the Bible. I don’t like organized religion. And I can’t stand self-righteous, judgmental Christians.”

I liked him right away!

In spite of Danny’s avowed atheism and my devout Christian beliefs, we became close friends. Over the next year Danny and I engaged in numerous conversations about faith. During that time Danny softened his stance on atheism. One day he announced with a laugh, “I’ve decided to upgrade from an atheist to an agnostic.” Several months later Danny said, “I’ve had an epiphany. I realize that I don’t reject Christianity. Instead, I reject the way that intolerant Christians package Christianity.” A few weeks after that conversation, Danny said, “Martin, you’ve just about convinced me on this religion stuff. So I want to know–what’s the least I can believe and still be a Christian?”

“What’s the least I can believe and still be a Christian?” What a great question! Danny’s provocative question prompted me to write a new book, using his question as the title. Part one of the book presents 10 things Christians don’t need to believe. In short, Christians don’t need to believe in closed-minded faith.

For example, Christians don’t need to believe that:

• God causes cancer, car wrecks and other catastrophes

• Good Christians don’t doubt

• True Christians can’t believe in evolution

• Woman can’t be preachers and must submit to men

• God cares about saving souls but not saving trees

• Bad people will be “left behind” and then fry in hell

• Jews won’t make it to heaven

• Everything in the Bible should be taken literally

• God loves straight people but not gay people

• It’s OK for Christians to be judgmental and obnoxious

More:   Martin Thielen: What’s the Least You Can Believe and Still Be a Christian?.

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Filed under Politics, Religion, Social Commentary

January 24, 2011 · 8:16 pm

Liz and Dick: The Ultimate Celebrity Couple | VF Daily | Vanity Fair

Now these two were Movie Stars!

Who the hell cares about Lindsey Lohan and today’s whiney, tacky wannabes?

Well, Brad and Angelina are probably the real thing…And George Clooney.  Maybe a couple of more…but very, very few can live up to the standards of the Stars of the earlier years…

Before Brangelina, before TomKat, before … Speidi … there was Liz and Dick—that is, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, the super-couple who set the standard all others can only aspire to in terms of modern celebrity. What other couple has been condemned both by the Vatican and on the floor of the House of Representatives? What other couple lived as decadently, as opulently, and as passionately? What other couple could conquer both Hollywood and Broadway the way these two did over a span of two decades?

More:  Liz and Dick: The Ultimate Celebrity Couple | VF Daily | Vanity Fair.

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Filed under Entertainment, Movies, Social Commentary, Style

January 24, 2011 · 7:00 pm

Rights group blasts US justice over racial gap | Raw Story

Something just isn’t right with our Criminal Justice system…

No focus on rehabilitation or drug rehab- unless you are Lindsey Lohan.

A leading rights group slammed the United States on Monday for “overwhelming” racial disparities in its criminal justice system, and shortcomings in its approach to immigration and anti-terrorism measures.

Human Rights Watch said in its annual world report that in the US prison system — which still has the world’s largest population of 2,297,400 inmates, according to the latest figures from June 2009 — black non-Hispanic males are incarcerated at a rate more than six times that of white non-Hispanic males.

The disparity “cannot be accounted for solely by differences in criminal conduct,” said HRW in its 2011 World Report.

In 2009, one in 10 black males aged 25-29 were in prison, and for Hispanic males the figure was one in 25 — for white males the figure was one in 64.

HRW also highlighted a number of positive moves in the United States to address racial disparities, noting including a new law that promises to reduce in the sentencing of cocaine offenders.

 

“US citizens enjoy a broad range of civil liberties and have recourse to a strong system of independent federal and state courts, but continuing failures — notably in the criminal justice and immigration systems and in counterterrorism law and policy — mar its human rights record,” said HRW.

via Rights group blasts US justice over racial gap | Raw Story.

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Filed under Politics, Race, Social Commentary