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Listen to Bunch of Betty’s Podcast #17: Betty’s Piano Pop 101 - Beyond Tori Mix!Like what you hear?? Bunch of Betty’s Podcast #17: Betty’s Piano Pop 101 - Beyond Tori Mix! Just listen…LINK to this podcast’s featured artist: SHAUNA BURNS!!PLAYLIST:1. (59:31) Tout Le Monde Dit by Carole Laure(source: Filles Sourires) NO LONGER AVAILABLE
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Society must thus be secured against the intrusions of the Good, or of God, so that its citizens may determine their own lives by the choices they make from a universe of morally indifferent but variably desirable ends, unencumbered by any prior grammar of obligation or value (in America, we call this the âwall of separationâ). And so, at the end of modernity, each of us who is true to the times stands facing not God, or the gods, or the Good beyond beings, but an abyss, over which presides the empty, inviolable authority of the individual will, whose impulses and decisions are their own moral index. These gods of the boutique can come from anywhereânative North American religion, the Indian subcontinent, some Pre-Raphaelite grove shrouded in Celtic twilight, cunning purveyors of otherwise worthless quartz, pages drawn at random from Robert Graves, Aldous Huxley, Carl Jung, or that redoubtable old Aryan, Joseph Campbellâbut where such gods inevitably come to rest are not so much divine hierarchies as ornamental étagères, where their principal office is to provide symbolic representations of the dreamier sides of their votariesâ personalities. It is, rather, a thoroughly modern religion, whose burlesque gods command neither reverence, nor dread, nor love, nor belief; âI am the Lord thy God,â says the First Commandment, âThou shalt have no other gods before me.â For Israel this was first and foremost a demand of fidelity, by which God bound His people to Himself, even if in later years it became also a proclamation to the nations. As such, it was not simply a prohibition of foreign cults, but a call to arms, an assault upon the antique order of the heavensâa declaration of war upon the gods. All the world was to be evangelized and baptized, all idols torn down, all worship given over to the one God who, in these latter days, had sent His Son into the world for our salvation. When a gentile convert stood in the baptistery on Eas-terâs eve and, before descending naked into the waters, turned to the West to renounce the devil and the devilâs ministers, he was rejecting, and in fact reviling, the gods in bondage to whom he had languished all his life; and no baptized Christian could doubt how great a transformationâof the self and the worldâit was to consent to serve no other god than Him whom Christ revealed. Moreover, in their very objectivity and supremacy over their worshipers, the gods gave the Church enemies with whom it could come to grips. And it is this god, I think, against whom the First Commandment calls us now to struggle. As Christians, we are glad to assert that the commandment to have no other god, when allied to the gospel, liberated us from the divine ancien régime; The word ânihilismâ has a complex history in modern philosophy, but I use it in a sense largely determined by Nietzsche and Heidegger, both of whom not only diagnosed modernity as nihilism, but saw Christianity as complicit in its genesis; Christianity, for its part, is not so much a new thing as a prolonged episode within the greater history of nihilism, notable chiefly for having brought part of this historyâs logic to its consummation by having invented the metaphysical God, the form of all forms, who grounds all of being in himself as absolute efficient cause, and who personifies that cause as total power and will. From this God, in the fullness of time, would be born the modern subject who has usurped Godâs place. The great Indo-European mythos, from which Western culture sprang, was chiefly one of sacrifice: it understood the cosmos as a closed system, a finite totality, within which gods and mortals alike occupied places determined by fate. And this regime was, naturally, a fixed hierarchy of social power, atop which stood the gods, a little lower kings and nobles, and at the bottom slaves; we fed the gods, who required our sacrifices, and they preserved us from the forces they personified and granted us some measure of their power. It was performed during the festival of Dionysus, which was a fertility festival, of course, but only because it was also an apotropaic celebration of delirium and death: the Dionysia was a sacred negotiation with the wild, antinomian cruelty of the god whose violent orgiastic cult had once, so it was believed, gravely imperiled the city; I can think of no better example of this than that of Antigone, in which the tragic crisis is the result of an insoluble moral conflict between familial piety (a sacred obligation) and the civil duties of kingship (a holy office): Antigone, as a woman, is bound to the chthonian gods (gods of the dead, so of family and household), and Creon, as king, is bound to Apollo (god of the city), and so both are adhering to sacred obligations. Not only is the mutable world separated from its divine principleâthe Oneâby intervals of emanation that descend in ever greater alienation from their source, but because the highest truth is the secret identity between the human mind and the One, the labor of philosophy is one of escape: all multiplicity, change, particularity, every feature of the living world, is not only accidental to this formless identity, but a kind of falsehood, and to recover the truth that dwells within, one must detach oneself from what lies without, including the sundry incidentals of oneâs individual existence; In any event, the purpose behind these indefensibly broad pronouncementsâhowever elliptically pursuedâis to aid in recalling how shatteringly subversive Christianity was of so many of the certitudes of the world it entered, and how profoundly its exclusive fidelity to the God of Christ transformed that world. If Godâs truth is in fact to be found where Christ stands, the mockery visited on him redounds instead upon the emperor, all of whose regal finery, when set beside the majesty of the servile shape in which God reveals Himself, shows itself to be just so many rags and briars. It is instead a penitent approach to a God who gives life freely, and who not only does not profit from the holocaust of the particular, but who in fact fulfils the âsacrificeâ simply by giving his gift again. In pouring himself out in the form of a servant, and in living his humanity as an offering up of everything to God in love, the shape of the eternal Sonâs life was already sacrificial in this special sense; For one thing, while every ancient system of philosophy had to presume an economy of necessity binding the world of becoming to its inmost or highest principles, Christian theology taught from the first that the world was Godâs creature in the most radically ontological sense: that it is called from nothingness, not out of any need on Godâs part, but by grace. The world adds nothing to the being of God, and so nothing need be sacrificed for His glory or sustenance. In a sense, God and world alike were liberated from the fetters of necessity; God could be accorded His true transcendence and the world its true character as divine gift. The full implications of this probably became visible to Christian philosophers only with the resolution of the fourth-century trinitarian controversies, when the subordinationist schemes of Alexandrian trinitarianism were abandoned, and with them the last residue within theology of late Platonismâs vision of a descending scale of divinity mediating between God and worldâthe both of them comprised in a single totality. In truth, Christian theology nowhere more wantonly celebrated its triumph over the old gods than in the use it made of the so-called spolia Aegyptorum; The command to have no other god but Him whom Christ revealed was never for Christians simply an invitation to forsake an old cult for a new, but was an announcement that the shape of the world had changed, from the depths of hell to the heaven of heavens, and all nations were called to submit to Jesus as Lord. Whereas earlier theology spoke of God as Goodness as such, whose every act (by virtue of divine simplicity) expresses His nature, the spectre that haunts late Scholastic thought is a God whose will precedes His nature, and whose acts then are feats of pure spontaneity. It is a logically incoherent way of conceiving of God, as it happens (though I cannot argue that here), but it is a powerful idea, elevating as it does will over all else and redefining freedomâfor God and, by extension, for usânot as the unhindered realization of a nature (the liberty to âbecome what you areâ), but as the absolute liberty of the will in determining even what its nature is. From there, it is a short step to Kantâs transcendental ego, for whom the world is the representation of its own irreducible âI think,â and which (inasmuch as it is its own infinity) requires God as a postulate only in the realm of ethics, and merely as a regulative idea in the realm of epistemology. Modern philosophy, however, merely reflects the state of modern culture and modern cult; I should admit that I, for one, feel considerable sympathy for Nietzscheâs plaint, âNearly two-thousand years and no new godââand for Heidegger intoning his mournful oracle: âOnly a god can save us.â But of course none will come. The Christian God has taken up everything into Himself; all the treasures of ancient wisdom, all the splendor of creation, every good thing has been assumed into the story of the incarnate God, and every stirring towards transcendence is soon recognized by the modern mindâweary of Godâas leading back towards faith. we should confess that the failure of Christian culture to live up to its victory over the old gods has allowed the dark power that once hid behind them to step forward in propria persona. Many among us retain some loyalty to ancient principles, most of us are in some degree premodern, and there are always and everywhere to be found examples of natural virtue, innate nobility, congenital charity, and so on, for the light of God is ubiquitous and the image of God is impressed upon our nature. If we turn from Christ today, we turn only towards the god of absolute will, and embrace him under either his most monstrous or his most vapid aspect. The gospel of a God found in broken flesh, humility, and measureless charity has defeated all the old lies, rendered the ancient order visibly insufficient and even slightly absurd, and instilled in us a longing for transcendent love so deep thatâif once yielded toâit will never grant us rest anywhere but in Christ. To have no god but the God of Christ, after all, means today that we must endure the lenten privations of what is most certainly a dark age, and strive to resist the bland solace, inane charms, brute viciousness, and dazed passivity of post-Christian cultureâall of which are so tempting precisely because they enjoin us to believe in and adore ourselves. It is, rather, the cultivation of the pure heart and pure eye, which allows one to receive the world, and rejoice in it, not as a possession of the will or an occasion for the exercise of power, but as the good gift of God. This is why it has the power to heal us of our modern derangements: because, paradoxical as it may seem to modern temperaments, Christian asceticism is the practice of love, what Maximus the Confessor calls learning to see the logos of each thing within the Logos of God, and it eventuates most properly in the grateful reverence of a Bonaventure or the lyrical ecstasy of a Thomas Traherne. Modern persons will never find rest for their restless hearts without Christ, for modern culture is nothing but the wasteland from which the gods have departed, and so this restlessness has become its own deity; In this time of waiting, in this age marked only by the absence of faith in Christ, it is well that the modern soul should lack repose, piety, peace, or nobility, and should find the world outside the Church barren of spiritual rapture or mystery, and should discover no beautiful or terrible or merciful gods upon which to cast itself. No third way lies open for us now, becauseâas all of us now know, whether we acknowledge it consciously or notâall things have been made subject to Him, all the thrones and dominions of the high places have been put beneath His feet, until the very end of the world, andâsimply saidâthere is no other god.
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Cow.Neil Bush’s frequent travels to Dubai are documented by Datamatix, a Dubai-based information technology company that has featured Neil Bush as a speaker. The Datamatix website features several prominent photographs of Neil Bush addressing a Dubai conference, identifying Neil Bush as the brother of U.S. President George Bush.Item 2. Shady business and sexcapades (from cnn.com)Neil Bush, younger brother of President Bush, detailed lucrative business deals and admitted to engaging in sex romps with women in Asia in a deposition taken in March as part of his divorce from now ex-wife Sharon Bush.According to legal documents disclosed Tuesday, Sharon Bush’s lawyers questioned Neil Bush closely about the deals, especially a contract with Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., a firm backed by Jiang Mianheng, the son of former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, that would pay him million in stock over five years.Marshall Davis Brown, lawyer for Sharon Bush, expressed bewilderment at why Grace would want Bush and at such a high price since he knew little about the semiconductor business.You have absolutely no educational background in semiconductors do you? Bush, venture capitalist Marvin Bush. Sixty-two year old Bertha Champagne, described as a long time baby sitter for Marvin and Margaret Bush’s two children, son Walker, 13, and daughter Marshall, 17, was found crushed to death by her own vehicle in a driveway in front of the Bush family home in the Alexandria section of Fairfax County. By Margie Burns, from the Progessive Populist.A company that provided security at the World Trade Center, Washington D.C.’s Dulles International Airport and United Airlines between 1995 and 2001 was backed by a private Kuwaiti-American investment firm whose records were not open to full public disclosure, with ties to the Bush family.Marvin P. WASHINGTON, Jan 19, 2003 — A company that provided security at New York City’s World Trade Center, Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C., and to United Airlines between 1995 and 2001, was backed by a private Kuwaiti-American investment firm with ties to a brother of President Bush and the Bush family, according to records obtained by the American Reporter.Two planes hijacked on Sept. But the Bush Administration has never disclosed the ties of a presidential brother and the Bush family with the firm that intersected the weapons and targets on a day of national tragedy.Marvin P. But White House responses to 9/11 have not publicly disclosed the company’s part in providing security to any of the named facilities, and many of the public records revealing the relationships are not public.Nonetheless, public records reveal that the firm, formerly named Securacom, listed Bush on its board of directors and as a significant shareholder. Bush is no longer on the board.Marvin Bush has not responded to repeated telephoned and emailed requests for comment on this story.Now I understand why Mike Malloy calls them the Bush Crime Family.
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In the February 15, 2006 edition of The News Journal, wine writer Roger Morris reported on The Business Monthlyâs report on American wine making. But everyone Else — the regional wineries of the East Coast, South, Southwest and the Plains — keeps growing and prospering and might even be threatening Western dominance.âA review by the industry magazine Wine Business Monthly says that there are more than 5,300 wineries in the United States today, and a little more than half of those — 2,740 — are in California. âThroughout the United States, local wineries are beginning to become huge tourist attractions, as they concentrate on making quality table wines and elegant dessert wines that no longer taste like cough syrup.ââWithin the last four years, the local Brandywine Valley wine scene has grown from being essentially a very good one-act business — Chaddsford — into multiple wineries concentrating on a variety of wines.âSix of those wineries — Chaddsford, Va La, Folly Hill, Paradocx, Kreutz Creek and Twin Brook — have created an explosive promotional unit, the Brandywine Valley Wine Trail.
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Child labour versus education: Poverty constraints or income opportunities?, Paper presented at a Conference on Opportunities in Africa: Micro-evidence on firms and households, April.Christiansen, L., Demery L., and Paternostro, S. Retrieved on April 4, 2006 from http://devnet.anu.edu.au/online versions pdfs/57/2757Dunford.pdfGow. Retrieved on March 31, 2006 from http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/crit_ped.htmlTravers, A., Decker, E. Retrieved on April 3, 2006 from http://radicalpedagogy.icaap.org/content/issue1_2/01travers1_2.htmlWilliams, L. Retrieved on march 31, 2006 from http://www.perfectfit.org/CT/index2.html
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) .But then again, Detroit is just like 90% of the US that aren’t aware of the latest trends. If anything, the brands that seem to be the most enduring have enduring product or internal (corporate) cultural trends that are so fundemental to life (regardless of trends), that they are always relevant. Advertising people can often be biased towards the urban trend centers - sometimes rightly, sometimes not.