The initial sensation was one of being studied by anthropologists.

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Every Hug, Every Fuss - Scientists Record Families’ Daily Lives

Isn’t this kind of a bizarre statement in an article about families being studied by anthropologists? Like, oh, the initial sensation was what was actually happening?

At the instant you hear that a quarter or a third or perhaps only 10 percent of the worlds population has disappeared, you will know that the Rapture has occured. You will hear this because you are still here and were not raptured yourself. You and your family will still be here because of the beliefs which you write about. At that time you should get out your Bible and read how you can avoid eternal damnation, but you won’t, since it doesn’t fit with your anything goes, everyone goes to heaven anyway theory. The world is very close to, if not already in the end times. Learn about it, live it or lose it.

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charles commenting on Born Again in Brooklyn

I am so intrigued by the infighting in Christianity, especially the millenarianist/evangelical attitude towards Catholics.

It’s not just his inadequate grasp of the facts. Taylor’s whole analysis is wrong. His idea is that higher education is too Fordist. (“Graduate education is the Detroit of higher learning,” he intones.)
But higher education isn’t too Fordist — it’s actually the brilliant, innovative post-Fordist employer par excellence. Every other employer wants to employ its people on the model of the campus — to get people who work for love, as perpetual students, eagerly discounting their labor in hopes of a future reward that someone else will provide.
I dunno if we should end the university as The New York Times or Mark C. Taylor claims to know it.
But we really oughta end the university as the rest of us know it — as not merely exploitative, but as a creatively super-exploitative employer.

— Brainstorm: More Drivel From ‘The New York Times’ (via igather)

The bulk of the stimulus program will provide jobs for men, because building projects generate jobs in construction, where women make up only 9 percent of the work force. It turns out that green jobs are almost entirely male as well, especially in the alternative energy area. A broad study by the United States Conference of Mayors found that half the projected new jobs in any green area are in engineering, a field that is only 12 percent female, or in the heavily male professions of law and consulting; the rest are in such traditional male areas as manufacturing, agriculture and forestry. And like companies that build roads, alternative energy firms also employ construction workers and engineers. Fortunately, jobs for women can be created by concentrating on professions that build the most important infrastructure — human capital. In 2007, women were 83 percent of social workers, 94 percent of child care workers, 74 percent of education, training and library workers (including 98 percent of preschool and kindergarten teachers and 92 percent of teachers’ assistants).

— Where Are the New Jobs for Women? [via]

All summer, more than a year after the drought began, fountains sprayed and football fields were watered, prisoners got two showers a day and Coca-Cola’s bottling plants chugged along at full strength. On an 81-degree day this month, an outdoor theme park began to manufacture what was intended to be a 1.2-million-gallon mountain of snow.

— New to Being Dry, the South Struggles to Adapt