You Know Religion is In Trouble When...
Saturday, March 31, 2007

Even the U.N. is concerned about its debasement.

Islamic countries pushed through a resolution at the U.N. Human Rights Council on Friday urging a global prohibition on the public defamation of religion _ a response largely to the furor last year over caricatures published in a Danish newspaper of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad.

The statement proposed by the Organization of Islamic Conference addressed what it called a "campaign" against Muslim minorities and the Islamic religion around the world since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.

The resolution, which was opposed by a number of other non-Muslim countries, "expresses deep concern at attempts to identify Islam with terrorism, violence and human rights violations."

It makes no mention of any other religion besides Islam, but urges countries "to take resolute action to prohibit the dissemination of racist and xenophobic ideas and material aimed at any religion or its followers that constitute incitement and religious hatred, hostility, or violence."

The resolution was adopted by a 24-14 vote with nine abstentions. Canada, Japan and South Korea joined European countries in opposition, primarily citing its excessive focus on Islam and incompatibility with fundamental rights such as the freedoms of speech and thought.

"The problem of religious intolerance is worldwide and not limited to certain religions," said Brigitta Maria Siefker-Eberle of Germany, speaking on behalf of the 27-nation European Union.

There are 17 Muslim countries in the 47-nation human rights council. Their alliance with China, Cuba, Russia and most of the African members means they can almost always achieve a majority.

So it's okay for Muslims to debase Judaism and Christianity but not the other way around? This is the catastrophic downside of having political states acting in the name of religion. Wait until the anti-Muslim crowd gets ahold of this, not to mention the Christianity-is-under-attack crowd and the Judaism-is-under-attack crowd. This is so stupid it may even make Buddhists mad!

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:37 AM 0 comments  

Chocolate Jesus
Friday, March 30, 2007

In the past, I have been critical of those Jews and Jewish groups who drop the "anti-Semitism" label at the drop of a hat. But the Catholic League has taken this practice to an absurd length with its preposterous habit of saying that every depiction of Jesus it did not personally approve is a threat and affront to Christianity. Earlier it was the "War on Easter;" now it's war on a depiction of Jesus made in chocolate.

A New York gallery has angered a US Catholic group with its decision to exhibit a milk chocolate sculpture of Jesus Christ.

The six-foot (1.8m) sculpture, entitled "My Sweet Lord", depicts Jesus Christ naked on the cross.

Catholic League head Bill Donohue called it "one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever".

The sculpture, by artist Cosimo Cavallaro, will be displayed from Monday at Manhattan's Lab Gallery.

The Catholic League, which describes itself as the nation's largest Catholic civil rights organisation, also criticised the timing of the exhibition.

"The fact that they chose Holy Week shows this is calculated, and the timing is deliberate," Mr Donohue said.

Oh, please. "One of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever"? Eat a Hershey bar and chill out.

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Posted by B Feiler at 11:30 PM 0 comments  

Is Obama a Prophet? Does Hillary Have a Jewish Problem?

A reminder that there is still time to watch the diavlog (that's a special, web-only television chat) I did with Bob Wright at bloggingheads.tv on God in the 2008 election, the rise of Iran, and "Is Osama bin Laden the new Martin Luther?" After a few days, I'm pleased to report that the grilling I was taking in the comments section has lessened somewhat.

Here's a list of the topics:

Will (growing) Islamophobia sink Obama? (07:02)

Bruce: `Obama is running as a prophet' (09:07)

Obama's Jewish problem (and Hillary's) (05:52)

Bob to Dems: Easy on the God-talk! (08:50)

Mormonism's (and Romney's) weirdness problem (03:28)

Sunni vs. Shia or state vs. state? (13:27)

Is there an 'Islamic Reformation'? Is that good? (22:05)

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:15 AM 0 comments  

Mrs. Feiler Faster: In the Land of Veils and Hostages

A former Christian preacher and blogger, Mike Barker, posted this thoughtful review of WHERE GOD WAS BORN:

I recently finished WHERE GOD WAS BORN by Bruce Feilor (ISBN 0060574879). Feiler's purpose in this book is to write about people and places in the Bible while in those places. Thus he writes three large sections on David in Jerusalem, Abraham in Iraq, and Esther in Iran. I was drawn the potent mixture of Feiler's writing about matters of the Bible and travel. In a sense he reminded me of the incredible travel books by Robert D. Kaplan, who has traveled and written extensively around the world. While I love the things of Robert D. Kaplan that I have read, Bruce Feiler brings to the table an added dimension. Feiler writes in a manner that clearly conveys he is a spiritual person, while at the same time in a manner which shows him attempting to delve deeper into the history of his faith, and how time and circumstances have molded that faith.

Feiler melds matter of theology, finely wraught descriptions of potently relevant locales, and history and current geo-politcal events into a very fine first-person narrative. As such, theologians, travel buffs, historians and poli-sci majors will all find the book sadly wanting. I however, was captivated by the subjects, theology and insights. Though he probably does not consider himself a theologian, Feiler articulates some mighty fine points about Christianity, Judaism and Islam; twenty years after giving up my preaching orders, I found several insights that were imminently "preach-able." In focusing on three such enigmatic characters in the Bible, Feiler has put his finger on an important truth: the people most of us embrace as paragons of our faith not only had their faults, but could even be thought of as really poor models for generations of faithful persons. And writing so intimately about people he has met over several years of travel and writing, reminds me that the great cloud of witnesses up in heaven might be better thought of as a enveloping fog in my own Swannanoa valley.

I was able to visit Israel and Jerusalem in the late 1980's so I could appreciate Feiler's writing about that city. Very, very few people have been to Iraq, especially in the aftermath of 9/11 and the US war in that region. So Feiler's writing about Bahdad and Ur were wonderfully eye-opening for me. The fact that he found a committed and articulate Army chaplain to dialogue with was a bonus. Finally, Iran has for nearly two generations been an utterly shrouded place for us all. Feiler made it in (with his wife no less) and reveals vast treasures, and incredibly heart-wrenching losses, in the land of veils and hostages.

I count myself a deeply devoted Christian, but at the same time hold my faith and its sacred book with an odd mixture of adoration and suspicion. I found in this book the writings of a kindred spirit, I think. feiler seems at once keenly aware of his place in the world and in his faith tradition and at the same time not at all afraid to take it on and ask the big questions. The book had several incredibly poignant moments, but ultimately was full of hope for people journeying torward deeper faith, for those who seek peace, and for those who know there is more to the people in the history of our faith than what we read about them and their homes in the Bible.

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:11 AM 0 comments  

Is Pot Kosher For Passover?

Apparently not. But the pro-marijuana party of Jerusalem argues it therefore must be kosher the rest of the year ...

Marijuana is not kosher for Passover, a pro-cannabis advocacy group says, advising Jews who observe the week-long holiday's special dietary laws to take a break from smoking the weed.

The Green Leaf Party announced on Wednesday that products of the cannibis plant have been grouped by rabbis within a family of foods such as peas, beans and lentils that is off-limits to Jews of European descent during Passover.

The Green Leaf Party, which has made several unsuccessful attempts to win election to parliament on a platform urging marijuana's legalisation, said it was issuing its advisory as a service to Jews who don't want to break ritual law.

But it said the rabbinical ban for the holiday beginning at sunset on Monday, during which many Jews eat matzos, or unleavened bread, could be a blessing in disguise.

"Logic dictates that if the rabbis say cannabis is non-kosher for Passover, it is apparently kosher during the rest of the year," Michelle Levin, a spokesperson for the party, told the YNet news website.

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:03 AM 0 comments  

The War on Easter?

Those organizations that live on the oxygen of publicity are at it again. Now there's a war on Easter!

Public schools in Tiverton in the US state of Rhode Island have banned the word "Easter" at all school events and children will now have their photos taken with Peter Rabbit instead of the Easter Bunny.

The US Catholic League reports that William Rearick, Schools Superintendent of the Tiverton Public Schools in Rhode Island, has banned the Easter Bunny from appearing at a fundraising event tomorrow at the Tiverton Middle School.

He has also banned the word "Easter" from all school events. He told the Providence Journal

Taking the place of the Easter Bunny will be Peter Rabbit, the Catholic League says, and children will be able to get their picture taken with him.

But League president Bill Donohue described it as "unconscionable that in this day and age Superintendent Rearick would choose to honour a thief".

"As every schoolchild knows, Peter Rabbit stole from Mr McGregor's garden," Donohue said.
The image on the right is from a Fox News segment on this story.

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:01 AM 0 comments  

Camel: The New White Meat

It's not just for bedouins anymore.

A local council in the eastern Australian state of Queensland is considering building a camel abattoir to cash in on a growing demand for camel meat.

Bulloo Shire Council is working with the Department of Primary Industries and a regional economic development group to investigate the feasibility of establishing a multi-million dollar facility to process the animals.

Recent reports indicate that feral camel numbers in outback Australia are rising, and that the animals are having an increasingly negative impact on the environment.

A taskforce set up to consider the issue has suggested culling may be necessary to reduce numbers.

Its recommendations included the use of camel meat for human consumption or pet food.

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:00 AM 0 comments  

When Germans Were Muslim
Thursday, March 29, 2007

I was recently reading the book "New World Coming" by Nathan Miller, about the 1920's, when I came across this passage about World War One that reminded a lot of how Muslim Americans have been treated in recent years.

"Once war was declared, German-Americans became the victims of American prejudices. Although previously highly respected, they were now suspected of espionage and sabotage. The German language was banned from the schools, German books were burned, Beethoven and Wagner were dropped from orchestral programs, and with patriotic zeal, sauerkraut was transformed into "liberty cabbage." In Baltimore, German Street became Redwood Street and the waiters at the city's leading German restaurant were rumored to be spies. Writers with Germanic-sounding names, among them Henry Mencken and Theodore Dreiser, were harassed. Super-patriotic vigilante groups such as the American Protective League and the National Security League rounded up supposed "slackers," pacifists, and conscientious objectors, with official approval."

Posted by B Feiler at 9:22 AM 0 comments  

Lemony Snicket Forges Bruce Feiler

From the blog intentional walk:

I had a chat with Lemony Snicket last night.

If you have NO idea who that is, don't feel bad. It probably just means that you don't have kids, or that you have kids but your kids aren't cool. It's not too late. Don't despair.

Lemony Snicket is the nom de plume of Daniel Handler, author of "A Series of Unfortunate Events." The 13-book series details the misadventures of the three Baudelaire orphans. There is far more tragedy than triumph but the reader can never say that he/she hasn't been warned. Snicket all but begs us to put the books down and find something more palatable. Sadly the writing is too good, the story too compelling, the wordplay too much fun, the humor too...humorous. And so we are sucked in.

There is solace in knowing that we are not alone. Handler is the best-selling children's author in America. And the "America" qualification only exists because of one Ms. Rowling who dwells across the pond. The series has sold over 52 million books. And, oh, did I mention that I had a chat with him last night?

Handler is, as one would expect, pretty darn funny. He was quite experienced at glad-handing all the nice ladies from the Library Association at Fresno State. Also experienced at fending off their thinly-veiled flirtation. I was privy to many conversations among said ladies later and many of them mentioned Handler's "cute little cheeks." I was not there for the cheeks. I was at this private, pre-talk reception because I have a very cool mother-in-law with a lot of pull at CSUF.

I approached Handler with two books. One was for him to sign (my copy of the last book in the series, "The End") and one for me to read between the reception and the talk since I was flying solo on this mission. I had just started Abraham by Bruce Feiler. Handler grabbed it and looked it over. The subtitle of the book is "A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths" and he asked if it was talking about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I confirmed that it was and joked that he was welcome to sign it if he wanted. He did, crossing out the scripture reference on the title page as he did. I noticed this later and kept my ears open for other indications of his spiritual bent. There were a few. It became obvious as the evening wore on that Mr. Handler was a lapsed Jew, fitting the stereotype of a 21st Century San Fransican. The disdain for conservatism oozed from each and every pore. Still, he was funny.

After signing "Abraham" (as himself, sadly...the forgery would have been better), he signed his own book: "27, III, 2007 Daniel Handler (allegedly L.S.)" I wandered off and chatted with some strangers (I knew next to nobody at this event but I found that middle-aged, book-reading women are quite easy to converse with...and since I am devoid of cute little cheeks, everything was on the up-and-up). Finally I saw a couple of good friends of my mother-in-law who I knew would want some updates on James. So I sat at their table for a few minutes.

It wasn't long until someone led Handler over to our table. One of the ladies was recovering from knee surgery and her friend was bringing the mountain to Mohammed ("Abraham" may be rubbing off on me). Handler was happy to sit with her and sign all of her books, chatting the while with all of us. The line followed him over and he remained seated next to me for about ten minutes, signing and chatting, chatting and signing. We talked about everything from kid's lit to "Throwing Muses" Oh, and "Hunkpapa." See? I'm conversant.
This man must be stopped! But he may be armed and dangerous. Approach him with caution and execute a citizen's arrest with all due haste.

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Posted by B Feiler at 9:21 AM 0 comments  

The New Great Excuse for Why You Didn't Read Your Friend's Book (Or Mine)

You're saving the environment. Our books are carbon negative. But not Harry's.

The printing for the final Harry Potter book will not only be the biggest, but also the greenest.

Scholastic Inc. announced Tuesday that it had agreed with the Rainforest Alliance, a conservation organization that works with the business community, on tightened environmental standards for ''Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,'' coming out July 21 with a first printing of 12 million.

J.K. Rowling's seventh Potter book will be a hulking 784 pages, Scholastic said, a comparable length to the last couple of Potter releases.

Among the details of Tuesday's agreement:

--The paper used will contain ''a minimum of 30 percent post-consumer waste (pcw) fiber.''

--Nearly two-thirds of the 16,700 tons of paper will be approved by the Forest Stewardship Council, an international organization with a mission to ''promote environmentally responsible, socially beneficial and economically viable management of the world's forests.''

--A ''deluxe'' edition of the new book, which has a first printing of 100,000, will be printed on paper that contains ''100 percent post-consumer waste fiber.''

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Posted by B Feiler at 9:20 AM 0 comments  

Twins-watch
Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Former soccer star Mia Hamm, wife of Dodgers first baseman Nomar Garciaparra, delivered twin girls late Tuesday.

''Both are healthy and over five pounds,'' Dodgers spokesman Josh Rawitch said, adding the births took place in the Los Angeles area.

Rawitch said Garciaparra left the team late Tuesday to be with his wife, but was in the air when the babies were born.

''He was on a speaker phone with the delivery room speaking with Mia during the births,'' Rawitch said.

Garciaparra went straight to the hospital upon arriving in Los Angeles to be with his wife.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:06 PM 0 comments  

Israel Lauds a Feminist

I received a mass email from a friend and feminist activist yesterday tauting the fact that Israel has decided to give its highest honor to a, well, feminist activist. "It is nothing short of astonishing that a strong, declared, dedicated feminist activist has won the Israel Prize. For those unfamiliar with the prize, it's the highest honor bestowed by the State of Israel. Click here for more information about the prize." Here's an article about the recipient at Haaretz:

The Israel Prize for Lifetime Achievement and Special Contribution to Society and the State of Israel will be awarded to Professor Alice Shalvi, a religious scholar and one of the country's leading feminists, and to Dov Lautman, former head of the Israel Manufacturers Association.

In their decision, the judges called Shalvi "revolutionary and courageously trailblazing, with intellectual integrity and long-term vision." She will be given the prize during an Independence Day ceremony.

Shalvi served as principle of the Pelech School for Girls in Jerusalem, turning it into one of the first religious experimental schools and a model for other experimental and democratic schools throughout the country. She began her feminist activity in the 1970s, battling for the rights of women whose husbands refused to grant them a divorce. She was also among the founders of the Israel Women's Network, and chaired it from its founding in 1984 until the beginning of this year. Shalvi was born in Germany in 1926 but fled to Britain shortly after the Nazi rise to power, when she and studied English literature at Cambridge. After immigrating to Israel in 1950 she received a position as a professor of English at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:15 AM 0 comments  

Metrosexual Camels

Queer Eye for the Straight Camel! The talk of Rajasthan: How many camel hair brushes can fit through the eye of a needle.

It’s time the metrosexual males moved on because now there's a new man in town who is driving all the women crazy.

Shah Rukh Khan is just one of the many camels who is queuing up at the Gorbandh Beauty parlour for camels at Tilwara.

Beauty parlours for camel makeovers have become a rage. And one of the parlours at a camel fair is a huge hit with camel owners because of it is economically priced.

“I got a camel here and priced it at Rs 15,000 but I found no buyers, then I took it to the beauty parlour and after the makeover I sold it for Rs 35,000,” says a camel owner from Jaisalmer.

The beauty bug has bitten the beast and its owners alike. While the owners count the cash and take the trophy camels around with pride, the camels are only too happy to lazily indulge in styling sessions.

There is camel hair colour, hump hairdos, camel tattoos and oodles of camel accessories at the parlours. So What's next - a camel fashion week?

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:01 AM 0 comments  

The New New Desktop

Judging by Mrs. Feiler Faster, the big buzz coming out of the TED Conference a few weeks back was a new interface for your computer desktop. She hasn't stopped talking about it, though maybe this blog entry by my old classmate at Yale, David Pogue, might get her to stop:

A Canadian programmer named Anand Agarawala presented a new computer-desktop filing system that was, to say the least, novel. The audience spent quite a bit of time giggling, ooh-ing and ahh-ing.

The status quo, Anand pointed out, is a desktop filled with icons. “You can sex it up with a ‘lickable’ interface like the Mac’s, but basically it’s the same old thing: Point and click, icons.”

In his revised version, icons behave a lot more like actual sheets and bundles of paper. As you drag them around the screen, they tumble and pile up. They collide with other icons, tumbling and shoving them pell-mell out of the way.

You can drag a dotted line around a group of icons to stack them into piles, which you can then click through, flip through, or spread out like a deck of cards. You can then add another icon to a pile by tossing it with your mouse, and grinning as it flies to the top of the pile as though you have perfect aim.

You can make an especially important icon bigger by dragging it; once it’s bigger, it’s also heavier, so that it pushes other icons out of the way. You can even crease and fold icons, as though to dogear them. You can even crumple icons up and toss them into a corner of the screen.

The desktop, meanwhile, looks like the inside of a box—and you can actually pin things up on the walls of it, or make shelves.

You can see a less charming version of the presentation in this YouTube video. (This video seems to emphasize this concept’s use on a tablet computer, but the TED demo was done on a regular laptop.)

As you’ll surely agree, there’s a huge entertainment factor in Bumptop Desktop, as it’s called. Unfortunately, it’s not especially practical.

For starters, none of the icons have names. A pile of PDF documents is fun to ruffle through, but their icons all look identical. There doesn’t seem to be any facility for creating folders, either, which, despite their clutter and their crusty age, do serve a practical purpose: you can have several open at once and, because they overlap, still keep them straight. It’s not clear how you’d achieve a similar arrangement in the folderless Bumptop world.

I’m guessing that replacing what we see in Mac OS X or Windows is not, ultimately, the point. It’s to start thinking, start playing, run some experiments, to exploit today’s high-powered graphics routines to bring some new life to the crusty old desktop metaphor. The results of this tomfoolery may not bring Apple or Microsoft to Anand’s doorstep, but maybe the Bumptop fun will at least rub off on those much bigger players.

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:00 AM 0 comments  

Cyrus the Messiah
Tuesday, March 27, 2007

One of the more surprising discoveries of my journey to Iran told in WHERE GOD WAS BORN the role of Cyrus the Great as the messiah of the prophets. He was the only non-Israelite in the entire Hebrew Bible to earn that distinction. He did so in large part because he was the first leader to respect different faiths and to allow his conquered people to worship their own Gods. A friend who helped arrange my two trips to Iran in the last few years sent me the link to this clip about Cyrus and Ancient Persia. If you've read this chapter in WHERE GOD WAS BORN or saw me discussing this issue with Bob Wright over at bloggingheads.tv, you might enjoy seeing the visuals (look beyond the odd posture of the host!).

Posted by B Feiler at 11:54 PM 0 comments  

I Was For Teaching-the-Bible-in-Schools Before Teaching-the-Bible-in-Schools Was Cool

TIME joins the bandwagon for teaching the Bible in public schools. Hooray! As I argued in the NYT over 15 months ago, religion is the dominant force in the world today. The idea that you can prepare students to enter that world without teaching them about that force -- and the book that helps define it for half the world's believers, is absurd. Here David van Biema sets out the beginning of the argument:

Last year Georgia became the first state in memory to offer funds for high school electives on the Old and New Testaments using the Bible as the core text. Similar funding was discussed in several other legislatures, although the initiatives did not become law. Meanwhile, two privately produced curriculums crafted specifically to pass church-state muster are competing for use in individual schools nationwide. Combined, they are employed in 460 districts in at least 37 states. The numbers are modest, but their publishers expect them to soar. The smaller of the two went into operation just last year but is already into its second 10,000-copy printing, has expressions of interest from a thousand new districts this year and expects many more. The larger publisher claims to be roughly doubling the number of districts it adds each year. These new curriculums plus polls suggesting that over 60% of Americans favor secular teaching about the Bible suggest that a Miss Kendrick may soon be talking about Matthew in a school near you.

To some, this idea seems retrograde. Citing a series of Supreme Court decisions culminating in 1963's Abington Township School District v. Schempp, which removed prayer and devotion from the classroom, the skeptics ask whether it is safe to bring back the source of all that sectarianism. But a new, post-Schempp coalition insists it is essential to do so. It argues that teaching the Bible in schools--as an object of study, not God's received word--is eminently constitutional. The Bible so pervades Western culture, it says, that it's hard to call anyone educated who hasn't at least given thought to its key passages. Finally, it claims that the current civic climate makes it a "now more than ever" proposition. Says Stephen Prothero, chair of the Boston University religion department, whose new book, Religious Literacy (Harper SanFrancisco), presents a compelling argument for Bible-literacy courses: "In the late '70s, [students] knew nothing about religion, and it didn't matter. But then religion rushed into the public square. What purpose could it possibly serve for citizens to be ignorant of all that?" The "new consensus" for secular Bible study argues that knowledge of it is essential to being a full-fledged, well-rounded citizen.

He concludes:

Oh yes, there should be one faith test. Faith in our country. Sure, there will be bumps along the way. But in the end, what is required in teaching about the Bible in our public schools is patriotism: a belief that we live in a nation that understands the wisdom of its Constitution clearly enough to allow the most important book in its history to remain vibrantly accessible for everyone.

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:03 AM 0 comments  

Jews: The New Episcopolians

Following up on another story we've been following here on Feiler Faster, the main Conservative Jewish seminary announced on Monday that they would begin admitting homosexuals, dissolving another major difference between the Conservative and Reform movements.

The seminary considered the flagship institution of Conservative Judaism said Monday it will start accepting gay and lesbian applicants, after scholars who guide the movement lifted the ban on gay ordination.

Arnold Eisen, incoming chancellor for the Jewish Theological Seminary, said the decision was made after extensive discussion with faculty and students, a survey on views of the issue within the movement and a meeting of the school's trustees.

"The larger issue has been how we can remain true to our tradition in general and to halakah (Jewish law) in particular while staying fully responsive to and immersed in our society and culture," Eisen said in a statement distributed to the school community and its supporters.

The Conservative branch holds the middle ground in American Judaism, adhering to tradition while allowing some change for modern circumstances.

The larger and more liberal Reform Jewish movement, as well as the smaller Reconstructionist wing, allow gays to become rabbis; the Orthodox branch bars gays and women from ordination.

In December, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards voted to allow the seminaries to decide on their own whether to admit openly gay students. However, their decision also left leeway for synagogues to reject gay and lesbian clergy if the congregations believe that same-sex relationships violate Scripture.

Yet another step toward what I believe will be the end of the tripartite division among American Jews in my lifetime.

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:01 AM 0 comments  

"Some People"

Perhaps the most notable part of Katie Couric's now oft-denounced grilling of John and Elizabeth Edwards the other night on 60 Minutes was her repeated use of "some people," as in "Some people are saying you are in denial." I was complaining about this to a friend when, a few minutes later, I discovered that Nora Ephron, naturally, had said it much better than I could:

"Some people" are saying that Katie Couric went too far on 60 Minutes. I don't actually know who those people are, because I haven't done any reporting on it. Why bother? "Some people" must be saying it. "Some people" will say anything. And there's no real need to mention their names, because I can just say that "some people" are saying it and get away with it.

Last night on 60 Minutes, Katie Couric kept referring to "Some people." She said that "some" were saying the Edwardses were courageous, and "others" were saying they were callous and ambitious. She said that some people were wondering how someone could be president if he was "distracted" by his wife's health. (This question, in a year when there are two presidential candidates who are themselves cancer survivors, seemed particularly disingenuous.) (And never mind that it was being asked by someone who managed to keep working while dealing with her own husband's terminal illness.)

I kept waiting for John or Elizabeth Edwards to ask her who "some people" were exactly, but they didn't. They cheerfully answered her questions. Elizabeth Edwards said, "We're all going to die."

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:00 AM 0 comments  

If Obama is a Prophet Does that Make Hillary a King?
Monday, March 26, 2007

Discuss. Actually, I did!

I participated in a novel, maybe even cutting-edge blogosphere phenom this weekend. My friend Bob Wright, author of The Moral Animal, polymath, and former columnist for The New Republic, runs a site called blogginheads.tv that allows two bloggers to appear side-by-side in an unedited and unrehearsed conversation about, well, whatever, but usually current events. The site was made popular by Bob's conversations with Mickey Kaus, also a friend of mine and author of the famed Feiler Faster Thesis, based on a theory I mentioned to him one night many years ago and that prompted the name of this blog. (And, yes, sooner or later I'll explain the story behind both. Actually, I do in the diavlog with Bob.)

Anyway, Bob and I had a conversation on Friday video videophone (mine is a bit distorted, fisheye-style) and you can view it here. We discussed God in the 2008 election, Obama and the Jews, Is Shia Islam rising in the Middle East, Is Osama Bin Laden the new Martin Luther, and other topics. The conversation lasts about 1 hour and 15 minutes. It's great for having the background while you're doing more important things and is also available on downloadable podcast. Also, you can click on just the parts you're interested in without having to listen to the entire thing.

Special thanks to Bob and Brian for sending me all the necessary equipment, even if it did make me look like a bobblehead not a blogginhead.

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:15 AM 0 comments  

Now You Can Bury a Muslim in Maryland

An update on a fascinating, under-discussed story we've followed here for some time. The Maryland legislature has now passed a bill allowing Muslim burials that had previously been forbidden because the bodies were not embalmed. The bill was a partnership between a Muslim and Jewish legislator who partnered on the ground of religious freedom.

Muslims bury their dead with neither flourish nor casket, but a ritual cleansing before the body is quickly returned to the earth, cocooned in a white shroud. But this tradition handed down over centuries has eluded Muslims around Washington, who, like Jews, do not practice embalming -- and are served by just one licensed mortician.

That's changing, though. Virginia licensed its first Muslim-owned funeral home last month, in Woodbridge. And Friday, a committee of Maryland lawmakers approved a bill that would open the industry to Muslims by exempting them from embalmings as they learn the trade.

If the General Assembly approves the bill, Muslims say they would be spared long trips to find mortuaries that will perform a last ablution.

The Maryland legislation is the work of two state delegates, Saqib Ali (D-Montgomery) and Samuel I. Rosenberg (D-Baltimore), who have formed a politically deft partnership: a freshman and the legislature's first Muslim, and a Jew who says he is drawn to issues of religious freedom.

"These are two religions that grew out of the same desert," said Rosenberg, a lawyer in his sixth term. "When people feel their religious rights have been violated, they should stand up and say, 'Give me redress.' "

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:06 AM 2 comments  

Look Left AND Right Before Crossing Off God

Pew has released its quadrennial study of politics, religion, and society in America. Most of the attention has focused on the political findings of the study, namely that Republican self-identification has guttered in recent years, while Democratic self-i.d. has risen. Andrew Sullivan, for instance, sees in the study a rise in social acceptance, of blacks, gays, and guns.

It's a devastating indictment of the Bush-Rove strategy for conservatism and the Republican party. They may have created the most loyally Democratic generation since the New Deal with the under 25s. But check the other findings out. Party identification is now 50 percent Dem and 35 percent GOP. The country is now divided in two over the question of whether military strength is the key to ensuring peace... Since Bush has been president, there has been a sharp decline in the number of Americans favoring "old fashioned values about family and marriage." In the last ten years, opposition to gay marriage has dropped ten points and support has risen ten points. There has also been a striking twelve point increase in support for affirmative action over the past decade - all of it among whites.
While Andrew points out that secularism is rising, particularly among the young, the real story may be the determined commitment of American to hold on to religious values. Pew asks three questions -- "Prayer is an important part of my daily life" (78% yes); "We will all be called before God at Judgment Day to answer for our sins" (79%; more than who are Christians, by the way); "I never doubt the existence of God" (83%). These numbers are stunning and would be rivaled no place else in the world other than the Middle East.

And while the God gap is growing (79% of GOPers answers these questions in the affirmative, compared with 62% of Democrats; two decades the number was equal at roughly 70%), to me the real news is how high these numbers continue to be among Democrats. "I never doubt the existence of God" is hardly the standard of religiosity where I come from. Many of the most faithful people I know spend a lot of time in the realm of doubt. But as I argue here with Bob Wright, while most pundits will conclude from this that GOP voters are still more religious-oriented , the real news is how religious-oriented the so-called secular left continues to be.

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:03 AM 0 comments  

Put on Those Hiking Shoes

This email brought a smile to my face this weekend:

I'am sure you do not remember me but I met you in Cleveland last fall....my question my seem silly to you, but I would greatly appreciate your answer. I am going to Israel this June and July and we are going to visit many of the archeological digs and I thought someone with your experience could tell me the best shoes to buy for this trip since we will be walking a lot. This has been a dream for me since I was a very young girl (I am now 70). If there is anything else I should know I would love it if you could tell me.

I am a Christian but I believe that Christ, being a Jew, did not intend to start a new religion, but man just seems to want everything tied up with rules, etc.

Thank you in advance and God Bless you for the great writing and congrats on your new family, girls are great I have 6 granddaughters...we don't do boys I guess.
Any tips? To send me your own email, click here.

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"Pancetta Isn't Smoky"

Food fights aren't just for the NYT critics anymore. A week after Frank Bruni found himself in a showdown with an angry restaurateur over a bad review, the Washingtonian critic finds himself in the same place.

Bad reviews are an occupational hazard of the restaurant business, and most chefs just bellyache or cry in their soup. Not award-winning Roberto Donna, who's started a high-profile food fight with Washingtonian magazine dining editor Todd Kliman. Donna is so upset about the review in this month's issue that he's starting a blog to critique local restaurant critics. "If you want to write a bad review, that's fine," he told us. "But write it with the truth."

Donna's Bebo Trattoria in Arlington was roasted by Kliman, who compared it to the Italian chef's famed Galileo restaurant: "The same self-satisfaction. The same arrogance. The same carelessness." The decor? "All the drama and warmth of Dulles Airport." The service? "Gray and joyless."

But what infuriates Donna are what he's said are glaring factual mistakes about his finances and the food: "It's full of lies." It was his corporation, not himself, that declared bankruptcy and the majority of the $2.5 million debt has already been paid -- all a matter of public record, he said. He also claims Kliman got food preparation wrong (branzino was grilled, not roasted; pancetta isn't smoky).

Now Donna is rounding up his fellow chefs for a blog on inaccuracies in local food reviews -- much like New York's Kobe Club owner Jeffrey Chodorow, who has vowed to start blogging about New York Times food critic Frank Bruni's reviews. Donna's unnamed blog is slated to begin next month, and he's printing up thousands of bumper stickers for his customers and fellow chefs: "Don't Believe the Washingtonian."

When I was growing and someone in my family went on a tirade about something nobody else got an exercised about, we all said, curtly, "Write a letter." Looks like that line would now be replaced with, "Start a blog."



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Obama: God for the Jews?
Friday, March 23, 2007

As I have written here (and here) in the last few weeks, I think the blogosphere can be great for a number of things, as we just saw when the Net quickly cobbled together all the critiques of the new Jesus documentary into a unified whole. But the blogosphere can also create faux controversies where there is no underlying reason. That's the case, I believe, with the mini-hullabaloo over Obama and the Jews. As best I can tell (and please, someone, correct me if I'm wrong), the flap started when Ben Smith of Politico (who recently apologized for getting the Edwards story completely wrong) published a piece suggesting that Jews at the recent AIPAC meeting, meaning highly politicized, Israel-right-or-wrongers, feel a "real, if kind of inchoate, skepticism" about the Illinois senator.

From that, bloggers across the spectrum sprung into action to explain this purported problem, offering everything from his perceived Islamic sensitivity, his appeasement of the Palestinians, to the fact that he's black. Here's how Andrew Sullivan summarized the situation.

I don't get the hostility from some American Jews (although the "cynicism" line in his AIPAC speech was lame). Neither does Matt Yglesias. MetaDC has an explanation (hint: JesseJackson). Beth Gottfried thinks the criticism reflects Obama's increasing appeal to Jewish Americans.
The reason Andrew does not get the hostility is it may not be there. The only sources Smith uses to build his case are E.J. Kessler, a NY Post editor, and Morton Klein, the president of the hyper pro-Israel Zionist Organization of America. Memo to Mr. Smith: The New York Post and ZOA hardly speak for the majority of Jews in America, most of whom are Reform, liberal, pro-Israel, for sure, but also queasy about the failure of Israel to tackle the settlement issue in a substantive way, and frustrated the Olmert launched a hasty war in Lebanon last summer that he could not finish successfully.

As for Obama, he comes out of a church and a political culture in Chicago that have been supportive to Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan. He has spoken favorably about Palestinian rights in the past and had his picture taken with Edward Said. But on his policy statements in recent years, he has shown a willingness to criticize the Palestinians and Israelis (as well as speak to the Iranians), a position that may not please the Israel right-or-wrong crowd but that is objectively smart about the region. Based on my contacts and conversations in the Jewish community in recent months, I would not say any hesitation about Obama stems from his positions on the Middle East, but on the larger issue of his lack of experience. In this regard, Obama's problem is not with the Jews; it's with the country.

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:15 AM 0 comments  

The Feminist Koran

The battle over the Koran continues, with a new female interpretation challenging the backbone of the dictate that allows men to beat women.

A new English-language interpretation of the Muslim Holy book the Koran challenges the use of words that feminists say have been used to justify the abuse of Islamic women.

The new version, translated by an Iranian-American, will be published in April and comes after Muslim feminists from around the world gathered in New York last November and vowed to create the first women's council to interpret the Koran and make the religion more friendly toward women.

In the new book, Dr. Laleh Bakhtiar, a former lecturer on Islam at the University of Chicago, challenges the translation of the Arab word "idrib," traditionally translated as "beat," which feminists say has been used to justify abuse of women.

"Why choose to interpret the word as 'to beat' when it can also mean 'to go away'," she writes in the introduction to the new book.

The passage is generally translated: "And as for those women whose illwill you have reason to fear, admonish them; then leave them alone in bed; then beat them; and if thereupon they pay you heed, do not seek to harm them. Behold, God is indeed most high, great!"

Instead, Bakhtiar suggests "Husbands at that point should submit to God, let God handle it -- go away from them and let God work His Will instead of a human being inflicting pain and suffering on another human being in the Name of God."

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:03 AM 0 comments  

In the Shadow of the Twin Towers

In response to my post about St. Nicholas, 9-11, and The DaVinci Code, a friend sent these pics. Close, indeed. Eerie.

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Snow Job

Okay, enough with the Bruni bashing. Here Frank Bruni has a thoughtful blog about why we should call to cancel our reservations at restaurants when it snows.

This blog has on many occasions been a forum for me — and for readers who submit comments — to vent about the hoops restaurants make us jump through, the rules to which they subject us, the hauteur and aloofness they project. And some of the most spirited discussions on this blog have been about the cumbersome aspects of making reservations at restaurants: the interminable busy signals, the demand that diners call back to confirm, etc.

So let’s take a second and acknowledge a way in which diners regularly abuse restaurants. On rainy nights, on snowy nights, on nights when the weather turns horrid all of a sudden, many diners hunker down at home, decide not to go out — and don’t bother to call the restaurants at which they have reservations and announce their changes of plans.

My conversation with the hostess on Friday was informed by, and merely confirmed, that fact, which I knew because restaurateurs over time had told me that the rate of no-show’s spikes whenever the weather tanks. Even before I reached the restaurant, as I leapt over corner snow banks with characteristic clumsiness (there was no point in my past when I or anyone who observed me saw ballet or gymnastics in my future), I thought: it’s a no-show night. And then I got to the restaurant and thought: yes, it’s a no-show night.

The lack of showing is understandable. The failure to call isn’t.

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When Does the Koran Say, 'Stop Beating Your Wife'?
Thursday, March 22, 2007

This is appalling on several fronts and will do nothing to quell a rising sense in this country (or across Europe) that Islam is a violent religion. But this has nothing to do with Islam and everything to do with misunderstanding the relationship between religion and politics.

A German judge has stirred a storm of protest here by citing the Koran in turning down a German Muslim woman’s request for a fast-track divorce on the ground that her husband beat her.

In a remarkable ruling that underlines the tension between Muslim customs and European laws, the judge, Christa Datz-Winter, said that the couple came from a Moroccan cultural milieu, in which she said it was common for husbands to beat their wives. The Koran, she wrote, sanctions such physical abuse.

News of the ruling brought swift and sharp condemnation from politicians, legal experts, and Muslim leaders in Germany, many of whom said they were confounded that a German judge would put 7th-century Islamic religious teaching ahead of modern German law in deciding a case involving domestic violence.

The woman’s lawyer, Barbara Becker-Rojczyk, said she decided to publicize the ruling, which was issued in January, after the court refused her request for a new judge. On Wednesday, the court in Frankfurt abruptly removed Judge Datz-Winter from the case, saying it could not justify her reasoning.

“It was terrible for my client,” Ms. Becker-Rojczyk said of the ruling. “This man beat her seriously from the beginning of their marriage. After they separated, he called her and threatened to kill her.”

While legal experts said the ruling was a judicial misstep rather than evidence of a broader trend, it comes at a time of rising tension in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, as authorities in many fields struggle to reconcile Western values with their countries’ burgeoning Muslim minorities.

Last fall, a Berlin opera house canceled performances of a Mozart opera because of security fears. The opera includes a scene that depicts the severed head of the Prophet Muhammad. Stung by charges that it had surrendered its artistic freedom, the opera house staged the opera three months later without incident.

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David Bloom R.I.P.

I was very pleased to see that in the midst of the anniversary of the war that MSNBC devoted a few minutes to the life of David Bloom, the correspondent who was killed during the initial drive to Baghdad. A staggering one-hundred-and-fifty-three journalists have died covering this war, the most since World War Two. Though David died before it descended into chaos, his death is no less tragic. I knew David and his wife briefly; his wife is interviewed in this clip and talks about deep-vein thrombosis. (I met his kids once, but didn't realize until this interview that he had twins, now twelve.) His death made us all aware of DVT -- 300,000 Americans get this condition, his wife says in this exchange. Just the other day, while flying back from L.A., I made a point of doing leg exercises. Do yourself a favor and make this a habit during long plane rides.

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:01 AM 0 comments  

You Can Love the Pope and Bob Dylan

The news that Pope Benedict tried to prevent his predecessor from meeting Bob Dylan has generated a big pushback from Dylan-loving-Catholics. Here's one example:

Being the "voice of a generation" can't be an easy job. It is a position that the troubadour of modern culture - born Robert Zimmerman to a middle-class Jewish family from Hibbing, Minnesota - won very early on in his career and one he has always rejected. But I suspect it is this same antiquated notion of Bob Dylan that Pope Benedict XVI had in mind when he recently revealed that he had opposed plans for Dylan to perform at a 1997 concert for Pope John Paul II. "There was reason to be sceptical," Benedict says in his new book John Paul II, My Beloved Predecessor, "to doubt if it was really right to let these types of prophets intervene."

For Catholics like me - and, trust me, there are millions of us - who have been profoundly moved, nourished and simply entertained by Dylan's music and countless other elements of pop culture, the pope’s comments felt like a betrayal of sorts as well. Fortunately, the then Cardinal Ratzinger's arguments did not win the day back in 1997 and Dylan appeared as scheduled. Of course John Paul II used the event to his advantage (as he so often did), engaging people by preaching about the movement of the Holy Spirit using Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" as his metaphor.

It is a strange feeling today to be part of a faith community whose leadership does not seem to value the cultural sensibilities of a considerable portion of its flock. For a Pope who has such a deep devotion to the works of such a classical giant as Mozart to have so little appreciation for one of the most important figures in twentieth- and twenty-first-century music is troubling and points to a lack of understanding of the scores of spiritual seekers - of which Dylan is a charter member - whose faith journeys might be somewhat messy. Benedict's apparent suspicion of popular culture is a sad reminder that the Church sometimes has a tin ear with regard to the endless ways that the Holy Spirit continually operates within culture to help us recognise the sacred in the most unexpected places.

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What Not to Wear When Meeting a Nobel Laureate
Wednesday, March 21, 2007

First of all, let me apologize for some missteps in the last few days while we were switching Feiler Faster and all of brucefeiler.com to a new server.

But just to prove that we at Feiler Faster will stop at nothing to bring you topical news and information, here's the very latest from Leo in the Holy Land. For those of you who missed the Breaking Celebrity News from last week, Leonardo DiCaprio, fresh from his shutout at the Oscars, took his latest supermodel girlfriend, Bar Refaeli, back to her home country. While visiting the tunnels along the Western Wall (easily the best single tourist thing to do in Israel that's been added in the last decade), he created something of a riot. A Paparazzi Intifada, if you will. Here's how Reuters reported the incident:

Israeli police arrested on Monday two members of actor Leonardo DiCaprio's security team after they clashed with photographers during a visit to Jerusalem by the star and his Israeli girlfriend Bar Refaeli.

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said DiCaprio and supermodel Refaeli were taking a private tour of the Western Wall tunnels, next to the Western Wall which is Judaism's holiest site, in Jerusalem's walled old city.

Rosenfeld said the photographers waited outside the tunnels for the couple to emerge.

"Two of his (DiCaprio's) security guards were arrested by police after being involved in a fight that broke out," Rosenfeld said. "They are being questioned."

Covering their faces after the tour, DiCaprio and Refaeli were whisked away in a waiting white van.

As a public service (and really, Mrs. Feiler Faster, that's all that it is) I append here a few pictures of Refaeli.



But there's more! Seeking, no doubt, to counter this bad publicity, DiCaprio's team leaked this story to People. But their plan ran square into a fashion problem.
Leonardo DiCaprio's reputation as an activist has reached as far as the Middle East: On his recent trip to Israel, he was asked to help promote environmental conservation and peace in the region, PEOPLE has learned.

Israeli Vice Premier and former Prime Minister Shimon Peres requested a meeting with DiCaprio, 32, within hours of the actor's March 11 arrival in Tel Aviv with his Israeli girlfriend, model Bar Refaeli, 21, a Peres aide tells PEOPLE.

"The meeting was pleasant and interesting," says the aide. "Shimon told Leo about his Peace Valley project [a joint Israeli-Jordanian-Palestinian economic development plan] and Leo spoke about [11th Hour,] his documentary on the environment."

The DiCaprio and Refaeli were dressed casually – he wore a sweater and backwards baseball cap; she a sweatshirt and jeans. Peres told local newspaper Ma'ariv on Monday: "They called my office and asked to meet me and I immediately agreed. Leonardo apologized for not dressing properly and in order to look fine turned his baseball cap."

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Posted by B Feiler at 4:03 PM 0 comments  

End "Israel Right or Wrong"

Scott MacLeod makes some important points here at TIME.com about how strange it is to be an American living in Israel and hear Israelis loudly debating Israeli actions but not Americans.

Nicholas Kristof's NY Times Op-Ed today raises two valuable points: 1) there is too little debate in the U.S. about Israel's policies and American policy toward Israel; 2) Washington does Israel as a nation no favor by blindly supporting the policies of the Israeli government of the day.

There are many reasons for this, some legitimate, some not so much. American governments and politicians are hesitant to criticize a close strategic and political ally--in part, not to give succor to Israel's real enemies. America's elites--in politics and culture--are rightfully attentive to the suffering of the Jewish people through history and especially to the Holocaust of the not-so-distant past. The refusal of Arab and Islamic states for many decades to deal with Israel--and the indiscriminate terrorism unleashed against Israelis--strengthened the support of many Americans for Israel. There has been a perhaps instinctive, understandable tendency to equate criticism of Israel with anti-semitism or even sympathy with terrorism (and a desire not to be labeled as such).

But none of that gives Israel a free pass when it comes to Americans honestly debating Israel's policies or America's policies toward Israel; they would include, at the moment: Israel's willingness to negotiate with the new Palestinian unity government; attitude toward the 2002 Arab peace initiative; use of force against Palestinian civilians; illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank; undeclared nuclear weapons program. As Kristof suggests, there is far more discussion within Israel itself about all these issues than in the U.S.

There have been some signs that things are changing. Two American professors, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, stimulated a major discussion in the U.S. a year ago with their essay in the London Review of Books titled "The Israel Lobby" (view a debate held at New York's Cooper Union about it). Another more recent example is the debate former President Carter provoked with his book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," which has been a New York Times bestseller for a couple months now (see Joseph Lelyveld's thoughtful review in the current New York Review of Books).

His colleague Phil Zabriskie (who actually lives in Israel, not Cairo, like Scott) goes even further:
I'd add that the lack of debate in America about Israel and the particulars Scott mentions--settlements, unforeseen consequences of policy initiatives, etc--can at times make it strange to be here as an American. I say this a week after numerous top politicians and 2008 candidates went to the AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) convention and made sure to say all the "right" things. Being here, and hearing all that purposeful, largely unqualified, seemingly unexamined, completely un-nuanced (if that's a word) support coming out of that meeting from American politicians--who repeatedly displayed the tendency to judge the policies of the government here (and the U.S. government backing of the same) on some highly subjective and possibly imagined scale of morality, rather than actual effectiveness, rather than if they work or not--you can start wondering if you are looking at or talking about the same place. There are unquestionably things here worth supporting and defending. And of course it's not only the Israelis who have to really work if they are interested in making things better. The Palestinians first and foremost, along with Arab countries and others obviously have a huge role to play, and have to make some real decisions. But I'm not sure how one looks at how things have been going here over recent years--as the emphasis has moved from peace to security, which are different things, the first delivering the second but the second not delivering the first--and thinks it's working, or is even slightly satisfactory.

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:03 AM 0 comments  

Moammar the Novelist

I'm in the process of planning a trip to Libya that I hope will happen sometime this year. Getting a visa is a huge challenge. So my brother and I (he would accompany me) have been exchanging any news articles we see. He sent one from the WSJ talking about Libyan fiction. It almost sounds like a joke, like that novel Saddam wrote, but no!

Libya's decision in late 2003 to dismantle its nuclear weapons program was the first hopeful announcement to come out that country in about 30 years. Before then -- and, alas, since -- Libya has often played the international oddity, thanks to its self-appointed "guide," Moammar Gadhafi, whose ludicrous pensees and Poncherello sunglasses can make him seem, at times, more buffoon than danger. Occasionally his genuine danger posed by Libya flashes beyond Libya's borders, as with the murderous bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. But to the Libyan people who live under the constant threat of Mr. Gadhafi's regime, he has created a nation of fear.

Hisham Matar depicts this terrified climate in his semi-autobiographical debut novel, "In the Country of Men." At the age of 9 in 1979 -- when Mr. Gadhafi had been in power for a decade -- Mr. Matar fled Libya to safety abroad and has returned home only through the writing of this book. The novel tells the story of Suleiman, a young boy whose parents exile him to safety in what amounts to a Libyan Kindertransport after the Mokhabarat, Mr. Gadhafi's secret police, tortured his father and executed a neighbor. "In the Country of Men" is a poetic and powerful account of the days of dread that Suleiman and his mother endure while pockmarked government agents stalk their small family in ever-tightening circles.

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:01 AM 0 comments  

FEILER FASTER EXCLUSIVE: Backstage at American Idol



The tickets are huge - about eight inches long and three inches wide - and are covered in the shiny red foil, sort of like Super Bowl tickets, only without the holograms. I was surprised. And I was even more surprised when someone handed me a set last week and asked if I wanted to go.

My wife has a PhD in American Idol and I started watching in the last few years just to get some family time. That's when I realized there's a reason it's what Jeff Zucker recently called "the most impactful show in television history."

Getting into the CBS studios is not easy, which is demonstrated by the hordes of people wandering around the chainlink fence trying to find a way in. And most of these people were dolled up, wearing high heels and stage makeup that was a combination of Little Whore House in Texas meets Rocky Horror Picture Show. My first impression of the show was that even the people in the audience thought they were on the verge of being discovered. Looking for cleavage in America: You can find it among the 350 people who made it through those gates, gave up their cell phones and Blackberries to security, and piled into the bleachers of the sound stage.

THIS IS A LIVE PERFORMANCE. YOU MUST BE IN YOUR SEAT 30 MINUTES PRIOR TO SHOW TIME. (Children under 8 not admitted.)

That's what's on the front of the ticket, along with the assigned seats; the back contains five paragraphs of disclaimers about how you, in fact, might be discovered, your face might be on television, and you're not allowed to even tell anybody if you get hurt or injured, no less sue one of six delineated companies.

The room itself is not a sound stage, per se, but one area of a sound stage closed off with black curtains. The set itself is enormous, and takes up about 60% of the space, with the audience crammed into the rest. The audience was quiet at first, polite, and surprisingly mixed, with kids and many grandmothers. The couple next to me had gotten tickets from the warm-up act and announced that they were from North Carolina in a voice that gave no doubt. They had never seen the show. They had waited in line that morning for a taping of The Price is Right and were disappointed when the show was canceled, so they had spent most of their day at CBS Studios.

Sitting in the back row, I was eye-level with the stage and was told by no fewer than six people that a boom camera, one of those ones that swoops down and makes TV look so dramatic, would be grazing the top of my head in the opening shot. I should not jump up and down. Also, I was alongside the monitor with the crib sheet of all the songs, so I should not stand in front of it. And I was immediately in front of the close-up camera, so I should not eclipse it. Lots of studious pages in headsets people told me this. Forget American Idol as a model of voter participation; the teacher-pupil ratio is out of this world.

"Welcome to American Idol, the #1 Show in the World!" About 15 minutes before the show, a young, athletic white rapper who looked like he could have been doing tumbling at Disney World began the warm-up act - teaching us all how to clap in unison, squeal with delight when we see the judges, and, most importantly, gasp with horror when one of the candidates was eliminated. He emphasized this a lot. "We wants lots of emotion. Noise is a good thing. Some of you may begin to cry." He then asked us how many people had watched the previous night (nearly everyone), and how many had voted the previous night (less than half). "Let's try that again," he said, "and remember, this is Hollywood, it's okay to lie."

At about five minutes before air time, he introduced the band and then the judges, one by one, were called from offstage to assume their seats. Randy came first, snaking through the crowd, giving high-fives to everyone. Simon came next and walked straight to his seat. Paula came last, dancing though the crowd and again giving high-fives. All three were trailed every step by bodyguards, and every time they went to greet an old friend or colleague or stage manager, the bodyguard followed them wherever they went. Before sitting down, Paula removed her belt. I thought for a second she might not stop there.

Ryan Seacrest arrived with very tight pants and very spiky shoes. In person, his dark blue suit and purple tie looked more like a costume than actual clothes people wear, but when I later watched on the monitor, they looked natural. Objects in the mirror are closer to normal than they appear.

About 30 seconds before the show went live, machines filled the stage with artificial smoke and then there was Ryan, standing a few feet in front of us, staring into the boom mike, announcing the "cold open." The boom didn't hit my head, but as soon as Ryan bolted for the stage a cameraman tapped me on the shoulder and asked me not to stand up the rest of the show. This was surprisingly hard to do as the stage managers and warm-up singer kept bouncing around the audience cajoling us all to get to our feet. Luckily I didn't have a sign, like the one in front of me that said, "ROSS IS THE BOSS."

Speaking of which: Ryan worked through the usual results show business of declaring people safe or unsafe, calling the bottom three to the center of the stage, etc. In the middle of this process, they cleared the stage for a commercial and a performance by Diana Ross. The huge TV screen in the center of the stage parted and there was The Diva herself, lit from behind, with huge trailing feather boa, and sparkling red-lipstick red dress. With all the parting, the sea of lights, and the waves of red, I thought Moses himself might step out from the lights. The entrance was masterful, fit for an Empress. (To watch of clip of Ross's biblical performance, click here.) My father, not a watcher of American Idol, recently asked my wife why so many people enjoy it. One answer can be found in this moment. Whatever else you think of the show, it is spectacularly well produced. In just half an hour, they hit every emotional note imaginable - from drama, to tension, to grandeur, to all-American cuddliness, like when DR at the end of her song said that these singers were inspiring young people across America. I used to be in the circus and marveled at how show people know how to string out routines for maximum impact. Barnum could only drool at American Idol, the Greatest Show in Show Business.

And of course it is a business. Producers were everywhere on the set, micro-managing every gesture and step. It was very striking, and impressive. And when Brandon, a cheery background singer who flubbed his words the previous night, got booted off, he didn't even have time to sing his farewell song. (To watch Brandon get booted off while audience "gasps in horror," click here.) But the cameras kept rolling and they took the footage for repurposing later. Everybody hung around for a while after the show ended, not wanting to leave the lights. The stage was full at this point and the audience didn't know what to do. Somehow this expectation lingered in the air that on a show that's all about finding unknown talent next door and having everyone vote was going to invite us all over for the after-party. Then the stage manager came over the loud speaker system and declared, matter of factly, "Audience, go home." So much for all those sweet-nothings about how we were the best audience ever. Our time had passed. We were not American Idols. We were Brandons. We all slumped out of the studio, reclaimed our cell phones, without even a picture to prove we had stood, for a moment, on the other end of the rainbow and "made some noise" in the Kingdom of Oz.

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Brandon Gets Booted From American Idol
Tuesday, March 20, 2007

If you listen closely while watching the edited video, you can hear Feiler Faster "gasping in horror" from the audience of American Idol on this night.

Posted by B Feiler at 10:26 AM 0 comments  

Diana Ross Makes Her Moses Entrance on American Idol

To read Feiler Faster's exclusive backstage report from this night see link above.

Posted by B Feiler at 10:25 AM 0 comments  

Mona Lisa v. Osama Bin Laden

Can Leonardo win the War on Terror? Jacques Chirac thinks so: He's selling out France's artistic legacy to Arabia in a bid to cure the clash of civilizations (and chub up the country's sagging coffers.)

The most visited museum in the world -- the Louvre -- is set to open its first international outpost on a currently uninhabited island off the coast of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.

In the largest foreign museum deal in French history, the petro-rich but museum-poor Persian Gulf emirate agreed last week to pay France $1.3 billion to borrow the Louvre's name and hundreds of its artworks, as well as treasures from the Picasso Museum, Pompidou Center, Chateau de Versailles and other French museums.

French President Jacques Chirac described the mega-museum agreement as an important way of bridging what the "world considers a clash of civilizations" between Islam and the West. To many French art experts and historians, however, it represents little more than putting the nation's priceless patrimony up for rent.

"Appalling!" declared Daniel Alcouffe, 68, an honorary curator of the Louvre who headed its decorative arts department for nearly two decades. He echoed the outrage expressed by some of the country's most prominent art experts and historians. "It's a shame to see France selling out its heritage," he said.

The "Desert Louvre," as the French press has dubbed the deal, is part of a revolutionary initiative by France to expand its global influence through its vast cultural heritage and holdings -- the one realm where it remains a dominant world power -- in the face of its shrinking diplomatic and economic clout.

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Now You Love Me

On with his head! Jeffery Chodorow, who last week suggested in the NYT that he would lop off the head of reviewer Frank Bruni for panning his latest restaurant, this week suddenly loves him after he praised his room service at a hotel. WWD:

When New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni praised Ono's room service fare at the Hotel Gansevoort on Wednesday, some saw a peace offering to Ono owner and self-declared Bruni archenemy Jeffrey Chodorow, who publicly banned Bruni from all his restaurants after the critic savaged his restaurant Kobe Club. Wednesday's feature on room service, conceived before Bruni's Kobe Club review but executed after it, did more than praise Ono's wasabi béarnaise. It also sent a message to Chodorow that, despite his promise to handsomely reward an employee who bars the critic from any of his restaurants, Bruni found a way in anyway. Reached at his restaurant opening in London, Chodorow acknowledged the loophole Bruni found: Chodorow's obligations to the hotel. "And even if the room service waiter recognized him, he wouldn't be able to turn around and take the meal away, either," he admitted.

But Chodorow had a new appreciation for the critic: "I think these are the kinds of stories he ought to do. They're interesting stories — I think it provides a more objective basis," he said. He clarified: "I think Frank Bruni is a good writer, I just don't feel that he's a professional who can be a restaurant critic." Latest on the list of unintended benefits of Chodorow taking out a $40,000 ad in the Times blasting Bruni's expertise and starting a blog to excoriate him: a gift of corned beef and prosciutto from Mario Batali's father, and a letter from a Kobe Club china vendor proffering a $2,500 credit. "I have not paid for a dinner in a restaurant since the ad," Chodorow said.

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:01 AM 0 comments  

Bible Road

Now on sale.Here's a description: Over the last 25 years while driving through 49 states, Sam Fentress encountered thousands of religious signs along America's highways, city streets and country roads. With over 150 images from every region of the country, Bible Road: Signs of Faith in the American Landscape is his photographic chronicle of what he discovered on beauty salon windows, highway pylons, silos and burger joint marquees. Aware that photographers Walker Evans, Berenice Abbott, Robert Frank, and others had only partially documented the subject, Fentress embarked on this remarkable and singular typology of roadside evangelism in America.

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Beards For God
Monday, March 19, 2007

I was in L.A. this last week (in the next few days I'm going to post a long report on my visit to "American Idol") and one of the novel things I saw was a curious ad campaign running on my hotel television in which a woman in a slinky outfit, sitting by the fire, her bare feet tucked underneath her, you get the idea, advertising a local number where you could call and meet "other single people staying at sophisticated hotels," or something like that. It was basically an upscale hotel pick-up scheme playing on your loneliness, anonymity, and desire to hook up with someone in your same economic status. Niche marketing at its best?


Somehow I was thinking of that campaign when I came home and stumbled onto an Internet chat of another niche market. There is certainly no sexual overtone to this one; if anything, it's very thoughtful and serious. But there is a site called "The Beard Community" where men in beards discuss anything and everything. I happened on to this site when I noticed they were discussing my new book, WHERE GOD WAS BORN, and idea that I write about in depth there (and often on Feiler Faster) about how moderates must reclaim religion. Check it out.

Here's the post that kicked off the discussion.

In his new book Where God Was Born : A Journey by Land to the Roots of Religion Bruce Feiler says the only thing strong enough to withstand the force of religious extremism is religious moderation. He notes that secular humanists seem to think that the only other choice is religious extremism, and that fundamentalists seem to think the only other choice is secular humanism, but that these polar sides include only 10% of people each. The 80% somewhere in the middle - religious moderates, are who he addresses his interesting compliation of Middle East travels, theology, and biblical studies. He makes a case for tolerance as found even in the Old Testament.

The board has its divisions already, so I'm not intending to start a religious debate. I'm just curious what people think of this kind of idea. I find it very compelling.

Charles



"There is always a period when a man with a beard shaves it off. This period does not last. He returns headlong to his beard." Jean Cocteau

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The DaVinci Code Meets 9-11

A goldmine for wannabe Dan Browns. The search for remains at Ground Zero have moved on to a destroyed church, where relics of three saints have been missing for decades.

Last week, two bones were recovered in the place where St. Nicholas' Greek Orthodox Church used to be, and where digging has begun for remains, said an official who knows about the search but is not authorized to speak publicly about it.

Debris from both towers collapsed onto the church and its parking lot on Sept. 11, 2001. The site was paved over to be used a staging area for reconstruction at the site, making it a likely place to find long-buried debris and remains, those involved in the initial cleanup say.

In the months after the attacks, some relics were returned to the St. Nicholas congregants, including a small bell and cross, several Bibles and even wax candles that had not melted from the heat of the attacks, said Peter Drakoulias, a church board member.

But its most precious relic is still missing: a 600-pound, 2-foot-by-2-foot safe that contains church documents and a small enamel box containing three bone fragments less than a half-inch long, said Drakoulias. The bones are believed to be those of St. Nicholas — the church's founding saint — St. Sava, and St. Katherine, he said.

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The Best Burger in America

Be careful what you wish for. From the AJC:

The walls of Ann's Snack Bar are filled with awards and accolades from every publication in town. But there's something about "Best Hamburger in America" that has a different ring to it.

In last Saturday's Wall Street Journal Weekend Edition, veteran food reporter Raymond Sokolov bestowed the grand title on this eight-stool Kirkwood restaurant's "World Famous Ghetto Burger" after eating dozens of hamburgers coast to coast and everywhere in between. Since then, owner Ann Price has been besieged with business at her ramshackle, blink-and-you'll-miss-it, 35-year-old joint.

"It's driving me nuts down here!" Price, 63, bellowed from behind the counter where a dozen or more of her iconic double-patty creations sizzled on the flattop grill, reddened with seasoning salt and draped in yellow cheese. "I don't have the space!"

"Miss Ann," as loyal regulars call her, prefers to work less like a short-order cook and more like an itamae-san at a sushi counter —- crafting each burger sequentially, starting with a mound of loose meat cupped in her palm. She carves slivers from a whole onion over the burger as if she were peeling a potato. She crisps bacon in the deep-fat fryer, toasts the bun on the griddle and hand-spreads thin veneers of every known condiment. Sokolov termed the results a "masterpiece" and "the next level of burgerhood." Among the better-known wimpies it bested: Los Angeles' famed In-N-Out Burger and chef Daniel Boulud's $32 foie-gras-stuffed burger at DB Bistro Moderne in New York.

In the easiest of circumstances, obtaining a Ghetto Burger can be a time-consuming process. Now it's a trial to just get your foot in the door.

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"It Takes Five Years for People to Notice You"

A little hometown boosterism here: The Savannah Music Festival has kicked off this year (My Mom is intimately involved) and it's grown to a major festival in a short period of time. Come visit!

"It takes five years for people to notice you," said Gibson, who is starting his fifth year in Savannah. " That's what it took for Jazz at Lincoln Center."

Gibson and Wynton Marsalis built JALC. Their relationship remains strong. In fact, Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra are performing March 24 at the Johnny Mercer Theater.

Marsalis said in a January telephone interview from New York City that he digs what Gibson is doing and relishes the chance to work the festival. "It's a great festival. I think Rob's doing a terrific job," he said. " That's how he is. He works tirelessly. He's infinitely interested in music." Marsalis said the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra will perform the band's " The Songs We Love Tour," which features what he calls the greatest arrangements of some of America's most beloved songs, including "All The Things You Are," "All of Me" "April in Paris," "Over the Rainbow," " Take the ?A' Train" and "Round Midnight." Arrangers include Frank Foster, Benny Carter and Neal Hefti.

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James Cameron's Next Film?
Sunday, March 18, 2007

Not for the faint-hearted or the easily offended, but this video, "The Greatest Action Story Ever Told," has been making the rounds on the Internet under the headline: Jesus Meets the Terminator.

Posted by B Feiler at 10:19 PM 0 comments  

Why On This Night Do We Drink Coke?
Friday, March 16, 2007

Every year, Coke turns back the clock and makes a special, Kosher-for-Passover Coke (look for the yellow top) made with sugar rather than corn syrup. Egullet has a wonderful review:

In April of 1985, the Coca-Cola company announced that it was re-formulating its flagship carbonated drink, which to the horror of Coke fans everywhere, included a switchover to high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Soon, the rest of the soft drink industry followed suit, and the classic taste of cane sugar-based sodas became practically extinct. Today, only a few small boutique soft drink companies still make sodas with refined cane sugar (or sucrose, made from sugar beets) a costly ingredient when compared with HFCS — but true carbonated beverage connoisseurs know and can tell the difference, as corn syrup has a characteristically cloying sweetness when compared to refined sugar. For nostalgic Coca-Cola lovers, unless you live in a foreign country that classic taste is but a distant memory.

Every late March and early April, for the two to three weeks leading up to the celebration of the Jewish Passover holiday season in the United States, Coke fans living in major metropolitan areas with large Jewish populations get their Real Thing, if only for that brief fleeting period. According to Jewish law, nothing made with chametz (any of a number of proscribed cereals and grains, including corn) during passover may be consumed — so in order not to lose sales from observant Jews during that eight day period, a small number of Coca-Cola bottlers make a limited batch of the original Coke formulation, using refined sugar. Needless to say, stocks run out quickly and fans of Passover Coke have been known to travel many miles seeking out supermarkets with remaining caches.

Passover Coke products (and Passover Pepsi) in 2-Liter bottles can be distinguished by their yellow caps, inscribed either with just the “OU-P” symbol and/or the words Kosher L’Pesach in Hebrew. The canned variety is rare and is known to be produced only by a scant few bottling companies in the United States – if you can find any, be sure to snap it up.

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Trump Tel Aviv

This trend is hardly new, but the NYT gives renewed attention to Americans buying getaway homes in Israel.

Indeed, from downtown Tel Aviv to the heart of Jerusalem, foreigners — especially Americans — searching for second homes are redefining Israel’s high-end real estate market. Part of Tel Aviv is, in fact, in the midst of a mini-Manhattan makeover with the recent arrival of New York-style residential projects designed by the likes of Philippe Starck and Richard Meier. Even Donald Trump has entered the Tel Aviv marketplace with plans for a 70-story residential and commercial tower — Israel’s highest — in the suburb of Ramat Gan.

Real estate analysts estimate that while foreigners made up less than 5 percent of total home buyers in Israel last year, they snapped up a third of the luxury properties — roughly defined as those priced above $500 a square foot. Taking advantage of a decrease in terrorism and property prices still far below Western levels, foreigners bought over $1.2 billion in Israeli real estate in 2006, according to the Israel Central Bank, more than double the $445 million in sales just three years earlier.

While deals like the $13 million purchase of a Tel Aviv triplex by Shari Arison, the Carnival Cruise Lines heiress, illustrate the upper end of the market, most foreign buyers are far more modest. But their desire for larger properties appears to be growing.

“The Americans have shifted from buying one- to two-bedroom to four- to five-bedroom apartments over the past half decade,” said Werner M. Loval, managing director of the Jerusalem office of Anglo-Saxon Real Estate in Jerusalem, one of Israel’s largest real estate agencies. “But they’re still usually spending from about $400,000 to $1 million.”

Davyd Tal, the Welsh-born owner of the real estate agency Jerusalem Homes, said that about 65 percent of all foreign buyers are Americans, most of whom are in their 40s and 50s. In Jerusalem, a quarter of all homes sold in 2006 went to foreigners.

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The Tiki Barber of Soccer

Speaking of twins (as in here and here), Brazilian super twins Fabio and Rafael Silva have been signed by the premier Manchester United football squad.

The youth internationals, tipped as the next Cafu and Roberto Carlos, are currently contracted to Brazilian club Fluminense.

The brothers have been linked with United for the past year and are reportedly set to sign for the Premiership giants in the summer.

They claim they have negotiated a deal and Rafael says it was Cristiano Ronaldo who helped persuade them to join.

The right-back told The Sun: "When we were negotiating, Cristiano Ronaldo phoned us saying that Manchester United was a tremendous club and it was a wonderful place to play football."

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Obama's Jewish Problem
Thursday, March 15, 2007

Does Obama have a Jewish problem? Can't say I've picked up on anything in my travels. But here's an entry from Politico.com.

It's a hard thing to pin down, Barack Obama's Jewish problem. But in the halls of the AIPAC Policy Conference yesterday, there was no denying that the members of the pro-Israel group -- largely Democrats, though they tilt right -- feel a real, if kind of inchoate, skepticism about the Illinois senator.

Now, an Iowa Democrat and AIPAC member, David Adelman, has written Obama a letter asking for clarification of Obama's remark to the Des Moines register that "nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people," a statement Adelman writes he found "deeply troubling."

Adelman, a Des Moines lawyer, said he had helped Mark Warner briefly, but is currently undecided among the 2008 contenders.

But his letter brings to the surface a sentiment that's been circulating largely on private email lists and in chatter about a posting on the pro-Palestinian blog Electronic Intifada, which claimed (with little evidence) that Obama was once on the Palestinian side. Several AIPAC attendees told me that while Obama is "saying the right things," they don't think his heart is in it. (A high bar, perhaps.) The sentiment is nowhere near universal in the pro-Israel, or Jewish, communities, but concern is pretty widespread.

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Posted by B Feiler at 12:11 PM  

We Teach Sex, Why Not God?

At a time when religion is the dominant force in the world today we must teach out students to understand religion. We must. To reach a piece I wrote about this last year in the NYT, click here. Meanwhile, the folks over at Newsweek and the WashPost are having the discussion online this week. Here's what Talmudic scholar Adin Steinsaltz wrote about the matter. And check out the hostile reaction he generated! (At least they're polite, unlike many commenters on blogs, which I attribute to two reasons: 1) Commenters here have to sign their name, and 2) Steinsaltz looks so authoritative in his octogenarian beard!)

Teaching religion in public schools is not easy. For one thing, in most countries, children of many different religious backgrounds sit together in the same classroom. For another, teaching the basics about religion would seem to cross the dividing line between church and state in those countries which separate the two spheres.

Nevertheless, I believe that basic religious training does have a place in school – not in the form of indoctrination or missionizing, but to give students a way to relate to religious issues as they mature.

There are likely many subjects to which this can be compared, but one example – which may seem wildly incongruous – that operates under parallel principles is sex education.

Clearly, the aim of such classes is not to provide practical experience. Instead, sex education is based on the understanding that young people have natural urges that will somehow express themselves and that this is something that the students will encounter, in one way or another. Before such education became commonplace, children were left to acquire knowledge about the subject from garbled pieces of information they got from their friends, or from very reluctant – and not much more illuminating – explanations they got at home.

This reasoning can also apply to religious instruction. There is a need to give children at least some basic and true notions about the subject. The schools should not be proselytizing. They should not be dictating how these concepts are used practically by the students. But at least young people will have the chance to acquire basic knowledge about what they will or will not practice in their later years.

These arguments apply to elementary and high school students alike. However, because of the general inattention of smaller children to what they learn in school, it is worthwhile to provide this training to young adults as well so that they gain some knowledge, not preaching, which will enable them to make reasonable and informed decisions as adults.

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Do Biblical Archaeologists Believe in the Bible?

Biblical Archaeology Society (BAS) takes up a fascinating question on its website: How scholarship affects the faith of scholars. Here's the introduction:

Several media stories recently reported that Bart Ehrman, a leading expert on the apocryphal gospels and one of BAS’s most popular lecturers, had lost his faith as a result of his scholarly research. This raised a question for us that is not often talked about, but seemed well worth a discussion: What effect does scholarship have on faith? We asked Bart to join three other scholars to talk about this: James F. Strange, a leading archaeologist and Baptist minister; Lawrence H. Schiffman, a prominent Dead Sea Scroll scholar and Orthodox Jew; and William G. Dever, one of America’s best-known and most widely quoted archaeologists, who had been an evangelical preacher, then lost his faith, then became a Reform Jew and now says he’s a non-believer. The discussion took place in the offices of the Biblical Archaeology Society on November 19, 2006, and was moderated by BAR editor Hershel Shanks.

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Food Fight at the NYT

Poor Frank Bruni. To be the NYT restaurant critic in the age of the blogosphere can't be much fun. More than one blog is dedicated to attacking his reviews on a weekly basis. I was briefly approached a few years ago about applying for this job. It was unbelievably flattering -- a never-in-a-lifetime experience, as my wife called it -- but once I looked into the workload, eating out a dozen meals a week, I was daunted. Bruni got the gig and while he is much reviled in the restaurant world, he's now facing a new kind of counterattack. The WP has the details:

Everyone at the Kobe Club knew the drill: When the New York Times critic comes for dinner, the whole place goes on high alert.

Whoever recognizes him raises the alarm. The chef prepares two of every dish the reviewer orders, so he can taste-test a duplicate of the entire meal before sending it out to the table. Waiters are attentive but not overbearing. And the owner, Jeffrey Chodorow, keeps a respectful distance.

When the moment of destiny finally arrived in the form of Frank Bruni, the Times restaurant critic since April 2004, every procedure was followed to the letter, according to staffers and Chodorow. After Bruni departed, the Kobe Club's general manager called Chodorow at 2 a.m. and made a bold prediction: We're getting three stars.

Wrong. On Feb. 7, Bruni awarded zero stars, which for a dining establishment aspiring to top-tier status in this town, the restaurant capital of the USA, is a failing grade with a side order of crow. He found a "rubbery" pork chop, "limp" iceberg lettuce, "gluey" mashed potatoes and a clam with a "metallic tang."

"We ate his meal in the kitchen," recalled Chodorow, who was livid. "We would know if something was off." Chodorow then shelled out $40,000 to take out a full-page ad in the Dining Out section of the Times two weeks later.

In his broadside, which took the form of an open letter to Bruni's boss, Chodorow said Bruni had launched "personal attacks." He questioned the reviewer's credentials, citing his previous job in Rome, covering politics, the pope and other general news subjects. He promised to start a blog with a section called "Following Frank," in which he would review the critic's reviews.

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"Most of My Chinese Friends Are Jewish"
Wednesday, March 14, 2007

The NYT on the first wave of Chinese adopted girls having Bat Mitzvot:

Fu Qian, renamed Cecelia Nealon-Shapiro at 3 months, was one of the first Chinese children — most of them girls — taken in by American families after China opened its doors to international adoption in the early 1990s. Now, at 13, she is one of the first to complete the rite of passage into Jewish womanhood known as bat mitzvah.

She will not be the last. Across the country, many Jewish girls like her will be studying their Torah portions, struggling to master the plaintive singsong of Hebrew liturgy and trying to decide whether to wear Ann Taylor or a traditional Chinese outfit to the after-party.

There are plenty of American Jews, of course, who do not “look Jewish.” And grappling with identity is something all adopted children do, not just Chinese Jews.

But seldom is the juxtaposition of homeland and new home, of faith and background, so stark. And nothing brings out the contrasts like a bat mitzvah, as formal a declaration of identity as any 13-year-old can be called upon to make. The contradictions show up in ways both playful — yin-and-yang yarmulkes, kiddush cups disguised as papier-mâché dragons, kosher lo mein and veal ribs at the buffet — and profound.

Yet for Cece, as everyone calls Cecelia, and for many of the girls like her, the odd thing about the whole experience is that it’s not much odder than it is for any 13-year-old.

“I knew that when I came to this age I was going to have to do it, so it was sort of natural,” she said a few days before the ceremony at Congregation Rodeph Sholom, a Reform synagogue on West 83rd Street where she has been a familiar face since her days in the Little Twos program. Besides, she said with a shrug, “Most of my Chinese friends are Jewish.”

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"Cow Born With Two Heads in June"

Last week I posted about the new trend in libraries and the website LibraryThing. Within hours, I got this very friendly and informative letter from its founder (with a stellar Mesopotamian reference). Rather than leave it in the comments section, I thought I'd share it with everyone. If this is an indication of their customer service (or just their monitoring of blog commentary about them), they are on the ball!

Hey there. This is the LibraryThing founder. Thanks for noticing us.

Two quick points:

We didn't time the announcement to go with the Shelfari thing, I promise. More and more I'm seeing people connect what happens with LibraryThing to other events—quite wrongly. Perhaps you'll appreciate the comparison, but it reminds me of Mesopotamian divination texts: cow born with two heads in June [horizonal line] famine in November. Bingo, a pattern!

I'm glad you found your page. I'm sure you saw that all of your books also have a page, with ratings, reviews, etc. Did you see that LibraryThing has a special "LibraryThing Authors" section? Catalog 50 books, so your readers can get an idea of what's on your shelf, and LibraryThing promotes you in various fun (but not necessarily valuable) ways. Check it out. We'd love to have you.

http://www.librarything.com/librarything_author.php

Best,
Tim

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Caleb's Dad on WALKING THE BIBLE

I stumbled onto another blogger who said some nice things about my work. People write me letters that say similar things, I'm pleased to say. These letters have been the best thing about having a website, until I started this blog. But reading them on a blog is a different experience. I still don't know quite what to make of it, but I am certainly grateful for his nice thoughts. Here's just the opening paragraph:

One of my "new" favorite authors is Bruce Feiler. A little over a year ago I picked up his book Walking the Bible and was really taken by his insights and personal spiritual journey. I am not concerned that he does not express "faith" as it classically might be understood, and I am not threatened by the musings about the discussion about how our understanding of God may have developed as a cultural phenomenon over time (I actually think that God has revealed himself over time and in the midst of relationships and culture). Having never journeyed the lands of the Middle East myself I particularly enjoyed Bruce's adventure. In fact, I ended up buying the PBS documentary Walking the Bible as well, along with the picture book.
He goes on to purchase ABRAHAM and keep on reading. Thanks, and good luck with your new boy Caleb (due in May). I love that name!

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Hollywood (Not Washington) Attacks Iran
Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Oh this is awfully good. Drudge has picked up a brilliant piece that captures our time: Iranian officials have lambasted the new blockbuster movie "300" for attacking Persian culture. Don't get me wrong. I love Iran. As I have written, of the 60 countries I have visited, Iran is the one that is most like America. (By the way, turn this statement around, and doesn't it sound like it could come from some American Anti-Defamation League!) But Iran in the wake of the Islamic revolution spent the first decade attacking Persian culture and even considered tearing down Persepolis, the jewel of Ancient Persia, because it was so associated with the Shah and was part of the "silence" before Islam. Now they suddenly want to attack Hollywood for not loving the place!

An Iranian official on Sunday lashed out at the Hollywood movie "300" for insulting the Persian civilization, local Fars News Agency reported.

Javad Shamqadri, an art advisor to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, accused the new movie of being "part of a comprehensive U.S. psychological war aimed at Iranian culture", said the report.

Shamqadri was quoted as saying "following the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Hollywood and cultural authorities in the U.S. initiated studies to figure out how to attack Iranian culture," adding "certainly, the recent movie is a product of such studies."

The movie's effort wound be fruitless, because "values in Iranian culture and the Islamic Revolution are too strongly seated to be damaged by such plans", said the Iranin official.

Shamqadri, who is also a filmmaker, said that production of more domestic and artistic films which portray Iranian achievements is a proper response to movies like "300".

"300," an ancient epic about the famous Battle of Thermopylae in Greek history, set a new record at the box office in North America this weekend

As if we needed more proof, this is why dictator's don't need "art advisers."

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Posted by B Feiler at 9:06 AM 0 comments  

"A Jewish School Where Half the Students Are Muslim"

I sent an American friend who is heading off to Britain with her Scotish husband and three kids for three weeks a link to the news about Churchill that broke out over the weekend. She sent me a link to this amazing article, "a nice contrast to the piece on Churchill and the Jews."

It's infant prize day at King David School, a state primary in Moseley, Birmingham. The children sit cross-legged on the floor, their parents fiddling with their video cameras. The head, Steve Langford, is wearing a Sesame Street tie.

A typical end-of-term school event, then. But at King David there's a twist that gives it a claim to be one of the most extraordinary schools in the country: King David is a strictly Jewish school. Judaism is the only religion taught. There's a synagogue on site. The children learn modern Hebrew - Ivrit - the language of Israel. And they celebrate Israeli independence day.

But half the 247 pupils at the 40-year-old local authority-supported school are Muslim, and apparently the Muslim parents go through all sorts of hoops, including moving into the school's catchment area, to get their children into King David to learn Hebrew, wave Israeli flags on independence day and hang out with the people some would have us believe that they hate more than anyone in the world.

The Muslim parents, mostly devout and many of the women wearing the hijab, say they love the ethos of the school, and even the kosher school lunches, which are suitable because halal and kosher dietary rules are virtually identical. The school is also respectful to Islam, setting aside a prayer room for the children and supplying Muslim teachers during Ramadan. At Eid, the Muslim children are wished Eid Mubarak in assembly, and all year round, if they wish, can wear a kufi (hat). Amazingly, dozens of the Muslim children choose instead to wear the Jewish kipah.

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:05 AM 0 comments  

The Two Views of Anti-Semitism

Stanley Fish has been musing about modern anti-Semitism over at the NYT blogs page. (You have to be a subscriber to read.) He addresses a fundamental disconnect: Jews are doing better than ever but haven't given up their underlying sense of fear.

By all the available evidence, formal and informal, precariousness does not mark the situation of the Jewish community today, at least not in this country. Whether the measure is education, wealth, ownership of property, influence in the corridors of power, prominence in the professions, or accomplishments in the arts, Jews in the United States are visible and successful to a degree that is remarkable given their relatively small numbers (around 2 percent of the population). Yet as Professor Charles Small of Yale University reports, “Increasingly, Jewish communities around the world feel under threat,” and there are some Jews in this country who share this feeling, not because they are themselves threatened (although that does occasionally happen), but because they fear – in the spirit of Sinclair Lewis’s “It Can’t Happen Here” or Philip Roth’s “The Plot Against America” – that what is happening elsewhere may soon happen here.

Why should they think that? Part of the answer is to be found in the relationship between three words – Israel, Iraq and anti-Semitism. Much of the world has been opposed to the Iraq war from its beginning, and now after four years 70 percent of Americans share the world’s opinion. Some who deplore the war believe that those who got us into it and cheered it on did so, at least in part, out of a desire to improve Israel’s position in the Middle East. Those who hold this view (and of course there are other analyses of the war’s origins) fear that the same people – with names like Wolfowitz, Pearle, Feith, Abrams, Kristol, Kagan, Krauthammer, Wurmser, Libby and Lieberman – are pushing for a strike against Iran, arguably a greater threat to Israel than Iraq ever was. Why, they ask, should our foreign policy be held hostage to the interests of a small country that is perfectly capable of defending itself and is guilty of treating the Palestinians, whose land it appropriated, in ways that are undemocratic and even, in the opinion of many, criminal?

After reviewing the other view of anti-Semitism, he concludes his summary:

So there you have two stories: anti-Semitism is on the rise and it’s time to get out those “Never Again” signs. Or, it’s not anti-Semitism in the old virulent sense, but a rational, if problematic, response by Middle East actors and their supporters in the West to what they see as “an oppressive occupying force”; don’t take it personally. I understand this second story, and appreciate its nuance, but I can’t bring myself to accept it, if only because I believe that the viral version of anti-Semitism is always capable of regaining its full and deadly form even when it is apparently dormant or weakened. All it needs is a pretext, and any pretext will do. If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict didn’t exist, it would attach itself to something else; but it does exist, and anti-Semitism couldn’t be happier.

I have to say that I'm more sympathetic to the second approach than Stanley Fish is.

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:03 AM 0 comments  

Were All Lefties Once Twins?

In the early days of the Feilerettes they first began to put food into their mouths with their left hands. Both of them. It was very cute to watch and seemed more, surefire evidence of the power of biology. Around that time Mrs. Feiler Faster and I went to buy a suit and the undeniably reliable scientific source of the suit salesman told us one of the more interesting things we learned during those early, sleep-deprived months: That all left-handers were once twins. The idea here is that anyone who is left-handed but not a twin would have had a twin who vanished somewhere along the way, a common practice before the arrival of the sonogram. Anyway, we repeated this endlessly because it was just too good to be true and too interesting to bother to verify.

Cut to: The other day I was trolling around the Internet and stumbled onto a twins site that had some interesting facts. Check out the fact of the left-handedness. Hmmmmm.........................

Did You Know?

· "Twin" comes from the German word "twine" meaning "two together."

· Gemini is the constellation or zodiac sign of twins.

Types of Twins

· Identical twins - result when a single egg splits. They share 100% of their DNA. They are the same gender and tend to look very similar.

· Fraternal twins - result when two eggs are fertilized at the same time. They share 50+% of their DNA. They can be the same or different genders, they can look similar or very different.

· Conjoined twins - are identical twins that occur when the egg does not split all the way when forming in the womb. 1 in 200,000 births are conjoined.

· Mirror-image twins - are identical twins that show mirroring traits instead of identical traits. For example, one is left-handed, the other is right-handed.

About Twin Births

· 1 in every 32 births is a twin. Since 1980, twins births have risen 62%

· Fraternal twinning occurs 1 in 60 births. Identical twinning occurs 1 in 150 births.

· A twin pregnancy causes normal pregnancy symptoms, such as nausea and morning sickness, to occur earlier. On average, twins are born 22 days premature.

· Multiple births are the most common in African American cultures. Multiple births are least common in Asian cultures.

· The nation with the highest number of multiple births is Nigeria.

Fun Facts

· In the United States, over 150 identical twins are married to identical twins. Genetically their children are brother and sister, but legally their children are cousins.

· Cryptophasia is when twins have their own "twin language" that only they understand. Many twins appear to have this so-called language when they are babies.

· Sometimes it is hard to tell if twins are identical or fraternal but look alike. DNA tests are an accurate way to prove if twins are truly identical or fraternal.

Studying Twins

· The scientific study of twins is called gemellology.

· 18-22% of twins are left handed, for non-twins the rate of lefties is only 10%.

· Studies have shown that identical twins tend to live longer than fraternal twins, researchers believe this is due to their close communication.

· Studies show that identical twins exhibit the same brain wave patterns.


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Posted by B Feiler at 8:01 AM 0 comments  

A Camel on the Ceiling

My post a few weeks ago about an unusual art exhibition in Estonia got a huge response, so I thought I'd post another one, this one as part of our ongoing series, Breaking Camel News. I learned of this one via Boing Boing.

2007 03 03 Biplane2Why is there a WWI Sopwith Camel biplane and landing strip on the roof of 77 Water Street in New York City's financial district? It's an art installation created in 1969 by Rudolph de Harak and William Tarr.

(Link to Wooster Collective post, Link to NYC Architecture page. The above photo was taken by Philip J. Hollenback when he worked at the adjacent 20 Exchange Place building. Link to Flickr stream.)

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:00 AM 0 comments  

Churchill: "Jews Are Unwittingly Inviting Persecution"
Sunday, March 11, 2007

News broke over the weekend of a discovery at my old graduate alma mater, Cambridge, that is sure to explode into a huge international story. In many ways the story is familiar: An old-school British diplomat has some negative things to say about the Jews. Shocking. But when that diplomat is a young Winston Churchill, watch the reaction ricochet around the world. The details are worth running in whole here, as reported in The Scotsman.

WINSTON Churchill suggested the Jewish people were "partly responsible for the antagonism from which they suffer", according to a document made public for the first time.

A historian at Cambridge University has uncovered the article written by Churchill in 1937, three years before he became prime minister.

Entitled 'How The Jews Can Combat Persecution' - by the Rt Hon Winston Churchill, it never saw the light of day after Churchill's private office stepped in to say publication would be "inadvisable".

The document lay buried in the university's Churchill archive for more than 60 years until historian Dr Richard Toye unearthed it while researching a new biography of the wartime leader. There is a suggestion the article was ghostwritten for Churchill.

But Toye said: "If it was ghostwritten, Churchill was apparently happy to put his name to this article in 1937. Like many of today's politicians, he was happy to endorse the sentiments contained in articles that were written for him."

Those sentiments include a complaint that cheap Jewish labour was "taking employment from English people" - a foreshadowing of today's arguments about the influx of immigrants to Britain.

The piece begins with reference to persecution of Jews over the centuries and refers to a new wave of anti-Semitism.

"It would be easy to ascribe it to the wickedness of the persecutors, but that does not fit all the facts," it reads.

"It exists even in lands, like Great Britain and the United States, where Jew and Gentile are equal in the eyes of the law, and where large numbers of Jews have found, not only asylum, but opportunity.

"These facts must be faced in any analysis of anti-Semitism. They should be pondered especially by the Jews themselves. For it may be that, unwittingly, they are inviting persecution - that they have been partly responsible for the antagonism from which they suffer."

The article goes on: "The central fact which dominates the relations of Jew and non-Jew is that the Jew is 'different'. He looks different. He thinks differently. He has a different tradition and background. He refuses to be absorbed."

Elsewhere, the article is sympathetic towards Jewish people and it is clear Churchill disapproves of their persecution.

He writes: "In fact, the Jew is as a rule a good citizen. He is sober, industrious, law-abiding. He identifies himself - up to a point - with the country in which he lives. He is ready, if need be, to fight and to die for it. Jewish soldiers served in the armies both of the Allies and of the Central Powers during the Great War. Twelve thousand of them died for Germany."

And Churchill ends by urging the British people to stand up for the Jews.

"The Jews are suffering from persecutions as cruel, as relentless and as vindictive as any in their long history," he writes.

"There is no virtue in a tame acquiescence in evil. To protest against cruelty and wrong, and to strive to end them, is the mark of a man. And when the victim of oppression is a brother in blood and faith, to attempt his succour becomes a sacred duty."

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:05 AM 2 comments  

Why the Pope Hates Bob Dylan

Just Because Bono is becoming part of the Episcopal church service, don't expect the same of Bob Dylan. Word this week that Pope Benedict tried to stop Bob Dylan playing for the late John Paul II in 1997, because he feared the musician was a "prophet" whose beliefs were at odds with the Roman Catholic Church.

In a new book of memoirs about his predecessor, the Pope recalls the events of the World Eucharist Congress at Bologna in 1997, a gathering of 300,000 young Catholic pilgrims who were to be exposed to the singer's iconoclastic songs and their "completely different" message, reports the Telegraph.

Pope Benedict wrote: "The Pope appeared tired, exhausted. At that very moment the stars arrived, Bob Dylan and others whose names I do not remember.

''They had a completely different message from the one which the Pope had.

"There was reason to be sceptical - I was, and in some ways I still am - over whether it was really right to allow this type of 'prophet' to appear."

Pope Benedict is known to have a strong dislike of popular music.

Last year, he cancelled the Vatican's Christmas fundraising concert and banned guitars from Mass.Six years ago he labelled rock and pop music "anti-Christian".

At the event in Bologna, Dylan performed four songs, including Knockin' on Heaven's Door, A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall and Blowin' in the Wind.

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:03 AM 0 comments  

"Namibia Is Nothing"

Though it doesn't come up here a lot, I do have an ongoing gig as a contributing editor at GOURMET. Consider this a heads up that I have a piece in the March issue, now on stands, about Namibia, based on a trip I made their last August. Here's how it's described on the website:

Remote Control
Namibia is one of the most barren, most peaceful, and least-known countries in southern Africa — and it's poised to become the next frontier of luxury travel.
The piece is not online, but Gourmet.com contains some exclusive photos not used in the shoot. Here is one. I hope you enjoy the piece.

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:01 AM 0 comments  

Duh of the Century

Okay, I'm not the kind of person who just rails against the stupidity of academic studies just for the fun of it. But THIS IS STUPID:

When children have sleep problems, their parents -- especially mothers -- often have sleep-deprived nights too, research shows.

In a study of families with children seen at a sleep clinic, researchers found that when children had multiple sleep problems, their parents were more likely to have daytime drowsiness.

Mothers were generally more affected than fathers, possibly because they were the ones who typically responded to their children's problems in the middle of the night, the researchers speculate.

"A child's sleep problem affects the whole family," said lead study author Dr. Julie Boergers, of Bradley Hasbro Children's Research Center and Brown Medical School in Providence, Rhode Island.

This is important, she told Reuters Health, because research shows that sleep disruptions and daytime sleepiness have negative effects on people's mood, behavior and health. For parents, sleep deprivation may cause them to have less patience with their child or spouse, and be less productive at work and at home, Boergers explained.

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:00 AM 0 comments  

Why Daylight-Saving Time is Bad for Your Teeth
Saturday, March 10, 2007

If you've been caught up in the mini-controversy about the Y2K effect of DST coming several weeks earlier this weekend, you've been missing the real story. It turns out that the biggest lobby to change the hours of Daylight-Saving Time has been the CANDY INDUSTRY!! More sunlight on October 31st means more trick-or-treating and more candy sales. And the claim that moving this changeover three weeks early saves energy: A lie! Before you move your clocks this weekend, listen to this fascinating report on The News Hour.

Daylight-Saving Time
Two panelists talk about the purpose and potential problems with moving daylight-saving time several weeks earlier.

audioRealAudioDownload

Posted by B Feiler at 7:46 AM 0 comments  

Here's One Way to Build a Farm Team
Friday, March 9, 2007

It's celebrity gossip day here on Feiler Faster! But all those daily readers in Red Sox Nation (otherwise known at my in-laws) should be interested in this:

A Brazilian website reported yesterday that Tom Brady's girlfriend Gisele Bundchen may be pregnant and, if so, the Pats QB is the father. According to the popular celebrity website Glamurama.com.br , Bundchen would be no more than two months pregnant, but may already have told select friends and family. The brief item was written by Joyce Pascowitch , who's the Brazilian equivalent of the New York Post's Richard Johnson . Brady's agent Don Yee did not return a phone call yesterday, and Bundchen's rep at IMG denied the report. Two weeks ago, Brady's ex-girlfriend actress Bridget Moynahan revealed she's pregnant, and Brady is the father. ( Moynahan's rep had no comment yesterday on the possibility of a Bundchen baby.) Brady, 29, and Moynahan, 36, dated for nearly three years before breaking up in mid - December. Soon after, the two-time Super Bowl MVP began dating the Brazilian supermodel. The pretty pair recently enjoyed five-star stays in Paris, Milan, and Rome, and Life & Style Weekly is reporting that Bundchen also took Brady to meet her parents in Porto Alegre , Brazil.
If all these reports are true, it might explain why the Colts zipped past the Pats in the playoffs to land in the Super Bowl. All of this action seems to have been gathered around late December...

Update: Giselle is a twin! That clearly brings this story under the Feiler Faster mandate:
Tom Brady’s seemingly endless baby-mama drama took a timeout yesterday when Gisele Bundchen’ family shot down reports that the New England Patriots super-stud had another completion - this time with the Brazilian supermodel.
The $30 million catwalker’s father as well as her sister, Raquel, told the media that the Brady baby buzz was bogus - Gisele is not pregnant with No. 12’s No. 2. (Last month, Tom’s ex, Bridget Moynahan, announced she is carrying the first heir to the Brady throne.)
“It is not true,” G.’s papa, Valdir, told O Dia gossip columnist Sabrina Grimberg. “I speak with Gisele every day and she would have told me.”
Meanwhile, sister Raquel told Ego.Globo.com that the family was shocked, just shocked, when they read the news on the Internet.
“It is clear that Gisele is not pregnant. She is well and has lots of commitments (meaning modeling gigs),” said the supermodel’s sis.
Raquel also told Ego that Gisele’s twin sister, Patricia, told her: “People are inventing things.”

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Posted by B Feiler at 12:05 PM 0 comments  

Library 2.0

The next big war in the book business is to see who can get you to put more of your book collection on the web. With the number of book buyers evidently declining rapidly (BN announced this week their 2007 earnings would be 30% less than previously reported, sending the stock down by 10%), booksellers are scrambling to get those of us who do buy books to do their selling for them. I know I'm not making this sound appealing, but there are hundreds of thousands who are doing it. I admit that I love the recommendations on Amazon for what others who bought this book also purchased -- it's a great way to tap into a social network of people who share a common interest. The new thing is to do this by uploading your own personal card catalog.


First, the NYT on LibraryThing :

Social networks that tap the interests and buying power of traditionally reserved groups like the bookish are a small but growing force on the Web. Ms. Havemann, for example, is among the 150,000 or so members of LibraryThing (www.LibraryThing.com), a site that lets people create detailed online book catalogs, learn about the collections of other members, discover shared favorites and swap recommendations.

Creating a catalog on the Web site is easy. Enter the title of one of your books, and the search engine supplies the rest of the details, like the International Standard Book Number, or ISBN, and a thumbnail image of the cover. Click again, and list the next item.

You can view or print your catalog instantly, sorted by author, for example, or by more personal tags like “books that mention Venice,” “books that touch on digital photography” or “books I’ve loaned out.” Collections can also be displayed by book covers.

Now, GalleyCat on the war between AbeBooks, an online used bookseller, and Amazon. This post was triggered by AbeBooks announcing a new Web 2.0 book recommendation system, "Book Hints":
As for the feature itself, well, a sample showing reveals that it's basically the same thing as Amazon.com's "customers who bought this item also bought..." recommendations, only with book jackets! And based on the data from LibraryThing members rather than actual sales data, of course. The most salient aspect of this rollout, perhaps, is the way it attempts to steal the thunder from last week's announcement of Amazon's investment in Shelfari, one of the main competitors to LibraryThing (in which AbeBooks has a 40 percent stake), by getting AbeBook's version of the bells and whistles out first.
Update: Wow. After writing this, I was doing an unrelated search and discovered that an entire page of Library Thing is devoted to people who have my books. Fascinating!

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:06 AM 0 comments  

Five Stars or I'll Sue You

This story passes some sort of jumping the shark test for me, or is it plate of shrimp. I think it's the latter. Either way, I've now heard about it from several different sources. Here's the NYT:

THE review, published last month in The Philadelphia Inquirer, was three sentences long. It praised the crab cake at Chops restaurant in Bala Cynwyd, Pa., but said the meal there over all “was expensive and disappointing, from the soggy and sour chopped salad to a miserably tough and fatty strip steak.”

The resulting libel lawsuit was 16 pages long. It did not dispute that the steak was lousy. Rather, it said that Craig LaBan, a restaurant critic for The Inquirer, “ate a steak sandwich without bread, not a strip steak, and therefore had, and has, no personal knowledge of the quality of the Chops strip steak.”

By comparing “a $15 steak sandwich to an upscale dinner strip steak,” the suit said, Mr. LaBan and The Inquirer libeled the restaurant, hurting its reputation and business.

The suit joins a long line of court encounters between sharp reviews and the restaurateurial ego, and, if the earlier cases are a reliable guide, it is doomed.

True, a Dallas restaurant owner not long ago extracted a re-review from The Dallas Morning News in exchange for dropping a libel suit. A suit over a description of wine as “dreadful plonk” is pending in a New Jersey court. And last month a Belfast jury hit The Irish Times with a verdict of 25,000 British pounds (about $50,000) over a review that included the assertion that the chicken Marsala was “so sweet as to be inedible.”

But American judges have apparently never punished even tough, mean and wrongheaded restaurant reviews. As the federal appeals court in Manhattan put it in 1985, “reviews, although they may be unkind, are not normally a breeding ground for successful libel actions.”

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:03 AM 0 comments  

Now We Know Why Britney Shaved Her Head

She's becoming a monk! Britney is returning to Christianity after a brief fling with Kabbalistic Judaism. Who's the winner here?

Ever since Britney Spears scribbled the word PUSH on her hand, people have been scratching their heads trying to figure out what the word stands for.

Until now, patience, understanding, smiles and honesty have been the leading contender, but www.hollywood.tv reports that PUSH is really the Christian message - 'Pray Until Something Happens'.

'It is often printed on bands and necklaces available in Christian shops,' said a source. 'These are frequently given as gifts to remind people that god is on their side through everything,' added the source.

Is the 25-year-old pop princess returning to Christianity at this difficult time in her life? It's a possibility, since she was raised in the Southern Baptist Church.
All this in the same week that Madonna pitched up at a Kabbalah Purim party in London. Do we need a new feature around here: At the Corner of Hollywood and God?

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:01 AM 0 comments  

Adam Gopnik Haters Club

One of the odd things about having a blog is that you get information -- mostly vague -- about which posts seem to generate a reaction. And for some reason, my post about Adam Gopnik haters a few weeks back resonated with a small but loyal audience. This seems hard to believe, as the reports seem to suggest that readers around the world are checking out Feiler Faster (like one loyal reader and commenter in Kenya!), but there it is on the report I see every now and then. So, hey you loyal Gopnik haters/defenders out there (that includes you, Mrs. Feiler Faster, Defendress In Chief), check out this snide remark from New York mag this week:

Though they probably made it difficult for j-school students to score juicy interviews, recent revelations of superpower editors in the media have made us feel that we're not sure the days of the shy and retiring redliner — RIP, William Shawn — were so bad after all. In today's Independent, New Yorker editor David Remnick rapidly reduces our opinion of him as he tells us that he went to a fancy college — "God knows why" — his worst trait as a journalist is his "lack of concentration," Iraq is "so depressing," and though he doesn't "write so much," as the editor, he gets to be himself "with all its grave limitations." False modesty is all very well, but Remnick's ruminations about himself as a child make us worry that some of those grave limitations have totally carried over into the magazine's present incarnation. Remembering his own precocious youth, Remnick confesses: "If I come across a kid who's 12 or 13, who seems a little pretentious and doesn't really quite know what he or she is talking about, I think that's OK. It means they're interested." Ladies and gentleman, you heard it here. The mystery of Adam Gopnik's ascendance at the mag … SOLVED.
The picture is of Gopnik, by the way, not Remnick.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:00 AM 0 comments  

Discovery Sues for False Claims
Thursday, March 8, 2007

I, for one, am sick of talking about "The Lost Tomb of Jesus" and have written what I hope will be my last big post about the matter, at least until some new major angle pops up. But this did make me smile: The Discovery channel has written a letter threatening to sue a Christian group in India for falsely claiming that it had pressured Discovery India from broadcasting the show. Suing for false claims a show that is about, at its heart, a false claim!! Who said irony is dead.

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:23 AM 1 comments  

Death of the American Newspaper II: The Religion Section

I'm tempted to just cut and paste the comment from below: More evidence (if we need any) of the challenges facing the American newspaper. But here the news is somewhat different. Below, the news is the end of the book section, which heralds the end of the book. Here, Christianity Today is talking about the end of the religion section, which hardly heralds the end of religion. It heralds the rise of the Net for God. Either way, bad for the paper.

The Dallas Morning News eliminated its religion section in early January. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution folded its Faith and Values section into the Living pages. The Wichita Eagle plans to cut its religion editor position, and other newspapers are removing their religion beats.

"In a time of flat revenues, we simply could not generate the advertising to break even on the section," said Bob Mong, editor of The Dallas Morning News. "I don't think any paper in the country tried harder than we did over the years."

Mong helped develop the religion section in 1994, but sees more potential now for online reporting in blogs and newsletters. The Dallas Morning News website has seen more page hits on its religion blog than it did for its religion section online, he said.

"I like the idea of a section. I obviously believed in the section approach to give the subject more visibility," Mong said. "It had a very strong and loyal readership, but there came a time when we simply had to make some difficult choices."

The media industry posted nearly twice as many job losses in 2006 as in 2005, according to the outplacement company Challenger, Gray, and Christmas.

"Unfortunately, with a lot of the cutbacks in newspapers right now, the religion beat is seen as expendable," said Charles Overby, who heads the Freedom Forum. "Eliminating religion reporters is, at best, an economic advantage that could cause longer term problems."

Overby, a former newspaper editor and part of USA Today's management, said he has seen religion coverage improve over the past five years and hopes the trend will continue.

"The tendency of newspapers is to look at the quirky aspects of religion. The truth is many readers are just looking for mainstream coverage," Overby said. "That's not church bulletin coverage, but it is recognizing that faith is an important part in many lives."

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:15 AM 0 comments  

Death of the American Newspaper I: The Book Section

More evidence (as if we needed any) of the severe challenges facing the newspaper industry. The great Jeffrey Trachtenberg of the WSJ reports: Publishers are no longer buying ads in book sections, which means fewer and fewer authors will the get the oxygen of exposure in daily newspapers. Coming on the heels of an AP announcement that it's no longer sending out a package of book reviews, this news is devastating -- especially for fiction. You simply cannot buy a book if you've never heard of it.

Sometime this spring, the Los Angeles Times is expected to announce that it is folding its highly esteemed Sunday book review into a new section that will combine books with opinion pieces. That would reduce to five the number of separate book-review sections in major metropolitan newspapers still published nationwide, down from an estimated 10 to 12 a decade ago. The reason: not enough ads.

Book publishers in recent years have moved away from buying ads in standalone book-review sections in favor of paying to stack mounds of books in the front of chain bookstores. Some small literary publications, such as the New York Review of Books, are showing growth, but the book review as a separate section is endangered not only at the Los Angeles Times but at other major newspapers like the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle and San Diego Union-Tribune.

The New York Times Book Review is an exception. "In 2006, our [ad] revenue from books was up almost 10%," says Todd Haskell, vice president, business development, for the Times. (The figure refers to the book-review section plus the paper as a whole.)

"Our book review is a vibrant part of the Sunday newspaper and will continue to be," says Mr. Haskell. "We aren't backing off an inch."

In an era of targeted marketing, publishers say the best time to reach readers is when they are in the stores with money in their pockets looking to make an immediate purchase. But with a sea of titles in the stores -- the average 25,000-square-foot store in the Barnes & Noble Inc. chain now stocks between 125,000 and 150,000 titles -- the only way for publishers to stand out is to pay for real estate in the front and pile those books up high.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:06 AM 0 comments  

"Take This Walk"

The blogger Cipriano sent me this link to a review he wrote of WALKING THE BIBLE, from his blog "bookpuddle, splashing around in books. " It's called "Take This Walk" and here's how it closes:

Walking the Bible is a profoundly enlightening, rewarding read. I highly recommend Feiler's book to all readers interested in the subjects of the Middle East and Old Testament biblical interpretation, in general. I liked his style and approach so much that I went and purchased his Learning To Bow: Inside The Heart of Japan, and am currently waiting for the slightest excuse to open that first page, and go walking….

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:03 AM 0 comments  

What Joe Wilson and President Bush Have in Common

Twins! Here's the start of a post from Hillary Rosen, an old acquaintance and fellower parent of twins. (For what it's worth, Hillary is a very high-profile gay activist, so her twins have two mommies.)

I ran into Joe Wilson at Starbucks this morning. We hugged and thought neighborhood coffee was as good a way as any to celebrate Scooter Libby's guilty verdict yesterday. Seeing Joe looking happy and fresh made me realize that so many people outside of Washington see this verdict and the events of the past few years as just about politics, not about people.

Joe and Valerie are neighborhood parents. We both have boy-girl twins and our kids played together sometimes. Just like lots of my friends in the neighborhood, they are fun, friendly, smart, passionate and accomplished. Their kids are adorable and play well with others. They are certainly better behaved than my kids.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:01 AM 0 comments  

The Art and Craft of Name-Dropping

I admit to an interest in the sociology of name-dropping, when it works (rarely) and when it doesn't (too needy). It has something to do with where you see the celebrity. Seeing a celebrity at a tony restaurant in New York is not that interesting. Seeing one in a dump in Baton Rouge is. Seeing a celebrity riding in a limo isn't interesting. Seeing one riding on a roller coaster is. You get the idea. I still need some more work coming up with categories.

But today I received a name drop of a different kind: In an email! From a Blackberry. With no comment, just a subject line. From Mrs. Feiler Faster, at TED:

Subject: Just met Forrest Whitaker :)

Hmmm. Acceptable. Or not. Hard to tell. He did just win an Oscar.

PS: I'm afraid my old pal John Aravosis fails the Name-Dropping Test. Seeing a Daily Show correspondent on the streets of New York is not worth repeating.

Posted by B Feiler at 7:00 AM 0 comments  

God: The New Rebellion
Wednesday, March 7, 2007

My brother sent me an article from the Wall Street Journal about what it calls a "growing trend" of children who become much more religious than their parents, straining family ties. The article is not available online, but here are a few excerpts, including advice at the bottom on how to handle the situation, with some sites that offer support.

Clergy are in the difficult position of trying to guide young people toward devoutness without dishonoring their families. The reluctance of parents to accept their children's choices can be a source of frustration for some youths and their pastors. "My joke is, they liked them better when they were on drugs," says Pastor Peter La Joy, who directs the student ministry at Calvary Chapel in Tucson, Ariz.

While statistics on the number of devout young people are hard to come by, some groups that minister to the young report big gains. Young Life, an evangelical Christian ministry that focuses on children "disinterested" in religion, says more than 106,000 teens attended its programs on a weekly basis during the 2005-2006 school year, up from 66,362 12 years ago. "Mecca and Main Street," a new book by Geneive Abdo, a senior analyst at the Gallup Organization's Center for Muslim Studies, argues that a significant number of young U.S. Muslims are becoming substantially more devoted to Islam than their parents. In the Jewish community, a growing number of formerly secular young people are embracing an Orthodox lifestyle.
And this:
Tom Lin's parents, immigrants from Taiwan, sent him to Harvard University with the expectation he would become a corporate attorney. When he instead opted for a much lower-paying career in a Christian ministry, his mother threatened to kill herself, says Mr. Lin, 34, a regional director for InterVarsity, a college ministry that has 843 chapters in the U.S. Mr. Lin adds that both parents cut off all communication with him for seven years, reconnecting only after his mother was diagnosed with cancer. (She died in 2002.) Mr. Lin says his choices were "shaming" to the values held within many immigrant cultures. His parents "moved to America for material prosperity," says Mr. Lin. "When [immigrants'] children forsake the very reason they came to this country, it's particularly devastating."

Families in which the children are more religious than the parents aren't the norm. In "Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers," University of Notre Dame professor Christian Smith reports that a child's religious beliefs generally will closely reflect his parents'. And not all religious fervor among the children of secular families has a solely spiritual basis. At times, "it's a part of teenage rebellion," says Azeem Khan, the former national coordinator of Young Muslims, a group that runs summer camps and other youth-oriented religious programs.

Overall, American's religious devotion seems to have remained fairly constant over the past 10 years. In a 2006 Gallup poll, 63% of respondents said they were members of a church or synagogue, down slightly from 65% in 1996. When asked how important they considered religion in their own lives, 57% said it was very important, the same as in 1996.

Here are the sites that offer advice:

"Following Jesus Without Dishonoring Your Parents," edited by Jeanette Yep and Peter Cha

Greg Joa, a contributor to the book, says families should consider how their generational differences can affect views. "The discussion is not just about religion," he says. When choosing religion over lucrative careers, he says, children need to realize a parent's objections are borne out of concern, not judgment. Parents should consider that their kids "haven't grown up under the restrictive pressure of, 'I must achieve more, I must make more,'" he says.

"But my parents aren't saved!" Christian Teen Corner (www.wolfeborobible.com/teen20.html)

If a young person wishes his parents would become more religious, the site recommends that the child show the benefits of devotion by being obedient and respectful: "Don't give your unsaved family members any reason for not wanting to know the Jesus that has made such a change in your life!"

"How do I tell my parents and family I've become a Muslim?" by Saraji Umm Zaid
(www.iprofess.com)

The author suggests that converts and the newly observant wait six to 12 months before alerting their family to their new religious identity, giving time to become "established in Islamic practices" and to "build a support system within the Muslim community."

"Is Orthodox Judaism Driving Our Family Apart?" (www.beingjewish.com)

The site, written by a newly Orthodox woman and her husband, recommends that parents who are concerned with "losing" their children to observant religion reach out to clergy: "Speak to the one who has the most influence on him right now -- his rabbi or religious teacher. ...The rabbi will probably be a good mediator, and can advise both you and the child how to work together."

Update: I found an AP version of the same story.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:05 AM 0 comments  

Match.Baghdad.Com

When I was in Iraq three years ago, I was lucky enough to find an Internet cafe in every single one of the half dozen towns I visited. Now comes word that the Internet has truly penetrated the place: Internet dating has come to Iraq! The LAT has a piece about love-clicking in a war zone:

Young Iraqis, trapped in their homes in the mean streets of this bloodstained capital, are increasingly turning to the Internet to chat with relatives, hang out with friends and search for love.

Such virtual relationships offer a refuge of sorts from numbing isolation and fear during a time of staggering violence. But all too often they are mirages — a seductive reminder of a life now tantalizingly out of reach for most.

"They are like birds in a cage," says Anas Attar, 22, one of a growing number of businessmen cashing in on the demand by selling access to their satellite-based Internet connections.

Via Boing Boing.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:03 AM 0 comments  

Where Is Mrs. Feiler Faster?

Even her own mother wonders. Here's the answer, c/o of Huffington Post (and an employee of the organization):

There has been some news coverage of TED lately. One month ago CBS put online a 10-minutes video report on TED, who attends and what's discussed. This week's BusinessWeek has a story headlined "Forget Davos. I'm booked up for TED", while yesterday's New York TimesWhere artists and investors plot to save the world". While both articles say great things about TED and compare it favorably to the Davos World Economic Forum however, it's worth pointing out that they almost contradict each other. BusinessWeek quotes a former attendee suggesting that TED has become mainly about connections with celebrities; the NY Times writes that TED is now mainly a do-good gathering discussing "photographs of genocide victims, environmentally sustainable AIDS clinics and water-purification systems". describes "

A partial list of speakers includes: venture capitalist John Doerr; demographer Hans Rosling (video); evolutionary biologist Paul Ewald; illustrator Maira Kalman; basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar; Nobel Prize winner (for discovering the quark) Murray Gell-Mann; Creative Commons founder Larry Lessig; documentary producer Deborah Scranton; Microsoft's former CTO, dinosaurs hunter and intellectual-property controversial guy Nathan Myhrvold; singer Paul Simon. Ah: Bill Clinton will also speak.

TED was started in 1984 when founder Richard S. Wurman observed the beginning of a powerful convergence between technology, entertainment and design. The first event featured the unveiling of the Macintosh computer and of the compact disc, among other things. But the finances didn't go along with the great lineup of speakers, so it took several years before Wurman tried it again, this time with success. TED has been held in Monterey every year since 1990. For the last four years it has been run by British media entrepreneur Chris Anderson, who sold his publishing house and in 2002 bought TED from Wurman. Chris runs it now as a part of his non-profit Sapling Foundation.

The name of the conference is a bit misleading: the event has grown to be much broader than the three original fields of technology, entertainment and design, encompassing science, media, education, politics, literature, spirituality, energy and environmental issues, and more. The format of the conference is classic: speakers have 18 minutes each for a keynote, and there is no Q&A (most speakers attend the whole conference, hence there are plenty of informal Q&A opportunities during lunches and dinners).

If I'm lucky enough to get any good details, I'll post them here.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:01 AM 0 comments  

Two Thumbs Up For Eden and Savannah

The verdict is in, Mrs. Feiler Faster reports, thumbs up on Desperate Housewives' star Marcia Cross's decision to name her twin daughters Eden and Savannah. No less an authority than "Celebrity Baby Names" blog (insert "Wow, there's a blog for everything," line here), declares:

The name Eden is well-documented, and means “place of pleasure” in Hebrew.

“Savannah,” well-known as a famous city in Georgia, has less clear roots. One website believes the word, which means “grassy plain,” comes from the Native American word zabana. Another site claims “Savannah” is of Spanish origin.

Roots aside, I give Cross and Mahoney a “thumbs up” for the pair of names. It’s twice as hard coming up with names for twins, and Eden and Savannah has a nice, original ring to it.

Given the coincidence(!?) with the names of our daughters, Eden and Tybee, I can't say her this thumbs up is getting universal approval over here...

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:00 AM 0 comments  

It's So Cold In New York ...
Tuesday, March 6, 2007

Even the bike messengers bring their bikes onto the subway.

Posted by B Feiler at 7:49 PM 0 comments  

Obama: The Joshua of His Generation?

Joshua is one of the great under-heralded leaders of the Bible, squeezed between Moses and David, the two monoliths. Maybe my favorite story from his life comes before he inherits the leadership mantle from Moses when he's one of the spies sent to check out the Promised Land and, along with Caleb, reports back that it can be taken. The others, of course, say the place is filled with giants who are too powerful. For that Joshua finds himself winning the Hebrew Idol competition. The prize: Leadership of the troops and his profile on the logo of the Israel Tourism Authority.

I grew to love Joshua even more when I was in a helicopter over Jerusalem at the start of WHERE GOD WAS BORN. [To read an exclusive excerpt of this chapter of my book, click here.) My favorite moment in the story of the Conquest occurs at the end, when Joshua gathers the Israelites together to read them the Law of Moses -- men, women, and children. As Yaya, the general I recruited to help me analyze Joshua's military tactics, explained, "Women only got the right to vote 100 years ago, and then only in certain places. This was 3,000 years ago. That's why the Bible survives. Its values are universal."

How interesting, in this context, to see Barack Obama compare himself not to Moses, but to Joshua this week in Selma:

You know, several weeks ago, after I had announced that I was running for the Presidency of the United States, I stood in front of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois; where Abraham Lincoln delivered his speech declaring, drawing in scripture, that a house divided against itself could not stand.

And I stood and I announced that I was running for the presidency. And there were a lot of commentators, as they are prone to do, who questioned the audacity of a young man like myself, haven't been in Washington too long.

And I acknowledge that there is a certain presumptuousness about this.

But I got a letter from a friend of some of yours named Reverend Otis Moss Jr. in Cleveland, and his son, Otis Moss III is the Pastor at my church and I must send greetings from Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. but I got a letter giving me encouragement and saying how proud he was that I had announced and encouraging me to stay true to my ideals and my values and not to be fearful.

And he said, if there's some folks out there who are questioning whether or not you should run, just tell them to look at the story of Joshua because you're part of the Joshua generation.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:05 AM 0 comments  

Do Not Marry a Muslim With "Dark Good Looks"

An incident in North Carolina is an important reminder that Hate Speech is not Free Speech.

The father of a North Carolina ninth grader who was given "anti-Muslim" literature in class says the material handed out is not an issue of free speech, but of slander and defamation.

"First of all, it slanders, things like, Mohammed is a 'criminal,' is 'demon possessed' ... that just made my blood boil," said Triaq Butte, whose daughter, Saira, participated in a ninth grade orientation seminar at Enloe High School in Wake County, N.C., where the material was distributed.

Butte is a non-practicing Muslim; he said his wife is Christian and his children are taught to accept and respect all religions.

"So for a person like me to feel like that — I've never been to a mosque — to feel like that … for me to feel such hideous attacks, they were not just pointing out failures or weaknesses in Islam or Muslims, they were just attacking."

The pamphlet, courtesty of Kamil International Ministries Organization, a Christian group based in Raleigh, compared the teachings of Jesus with accusations against the Prophet Muhammad.

Among the materials handed out was a pamphlet called "Jesus not Muhammad," as well as one entitled, "Do Not Marry a Muslim Man." The latter pamphlet compares parts of the Koran with those of the Bible, such as:

— "Husband, beat your wives and deny them sex." (The book of Islam, Koran 4:34)

— "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church and gave Himself for her." (The Holy Bible, Ephesians 5:25)

It warns women not to be lured into marrying a Muslim, even for his "dark good looks, education, financial means, and the interest he shows in you."

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:03 AM 0 comments  

"Have I Screwed Up My Daughters Forever?"

I'm a little late in posting this, but: The best piece I've read in ages. Enjoy.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:01 AM 0 comments  

Yada Yada Yada: Is Jerry Seinfeld Ruining Documentaries?

A fascinating scandal has erupted in the world of documentary film, where the director of one of the Oscar-nominated films has written an open letter to the Academy denouncing Jerry Seinfeld's introduction of the category. This may be a fascinating case of don't get what you wish for, after all, isn't it better to have viewer listen to Seinfeld make a few jokes at the films' expense rather than fall asleep or go to the bathroom?

While I appreciate the role of humor in our lives, Jerry Seinfeld’s remarks were made at the expense of thousands of documentary filmmakers and the entire documentary genre. Obviously we make films not for awards or money, although we are glad if we are fortunate enough to receive them. The important thing is to tell stories, whether of people who have been damaged by war, of humankind’s reckless attitude toward nature and the environment, or even of the lives and habits of penguins. With his lengthy, dismissive and digressive introduction, Jerry Seinfeld had no time left for any individual description of the five nominated films. And by labeling the documentaries “incredibly depressing,” he indirectly told millions of viewers not to bother seeing them because they’re nothing but downers. He wasted a wonderful opportunity to excite viewers about the nominated films and about the documentary genre in general.

To have a presenter introduce a category with such disrespect for the nominees and their work is counter to the principles the Academy was founded upon. To be nominated for an Academy Award is one of the highest honors our peers can give us, and to have the films dismissed in such an offhand fashion was deeply insulting. The Academy owes all documentary filmmakers an apology

Sasha Stone at OscarWatch has a great take on this, pointing out that for better or worse, this was the Green Oscars, not the Iraq Oscars, and that's why John Sinno, the director of Iraq in Fragments and the author of this letter, is so upset.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:00 AM 0 comments  

The Jesus Tomb Meets the Internet
Monday, March 5, 2007

To read my round-up and Monday morning reality check of "The Lost Tomb of Jesus" click here. "When the story of "The Lost Tomb of Jesus" is written, it will have an interesting asterisk: As the first of a long list of biblical scams to be perpetrated in the age of the blogosphere."

To see watch my debate with Simcha Jacobovici on CBS, click here.

Posted by B Feiler at 9:23 AM 2 comments  

The God Gene

In WALKING THE BIBLE, I first wrote about the idea that I felt a physical connection to the land and wondered whether this landscape was somehow in my DNA. At the time this sounded laughable to most people, but ever since the genome was decoded and suggested that we carry historical memory around within us, this idea has been gaining traction.

I was thinking about that this weekend as I was reading through the NYTimes Magazine cover story called "Darwin's God." The article looks at a new corner of evolutionary studies examining where religion comes from. While it's hard to summarize in a few paragraphs, here is an excerpt from the opening. It requires free registration to read, or running out to a newstand while the Sunday edition is still on sale.

The magic-box demonstration helped set Atran on a career studying why humans might have evolved to be religious, something few people were doing back in the ’80s. Today, the effort has gained momentum, as scientists search for an evolutionary explanation for why belief in God exists — not whether God exists, which is a matter for philosophers and theologians, but why the belief does.

This is different from the scientific assault on religion that has been garnering attention recently, in the form of best-selling books from scientific atheists who see religion as a scourge. In “The God Delusion,” published last year and still on best-seller lists, the Oxford evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins concludes that religion is nothing more than a useless, and sometimes dangerous, evolutionary accident. “Religious behavior may be a misfiring, an unfortunate byproduct of an underlying psychological propensity which in other circumstances is, or once was, useful,” Dawkins wrote. He is joined by two other best-selling authors — Sam Harris, who wrote “The End of Faith,” and Daniel Dennett, a philosopher at Tufts University who wrote “Breaking the Spell.” The three men differ in their personal styles and whether they are engaged in a battle against religiosity, but their names are often mentioned together. They have been portrayed as an unholy trinity of neo-atheists, promoting their secular world view with a fervor that seems almost evangelical.

Lost in the hullabaloo over the neo-atheists is a quieter and potentially more illuminating debate. It is taking place not between science and religion but within science itself, specifically among the scientists studying the evolution of religion. These scholars tend to agree on one point: that religious belief is an outgrowth of brain architecture that evolved during early human history. What they disagree about is why a tendency to believe evolved, whether it was because belief itself was adaptive or because it was just an evolutionary byproduct, a mere consequence of some other adaptation in the evolution of the human brain.

Which is the better biological explanation for a belief in God — evolutionary adaptation or neurological accident? Is there something about the cognitive functioning of humans that makes us receptive to belief in a supernatural deity? And if scientists are able to explain God, what then? Is explaining religion the same thing as explaining it away? Are the nonbelievers right, and is religion at its core an empty undertaking, a misdirection, a vestigial artifact of a primitive mind? Or are the believers right, and does the fact that we have the mental capacities for discerning God suggest that it was God who put them there?

In short, are we hard-wired to believe in God? And if we are, how and why did that happen?

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:05 AM 1 comments  

Tehrangeles: Or Why Eddie Murphy Is Studying Farsi

A few years ago, before taking my wife on a second honeymoon in Iran, I learned that a large number of Iranian Jews had moved to Beverly Hills after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. I made a number of telephone friends in this community who later introduced me around the Jewish community in Iran. Thirty-five thousand Jews still live in Iran, the largest number in the Middle East outside of Israel(All of this is described in comic detail in WHERE GOD WAS BORN, including what happened when I created something of a scandal by introducing my wife in synagogue in Tehran in front of 800 people. No one had ever seen a man introduce his wife in public.)

The Jewish Community in Beverly Hills was so prominent, I was told, that one nickname for L.A. was Tehrangeles. Well, now we know how prominent -- and how large! And how some of their neighbors think about it. A friend tipped me off to the fact that a firestorm erupted recently when the City of Beverly Hills sent out its local election ballot and it was translated into Farsi, the official language of Iran. Farsi! In Beverly Hills. What would Eddie do now!? (The headline in the LAT: "For some, Beverly Hills ballot went to Farsi.")

For the first time, Beverly Hills had translated its entire absentee and sample ballots into Persian. The ballots for the March 6 municipal election, in which two City Council seats are up for grabs, went out this month, and the response was swift.

More than 300 residents phoned the city to complain. City Clerk Byron Pope fielded about 100 of them personally.

"I believe the cover is what shocked the community," said Pope, who had instructed the city's election materials supplier to print the entire ballot, cover to cover, in English and Persian, also known as Farsi. "I believe it was the Farsi script, with the war going on and all," he said.

The translation is the latest measure of the growing Persian influence in Beverly Hills, where Persians now make up about a fifth of the city's 35,000 residents.

The influx, which began in the late 1970s as wealthy Iranians clustered in Beverly Hills after the fall of the shah, has made a mark on many facets of the city, from architecture to the schools.

But it has — as in the case of the ballots — caused friction. Some long-time residents have complained about newcomers tearing down historic homes in favor of what they consider monolithic white "Persian palaces."

At the same time, Persians have flexed their political muscle by holding voter registration drives, electing the first Persian to the City Council in 2003 and making the Persian new year a holiday for students.

Three of the six candidates running for City Council next month were born in Iran, and Councilman Jimmy Delshad will serve as Beverly Hills' first Persian mayor if he wins reelection.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:03 AM 0 comments  

Why Are Cheap Hotels So Ugly?

And might that be changing. Sitting in a run-down Marriott last week in Louisville, I ran across this article that fashionable design, the kind seen in many upscale hotels, might be going downscale.

TRAVELERS who are tired of paying top dollar for trendy hotel rooms may soon get a break. A new wave of hotel chains, designed with fashionable but price-sensitive travelers in mind, is on the rise.

The hotel companies creating the new chains, which they often refer to as lifestyle hotels, aim to marry the stylish sensibilities of so-called boutique hotels with the low prices normally associated with budget brands. With a focus on modern design, the latest in technology and cool lobbies with social scenes, the hotels cater primarily to young business travelers. But with room prices expected to be $150 or less — well below the going rate at other hotels emphasizing contemporary design — the new chains may be a welcome alternative for vacationers, too.

The idea:

The new concept is to offer more bang for your buck by providing “the features and services of a more upscale hotel at a lower price point,” said Bjorn Hanson, global hospitality leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Each room at Cambria Suites, a new all-suites brand from Choice Hotels International, will offer MP3 plug-ins, a CD and a DVD player, free high-speed wireless Internet and two flat-panel television sets. The first Cambria Suites is scheduled to open in April near the airport in Boise, Idaho, and others will follow later this year in Savannah, Ga.; Green Bay, Wis.; Appleton, Wis.; and at the Akron-Canton airport in Ohio.

NYLO Hotels, a new brand created by a group of veteran hoteliers including Michael Mueller, a former senior vice president of development for Starwood, will offer similar electronic features along with loftlike accommodations with high ceilings, exposed brick, and large windows. Each hotel will have a business center, a 24-hour restaurant and a gym with showers and steam rooms.

And in Savannah, too! Photos from the Cambria website.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:01 AM 1 comments  

Nazi Tourism

You've heard of eco-tourism. How about Nazi tourism? The City of Vienna is in New York this week pitching itself as a honeymoon spot for Jews, highlighting a decades-long campaign to make Jews feel welcome in a city long associated with Hitler and the Holocaust.

The tour also touts Vienna's successes in urban renewal, waste management and attracting innovative industries. But at its heart are the amends it has made for its Nazi past – paying out reparations, returning stolen property, and helping to set up a “Jewish Welcome Service” that over the past 27 years has funded hundreds of visits by Austrian Jews who fled the Nazis.

Austrian authorities have paid for the rebuilding of synagogues, Jewish schools, memorials and other institutions serving the capital's 7,000 Jews.

“Everything is OK. I feel good here,” said Raphael Chai Malkov, who moved to Vienna from Israel in 1989 and owns a kosher bakery and grocery. “I hope it will stay this way.”

Three of the 12 planned events deal with Jewish themes – a visit to a Brooklyn Hassidic community by representatives of Vienna's Jews; a discussion of “Contemporary Jewish Vienna,” and a showing of “Zorro's Bar Mitzvah,” a documentary about four Austrian Jewish youths preparing for their religious coming-of-age ceremony.

BTW, here's what Variety says of the film: Vet documaker Ruth Beckermann blends healthy irony with bemused respect in "Zorro's Bar Mitzvah," which follows four youngsters in Austria as they celebrate becoming full members of the Jewish community at age 13. Film smoothly challenges the unstated taboo of portraying well-off German-speaking Jews whose children are thriving and have no qualms about expressing their Jewish identities. Intimate, communicative lensing and keen editing suggest an all-media career for Jewish and non-Jewish auds alike.

To learn more about the film, click here.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:00 AM 0 comments  

The Jesus Controversy: Readers Talk Back
Friday, March 2, 2007

I’ve received many comments about my media appearances this week on the topic of "The Jesus Tomb." This was one of the more polite and thoughtful, and I thought I would respond.

Hi Bruce,

I just watched a couple of the clips where you spoke out vehemently against the Jesus tomb documentary as being correct or factual.

A couple of points from an outside perspective:

1. You really don't know whether these tombs are of Jesus's family or not. Nobody can prove it one way or the other. It is, however, much more likely that Jesus was not raised from the dead as opposed to him being raised from the dead. It is more likely that he was not because that's what happened to 100% of the people we have ever known about.

2. Since there is absolutely no corroborating contemporary evidence from the time I find that anyone taking a position on whether this tomb is Jesus of Nazareth or not is making a fool of him or herself. The honest answer is: we don't know.

I wish pundits like yourself would exercise some intellectual honesty and just state the obvious which is: I don't know, let's take a closer look and we can choose to believe it or not.

But to dismiss some physical evidence while believing in supernatural events without any physical evidence strikes me as self delusional and ultimately dishonest.
One theme of all of my work in this area (and something I say on an interview I taped for CNN that will be airing at 11 pm on Friday night) is that struggling with questions of faith is a wonderful part of being human. In fact, it may be the ultimate aim of being human. I am thinking of when Jacob is coming back from Mesopotamia and wrestles with God in Genesis. At the end, God leaves a mark on Jacob’s leg, suggesting that we experience God not by talking with him, seeing him, smelling him, or hearing him. But by walking with him. Then God changes Jacob’s name to Israel, which means, literally, “One who strives with God.” Considering that Israel becomes the destination for the Five Books at least, the destination becomes the place where we struggle.

So, to answer the first point, I welcome an inquiry that ends with “I don’t know.” Many of the conversations with archaeologists that appear in my books end with similar notions. I’m thinking of one with Hanan Eschel in ABRAHAM that ends with his talking about having humility in matters of faith.

That’s precisely what’s not going on with Simcha Jacobovichi and James Cameron. They call their show “The Lost Tomb of Jesus.” Not maybe. Not possibly. But, “The Lost Tomb of Jesus.” They declare these boxes “The Greatest Archaeological Discovery of All Time.” There is not a single archaeologist who agrees with them. NOT A SINGLE ONE. Even the archaeologist who did the dig, who should have a vested interest in having his name attached to such a discovery, disagrees.

In criticizing this project, I am not passing judgment on whether there was a resurrection or not. Having not walked this part of the Bible, I’ve not really grappled with this question. And I don’t believe I’ve been asked in any of the dozen interviews I’ve done on this topic this week whether I believe Jesus experienced a physical resurrection. I’ve been asked about their claim that their evidence PROVES he was buried in this tomb, PROVES he was married to Mary Magdalene, and PROVES they sired a son together. Their research hardly proves the first (it just comes up with the odds, 600-1, that it might be him); it doesn't even attempt to prove the second claim (it says only that the bones of “Jesus” and the bones of the one of the “Marys” don’t share a mother; they have no proof they ever met, no proof they are the same age, no proof they had a relationship, and no proof they ever had children); and their research doesn't even address the question of whether they had a child (they didn't even test the DNA of the supposed son, they claim). In other words, THEY HAVE NO PROOF. They just have statistical equations. I simply don’t agree that pointing out that they have no proof of their claims is dishonest. I’m not saying I know. I’m just saying that they haven’t proved that they know.

And remember, they didn't even do this research to begin with. Someone else did – 27 years ago. Those images of them carrying burial boxes from caves are all a setup. Simcha is just a journalist who reinterpreted someone else’s work. Fair enough, but then to make these grand claims is odd. Unless you look at their history, which is what’s interesting and little discussed here. Simcha writes in his book about his work on the James ossuary a few years ago, in which he and his colleagues claimed they had made “the greatest archaeological discovery in history.” (The same words they're using now.) The Israel Antiquities Authority now says that's a forgery. The man who discovered it is now on trial.

It’s beginning to sound familiar now isn't it.

And that’s the point. You have to remember that dozens of tombs have been found in this one neighborhood that have burial boxes with the name of Jesus on them. I, and the others who are criticizing this charade, are not passing judgment on whether they are the Jesus of Nazareth described in the Bible. You want it; you got it: We don’t know. And we don’t know about this claim one either. But for two people – one of whom is an investigative reporter, the other of whom is a film director – to claim that they of all the people in the world know is, as I said to Simcha the other day, irresponsible at best and tawdry at worst. Sorry, but I don’t believe that calling this exercise for what it is rises to the level of what you call “self-delusional and dishonest.” If anything, I think the events of the last week have shown the power of the Internet to insert honesty back into the conversation.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:06 AM 0 comments  

Me on CNN 11 PM Friday; on FOX NEWS 9 PM Saturday

Posted by B Feiler at 7:03 AM 2 comments  

"Vegetarians Should Probably Take a Pass on Feiler's"

Somewhere over the rainbow, in Madison, Wisconsin, a pot of gold!

And the blogger, Madison A to Z, loves it. "In a word: Don't let the facade fool you (in one sense or the other)." Plus, it's cheap! "JM ate the queen cut prime rib with french fries and a lemonade. Nichole ate the broiled walleye with the twice-baked potato and a lemonade. The bill was $21 plus tip." Beat that Nobu. Here's their review:

So, OK, we confess - pulling in to Feiler's parking lot, next to the KFC in the shadow of the Beltline off Verona Rd., we felt like we were getting in over our yuppie heads. Feiler's turned out to be a really friendly place, though. We didn't get any of that barfly swivel-glare-at-the-new-people action that sometimes makes Eating in Madison A to Z uncomfortable.

It was the placemats, of all things, that put us at ease. They've got a cartoon of a posh couple pulling up to a caricature of Feiler's Cocktail Lounge and Cultural Center, plus an outhouse, a peeing dog, and Bert in a tree. The top-hatted ponce is saying to his date, "Let's eat here, it looks like a nice respectable place." T-shirts are also available to commemorate Feiler's recent anniversary.

As for the food, JM's salad was fine though the honey dijon dressing left a little something be desired. While no connisseur, he described his prime rib as "only OK" although the portion was well-sized. His meal highlight was the french fries which were golden and crisp. Someone changes their fry grease often. All in all, it was a great supper club choice.

For Nichole, there weren't a lot of appealing menu choices (vegetarians should probably take a pass on Feiler's). The walleye was a bit dry, but butter and tartar sauce both helped. The salad bar reminded us of Grama's kind of salad - iceberg lettuce, shredded carrots & other typical veggie toppings, coleslaw, pickled beets, and real bacon bits on a 4' cart with wheels.

The lack of swivel, the tongue-in-cheek placemat, and the general down-hominess of Feiler's won us over (as did the chance to use a $15 coupon). Best of all was the waitress, who juggled half a dozen tables with aplomb and friendliness. It all added up to a pleasant stop.

A free Feiler's T-shirt to the first person who submits a review to Feiler Faster.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:01 AM 1 comments  

Twin-splosion

When we first learned we would be having twins, we went scampering to the bookstore to buy up the half a shelf of books on the topic. That first night I read with increasing horror about the higher rate of complications during pregnancy, the higher rate of birth defects, the high rate of twins who begin to cannibalize one another in the womb. The worst of the books -- and I can't remember the name -- was so bad that I hid it in my office so my wife wouldn't take it with her the next day on a flight to South Africa. I knew she would go crazy with anxiety.

But one set of figures has stayed with me: Throughout history, one percent of humans have been twins: Two-thirds fraternal; one-third identical. In recent years the percentage has soared, perhaps as high as three percent, I've heard (though I've never done the research). The reasons: 1) Fertility treatment tends to send out more eggs, 2) In IVF, more than one egg is fertilized, and 3) Older women send out more eggs in general. This has increased the percentage of fraternals, of course, which involve more than one egg, and not identicals, in which one egg splits.

Twins are particularly prevalent in Hollywood, it seems, no doubt because the increase wealth produces a large number of women over 40 who can afford expensive treatments to produce children later in life. Last week, we had the extraordinary story of Marcia Cross, who named her twins nearly identical names to ours. And this week, USA Today runs a roundup of all the double births:

•Sean "Diddy" Combs, 37, and Kim Porter, 36
Relationship: The rapper, hip-hop mogul and fashion designer has been dating the former model and actress since 1994. (They broke up in 1999 and reconciled in 2003.)
New arrivals: Daughters D'Lila Star and Jessie James were born Dec. 21.
Other kids: The couple have a son, Christian, 8. Combs has a son, Justin, 13, with stylist Misa Hylton-Brim, and Porter has a son, Quincy, 15, with singer Al B. Sure.

•Marcia Cross, 44, and Tom Mahoney, 49
Relationship: The Desperate Housewives actress married the stockbroker in June.
New arrivals: Daughters Eden and Savannah were born Feb. 20.
Other kids: These are their first children.

•Angela Bassett, 48, and Courtney B. Vance, 46
Relationship: The How Stella Got Her Groove Back actress and the former Law & Order: Criminal Intent assistant district attorney married in 1997.
New arrivals: Surrogate son Slater Josiah and daughter Bronwyn Golden were born Jan. 27, 2006.
Other kids: These are their first children.

•Patrick Dempsey, 41, and Jillian Fink, 40
Relationship: Grey's Anatomy's Dr. McDreamy married the stylist in 1999.
New arrivals: Sons Darby Galen and Sullivan Patrick were born Feb. 1.
Other kids: They have a daughter, Tallulah, 5.

•Melissa Etheridge, 45, and Tammy Lynn Michaels, 32
Relationship: The singer, who took home an Oscar Sunday for her song from An Inconvenient Truth, exchanged vows with the actress in 2003.
New arrivals: Son Miller Steven and daughter Johnnie Rose were born Oct. 17.
Other kids: Etheridge has daughter Bailey Jean, 10, and son Beckett, 8,with former partner Julie Cypher.

•Diana Krall, 42, and Elvis Costello, 52
Relationship: The singers have been married since 2003.
New arrivals: Sons Dexter Henry Lorcan and Frank Harlan James were born Dec. 6.
Other kids: Costello has a son Matthew, 32, with previous wife Mary Burgoyne.

Photo taken outside my home, February 2007

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:00 AM 1 comments  

Lost Tomb of Jesus?
Thursday, March 1, 2007

I appeared on the NPR show "Here and Now" to discuss the Jesus tomb controversy on Thursday. Here's the description on the website: The claim that Jesus wasn't physically resurrected is made in the new James Cameroon documentary which will air on the Discovery Channel this coming Sunday. The film "The Lost Tomb of Jesus" says the burial boxes discovered in this tomb years ago are inscribed with the names "Jesus", "Mary," "Mary Magdalen," "Matthew," "Joseph," and "Judah." It also claims that Judah was the son sired by Jesus and Mary Magdalen. We speak with journalist Bruce Feiler about this claim.

To listen to the interview click here. To see me discuss the show on CNN, click here. To see me debate the director on CBS, click here.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:35 AM 0 comments  

Is My Daughter a Pharaoh?

I'm in Dallas this morning, and one of the reasons I like going on the road every now and then is that, as the father of 22-month-old identical twins, I can get a good night sleep. But here I am at 6:15 AM local time, waiting to do a Sirius Radio interview, and reading an article in the NYT about sleep problems and children.

Indeed, this is Topic # 1 among parents I know. Our pediatrician persuaded us very early on that we are raising a generation of sleep-deprived kids -- from baby until teenager -- and that we should be tough from day one. Oh, boy, did our friends and even our parents sometimes disagree. But we have tried, and now we're doing okay.

Yet now I read that the real battles have yet to begin?! The NYT chimes in this morning with a huge piece about toddlers sharing their parents beds, and the parents being shipped off to the kids beds. Aaarggh! This section rung true to me:

Ms. Lange spoke of a generational swing. “When I was growing up,” she said, “my parents’ bed was verboten. It wasn’t even on the table. I remember one night when I was scared as a child, I slept in the hallway, on the floor in front of their closed door. I had a lot of very serious boundaries when I was growing up. Now I think there is a backlash.”

Neil Newman, a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in Manhattan, treats parents and children over 5 years old, many of whom are struggling with sleep battles. “If I had to generalize,” he said, “I’d say it usually has something to do with separation or boundaries. It might be a problem of anxiety, but mostly the origin of the problem is the difficulty parents have in setting appropriate limits. It’s commonly believed in the mental health field that it’s important the children learn to sleep on their own. Not doing it often generalizes to other problems, because it’s about a fairly important way that parents say no to their child.”

Sleep specialists deploy a medley of behavioral and cognitive therapies: saying good night and then sitting in a chair that moves farther and farther away from the room each evening; proxy items (stuffed animals to “stand in” for the parent); handmade books that tell the story of the child going to sleep in her own bed. Amy Powers, a Houston mother, painted a “whole nighttime chronology,” she said, in a mural on her 4-year-old daughter Sarah’s wall. Sarah’s bed is a white four-poster, with a pink canopy and zebra-striped netting over the whole affair.

“It’s wonderful and it’s wasted,” Ms. Powers said. “By the time she’s ready to sleep in her own room, she’s going to be over the whole princess thing.”
And I have to say, when I read that section about the "nighttime chronology," it reminded me precisely of the paintings in the tombs of the pharaohs with depictions of what happened to the pharaoh overnight as he waited to be touched by the God of the Sun in the morning. My princess has become a pharaoh!

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:04 AM 0 comments  

Don't Want to Read "The Lost Tomb"?

But want to read something else on religion? Amazon has posted my list of Top Ten Books on Religion. Here are the top three:

3. Constantine's Sword by James Carroll

Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews -- A History: A rare and beautiful book by a towering, humane writer. Novelist and critic James Carroll explores the 2,000-year history of the Church's battle against Judaism and writes of his own struggles with Catholicism. This may be the best book ever written about one of the central tragedies in Western civilization.

2. The Bible As it Was by James Kugel

The Bible As It Was (Belknap): Clear, simple, and profound. A wonderful companion to the Bible, written by Harvard scholar James Kugel, that shows how ancient interpreters took the central stories of the text--from Creation to the Exodus--and introduced the commentaries that allowed it to survive.

1. The Dignity of Difference by Jonathan Sacks

Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations: At a time when the world braces for religious war, Jonathan Sacks, the chief rabbi of Britain, has written the definitive book on finding common ground through faith. Penetrating, learned, and highly readable, "The Dignity of Difference" belongs on the bookshelf of any thinking believer and could help those struggling to find ways to reach out to others of different religious backgrounds.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:01 AM 0 comments  

Is Osama Bin Laden Martin Luther?

My old friend Fareed Zakaria has an intriguing piece in Newsweek suggesting that we are, at last, seeing a Reformation in Islam, which he deems as both good news and bad. He says the dominant reality in the region is the growing schism between Sunni and Shia -- from the violence in Iraq, to warning of a Shia crescent in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, to the Palestinian turn to Shia. Here's a summary, provided by the WSJ:

Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri founded al Qaeda in the 1980s as a pan-Islamic organization. To that effect Mr. bin Laden initially resisted sanctioning violence against the Shiite minority in Afghanistan during the war against the Russians. Similarly, after the invasion of Iraq, Mr. Zawahiri reproached al Qaeda's head there, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, for attacking Iraq's Shiites.

Nevertheless, Mr. Zarqawi's approach has won out. Al-Qaeda's anti-Shiite message has boosted its appeal among a Sunni minority disenfranchised by the fall of Saddam Hussein. However, while the anti-Shiite stance might boost al Qaeda's appeal in "Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and some parts of the gulf," Mr. Zakaria says it means that everywhere else al Qaeda has lost its original appeal as a uniter of Muslims against a common, powerful enemy.

While al Qaeda finds itself dragged into an internal battle between Muslims, the U.S. should stay out of it, Mr. Zakaria says. This way it can ensure that what is a war between sects evolves into a war of ideas. "Islam must make space for differing views about what makes a good Muslim," says Mr. Zakaria. "Then it will be able to take the next step and accept the diversity among religions, each true in its own way."

The idea is certainly appealing here: Sit back while Islam fights an intramural battle and spends more time fighting with one another than with the outside world. Daniel Benjamin made a similar argument a few weeks ago. But I think the rising Shia argument is very weak; where are the new recruits going to come from? Shia seems to have topped out at 15% of the Muslim world. And maybe Bin Laden's dream of being a pan-Islamist might not give him the possibility of uniting the entire Muslim world, but isn't 85% of it fairly substantial? The real issue of Bin Laden is what percentage of the Muslim world is committed to fighting the West vs. what percentage is committed to trying to coopt its financial model. In places like Morocco, which is outside the Shia sphere, that is the real battle. I think there is quite a difference between a sectarian battle within Islam for the future of the faith vs. an internal reform movement that substantially changes the base theology, which is what the Reformation was about.


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