Taking it Outside

This is not good news for ObWi that Publius is pulling out. Even if I disagree with him to the extent that I think his opinions prove him a crazy stupid idiot, I think he has done an admirable job in keeping things going. He has pulled the Wingers through hard times, posted regularly, and tried to include others like Althouse and McArdle in a debate (shot down by the regulars).

Why not have Edward_ cross-post  a few things, and just for the hell of it get LT Nixon to do one post a week. Apparently, Universities are frowning on their faculty spending too much time blogging. I personally think that Publius did not fall into the trap of wasting time on the blog; he wrote what he wrote, and generally stayed out of the comments. If there was pressure from the university to stop Publius from blogging, I think that it was unwarranted. You may hate me for this, but if Hilzoy got shut down by her school, I think it is quite possible that she was spending too much effort on the ObWi blog and not enough on her real job. This is one of those things that  is a dicey judgement call. If Glenn Reynoldsand Ann Althouse can do it, why not everybody? Or conversely, if blogging is wasting professional time, why not stop all professors from having blogs?

I think that the fact that Publius was a bit disinterested in the comments (per libjn) was a good thing; it indicated that he was not wasting working hours on a blogging hobby. If his school thinks otherwise, I think that they should consider whether Publius writes his posts after work. I think that he does. I do not think that there is any indication that Publius (besides using the [i]racist card[/i] from time to time) has ever done anything to warrant some kind of "stop blogging" edict.

You can just get tired of it, that's true. And if that is the reason for Publius, that is fine with me; I can dig that.

In 'Impossible Motherhood,' Irene Vilar, now a mother of two, writes of what led her to have 15 pregnancies ended.

More: Los Angeles Times

Just off the heels of the Abortion/Government Execution thread! Anyways, I suspect this article will be circulating, as proof...of...something nefarious. Care to guess?

The following is work I did a few summers ago, attempting to understand an important part of Protestant History in the United States. I stopped tweeking it after the summer ended. It's long and unclear, thus is my curse. Just witness Slarti's response for help in the "Spanish Goth meet Obama" thread, and Gary has always complained about my unclear writing. Anyways, it certainly does not stop me from trying to figure stuff out. - SOD  

The Unstable Characteristics of Evangelicals:

How Race Constructs Their Political and Religious Identity

One of the most interesting stories in American culture is the construction of the religious identity known as "Evangelical." It is the most popular and influential banners under which right-wing Protestant politics and conservative theology gathers to build solidarity among the many disparate Protestant denominations, sects, and para-church organizations. However, the recent literature on American Protestant history and theology calls into question the popular usage of "evangelical" as synonymous with "conservative," claiming it was a conscious effort by Fundamentalists and right-wing activists to co-opt the popular Protestant term, in order to "re-brand" themselves. Their efforts also placed the powerful term within the conservative side of a theological debate within the Protestantism, frequently called the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy, thus fusing conservative theology with conservative politics. This move to, to place evangelicalism on the conservative side of Protestantism and politics, is developed by Billy Graham and the Neo-Evangelicals and is fully developed during the rise of the Religious Right and the Reagan Revolution. Since this socio-political effort construction's value is contingent on the ability to mobilize (or at least, to present the image of vast mobilization) it has allowed its theological label to represent all the popular movements within modern-day Protestantism (which is the anti-thesis of conservative and traditional Protestant theology), in order to preserve its right-wing political commitments. I will attempt to unravel this complex quilt of theology, politics, identity, and culture.

This post should have gone up a few weeks ago, before things got so bad, but I've been having my own prolems with life (nothing especially grim, just lots of small things) So this is your chance to get it our of your system.

Here is my nutshell view of what is happening.

-slart doesn't have the keys

-Eric is on his honeymoon and anyway, likes to mix it up, so is a lot more hesitant to call people out

-Publius never looks at the comments except on the Net Neutrality stuff he writes

-Lindsay hasn't gotten used to the blog and is not going to be the enforcer (not sure if she would have been anyway)

-von and Sebastian did calling out when Hilzoy was around but no longer feel the need to

-The rollout of a new blog appears to be close, and it is perceived that just setting up in a new place will solve these problems

 This short bullet list is based on speculative observations (I have no line into the hivemind) and is in no way meant to disparage anyone, people's lives are people's lives, and a blog is the last of their concerns. However, the first point looks like one that could be changed.

The anti-Goths rule. We don't believe in and can't allow witches

[url=http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/03/hoopeston-documentary-premieres-at.html]Because they are weird.[/url]

[url=http://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/9831]And we cannot have weirdness in the home of the CornJerkers.[/url]

[url=http://www.synydyne.com/projects/hoopeston/]More movie exerpts here.[/url]

Update: Oh, the whole video is there.

The fine folks at Harvard University Press are offering the Introduction to The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America by Eric P. Kaufmann, for free.

Harvard Site & PDF

This book has had a profound affect on my research, and my idea of a re-formation of Anglo-Protestantism in its present form. More on that later.

I swear, the daughter on the far left, was the same homegirl who turned me on to Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance & This Mortal Coil (Damn, she opened the whole 4AD world for me!)