Page 3 of 4

Posted on

Brown Paper Bag Experiences

We have all been subject to “Brown Paper Bag Experiences” when others evaluate us not by our inner selves — but by our outward appearances — and many times they wrongly judge us by jumping to incorrect conclusions. In my article, Coercing Faith, Gordon Davidescu posted this Brown Bag comment:

I think the best analogy (or at least the one I just came up with now) is this: Say you see a person walking down the street with a brown paper bag in his hand. Given New York’s liquor laws you know that he has some sort of alcoholic beverage inside. However, you don’t know if that alcoholic beverage is a beer or wine, or even a wine cooler – unless it is taken out of the bag. Converting is sort of like removing the bottle from the bag. Being Jewish means you have a Jewish Soul – but not everyone with a Jewish Soul hidden in their paper bag realizes that they are Jewish until they take it out of the bag – converting, that is.

Continue reading → Brown Paper Bag Experiences

Posted on

Should Hate Speech Be Free?

I have always been of the mind that all speech should be free. One should always feel free to express the worst in us, out loud, in public, where the speech can be tested against community standards and either be excoriated or accepted.
There are two events, recently published in The New York Times, that force me to wonder if there is a reason why some expressions should never be made public.
The first example concerns the murder trial of Ronell Wilson — who allegedly shot two undercover detectives in the back of the head — when he was arrested, handwritten scraps of a Rap song were found in his pocket describing the killings before they happened.

Hate Speech

Continue reading → Should Hate Speech Be Free?

Posted on

The Myth of Racial Harmony: Dumb and Dangerous

I recently heard on the radio 45% of American Black males do not graduate from high school. Why does their education end before their 18th birthday? Is there something culturally askew where education has no value? Are they born not to succeed in life? Is there a genetic code that denies them fruitful opportunity for living? The answer to those questions is a resounding: No!

Continue reading → The Myth of Racial Harmony: Dumb and Dangerous

Posted on

Weighing Humor Against Moral Values

Is funny always funny? Or does the sense of what’s funny change with the cultural ebb-and-flow over time of what certain people find funny? In a recent thread of comments here, one regular commenter made a “joke” about work where the new management team were “Nazis” and the workers were “Jews.”

Continue reading → Weighing Humor Against Moral Values

Posted on

Blame it on the Jews: A History of Hating

With the recent explosions of vitriol from Mel Gibson against the Jews in general and with the new insurgency against Israel proper by Hezbollah in particular, one begins to wonder about the how and the why of blaming the world’s troubles on the Jews. I decided to do some quick Google searches on historically paired stereotypical keywords to see what kind of hate against the Jews was being officially published on the internet and the results were hateful but not surprising.

Continue reading → Blame it on the Jews: A History of Hating

Posted on

Deaf Holocaust: Finding the Executioner’s Hand

Few people know over 13,000 Deaf people — andDeaf Holocaust not just the Jewish Deaf — were killed by the Nazis in the late 1930’s.

Not only were the Deaf the first to find the executioner’s hand under Fascism, they were also viewed as inferior “useless eaters” by the ruling party.

Since the Deaf were unable to communicate in the Germanic mother tongue they were not heard or understood by the majority and fell prey to early graves.

The BBC has a wonderful companion website to help us always remember the Deaf who died. Here are three incredible blocks of quotes from the amazing show:

EducationErna Young who was sterilised as a young girl — estimated that some 17,000 deaf people were sterilised between 1933 and 1945 – the youngest was only 9 years old. Given that there was no national register of deaf or disabled people in Germany, many were given over to the authorities by teachers of the deaf – the very people trusted with their care and support. Some Nazi educationalists even began to question the right of deaf children to be educated at all, believing the education of the ‘inferior’ to be wasteful.

Continue reading → Deaf Holocaust: Finding the Executioner’s Hand

Posted on

Mandatory Organ Donation

There are some ethicists who believe all organ donations must be mandatory and the option to opt out of the program should only be granted in limited conditions concerning religious beliefs or impaired mental state of the donor at the time of death.
The assumption upon death should be the organs of the deceased belong to the corpus of humanity and — as a matter of believing in each other — those organs must be recycled to keep the ill alive. 

Continue reading → Mandatory Organ Donation

Posted on

The Truth in Eli’s Blue Tattoos

David Irving, a British historian, will be in prison for the next three years after claiming for decades the Holocaust did not happen. The Austrian sentencing judge called Irving a “falsifier of history” who had academically challenged the Holocaust research of other scholars. One researcher, Deborah Lipstadt of Emory University, fought back against Irving and won but she feels Irving’s imprisonment will only make him a Free Speech martyr.

When the Western mindset of freedom and Free Speech meets anti-Muslim cartoonists and Holocaust deniers like Irving, there is a strange and dangerous conflation of the radical worst of us becoming memes for a movement. The best evidence for fighting the David Irvings and others who press lies over ugly truths is in the specificity of the body and the revelation of embedded truth that erupts to the surface when crushed into the flesh. When I was a teenager, I worked at a television station as an on-camera movie reviewer.

There was a man who worked in the film department named Eli. Eli was the only person who could take a piece of ruined raw film, fix it, and have it on the air for the evening news in five minutes. Eli was old school. He could fix anything mechanical. The new videotape revolution happening around him held no interest. He was pure celluloid and chemicals and darkrooms. Eli was a “Jew in Nebraska” and that was extremely rare in the 1980’s. He moved to Nebraska after World War II after surviving Auschwitz and surviving Auschwitz was even rarer than a Jew in Nebraska.

Continue reading → The Truth in Eli’s Blue Tattoos

Posted on

Award Winning Awarded Winner

The world is award-winning crazy and the delicious fact is none of those awards matter!
The awards ceremonies grow exponentially each year. Soon we’ll all be winning awards for just waking up in the morning. In fact, you just won an award right now: The All-Time Great Blog Reader Award! 

Continue reading → Award Winning Awarded Winner

Posted on

Enter the Share a Close Shave Contest!

It’s time for another Urban Semiotic Contest!
Our Gordon Davidescu was lucky enough to get his hands on the coveted Gillette Fusion Power Razor as he told us yesterday:

At my supermarket they have a promotional item of the week. If they don’t mention it to you at the checkout counter and you point out that fact they have to give it to you for free. This week the promotional item was the Gillette Fusion Power. Since they didn’t mention it to me I got one for free. Since I can’t use it I’d like you to have it. At the very least you get an extra blade and coupon for $2 off the blades. How fun!

Continue reading → Enter the Share a Close Shave Contest!