7/23/14 (theonion.com)

DURHAM, NC—Confirming that the vast majority of U.S. citizens possess either too much or too little patriotism, a new study released Wednesday by researchers at Duke University has found that only 5 percent of Americans feel the correct amount of pride in their country.

The three-year study, which analyzed thousands of casual conversations, online discussions, exchanges at family gatherings, and parade attendance records, concluded that Americans routinely fail to display a level of patriotic sentiment that reflects a balanced appreciation of what makes the United States great as well as what makes it flawed.

“When it comes to expressing national pride, it turns out that only one in 20 Americans gets it right,” study co-author Chris Verbeek said of the small subset of citizens who show an evident level of patriotism for their native land, but who know not to go overboard with it. “Among the remaining 95 percent, a great many feel too little pride in their country, believing the United States is nothing more than an uncaring international bully that’s effectively responsible for all of the world’s problems. And simultaneously, you have people who are so incredibly proud of America they seem to think they’re actually living in a perfect, shining city upon a hill.”

“As it turns out, those who engage in over-the-top, borderline aggressive displays of patriotism and those who endlessly vocalize their disdain for America without once stopping to appreciate that this country grants them the right to dissent in the first place are both off the mark,” he added. “Indeed, we found that having an appreciable, but tempered, amount of pride in the United States is a rarity among the general populace.”

According to the study, approximately 74 million Americans exhibit a degree of pride so excessive that any criticism of U.S. policy causes them to angrily state that people who do not love the country ought to leave it. But the report confirmed this group was matched in size by those whose pride is so deficient that they steer nearly every conversation back to the subject of the nation’s shortcomings, loudly declaring it to be so irreversibly broken that they would be better off moving their family to Canada, or perhaps Scandinavia.

Researchers discovered that individuals in the first category make a point of telling others they only buy products made in the United States, reflexively and repeatedly refer to the U.S. as the “greatest nation on earth,” and pay their bills with patriotically themed personalized checks. The other group, meanwhile, reportedly challenges anyone who professes happiness at living in the United States, vehemently refuses to recognize Columbus Day, and rolls their eyes at most personal displays of the American flag.

“Among those with inappropriately low levels of patriotism, the most extreme refuse to stand for the national anthem at sporting events, while the more moderate stand but are generally annoyed at having to wait if it’s a particularly long rendition of the song,” Verbeek said. “At the same time, those overly proud of their nationality will sing along and often badger complete strangers to remove their hats during the song, with many going so far as to visibly tear up if the anthem is followed by a performance of Lee Greenwood’s ‘God Bless The U.S.A.’”

The study also noted that the percentage of U.S. citizens who possess exactly the right amount of love and admiration for their country has fallen sharply in recent decades and currently stands at an all-time low, having declined from a record peak of 36 percent in 1776.

Ultimately, Verbeek explained, fewer Americans than ever seem capable of feeling good about where they’re from without also believing the place of their birth makes them more important than everyone else.

“According to our findings, those with a correct sense of pride in the United States genuinely appreciate the Founding Fathers but don’t mythologize them, enjoy Fourth of July festivities, and during their lifetime visit at least four national monuments, one of which must be the Lincoln Memorial,” Verbeek said. “In addition, they find the bald eagle to be majestic but don’t feel their heart swell every time they see a picture of one.”

I’m reading this book and I absolutely love it.

Here’s the Dust Jacket Bio

Renowned psychologist Jordan B Peterson’s answer to this most difficult of questions uniquely combines the hard-won truths of ancient tradition with the stunning revelations of cutting-edge scientific research.

Humorous, surprising and informative, Dr. Peterson tells us why skateboarding boys and girls must be left alone, what terrible fate awaits those who criticize too easily, and why you should always pet a cat when you meet one on the street. What does the nervous system of the lowly lobster have to tell us about standing up straight (with our shoulders back) and success in life? Why did ancient

Egyptians worship the capacity to pay careful attention as the highest of gods? What dreadful paths do people tread when they become resentful, arrogant and vengeful?

Dr. Peterson journeys broadly, discussing discipline, freedom, adventure, and responsibility, distilling the world’s wisdom into 12 practical and profound rules for life. The 12 Most Valuable Things Everyone Should Know shatters the modern commonplaces of science, faith, and human nature while transforming and ennobling the mind and spirit of its readers.

Dr. Peterson was nominated for five consecutive years as one of Ontario’s Best University Lecturers. He is one of only three profs rated as “life changing” in the U of T’s underground student handbook of course ratings.

He’s a Quora Most Viewed Writer, with 200,000 Twitter followers and 90000 Facebook likes. His YouTube channel’s 225 videos have 460,000 subscribers, 1,000,000 views a month, and 30,000,000 views in total.

Malcolm Gladwell discussed psychology with him while researching his books, Norman Doidge is a good friend and collaborator, thriller writer Gregg Hurwitz employed several of his “valuable things” as a plot feature in his #1 international bestseller, Orphan X, and he worked with Jim Balsillie, former RIM CEO, on a project for the UN Secretary General.

His psychological tests have identified thousands of promising entrepreneurs on six different continents. His U of T lectures on psychology and myth were turned into a 13-part series on TVO. His web-based SelfAuthoring Suite, raved about on CBC Radio, in O: The Oprah Magazine and on NPR’s national website, has helped tens of thousands of people resolve their past problems and improve their futures.

The 12 Most Valuable Things Everyone Should Know is self-help with smarts, an introduction to philosophy, mythology and the science of the mind, and a practical, engaging guide to a better life.

SOH Ideas
Published on Jul 10, 2016
Twenty-first century depictions of love and marriage are shaped by a set of Romantic myths and misconceptions and with his trademark warmth and wit, Alain de Botton explores the complex landscape of a modern relationship, presenting a realistic case study for marriage and examining what it might mean to love, to be loved – and to stay in love.

Alain de Botton is an internationally renowned philosopher, television presenter and author of international best sellers Essays in Love, How Proust Can Change Your Life and Status Anxiety. In this talk, he discusses his stunning new novel The Course of Love, a philosophical novel about modern relationships.

http://sydneyoperahouse.com/ideas

Click on “Zoom” to enlarge.

Submitted by Rick Thomas, H.W., m.

Mainuddin Shuvro
Published on Oct 18, 2016
The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was one of the most brilliant and dangerous minds of the 19th century. His uncompromising and often brutal ideas smashed the comfortable presuppositions and assumptions of religion, morality and science. His was a world not just bereft of God but almost of humanity, breathtaking in both its post-religious starkness and its originality.

Bettany Hughes goes in search of the beliefs of a man whose work is amongst the most devastatingly manipulated and misinterpreted in philosophical history. Nietzsche’s dislike of systems and of seeking truths left his ideas ambiguous and sometimes incoherent. It was this that made him vulnerable to interpretation, and as a result his thoughts – which warned against the very notion of a political system like totalitarianism – were manipulated to strengthen its ideals.

Vocally opposed to anti-Semitism, his anti-Semitic sister made sure he became the poster boy for Hitler’s drive for an Aryan ideal. Anti-nationalistic, he came to symbolise a regime he would have loathed. His philosophical quest led him to isolation and ultimately madness, but his ideas helped shape the intellectual landscape of the modern world.

• June 30, 2018 (BigThink.com)

by KEVIN DICKINSON

A ‘blood moon’, taken by Ulrike Bohr. Creative Commons.

“The blood moon is upon us again.” It sounds like a tagline for the latest Castlevania sequel, but the reality is a tad less theatrical. EarthSky reportsthat on the night of July 27–28, sky watchers in the Eastern Hemisphere will be treated to the longest total lunar eclipse of the 21st century, hanging out for a stunning one hour and 43 minutes.

As we’ve come to expect whenever a blood moon arises, conspiracy theorists and fringe Christian evangelicals are heralding the event as a sign of the imminent apocalypse. Undeterred by previous predictions that didn’t pan out, these apocalypse prophets have taken to the tabloids, YouTube, and online forums to pronounce the fulfillment of prophecies that signal the end times are nigh.

Is the blood moon a sign of an end-times prophecy? No. Absolutely not.

But that doesn’t make for a very interesting article, does it? Instead, let’s see if we can’t find out why some people think it is.

By any other name

Before we get into the prophetic stuff, let’s quickly recap what exactly a blood moon is.

Typically, the moon reflects the sun’s light, but during a lunar eclipse, the moon’s orbit takes it through the Earth’s shadow. A total lunar eclipse occurs when this shadow completely covers the moon. Some sunlight still reaches the moon though, and since the Earth’s atmosphere filters out the blue, the light that reaches the moon has a ruddy hue.1 Hence the name.

As such, there’s nothing special about a blood moon. It’s simply a total lunar eclipse that’s been given a poetic nickname.

Although eclipses can be spectacular natural sights, they aren’t incredibly rare. NASA has calculated all of the lunar eclipses Earth will experience in the 21st century, and it comes to a whopping 228 (85 total eclipses, 57 partial eclipses, and 86 penumbral eclipses).

In fact, we’ve already had one this year. On Jan. 31, 2018, the western United States was treated to a “super blue blood moon” — a name so stirring that NASA gave the event its own cinematic trailer.

Opening the sixth seal, film at 11

Many religions and folk traditions hold eclipses as the harbingers of divine change, not just in Christianity. Today’s version of the blood moon prophecy, however, gained traction back in 2014, when Mark Biltz and John Hagee released the books Blood Moons: Decoding the Imminent Heavenly Signs and Four Blood Moons: Something Is About to Change respectively.

Both men argued that the four blood moons occurring between April 15, 2014, and September 28, 2015, were significant because they formed a tetrad — that is, four total lunar eclipses with no partial eclipses in between and each separated by six lunar months — that fell on significant Jewish holidays.2 Citing scripture to support their ideas, the two men argued that these eclipses provided evidence for the fulfillment of prophecy and the coming of the end times.

Examples of scriptures linking blood moons to Tribulation are Joel 2:31, “The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord come,” and Revelation 6:12, “And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood.”

Of course, September 28, 2015, came and went without any discernable incident. Since then, blood moon predictions seem to exist on a sliding scale. Each total solar eclipse is part of a tetrad, whether or not it legitimately is. Alternatively, it is linked to some other event that may be described in prophetic scripture, such as a natural disaster or the current political state.

To pick one representative example, Paul Begley, an Indiana pastor, declared on his YouTube channel:

Is the blood moon coming July 27, 2018, is this a sign of the end of the world? It is a sign of the end times. We are in the era of the apocalypse. And this blood moon, which will be the longest blood moon of this century, is happening in the 70th year of Israel being a nation. It’s happening the same year that Jerusalem has been declared the eternal city of God, and it’s happening when the volcanoes already erupting in Hawaii […] all of the volcanic rivers flowing. It’s incredible how the Bible refers to these events taking place in the last days.

In addition to the Book of Joel, he cites Luke 21:25 as evidence for his conclusions: “And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring.”

Oh, and if you’re curious, there will be a total of eight tetrads in the 21stcentury, the next one beginning April 25, 2032. So, rare but not end-of-the-world, once-in-a-lifetime rare.

The coming of Planet X

Of course, the blood moon prophecy is hardly the only prediction of the end of times coming from the evangelical camp. Evangelist Hal Lindsay predicted the end of the world before December 31, 1988, in his book The Late Great Planet Earth,3 and Pat Robertson named April 29, 2007, as the day of days his 1990 book The New Millennium.4

Jesus himself even seemed convinced the world would not last into the 2ndcentury, such as when he said: “Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.” (Matthew 16:28).

Nor is the phenomenon limited to Christians. Remember the Nibiru cataclysm? Originally proposed by contactee Nancy Lieder in 1995, the doomsday event would have seen a planet-sized object, named Nibiru or Planet X, collide with the Earth. The original contact was to come in 2003 before being pushed back to coincide with 2012. It was later revived byChristian numerologist Davide Meade in 2017.

Why believe?

Obviously, none of these apocalypses came to pass, yet the question remains: What’s the appeal to the blood moon prophecy and other end-of-time predictions?

Speaking with Scientific American, neuroscientist Shmuel Lissek argues that “some apocalyptic believers find the idea that the end is nigh to be validating” and that such fatalists may find reassurance in finding a group of like-minded people. It’s basically a Seeking a Friend for the End of the Worldmentality writ large As a bonus, if the world actually does end, you get “I told you so” privileges for eternity.

Another possible explanation comes from philosopher Karl Popper. In The Conspiracy Theory of Society, Popper argues that “conspiracy theories are based on the idea that a social outcome is evidence of an intentional order, and that random occurrences are rarely, if ever, relevant.” This is because people discount unintended consequences and prefer to view all events of being the result of an intended cause. While Popper was specifically looking at conspiracy theories, it’s easy to see how apocalyptic predictions fit the same pattern, just with a divine mover.

In his book Why People Believe Weird Things, Michael Shumer offers several explanations to his titular question. Applying these explanations to the blood moon prophecy, we would get something like the following:

• Credo consolans: People believe in the end of the world because they want to.
• Immediate gratification and simplicity: Simple explanations are immediately gratifying while reality is often complex and challenging.
• Morality and meaning: The end times will provide proof of eschatological meaning and morality from a higher power.

Whether one or a combination of these possible explanations, the appeal of blood moon prophecy and other apocalyptic visions is undeniable. Lucky for us, we’ll have plenty of time to consider the phenomenon and its potential causes. We have 69 total eclipses still to go this century.

Guardian Football
Published on Jun 24, 2018

Sweden midfielder Jimmy Durmaz delivered a powerful statement against racism after being targeted on social media for giving away the free-kick that led to Germany’s stoppage-time winner in Sochi on Saturday.

The whole squad lined up behind Durmaz to underline that they support him, and his message.