Lookout Famous Amos!
Thursday, May 31, 2007

The newest baker on the blogosphere, the Feilerettes favorite boy toy:

Actually, it’s very rare that I get to taste any of my recipes made by other people. I know people make them – friends call and you, my wonderful friends in the blogosphere, write – but generally they don’t make them for me, which is one reason why last night’s dessert, a variation on My Best Chocolate Chip Cookies, was so special. The other reason was that the cookies were made, from start to finish, with only one or two fatherly assists, by Mitchell, a 9-year-old with definite tastes.

Because Mitchell knows what he likes, he made some decisions about the recipe. He wanted chocolate-chip cookies, but he didn’t want “plain” cookies, so he made a Playing Around variation, Cocoa Chocolate Chip Cookies. He likes cookies softer than crisper, so he made his a little bigger and baked them a tad less. Because he loves cookies when the chips are gooey, he served them warm. Finally, because he’s as busy as the rest of us, he made the dough ahead of time, shaped it into balls, refrigerated the mounds, and then popped them on the baking sheet and slid them into the oven just as we were finishing our main course.


The cookies were a hit all around: we all loved them; I was delighted beyond measure to see Mitchell make them; and Mitchell was, like all of us bakers, so happy that he had made everyone around the table happy.

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Posted by B Feiler at 5:08 PM 0 comments  

Me on NPR

I did a fascinating one-hour interview on Thursday on the wonderful Minnesota Public Radio show "Mid-morning Live." The host took the conversation in unexpected bur continually interesting directions. To hear the interview, click here. The summary:

Author Bruce Feiler explores modern day Biblical lands and the landscape of faith. He talks about his journeys to Israel, Iran, Iraq and how his travels drew him away from structured religion.

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Posted by B Feiler at 2:37 PM 0 comments  

Twin Lit!
Wednesday, May 30, 2007

The Feilerettes have always been very verbal, and have always loved books. Even before they knew the alphabet, they would sit on the ground and thumb through books, being very careful to turn every page. For some months now, when they arrive at the last page, they declare, "The end!"

Having recently turned two, one of our daughters has started thumbing through grown-up books. Ones without pictures. She was turning the pages on a book about New York real estate when she handed over the book to me today and announced, "Bruce Feiler." Bruce Feiler, it seems, is the author of any grown-up book.

Looks like it's time for her to meet the Mulgrays!

Like many identical twins, Helen and Morna Mulgray have always done everything together.

They have always shared the same bedroom, worn identical clothes and enjoyed the same books and television programmes. For three decades they had the same job -- though in different schools -- before retiring the same year.

But at the age of 68, the Mulgray twins, who have never been apart for longer than two weeks, created a minor piece of history yesterday when their first novel went on sale in bookshops across Britain.

No Suspicious Circumstances, a crime novel set in Edinburgh and featuring an intrepid female investigator from HM Revenue & Customs, is believed to be the first novel published in English by identical twins. The authors, from Joppa, outside Edinburgh, are described on the cover simply as "The Mulgray Twins."

Started more than 14 years ago, it is the result of thousands of hours of painstaking writing and rewriting. Each of its 86,000 words was a joint endeavour.

"We have both spent 31 years as English teachers so have always loved writing," said Morna yesterday. Helen added: "We used to do it in the holidays, but back then it was just a hobby. When we retired we had the time to do it seriously."

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:12 PM 0 comments  

Drink Local

Hooray! This is likely to get me in trouble at home, but what an excellent idea. Years ago I tried to help can the "fresh ground pepper" cliche by refusing it at every restaurant I attended. It didn't work. Maybe I can take the same magic and help kick the "what type of water would you like?" scam at many restaurants.

DON’T bother asking for Fiji, San Pellegrino or any other designer water at either Incanto, a restaurant that opened in San Francisco in 2002, or at Poggio, which opened in Sausalito, Calif., two years later.

All their water comes out of the tap. It’s filtered before it reaches the table, but it’s from the public water system, just the same.

“Serving our local water in reusable carafes makes more sense for the environment than manufacturing thousands of single-use glass bottles for someone to use once and throw away,” Incanto explains at its Web site.

These two Bay Area restaurants were pretty much alone in kicking the bottle habit until Alice Waters, the godmother of things organic, sustainable and local, banned bottled still water at Chez Panisse in Berkeley last year and started serving only house-made sparkling water this year. Then the press took notice. Now other California restaurants, like Nopa in San Francisco, are following suit. Even an ice cream shop — Ici, in Berkeley — has jumped on the non-bottled-water wagon.

And now, with a little push from Ms. Waters, an important New York City restaurant is coming on board.

It’s a big move in the restaurant industry, which, if you extrapolate from the amount of water it buys, takes in at least $200 million to $350 million from bottled water a year, according to the restaurant consultant Clark Wolf.

The “eat local” movement first became popular in California, so it makes sense that “drink local” is catching on there as a way to reduce the environmental costs of manufacturing and transporting bottles of water, as well as the mountains of plastic that end up in landfills.

Read the whole article. It's excellent, including quotes from a school district that banned bottle water: When they first did it, everyone was up in arms. A year later no one complained. And an advocacy group that calculated the amount of fuel necessary to bring a boat load of water from France: An equivalent of 700 cars a year on the road. Even if you calculate in hyperbole, well done! And then this:

Dr. Gina Solomon, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, the environmental advocacy group, said there is no reason to believe that bottled water is safer than tap water, though there can be problems with either. The public water supply is much more stringently regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency than bottled water is by the Food and Drug Administration. The E.P.A. requires multiple daily tests for bacteria, for example, with the results available to the public; the F.D.A. requires weekly testing, which does not have to be reported to the agency, to the states or to the public.

“The rationale for buying bottled water is a fantasy that has a destructive downside,” Dr. Solomon said. “These companies are marketing an illusion of environmental purity.”

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Posted by B Feiler at 6:25 AM 0 comments  

The Pope Joins the Party
Tuesday, May 29, 2007

In praise of flip-floppping.

In a surprising about-face, Pope Benedict has decided to restore power and prestige to the Vatican department that oversees dialogue with Islam a year after he controversially downgraded it.

The department's return to its former status occurred as Catholic-Muslim dialogue is still suffering the negative effects of Benedict's Regensburg speech last September in which he appeared to equate Islam with violence.

Catholic and Muslim officials on Monday hailed the decision as a positive step that could help improve relations.

Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone said in Italy's La Stampa newspaper at the weekend that the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue would again become "a separate department".

Benedict downgraded the office in March 2006 by putting it under joint presidency with the Vatican's culture ministry and removing its president, Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, a Briton.

"This would be a very positive thing for Muslims," said a senior Muslim official active in inter-faith dialogue who asked not to be named. He said Muslims had seen the council's downgrading as a sign Benedict was not very interested in Islam.

"I think it's a great idea," said Father Tom Reese, senior fellow at Georgetown University's Woodstock Theological Center and a world-renowned Vatican expert.

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Posted by B Feiler at 5:03 PM 0 comments  

The Most Frightening Four Letters in English Acronyms

NICU. As parents of twins, we lived in fear of the NICU, the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. We know they do amazing work these days and know many parents, and children, who have thrived after premature, in some cases drastically premature, births. And, of course, the number of cases among twins and triplets (a friend in South Africa had some over the weekend) is much higher than for singletons.

How interesting to read in the NYT this morning that the standard of care is beginning to change, away from all the isolation, tubes, and feedings, and more in the direction of maternal contact with the child. Here are the key grafs:

Hospitals are overhauling their neonatal intensive care units to transform open wards into private spaces that, in essence, restore the intimate relationship between the mother and child and allow the fragile infants to develop.

The momentum for the model occurs as more babies are being born prematurely and at an earlier stage. In 2004, there were 508,356 preterm births at less than 37 weeks of gestation, a 30 percent increase since 1981, according to the March of Dimes.

In addition, survivability rates for smaller preterm infants are increasing as technology and care improve. Now, infants with a gestational age from 23 weeks, and with some exceptions less, are being cared for. Because the professionals have become so adept at sustaining the infants’ lives, they now are focusing on their future development. “Their little brains are not as well developed, and there is a longer recovery period,” said Kathleen A. VandenBerg, a trainer in the Newborn Individualized Developmental Care and Assessment Program.

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Posted by B Feiler at 4:25 PM 0 comments  

"Noah's Ark" Found in China

Another Noah's Ark!

'Noah's Ark' of 5,000 rare animals found floating off the coast of China

Endangered, hunted, smuggled and now abandoned, 5,000 of the world's rarest animals have been found drifting in a deserted boat near the coast of China.

The pangolins, Asian giant turtles and lizards were crushed inside crates on a rickety wooden vessel that had lost engine power off Qingzhou island in the southern province of Guangdong. Most were alive, though the cargo also contained 21 bear paws wrapped in newspaper.

According to conservation groups, the haul was discovered on one of the world's most lucrative and destructive smuggling routes: from the threatened jungles of south-east Asia to the restaurant tables of southern China.

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Posted by B Feiler at 4:22 PM 1 comments  

Rolling Thunder

The talk of Tybee Island, GA, this weekend was Operation Rolling Thunder, a program in which 90 police officers were brought to town to give out traffic tickets. Someone wrote into the Vox Populi feature of the newspaper that they couldn't wait for the Rolling Thunder to leave town so they could resume breaking the law.

How odd, then, to return home and read this headline: "Rolling Thunder Rolls Up to White House." Turns out it's the annual Memorial Day motorcycle rally for POW-MIAs who got a personal invitation to meet Bush on the White House grounds.

Who's doing the naming at the Savannah Police Department?

Posted by B Feiler at 4:15 PM 0 comments  

Five Questions About Religion for Every Presidential Candidate
Thursday, May 24, 2007

God is in the air these days, and He's threatening to take over the presidential campaign. Mitt Romney was asked on "60 Minutes" whether he obeyed Mormon dictates against premarital sex. Rudy Giuliani was asked whether his stance on abortion makes him a bad Catholic. The entire Republican field was asked whether they were against evolution. Expect the death of Jerry Falwell to provoke more questions about the role of the Religious Right in the GOP.

While Republicans notably are on the defensive about religion, Democrats are on the offensive: Barack Obama is claiming to be part of the "Joshua Generation" leading blacks into the Promised Land. Hillary Clinton is singing spirituals. John Edwards boasts how often he prays.

But while this God primary may be a welcome break for a media bored by benchmarks and 10-point plans, candidates' personal theologies are not the point ("Madame Candidate, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"). The real issue is how would-be Presidents understand the religious challenges facing the world today and how those beliefs might influence their decisions in office.

With that standard in mind, here are five questions about religion that all candidates should be asked.

1. Do you believe Jews, Christians and Muslims all worship the same God? George W. Bush answered this question affirmatively in 2004 and was heaped with brimstone by the Religious Right. Today, given events in Iraq and Iran, and fears of terrorism, anti-Muslim sentiment in America seems even higher - yet any attempt to address these issues depends on our ability to work cooperatively with the Muslim world.

2. With religious issues dominant in the world today, wouldn't our children be more prepared for the 21st century if our schools taught them about religion? The 1963 Supreme Court decision that outlawed using the Bible for religious purposes in schools explicitly stated that teaching religion in a nondenominational way was allowed. Teaching children to live and work with those who disagree is a defining challenge of the new century.

3. Do you believe that Israeli settlers have a God-given right to the West Bank? American politics has seen a curious alliance between Israel-loving Jews and evangelical Christians - like Falwell - who believe Jewish residence in Israel is a precondition for the return of Jesus. Yet peace in the region depends on dismantling some settlements. Which voters are more important: Those who believe God should help determine the fate of Israel, or those who fault Washington's reluctance to push for a two-state solution?

4. Given the Bible's role over the years in defending slavery, repressing women and justifying violence, can you pledge that you will keep it out of policy decisions? American history shows that advocates on all sides of major debates cite the Bible to support their position, rendering it almost meaningless. Maybe the time has come to purge the Bible from policy debates entirely.

5. Do you believe liberty is God's gift to mankind, and that it's America's obligation to spread this blessing to the rest of the world? President Bush evoked the spread of God's freedom when going into Iraq but balked at doing the same in Darfur. President Bill Clinton intervened in Kosovo but failed to see a greater plight in Rwanda. Perhaps the most important question about God in politics today is whether Americans wish to see our struggles with religion played out on an international stage.

The Constitution says that "no religious test" shall be required as a qualification for office. But given the platitudes served up by politicians, perhaps it's time for a real exam.


This article originally appeared in the New York Daily News.

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:30 AM 0 comments  

Fire on the Mountain

From the AP: Fire heavily damaged a synagogue Thursday, and police said they suspect arson.

The blaze struck on the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, which celebrates Moses' receiving of the Torah from God.

Police did not give a motive, but there have been incidents of anti-Semitism in Geneva recently, including graffiti scrawled on another Jewish house of worship.

The blaze broke out at 5 a.m. in the Hekhal Haness Synagogue in Geneva's Malagnou neighborhood. About 40 firefighters responded and had the fire under control an hour later, police spokesman Philippe Cosandey said. No one was hurt.

Cosandey said investigators suspect arson because there appeared to be several sources for the flames.

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:18 AM 0 comments  

Zen and the Art of Paris
Wednesday, May 23, 2007

That was quick! Paris Hilton seems to have made it through the Bible in record time (Just think: she could teach speed-reading of Leviticus in prison, not that her fellow inmates need to be in much a hurry), and today was photographed with a book of Buddhist teachings. Given how fast she made it through the Bible, and how short this book is, I suppose we can expect to see here with the Koran by nightfall. She may have to wear a bra with that one, though.

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Posted by B Feiler at 4:45 PM 0 comments  

The Garden of Eden Returns

In WHERE GOD WAS BORN I tell the story of a pioneering nature group run by the wonderful and brave Azzam Alwash that was attempting to reflood the Tigris-Euphrates marshes in southern Iraq that Saddam Hussein had drained. Azzam sent this link today to a hopeful update on his progress.

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Posted by B Feiler at 4:11 PM 0 comments  

Six Days of Cold War

I thought I'd never need to read another book on the Six Day War after Michael Oren's Six Days of War. Was I wrong?

In a new book that "totally contradicts everything that has been accepted to this day" about the Six Day War, two Israeli authors claim that the conflict was deliberately engineered by the Soviet Union to create the conditions in which Israel's nuclear program could be destroyed.

Having received information about Israel's progress towards nuclear arms, the Soviets aimed to draw Israel into a confrontation in which their counterstrike would include a joint Egyptian-Soviet bombing of the reactor at Dimona. They had also geared up for a naval landing on Israel's beaches.

"The conventional view is that the Soviet Union triggered the conflict via disinformation on Israeli troop movements, but that it didn't intend for a full-scale war to break out and that it then did its best to defuse the war in cooperation with the United States," Gideon Remez, who co-wrote Foxbats over Dimona, told The Jerusalem Post Tuesday. Essentially, the Soviet Union at the time was regarded as having evolved "a cautious and responsible foreign policy," the book elaborates. "But we propose a completely new outlook on all this," said Remez.

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Posted by B Feiler at 4:00 PM  

Springtime With Paris

Paris Hilton, photographed in Los Angeles, May 22, 2007.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:00 AM 0 comments  

Can Lionel Ritchie Bring Peace to the Middle East?
Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Mrs. Feiler Faster was in Jordan this weekend attending a World Economic Forum (you know, the Davos folks) forum at the Dead Sea. Actually, she was the first woman ever asked to co-chair one of their events in the Middle East. One night, all the assembled business executives, politicians, and media elite attended a dinner in a massive tent that belonged to King Abdullah. The entertainment was Lionel Ritchie. He sang one song, apparently, and people were polite enough, at which point he announced, "I thought you were a good crowd. Why don't you all move forward to the stage."

Mrs. Feiler Faster: "I thought no way any of these staid business people would do what he was asking. But sure enough, everyone in the tent started moving toward the front of the stage, sticking their hands in the air, and swaying back and forth to the music like it was a high-school prom. Everybody knew every word to every song! I couldn't believe it!"

I mentioned this story to some friends over the weekend, and one of them told me about an article that Andrew Corsello wrote in GQ a few months back about how HUGE Lionel Ritchie is in the Middle East. Andrew and I share an agent, so I'm trying to track down the article. In the meantime, here's an interview he did about his piece on NPR. Say you, say me.

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Posted by B Feiler at 9:30 AM 0 comments  

Did Muslims Win the Cold War?

I drank in many of Bernard Lewis's books on Islam a few years ago; I bet I read at least four. They are nearly universally calm, well-reasoned, and old-fashioned in an avuncular way. I certainly recommend them. But I have also been disheartened in recent years to read about his role of adviser to Dick Cheney and others. In these sessions, apparently, he takes the approach that Islam only responds to pressure, violence, and strength.

Could the two sides of his persona possibly read true. This piece, I fear, is an example in the wrong direction.

We in the Western world see the defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union as a Western, more specifically an American, victory in the Cold War. For Osama bin Laden and his followers, it was a Muslim victory in a jihad, and, given the circumstances, this perception does not lack plausibility.

From the writings and the speeches of Osama bin Laden and his colleagues, it is clear that they expected this second task, dealing with America, would be comparatively simple and easy. This perception was certainly encouraged and so it seemed, confirmed by the American response to a whole series of attacks--on the World Trade Center in New York and on U.S. troops in Mogadishu in 1993, on the U.S. military office in Riyadh in 1995, on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000--all of which evoked only angry words, sometimes accompanied by the dispatch of expensive missiles to remote and uninhabited places.

Stage One of the jihad was to drive the infidels from the lands of Islam; Stage Two--to bring the war into the enemy camp, and the attacks of 9/11 were clearly intended to be the opening salvo of this stage. The response to 9/11, so completely out of accord with previous American practice, came as a shock, and it is noteworthy that there has been no successful attack on American soil since then. The U.S. actions in Afghanistan and in Iraq indicated that there had been a major change in the U.S., and that some revision of their assessment, and of the policies based on that assessment, was necessary.

More recent developments, and notably the public discourse inside the U.S., are persuading increasing numbers of Islamist radicals that their first assessment was correct after all, and that they need only to press a little harder to achieve final victory. It is not yet clear whether they are right or wrong in this view. If they are right, the consequences--both for Islam and for America--will be deep, wide and lasting.

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Posted by B Feiler at 9:30 AM  

Hurry Up and Pass Go

This article about gamemakers speeding up board games because busy parents don't have time to play an entire game of, say, Chutes & Ladders, is very interesting. But it's TOO LONG! If you don't have time to read the whole thing, here's the essence:

Board game makers are heeding pleas of parents like Hastings [who complains a game takes days to complete] and introducing games tailored to busy lives and shorter attention spans that take only about 20 minutes to play.

Hasbro Inc., the largest U.S. game company, is releasing a streamlined version of The Game of Life that uses a Visa card rather than cash and a "LifePod" that electronically keeps track of points — which can keep the game moving. The Pawtucket, Rhode Island-based company is also introducing three "Express" versions of classic board games this year: Monopoly Express, Scrabble Express and Sorry Express.

"A lot of people like playing games, but they want resolution," said Jim Silver, editor-in-chief of Toy Wishes magazine. "And that's why you see some of these quicker games coming out."

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:59 AM 0 comments  

The New New Evangelicals
Monday, May 21, 2007

Don't miss the thoughtful piece in the NYT about the changing face of evangelical America. As we've chronicled here at FeilerFaster, the new it topics include AIDS and Darfur. If you still think all evangelicals are like Jerry Falwell, time to update your opinion:

The evangelical Christian movement, which has been pivotal in reshaping the country’s political landscape since the 1980s, has shifted in potentially momentous ways in recent years, broadening its agenda and exposing new fissures.

The death of the Rev. Jerry Falwell last week highlighted the fact that many of the movement’s fiery old guard who helped lead conservative Christians into the embrace of the Republican Party are aging and slowly receding from the scene. In their stead, a new generation of leaders who have mostly avoided the openly partisan and confrontational approach of their forebears have become increasingly influential.

Typified by megachurch pastors like the Rev. Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif., and the Rev. Bill Hybels of Willow Creek Community Church outside Chicago, the new breed of evangelical leaders — often to the dismay of those who came before them — are more likely to speak out about more liberal causes like AIDS, Darfur, poverty and global warming than controversial social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage.

But the conservative legacy of the religious right persists, and abortion continues to be a defining issue, even a litmus test, for most evangelicals, including younger ones, according to interviews and survey data.

“The abortion issue is going to continue to be a unifying factor among evangelicals and Catholics,” said the Rev. Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, who is often held up as an example of the new model of conservative Christian leaders. “That’s not going to go away.”

The persistence of abortion as a core concern for evangelical voters, who continue to represent a broad swath of the Republican base, could complicate efforts by Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has been leading the Republican presidential field in nationwide polls, to get primary voters to move past the issue and accept his support for abortion rights. The broader impact that the changing evangelical leadership may have on politics appears to be just beginning. Many evangelicals remain uneasy about the other leading Republican contenders, Mitt Romney, because of his Mormon faith and his past support for abortion rights, and Senator John McCain of Arizona, who has long had a tenuous relationship with conservative Christians.

The evangelical movement, however, is clearly evolving. Members of the baby boomer generation are taking over the reins, said D. G. Hart, a historian of religion. The boomers, he said, are markedly different in style and temperament from their predecessors and much more animated by social justice and humanitarianism. Most of them are pastors, as opposed to the heads of advocacy groups, making them more reluctant to plunge into politics to avoid alienating diverse congregations.

“I just don’t see in the next generation of so-called evangelical leaders anyone as politically activist-minded” as Mr. Falwell, the Rev. Pat Robertson or James C. Dobson, he said.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:11 AM 0 comments  

The Jefferson of Islam?

How's the plan of democracy in the Middle East going? The CSM reviews.

Critics of Bush say Iraq is a sinkhole of despair and the campaign for democracy in the Arab world is a hopeless quest. There is something in the Arab psyche, they suggest, that renders democracy unattainable.

Supporters of the president argue that while Iraq is not moving politically with the dispatch that impatient Americans expect, it has held elections in which millions of Iraqis voted despite threats of reprisal by terrorists, it has developed a constitution, and it has formed a government.

The truth probably lies somewhere between these two extremes.

Installation of democracy of the Jeffersonian character is unlikely. Where reform is budding, the outcome may be freer structures of representational government, but not necessarily patterned upon those of the United States or the West. They are more likely to incorporate local customs and traditions. Islamic countries would probably develop governmental systems that pay heed to religious beliefs. Afghanistan and Iraq are examples.

While outsiders can encourage and support, indigenous peoples must take the initiative in the movement toward freedom. In his second inaugural address, Bush recognized this when he said, "America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling. Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their own way."

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:03 AM  

The Netflix of Books

Apparently a number of people are trying this concept, but this is the first one I've heard of.

BookSwim aims to be the "Netflix of books." Since 1998, Netflix has become the king of online DVD services by renting batches of DVDs via the mail for a fixed monthly fee, and letting subscribers keep the movies as long as they like.

That's how BookSwim is meant to work. For $15 to $20 per month, the company will send your top five book choices. Return three books in a prepaid envelope, and your next three choices will be mailed to you.

For now, the founders are the only employees and will handle the mailing themselves. Assuming demand develops, they plan to hire part-time helpers.

Orders can be placed at BookSwim.com, along with customers' book ratings and comments. Burke and Siddiqui had an inventory of about 80,000 books when they launched the site's introductory phase in March.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:01 AM  

How Many Of Me

From my father, courtesy of www.howmanyofme.com.

There are 4,526 people in the USA named Eden. There are 1,237 people in the USA named Feiler. There are 0 people in the USA named Eden Feiler. (Wait, but there's one. Hmmm....)

There are 0 people in the USA named Tybee. There are 1,237 people in the USA named Feiler. There are 0 people in the USA named Tybee Feiler. (But, again wait....)

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:00 AM  

Which Bible To Teach in Schools
Friday, May 18, 2007

If you're going to be an advocate of teaching the Bible in schools, as I am, you need to be very careful which curriculum you teach. I've looked at two of the leading curricula in circulation now and find the one from North Carolina to be as biased as many claim. It's really just a fundamentalist tract in disguise. The new book, while it may not be perfect, is much more balanced and interesting, as well being designed by Jews as well as Christians. The WSJ reviews:

In recent years, many prominent educators have urged U.S. public schools to teach the Bible as part of literature or culture classes, contending that students need to understand the book's influence on literature, history and current events. More schools are starting to offer such classes, in some cases with a push from their state legislatures. Georgia last year passed a law providing money to encourage high schools to offer Bible electives. This month, the Texas House of Representatives almost unanimously approved a bill, now in the state Senate, that would offer training to teachers leading classes on the Old and New Testaments.

But the spread of Bible instruction is raising questions about the separation of church and state. That is particularly true in school districts that have adopted the National Council program, one of two competing national curricula now available.

The curriculum sold by the Greensboro, N.C.-based National Council concentrates on the Bible's role as literature and as an influence on American history. Founder Elizabeth Ridenour says that nearly 400 districts have adopted the National Council curriculum since 1992.

A competing multidenominational curriculum is offered by the Bible Literacy Project, a nonprofit group that gathered a board of scholars to write a student text that discusses the Bible's books and their influence on Shakespeare, poetry, art and music. Available for the past year, the textbook has mostly received praise from scholars and critics. Charles Stetson, the project's founder, says it has been adopted by 83 school districts in 30 states.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:03 AM  

The Arks Go Marching Two by Two

Is it just me, or are there suddenly a glut of Noah's Arks out there. To see what I mean, click here and here. But now another one is going up on Mt. Ararat itself.

Environmental activists are building a replica of Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat—where the biblical vessel is said to have landed after the great flood—in an appeal for action on global warming, Greenpeace said Wednesday.

Turkish and German volunteer carpenters are making the wooden ship on the mountain in eastern Turkey, bordering Iran. The ark will be revealed in a ceremony on May 31, a day after Greenpeace activists climb the mountain and call on world leaders to take action to tackle climate change, Greenpeace said.

"Climate change is real, it's happening now and unless world leaders take urgent, decisive and far-reaching action, the next decades will see human misery on a scale not experienced in modern times," said Greenpeace activist Hilal Atici. "Those leaders have a mandate from the people ... to massively cut greenhouse gas emissions and to do it now."

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:01 AM 0 comments  

What Do I Have in Common With Billy Graham and Rick Warren?

This blog post says we can't be quoted in academic papers.

Hopefully, neither students nor scholars would quote sermons or devotional texts to try to support an academic case. Henry’s commentary belongs in this category. In the post mentioned above, Jim West also panned Rick Warren. For some reason, Jim has an irrational hatred for Rick Warren, but he’s right to say that Rick Warren shouldn’t be quoted in academic papers; the same goes for T.D. Jakes or Bruce Feiler or Billy Graham or Lee Stroebel or Josh McDowell or Philip Yancey or any of the authors popular in evangelical bookstores. Some of these guys may be great homiletical/devotional writers, some less so (and some may produce outright dreck), but they’re not academics, and their books are not good sources for academic papers. From this point of view, citing Matthew Henry in an academic paper is a category mistake, like wearing a Mavericks jersey to a Cowboys game.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:00 AM 2 comments  

Falwell and Flint: K-I-S-S-I-N-G
Wednesday, May 16, 2007

OK, I thought I'd read everything interesting about Falwell, then I saw this statement from Larry Flint! To remind, Flint published a satirical ad that ran in Hustler in 1983 with the headline "Jerry Falwell Talks About His First Time," in which the magazine described a drunken Falwell having an incestuous encounter with his mother. Here's Flint's statement.

"The Reverend Jerry Falwell and I were arch enemies for fifteen years. We became involved in a lawsuit concerning First Amendment rights and Hustler magazine. Without question, this was my most important battle – the l988 Hustler Magazine, Inc., v. Jerry Falwell case, where after millions of dollars and much deliberation, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in my favor.

My mother always told me that no matter how much you dislike a person, when you meet them face to face you will find characteristics about them that you like. Jerry Falwell was a perfect example of that. I hated everything he stood for, but after meeting him in person, years after the trial, Jerry Falwell and I became good friends. He would visit me in California and we would debate together on college campuses. I always appreciated his sincerity even though I knew what he was selling and he knew what I was selling.

The most important result of our relationship was the landmark decision from the Supreme Court that made parody protected speech, and the fact that much of what we see on television and hear on the radio today is a direct result of my having won that now famous case which Falwell played such an important role in."

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Posted by B Feiler at 10:19 AM 1 comments  

The God Primary

My take on the real questions we should be asking every candidate for president. From today's New York Daily News:

God is in the air these days, and He's threatening to take over the presidential campaign. Mitt Romney was asked on "60 Minutes" whether he obeyed Mormon dictates against premarital sex. Rudy Giuliani was asked whether his stance on abortion makes him a bad Catholic. The entire Republican field was asked whether they were against evolution. Expect the death of Jerry Falwell to provoke more questions about the role of the Religious Right in the GOP.

While Republicans notably are on the defensive about religion, Democrats are on the offensive: Barack Obama is claiming to be part of the "Joshua Generation" leading blacks into the Promised Land. Hillary Clinton is singing spirituals. John Edwards boasts how often he prays.

But while this God primary may be a welcome break for a media bored by benchmarks and 10-point plans, candidates' personal theologies are not the point ("Madame Candidate, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"). The real issue is how would-be Presidents understand the religious challenges facing the world today and how those beliefs might influence their decisions in office.

With that standard in mind, here are five questions about religion that all candidates should be asked.

To read the questions, click here.

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Posted by B Feiler at 10:00 AM 1 comments  

"No Chicken Was Safe in Falwell's Grasp"

I've been looking for an unexpected comment about Jerry Falwell -- beyond the glorification of the right and the vilification of the left (in my view, both have valid points here; he was both powerful and full of hate) -- and finally I found one. It's by Zev Chafets, who has written about evangelicals and the Jews. After a wonderful riff about Falwell loving to eat ("No chicken was safe within Falwell's grasp, and he liked them deep-fried. I dined with him several times, and he ate with the aplomb of a fellow whose cardiologist was Jesus.") he settles in to his main point.

Falwell's Zionism was by no means inevitable. Before him, evangelicals reluctantly acknowledged that the Jews were God's chosen people, but many didn't quite agree with the choice. Falwell embraced the Jews of Israel (who appreciated his friendship) just as he embraced American Jews (who, by and large, spurned it). He could be acerbic about Jewish leaders — he called Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League a "damn fool" and pointedly told me that the comment was on the record — but he never let Jewish hostility shake his philo-Semitism. American Jews who now take evangelical friendship for granted need to know that it is, to a large extent, a grant from Jerry Falwell.

Falwell was always aware that he was under scrutiny. He hated crooked TV preachers like Jim Bakker, and he didn't have much use for hypocrites like Ted Haggard either. He was married to the same woman for nearly 50 years. He took in millions of dollars during his lifetime without a scandal — not bad for a televangelist.

Not everything Falwell said and did was commendable. He sometimes said stupid things, like his famous crack that 9/11 was the product of American immorality. He knew he was wrong, and he said so (just as he apologized for the segregationist views of his youth). Not every man of God has "I'm sorry" in his vocabulary. He never apologized for his beliefs, though, or his tough partisanship. He was a born-again Christian, an American and a Republican, in that order, and if you didn't like it, well, there were plenty of other places you could spend Sunday morning.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:41 AM 0 comments  

Why They Hate Us 2.0

Disturbing news from a Zogby poll about how Arab opinion toward the U.S. is worsening. TIME summarizes:

--There is a hardening of negative attitudes toward the U.S. and now even a downwards slide in attitudes toward our people, culture, values and products.

--There is less confidence that there will be peace and stability in the region in the next five years, with growing concern in several countries about the regional consequences of an Iraqi civil war; the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and a mounting concern about Iran’s intentions and U.S.-Iranian tensions.

--There is a turning inward. Arabs are investing more in their own economies instead of in the West, and more engaged than ever before with problems closer to home.

--There is a turning away from the U.S., as Arabs are factoring the East (China, India, and Southeast Asia) more significantly in their future investment strategies.

--There is a growing public pressure on Arab governments, especially those who maintain strong ties to the U.S. to distance themselves from our policies.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:05 AM 0 comments  

Real News From Iraq

Finally, the beginnings of a real coalition of the willing?

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf yesterday opened the 34th Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers (ICFM) at the majestic Jinnah Convention Center in the sprawling Pakistani capital and proposed the creation of a Muslim peacekeeping force to help stabilize Iraq.

“The mass killings that are taking place there have to end,” said a jaded and very tired-looking Musharraf. “All outside interference should stop immediately,” he said. “And if all the warring factions in Iraq accept, then maybe a peacekeeping force from Muslim countries grouped under the United Nations could be looked at as a possible solution,” he said. “There can be no two opinions that a political solution is a dire necessity now.”

And a fascinating and smart justification. A political solution is the only solution:
He said Pakistan and India finally realized that there was no military solution to the conflicts between them. “The relations between the two of us were never as good as they are now,” he said. “Both the countries decided to fall back and to give peace a chance. A little swallowing of egos can do wonders, can help a lot. We are building on the trust that we have created between ourselves.”

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:01 AM 0 comments  

Do We Need a Person of Faith to Run the Country?

Andrew Sullivan on "Reaping the Religious Whirlwind," God and the Republican Party:

Tackling an antiMormon evangelical heckler at one event, Romney delivered this carefully rehearsed line: “We need to have a person of faith lead the country.” It sounds pleasant enough and smooths over the difficult question of what exactly the content of your faith is – but isn’t it also a form of bigotry? Doesn’t it imply that atheists have no business running for office in the United States? If it’s bigotry to oppose someone on the basis of their faith, why is it not bigotry to oppose someone because they have none?

What the Republicans are discovering is that the short-term gains of using religion as a political weapon may be outweighed by the medium-term costs. Their two best candidates have been crippled by religious controversy. The third, John McCain, despite being pro-life, has had run-ins with the religious right in the past and cannot regain lost trust with the evangelical base.

Meanwhile, independents and swing voters are turned off by some of the rhetoric. In the first nationally televised Republican debate, three candidates said they did not accept the theory of evolution. If they don’t even buy natural selection, how are they going to grapple with climate change? And then there are small stories from the heart-land that just strike many Americans as bizarre. My favourite one was a resolution proposed by Utah Republicans at a local convention a couple of weeks ago. It was a statement of opposition to illegal immigration, but it had an eye-catching title: “Resolution opposing Satan’s plan to destroy the US by stealth invasion.”

The real stealth invasion, of course, is the incursion of blatant sectarianism into secular American political discourse. Sectarian politics doesn’t work in Baghdad, and it can’t work in Washington either. When it doesn’t end all civil conversation, it diminishes the ability of good men – like Romney and Giuliani – to run for office regardless of their own religious convictions.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:00 AM 0 comments  

No Question About Faith in Republican Debate
Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Wonder why. Is it presumed they all agree? Did moderators think the topic overexposed? Could they think of no questions that would elicit unexpected answers? Hmmmm. A missed opportunity. For more on this topic, I'll link soon to an Oped I've written that appears in Wednesday's New York Daily News.

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Posted by B Feiler at 10:29 PM 0 comments  

His Kids Loved Him

I've been reading through some of the obits about Jerry Falwell, a man I secretly always wanted to debate but never had the chance. One line jumped out of this comment on the Baptist Press:

These remain as monuments to Jerry Falwell's leadership and vision. But far more than these, I would look to his family. Dr. Jerry Falwell leaves a wife he dearly loved, Macel, and three children who were the pride of his life. The best testimony to Jerry Falwell the man is that his children love him and his two sons stand ready to continue what their father began. For a man who spent so much time in the public eye, this is truly a powerful legacy.
It's easy to dismiss this line, but the more I think about it, the rarer it seems: Billy Graham couldn't make that claim. Ronald Regan couldn't make that claim. I bet Ted Haggard won't be able to make that claim. Interesting.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:21 PM 0 comments  

BREAKING NEWS: Falwell "Gravely lll"

From the AP:

The Rev. Jerry Falwell was found unconscious in his office Tuesday and taken to the hospital, a Liberty University executive told a newspaper.

Ron Godwin, the executive vice president of the school, told The News & Advance of Lynchburg that Falwell was found unconscious after missing an appointment Tuesday morning. Falwell arrived at Lynchburg General Hospital around noon, the newspaper reported on its Web site.

When contacted by The Associated Press, Godwin said he couldn't talk at that time.

Update: AP reporting at 1:35 EDT that he has died.

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Posted by B Feiler at 12:56 PM 0 comments  

"You Can't Just Be President of the Christians"

Rereading American history for the last year for my new book, I've been struck how central religion has been to American life and how important preachers have been to momentous occasions in American history. The upshot: I'm much more comfortable standing up to the liberal orthodoxy these days that preachers stay out of politics. Of course this is a reaction to the outsized influence of the Religious Right, but I don't think it's the proper one.

Thus, how surprising to read that T.D. Jakes is saying that preachers should stay out of politics:

"I think really religion in general is struggling with politics, not just African Americans. Many, many times we've allowed ourselves to be taken up under the control of this party or that party, and I think that's dangerous when you do that," he tells Michele Norris.

"I don't think that God should be assigned to a party. When the party goes bad, then the clergy are embarrassed, and I think that faith should transcend politics," he says.

Jakes says he encourages his parishioners to vote and to be aware of the issues. But to assume that African Americans are "ignorant and need the pastor to tell them how to vote is an insult to our intelligence," Jakes says. "That day is gone."

Although it is important to Jakes that a presidential candidate has some consciousness of faith, spirituality and morality, he says he is not "myopic."

"I know many people who really love the Lord, but they might not be a good president," Jakes says.

He says that to be an effective leader, "you can't just be the president of the Christians."

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:05 AM 0 comments  

No Editing at the New York Times?

The NYT ran a long, long piece this weekend (now on top of the most e-mailed list) that basically makes a simple, timeless point: Nobody in the book business knows why some books sell and others don't.

“It’s an accidental profession, most of the time,” said William Strachan, editor in chief at Carroll & Graf Publishers. “If you had the key, you’d be very wealthy. Nobody has the key.”

The hunt for the key has been much more extensive in other industries, which have made a point of using new technology to gain a better understanding of their customers. Television stations have created online forums for viewers and may use the information there to make programming decisions. Game developers solicit input from users through virtual communities over the Internet. Airlines and hotels have developed increasingly sophisticated databases of customers.

Publishers, by contrast, put up Web sites where, in some cases, readers can sign up for announcements of new titles. But information rarely flows the other way — from readers back to the editors.

“We need much more of a direct relationship with our readers,” said Susan Rabiner, an agent and a former editorial director. Bloggers have a much more interactive relationship with their readers than publishers do, she said. “Before Amazon, we didn’t even know what people thought of the books,” she said.

All true, all true. Fine. Even if the NYT and others have printing the same article since Guttenberg. But my favorite part of the article was this note attached to the end:
Editors’ note: The editor of the Sunday Business section is under contract to Random House and did not edit this article.
So, did anyone edit the article?

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:01 AM 0 comments  

Peace With All

From a review of my friend Akbar Ahmad's new book, Journey Into Islam, from www.dawn.com.

Akbar’s field study of the Islamic heartland is pegged like a tripod, surveying the three most defining models of Islamic thought and action: the Sufi model of total devotion to Allah and peaceful co-existence — Sulh-i-kul (peace-with-all) — with His creations, epitomised by Ajmer, renowned for the shrine of the great saint and mystic Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti Ajmeri; the Aligarh paradigm steeped in modernity and liberalism of Islam and the Deoband template anointed by an orthodox and atavistic interpretation of Islamic dogma and ritual.

Akbar’s painstaking and innovative research clearly establishes the fact that partisans of all three models are, by and large, inclined to co-exist in peace and harmony with the West and cannot be stigmatised — as is currently fashionable in the West — for being hotbeds of radicalism. All three, however, have this strong sense that there’s little effort in the West to understand Islam and its followers, which isn’t the way to peace or bridge-building among universal faiths.

Akbar S. Ahmed’s Journey into Islam is, no doubt, a labour of love. Akbar has made a sterling contribution to the inescapable need for a rational, cool and un-phlegmatic dialogue between the denizens of the Islamic world and their western detractors. His is a voice of reason and rationality. However, the question remains: is anyone listening? Is this moderate voice going to be heard or will it be drowned in the cacophony of jingoistic shibboleths baying for the blood of Muslims? Take your own pick for an answer.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:00 AM 0 comments  

Jerusalem: Capital of Hamasistan?
Monday, May 14, 2007

Fact or fearmongering?

At a special cabinet meeting on Jerusalem Sunday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced plans to channel NIS 5.75 billion worth of benefits into the capital over the next five years, in an attempt to reverse the capital's demographic trends which Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski warned could lead to Hamas taking over the city without firing a shot.

"Jerusalem could, God forbid, end up not under Jewish sovereignty, but rather that of Hamas," Lupolianski said at the meeting, held at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center overlooking the Old City walls in honor of the 40th anniversary of the unification of the capital.

A recent study carried out by Hebrew University demographer Prof. Sergio Della Pergola predicted that if the situation - and Jerusalem's borders - remained unchanged, only 60% of Jerusalem's residents would be Jews by 2020, with the remaining 40% Arab, while another survey predicted that the number of Jews and Arabs living in the city would reach parity within a quarter century.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:03 AM 0 comments  

Need to Get Your Kid Into Pre-School? Get God.

What makes people find God? A family crisis, perhaps? A personal tragedy? A walk in a beautiful setting? Getting older?

In New York, it's getting your children into pre-school.

In the frenzy to land a preschool spot, some parents have found God. Area churches and synagogues that offer early-childhood programs are swelling with new families that have joined to help gain priority school admission for their kids. Brooklyn Heights’ Plymouth Church, for instance, has had “a surge of growth in young families,” reports the Reverend David Fisher. “We’re not sure if there is a direct relationship between the school and our congregation’s growth—though we strongly suspect there is.”

Not that it always works. When one Manhattan mother applied to a Jewish preschool, she was urged to join the affiliated synagogue. She paid the $1,500 fee and attended the odd service, but her kid was wait-listed anyway. “Then we applied again, and he still didn’t get in,” she complains. On the other hand, a Carroll Gardens mother who volunteered at a Brooklyn church event will be sending her daughter there in the fall. “Now I am going to be more involved in the church because it could help with a kindergarten recommendation.”

Some institutions are growing wise to self-interested joiners. “I laugh when people tell me, ‘I joined Temple Emanu-El in June and I’m applying to the preschool in September,’ says Amanda Uhry, owner of Manhattan Private School Advisors. “I say, ‘Do you think Emanu-El isn’t hip to that’s going on?’” Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church Day School prefers two years of membership and participation to be eligible for an admissions advantage, while the East Side’s Christ Church United Methodist limits preschool priority to congregants who actively worship and give money.

“The Day School office sends to the church office the list of people seeking admission, and we go over it to make sure that the criteria are being met,” says Christ Church’s the Reverend Javier Viera.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:01 AM 0 comments  

Why We Need More Wal-Marts

They are the key to the ancient world!

Workers digging at the future site of a Wal-Mart store in suburban Mesa have unearthed the bones of a prehistoric camel that's estimated to be about 10,000 years old.

Arizona State University geology museum curator Brad Archer hurried out to the site Friday when he got the news that the owner of a nursery was carefully excavating bones found at the bottom of a hole being dug for a new ornamental citrus tree.

"There's no question that this is a camel; these creatures walked the land here until about 8,000 years ago, when the same event that wiped out a great deal of mammal life took place," Archer told The Arizona Republic.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:00 AM 0 comments  

Romney, the Garden of Eden, and Underwear
Friday, May 11, 2007

Though I was criticized for making this point on blogginheads.tv a month or so ago, TIME Magazine raises the religious issue with Romney and even addresses the location of the Garden of Eden and Mormon underwear.

"John F. Kennedy's election in 1960 was supposed to have laid the 'religious question' to rest, yet it arises again with a fury. What does the Constitution mean when it says there should be no religion test for office? It plainly means that a candidate can't be barred from running because he or she happens to be a Quaker or a Buddhist or a Pentecostal. But Mitt Romney's candidacy raises a broader issue: Is the substance of private beliefs off-limits? You can ask if a candidate believes in school vouchers and vote for someone else if you disagree with the answer. But can you ask if he believes that the Garden of Eden was located in Jackson County, Mo., as the Mormon founder taught, and vote against him on the grounds of that answer? Or, for that matter, because of the kind of underwear he wears?"

Slate editor Jacob Weisberg threw down the challenge after reviewing some of Joseph Smith's more extravagant assertions. "He was an obvious con man," Weisberg wrote. "Romney has every right to believe in con men, but I want to know if he does, and if so, I don't want him running the country." That argument, counters author and radio host Hugh Hewitt, amounts to unashamed bigotry and opens the door to any person of any faith who runs for office being called to account for the mysteries of personal belief. He has published A Mormon in the White House?, a chronicle of Romney's rise as business genius, Olympic savior, political star. But Hewitt has a religious mission as well when he cites a survey in which a majority of Evangelicals said voting for a Mormon was out of the question. If that general objection means they would not consider Romney in 2008, Hewitt warns, then prejudice is legitimized, and "it will prove a disastrous turning point for all people of faith in public life."

The Mormon question has settled in right next to the issue of whether a twice-divorced man has credibility discussing family values or whether changing one's mind on an issue like abortion is a sign of moral growth or cynical retreat. Unlike in 1960, today the argument is less about the role of religion in public life than in private. It is about what our faith says about our judgment and how our traditions shape our instincts--and about what we have the right to ask those who run for the highest office in the land.

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Posted by B Feiler at 10:34 AM 0 comments  

Open the Door, Please

A reader writes in response to my post on "Knocking."

Dear Mr. Feiler,

The next time Jehovah's Witnesses come to your door, please give them a hearing hear for a few minutes; if your busy, you can request that they come back at a more convenient time for you. These people volunteer their time to spread the good news from the Bible. Whether you agree with their position on the Bible or not, it is always good to have a friendly dialog with others. Not everybody will agree with what you write in you books, but that does not mean that they should not be read by anyone that wishes to.

Often people that claim that they do not agree with the message of Jehovah's Witnesses have never actually allowed one to converse with them; they base their opinions on what they hear from others. Before one issues an opinion on any subject, they should gather all the available facts. Not allowing Jehovah's Witnesses to speak and then having an opinion is not unlike someone having an opinion on one of your books without having had the benefit of reading it.

Best regards,
[Signature]
First of all, I am blessed to get emails from readers. From time to time, I get an email that is rude, and sometimes openly hostile. I find that the ruder people are the more likely they are not to sign their name. I was deeply impressed by the tone of this note and by the fact that this person signed his name. Already, this note made me respect Jehovah's Witnesses more. If the only thing this faith does is teach its followers to be polite, that's not a small thing.

I also believe, as anyone reading this blog surely knows, in open dialogue among people of different faiths. And I believe each of us should be blunt and critical about our own faiths before, and maybe even as a precondition, for applying that standards to others. So I agree about the need for more knowledge.

Having said that, I would still prefer to have that conversation at a time of my own choosing. Especially as someone who devotes most working hours in my day (and many at night) to this topic, I don't find it to be a sign of intolerance that when someone knocks on my door unrequested on a Saturday afternoon, when I'm either working, or napping, or doing dishes, or playing with my children, or whatever I'm doing, that I chose not to speak with them. This scenario, which, if you didn't read my initial post, just happened to me, is not like someone having an opinion about my books without having read them (a very common position, by the way), it's like me walking into someone's bedroom when they may not even be dressed, asking them what they think of my books, then considering them ill-read and rude when they tell me to go away. With respect: There's a time and place for everything, even interfaith dialogue.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:05 AM 2 comments  

The "Love Bra" Hits Japan

When I was teaching junior high school in Japan 20 years ago the country was undergoing a size crisis: Young people were considerably taller than their parents, largely because they ate more protein. Those post-war years in Japan saw a lot of rice on the dinner plate (and a lot of stomach cancer as a result). One question being considered: Should chopsticks be longer, since they are said to have been designed to be proportionate to the size of the hands.

The WSJ checks in on this trend and though it doesn't mention the chopstick situation, the reporter points out that my former students, especially the girls, have grown up and now have hips and breasts that are several sizes larger than their mothers. One impact: The Love Bra, a new product that pushes up and out and needs no padding.

The cleavage craze took off in 2003, when a young pop star named Kumi Koda appeared in ads around Tokyo wearing a barely-there metallic bra and not much else. In one image, she wore coconut shells over her chest. Then, two years later, she performed at the televised Japan Record Awards wearing thin tape-like gold satin straps over her breasts that revealed nearly everything when she danced. The 24-year-old star has become the champion of a new "If you've got it, flaunt it" attitude among young Japanese women.
These are the facts:
Today the average Japanese woman's hips, at 35 inches, are around an inch wider than those of women a generation older. Women in their 20s wear a bra at least two sizes larger than that of their mothers, according to Wacoal. Waist size, meanwhile, has gotten slightly smaller, accentuating many young women's curves.

The average 20-year-old is also nearly three inches taller than she was in 1950, according to government statistics, and the average foot has grown by nearly a quarter of an inch.

The physical changes are largely the result of an increasingly Westernized diet, say nutritionists. Meals that used to consist of mostly fish, vegetables and tofu now lean heavily toward an American-style menu of red meat, dairy and indulgences such as Krispy Kreme doughnuts and Cold Stone Creamery ice cream.

All this extra protein and calcium has led to longer, stronger and fuller bodies. Shinichi Tashiro, an endocrinology professor at Showa Pharmaceutical University, says the intake of extra fat tends to go to either breasts or hips in adolescent girls.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:01 AM 0 comments  

Where The Moderates Are

Still one of the of the most frequent questions I get on the road is, "Where are the moderate Muslims?" Answer: Here. Three heavyweight friends of mine are joining together in Washington, DC, next month to discuss interfaith relations. Here's the invitation:

Globalization, the war on terror, Islamic fundamentalism, and Islamaphobia have left many wondering if friendship between Islam and the West is possible. In our continued efforts to promote inter-religious dialogue and intercultural understanding, the Center for Global Justice and Reconciliation is hosting a panel discussion to openly address the escalating tensions between Western Nations and the Muslim world. I hope you will join Bishop John Bryson Chane, Rabbi Bruce Lustig, and Islamic scholar Professor Akbar Ahmed on Thursday, June 14, from 7- 9 pm in Perry Auditorium* for a discussion of Dr. Ahmed’s new book, “Journey Into Islam” which examines the need for dialogue and deeper understanding across religion and culture. Together the panelists will reaffirm the power of dialogue and forming friendships across religion, race, and tradition to create lasting peace.

We would very much like you to be a part of this evening of inter-faith sharing and discussion. Please contact Katherine Wilkins at (202) 537-5737 or kwilkins@cathedral.org, with your response by Wednesday June 5th.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:00 AM 0 comments  

The Meaning of Herod's Tomb
Thursday, May 10, 2007

A friend asked me how important I thought the discovery of Herod's tomb was on a scale of 1 to 10: 1 being Jesus's tomb, in other words, a hoax; 10 being the Dead Sea Scrolls, meaning the find of the century. (Great scale, by the way.) My answer: A three, maybe a four.

Why so low? First, Herod lived only 2,000 years ago, hardly the 3,000 of David or the 4,000 of Abraham. As a result, we know quite a lot about him. You can credibly write a biography of Herod (many have done so) based on the archaeological and historical record of his time under the Roman empire. This would be nearly impossible with David. And absolutely impossible with Abraham.

Second, Herod himself is not one of the biblical patriarchs, kings, or prophets. He's not a central player in the main storyline of the Bible, except for his role expanding the Second Temple and his role in setting in play a number of events surrounding Jesus. As a Roman client king, he was a political functionary, albeit a powerful and prolific one; not a person particularly touched with an intimate relationship with God.

This leads to the third reason: This discovery, if true, doesn't really alter what we know about the period, the Bible, or even Herod that much. It was found, for instance, in a place that already carries his name. As a result, it doesn't really touch on the great debates surrounding the Bible, religion, the veracity of the stories, etc. These, of course, are the really big questions that discoveries such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Gnostic Gospels, and David's kingly title have done in recent decades. Especially considering that the tomb appears to be empty (meaning it contains none of the extraordinary discoveries found in, say, King Tut's tomb), it hardly advances the story. King Herod's tomb is fascinating, titillating, and important in the story of late Second Temple Judaism, but it's not a galvanizing moment in biblical archeology or world religion.

PS: The discovery has absolutely no significance at all in the conversation between Israelis and Palestinians over who should control the the West Bank, unlike this silly assertion in the paragraph 3 of the Washington Post article on the find:

The discovery dusted off the competing Israeli and Palestinian claims to the region between Bethlehem and the Judean desert. Israeli settler leaders said the reported find of the Jewish king's tomb supported their historic right to the area, while Palestinians expressed fears that it would be used as a pretext to increase Jewish settlement construction south of Jerusalem.

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Posted by B Feiler at 10:57 PM 0 comments  

"Newspapers are Screwed"

Some interesting pieces on the future of online news vs. newspapers. The publisher of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette wrote a piece on the peril of giving away news on the Internet for the WSJ:

All of this would be fine if newspapers generated lots of additional revenues from offering free news. But the fact is newspapers generate most of their online revenues from classified advertising, not from news. Gordon Borrell, CEO of Borrell Associates, estimated that newspaper Web sites generated 78% of their revenues from classifieds in 2006.

It turns out that a Web site is a very different medium from a newspaper. While consumers often find pop-up ads a distraction and banner ads as more clutter, readers often seek out the advertising in newspapers.

The Inland Cost and Revenue Study shows that newspapers will generate between $500 and $900 in revenue per subscriber per year. But a newspaper's Web site typically generates $5 to $10 per unique visitor per year. It may be that newspaper Web sites as an advertising medium, and free news, just can't generate the revenue to sustain a valued news operation.

In fact, online revenues for the publicly traded newspaper companies in 2005 varied from 1.7% at Journal Register Co. to 5.7% at Belo Corp. The only company higher was the Washington Post Co. at 8.4%. Yet newspapers typically spend 12% or more of their revenues on their news and editorial operations.
And the founder of Craigs List, Craig Newmark, was even more blunt to a meeting of newspaper folks:
The mostly free classified site, which covers such categories as real estate, help wanted, personals, and general merchandise, has been taking important classified dollars away from newspapers. The site claims over 7 billion hits a month worldwide.

But Newmark doesn't feel guilty about the ongoing shift of classified dollars away from the medium. While he is a champion of more investigative reporting in newspapers -- which he admits costs money to fund -- he wasn't going to let the crowd boo-hoo about revenue woes. He deftly mentioned newspapers' high profit margins -- somewhere in the ballpark of 10% to 20% -- as proof there is plenty of money to feed investigative journalism and the newsroom. "I don't understand what the problem is," he said.

"People like Helen Thomas need backup," he said.

Newmark told an all-too-knowing audience that this is a time of "creative destruction" and that he has a "great deal of sympathy for people who run the printing presses. They are screwed." It's not that journalism is becoming obsolete; rather the delivery methods are changing: "Even the kids realize news is important. The problem is paper is too expensive," he said.

Posted by B Feiler at 8:06 AM 1 comments  

Savannah Mustard With Your Crumpet, Ma'am?

An answer to the Savannah Mustard Conundrum (not quite the Feiler Faster Thesis, but hey)? A reader writes:

Savannah mustard is just a variety of mustard greens.Look at Park Seed Company website -

Mustard Savanna Hybrid
Brassica juncea Savanna Hybrid
20 days. The earliest Mustard Green we grow, Savanna Hybrid begins bearing huge, tasty green leaves less than 3 weeks after planting! The leaves are very uniform and quite abundant on strong plants, which hold their harvest in the field much longer than open-pollinated types. A superb choice for high performance and great yields, plus mild, fresh flavor.

Sow seed outdoors in early spring or, for fall crops, 6 to 8 weeks before first fall frost. Space seedlings 1 to 2 inches apart in rows 15 inches apart. Pkt is 1/16 oz. (1025 seeds).

Seeds Item # 5618
Mustard Savanna Hybrid
Fair enough, but this doesn't explain how it got the name Savannah?! And, by the way, does it have the 'h' at the end or not???

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:06 AM 1 comments  

The Baby War in Israel

The real money has always been on demographics to change the political situation in Israel. These numbers strike me as representing slower growth than I would have imagined.

The number of Arabs living in Jerusalem grew twice as fast as the city's Jewish population over the past decade, according to a report by an Israeli research institute.

At current growth rates, Jews will comprise 60 percent of the holy city's population by 2020 compared with 66 percent now, according to projections by the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies.

It said the Arab population would rise from 34 percent to 40 percent over the same period.

The city's population in 2007 stands at 720,000 people, a figure that includes east Jerusalem which was captured and later annexed by Israel after the 1967 war, as well as new districts built in the same area.

Over the past 40 years the Arab population has grown by 257 percent from 68,000 to its current level of 245,000, while the number of Jews living in the city has risen by 140 percent -- from 200,000 to 475,000.

The Arab birth rate for the past decade has been between three percent and four percent, more than double that of Jews. If this trend continues Arabs will make up 50 percent of the population by 2035, the report said.

Jerusalem's demographic evolution has been altered by the departure of thousands of Jewish families from the city itself to the outskirts and nearby settlements in the occupied West Bank, where living costs are cheaper.

Update: Now I see why. Later in the report the study points out that Hasidic Jews will up the birth rate among Jews in Israel."
After 2025, the Jewish majority will rebound past its current 80 percent position as natural growth in high growth Jewish sectors overtakes growth in Arab population groups."

The so-called secular and traditional Jews would drop from the current 64 percent to 56 percent of Israel's population. The secular-traditional sector would decrease from the current 80 percent to 71 percent of the Jewish community.

The report linked predicted Jewish growth to the current "baby-boomer" generation as well as steady immigration. At the same time, Arab fertility rates dropped from over nine births per woman in the 1960s to 4.4 in 2000 and 3.6 in 2006.

This is a mixed blessing for moderate Jewish lovers of Israel, as the ultra-Orthodox are not particularly Zionist, don't serve in the Army, and are a heavy financial burden on the State because of the subsidized education they receive.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:03 AM 0 comments  

Knocking

I'm living in Brooklyn these days, as many of you know, the worldwide headquarters of Jehovah's Witnesses. We had our first door knockers a couple of weeks ago on a Saturday afternoon. I kind of wanted to hear their pitch but I was in the middle of doing something. I noticed their Bibles and explained that I write books about the Bible and wished them well.

Then I got this press release about an upcoming PBS documentary about them. I haven't seen it, but here's the info. Mormons this week and Jehovah's Witnesses after that. PBS is spreading its wings wide these days. Good for them.

PBS EXPLORES THE OFTEN-MISUNDERSTOOD JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES
'Knocking' Puts Fundamentalism and the Culture War in a New Light
TV Premiere: May 22 on Independent Lens

“Riveting and illuminating. Knocking takes us inside the world of Jehovah’s Witnesses in a way that is utterly surprising and moving.” -- Anderson Cooper, CNN

“Knocking affirms the principle that in a free society, the protection of religious liberty and the advancement of personal freedoms need not be competing values." -- Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director, American Civil Liberties Union

As religion creeps more and more into political affairs and fuels both the Culture War and holy wars, the moving new documentary Knocking enters the national dialogue with a welcomingly fresh perspective. The festival-winning film, airing May 22 on the PBS series Independent Lens, opens the door on Jehovah's Witnesses and takes the discussion of fundamentalism to an entirely new place.

Jehovah’s Witnesses are a Christian group that has ministered door-to-door for 130 years and counts 7 million members worldwide. Though often dismissed as an odd or irrelevant sect, Knocking takes an empathetic and objective look at how the unlikely religion became such a surprisingly vital thread in the fabric of American life. Among other things, Knocking presents the group's unique brand of fundamentalism as an example of how to calm the divisive Culture War. Jehovah’s Witnesses adhere to a strict separation of church and state.

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Posted by B Feiler at 7:00 AM 1 comments  

Herod's Tomb Found?
Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Breaking news From the AP:

An Israeli archaeologist on Tuesday said he has found the tomb of King Herod, the legendary builder of ancient Jerusalem and the Holy Land.

Hebrew University archaeologist Ehud Netzer said the tomb was found at Herodium, a flattened hilltop in the Judean Desert where Herod built a palace compound. Netzer has been working at the site since the 1970s.

Netzer said the tomb was discovered when a team of researchers found pieces of a limestone sarcophagus believed to belong to the ancient king. Although there were no bones in the container, he said the sarcophagus' location and ornate appearance indicated it is Herod's.

"It's a sarcophagus we don't just see anywhere," Netzer said at a news conference. "It is something very special."

Netzer led the team, though he said he was not on the site when the sarcophagus was found.

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:49 AM 0 comments  

The Real Impeachment: Iran

More articles you won't read in the American press, which is buying hook, line, and sinker into the mindless warmongering against being propagated by the White House and others. The Guardian reports what's really happening:

A grand coalition of anti-government forces is planning a second Iranian revolution via the ballot box to deny President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad another term in office and break the grip of what they call the "militia state" on public life and personal freedom.

Encouraged by recent successes in local elections, opposition factions, democracy activists, and pro-reform clerics say they will bring together progressive parties loyal to former president Mohammad Khatami with so-called pragmatic conservatives led by Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani.

The alliance aims to exploit the president's deepening unpopularity, borne of high unemployment, rising inflation and a looming crisis over petrol prices and possible rationing to win control of the Majlis in general elections which are due within 10 months.

Parliament last week voted to curtail Mr Ahmadinejad's term by holding presidential and parliamentary elections simultaneously next year.

Though the move is likely to be vetoed by the hardline Guardian Council, it served notice of mounting disaffection in parliament.

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:05 AM 0 comments  

Muslim Rap

Seems to be the week for Muslim youth rebellion music stories. First, punk. Now, rap.

Six suicide blasts in Morocco's biggest city have sparked fears of more al Qaeda-linked bombings to come, but they provided an unlikely inspiration for a streetwise young rap musician.

Sitting in the cramped back room of a Casablanca apartment, his friends beating out the rhythm on their hands and chests, Younes Samih launches into his latest song, ``Today's War.''

``What do you want -- to make blood and tears flow? Have you found no other way out except to blow yourself up?'' the 23-year-old pours out in a quickfire torrent of Arabic.

``Come with us and think about it. Don't let yourself be poisoned. If you die by blowing yourself up, where will you leave your heart?''

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:03 AM 0 comments  

Valet, the Play

Only a few days left for anyone in L.A. to see this new play by some new friends of mine.

VALET
A physical theater play of astronomical procrastinations…
Spend the evening with LA's most notorious men of service!
Your manipulation is our pleasure.

Written and performed by:
Brandon Breault and Matthew Morgan
Special Guest Star: Whit Hertford
Technical Director: Corey Womack
Directed by: Rory Kozoll

Theatre Theater
5041 W. Pico Blvd.
Between La Brea and Fairfax

5 PERFORMANCES ONLY!!!!!!!
Sunday, April 29 @ 8pm
Monday, April 30 @ 8pm
Sunday, May 6 @ 7:30pm
Thursday, May 10 @ 8pm
Sunday, May 13 @ 7:30pm

$12

Reservations: 323.251.6930

Posted by B Feiler at 8:00 AM 0 comments  

Savannah Mustard?
Monday, May 7, 2007

Another post about the State Dinner on Monday night: I come from Savannah, GA, in fact from five generations of Savannahians. I also am a contributing editor at GOURMET, though I admit that I know far less about food than I know about, say, Savannah. Thus, you can imagine my surprise to hear on C-SPAN that the menu for QEII (NB: not proper etiquette; don't spell this way at home!) contains "Savannah mustard." Savannah mustard?! Any clues?

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:18 PM 0 comments  

The Pope of Protestantism

I happened to be at the magisterial Riverside Church a few days ago doing research for my new book. I had never been to what's sometimes viewed as the Vatican of liberal Protestantism and I was blown away by the beauty and quirkiness of the building. It may be modeled on Chartres, but only Riverside has Einstein carved above the front door. And Darwin!

Coincidentally, my friend Sam Freedman has an outstanding article in the NYT about the challenges the church is having finding a new minister. I recommend this piece highly, though my own visit this week suggests the problems may be even deeper than Sam is able to get on the record, including that the 2,700 member figure quoted here is greatly exaggerated.

Since being founded by John D. Rockefeller in 1930, Riverside has often and justifiably been likened to the Vatican for America’s mainstream Protestants, the theologically and politically liberal segment of the faith. The church’s first minister, Harry Emerson Fosdick, and successors like William Sloane Coffin, used Riverside as a national pulpit from which to preach social justice, civil rights and opposition to the Vietnam War, among other causes.

Yet now, as Riverside prepares to search for a new senior minister for only the sixth time in its history, mainstream Protestants are struggling to reverse a decades-long pattern of losing numbers, vitality and influence to their evangelical Protestant competitors. Between 1990 and 2000 alone, mainstream denominations like the Episcopal, Presbyterian and United Methodist Churches and the United Church of Christ lost 5 percent to 15 percent of their members, according to the Association of Religion Data Archives. Riverside is interdenominational but is affiliated with the United Church of Christ and the Baptist Church

The confluence of challenge, opportunity and visibility, then, makes Riverside’s selection of a new leader important not only for the 26 million adherents of mainline Protestantism but also for the shape of American religion as a whole.

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:03 AM 1 comments  

Pass the Peas, Please

My favorite line from an article in the NYT about the Queen's eating habits in advance of the white-tie State Dinner Monday night at the White House:

The guidebook includes the queen’s dietary restrictions. “She doesn’t like spicy food,” said Anita McBride, Mrs. Bush’s chief of staff.

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:01 AM 0 comments  

Free Authors!

I received this email from the AuthorsGuild. Interesting and important.

When collectors donate manuscripts, letters, and diaries of an author to libraries or universities, they are entitled to deduct the fair market value of those literary papers from their income for tax purposes. When authors donate their manuscripts and other papers to libraries or universities, they're permitted to deduct only the cost of the physical materials used to produce those documents (the cost of paper, ink, toner).

The difference, of course, is immense, and immensely inequitable to authors who choose to donate their papers for scholarly research.

We now have a good chance to right this wrong, and we'd like your help.

BACKGROUND

For seven years, the Authors Guild has supported proposed changes to the tax code that would allow authors and artists to deduct for tax purposes the appraised market value of their own work (such as manuscripts, first editions, or research notes) that they donate to museums, universities, and libraries. Current tax laws permit the creators to deduct only the value of the materials used in creating the work, such as the expense of the paper and ink in the case of an original manuscript. Collectors and others, however, are permitted to deduct the fair market value of donated manuscripts.

The "Artist-Museum Partnership Act" was recently reintroduced in the House and Senate to correct this inequity. In the Senate, the bill was introduced as S. 548, by Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Robert Bennett (R-UT). In the House, H.R. 1524 was introduced by Representatives John Lewis (D-GA), Jim Ramstad (R-MN), and Lloyd Doggett (D-TX).

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:00 AM 0 comments  

Death in the Sinai
Sunday, May 6, 2007

Just a few days after Condi Rice was in the Sinai for a regional peace meeting about Iraq, a blow to peace on the peninsula:

A plane carrying foreign peacekeepers across the Sinai desert crashed Sunday near a stretch of highway where it had tried to make an emergency landing, killing eight French soldiers and a Canadian, officials said.

Capt. Mohammed Badr, a police officer in Sinai, said the plane went down 50 miles from the nearest major town, el-Nakhl.

It appeared the Canadian-made DeHavilland DHC-6 Twin Otter tried to land on the mountain highway but crashed nearby after clipping a trick, said Normand St. Pierre, a spokesman for the Multinational Force and Observers, an independent force created by Egypt and Israel to monitor their border in the Sinai after a 1979 peace deal.

The crash wiped out more than half of the 15-member French contingent and destroyed the mission's sole fixed-wing aircraft, St. Pierre said. A ''higher than normal'' load of passengers and crew were aboard the aircraft at the time of the crash because it was on a training mission. The truck driver escaped unharmed.

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Posted by B Feiler at 10:38 AM 0 comments  

The New New South
Friday, May 4, 2007

Patty Cohen hit two stories out of the park this week in the NYT. First, her profile of Michael Chabon in the Sunday paper.

Then this wonderful piece about a new wave of Southern historians showing that the South is not what you think. If you read one article on this blog today, read this one.

A new generation of historians is exploring some of the untold stories of the civil rights movement and its legacies: the experiences not of heroes or murderous villains, but of ordinary Southern whites. And their research is challenging some long-held beliefs about the nation’s political realignment and the origins of modern conservatism.

“You want to pry below these great narratives of good and evil and black and white,” said Jason Sokol, 29, who wrote “There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights, 1945-1975” (Alfred A. Knopf). “For those of us who didn’t live through it, there’s more of an effort to not simply celebrate the civil rights movement and how extraordinary it was, but to place it within the broader arc of the 20th century.”

This new wave of historians, many of them young, believe that one cannot understand today’s housing, schooling, economic development or political patterns without understanding the mostly apolitical white Southerners of that era. None of these scholars play down the inbred racism of the region, but they argue that the focus on race can obscure broader economic and demographic changes, like the dizzying corporate growth, the migration of white Northerners to the South and the shifting emphasis on class interests after legal segregation ended.

The conventional wisdom, said Jacquelyn Hall, director of the Southern Oral History Project at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is that the general backlash to the civil rights movement “was exported out of the South to the rest of the country,” and that the Republican Party benefited from the shift. But she said a raft of new scholarship is showing “the strength of the Republican Party in the South is linked to the economic boom in the South.” Corporations moved down to the once-solidly Democratic South and brought with them traditional suburban Republican voters. Their interests matched up with a growing neo-conservatism in the North. “What’s going on is much more a regional convergence story as opposed to the South influencing the rest of the country,” she said.

Conservative appeals to limit the government’s reach and emphasize individual freedoms resonated not only in the South, but in the North as well, said Joseph Crespino, 35, whose book, “In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution” (Princeton University Press), was just published.

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:05 AM 0 comments  

The Day the Sun Went Out in Georgia

A news story hits home. From my brother in Savannah today:

Savannah amazing this morning... So much smoke from the South Georgia fires that the city looks like it's in thick fog. And it smells like the fire is next door!

Posted by B Feiler at 8:03 AM 0 comments  

Embassy For Sale

The State Department is having a White Elephant Sale.

From Kinshasa to Katmandu, Bangkok to Bogota, U.S. embassies, ambassadorial residences and other diplomatic digs are up for sale as the State Department moves its employees to more secure locations, upgrades facilities and combines operations in multipurpose compounds.

Some 29 properties worth more than $205 million are now on the market in 21 countries, including a huge and historic embassy annex in the heart of London, large chancery buildings in Panama, Nicaragua and Nepal and homes fit for envoys extraordinary in Belize and Venezuela.

The former house of the No. 2 at the U.S. Embassy in Canada, once featured in a Paul Newman film, is also for sale, as is a magnificent manse in the steamy Indonesian capital of Jakarta and a gem with multiple swimming pools and tennis courts in Ivory Coast.

With an asking price of $180 million, the immense former Navy Annex fronting Grosvenor Square in London's Mayfair district is probably beyond most budgets. Ditto for the old U.S. Embassy in Nepal, $6 million, described as a "grand colonial estate."

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:01 AM 0 comments  

Foie Gras Fatwah Expands

The foie gras fatwah that we discussed here a few months ago, when it reached Chicago, is now promised for L.A. in 2012. (By the way, this is not HDTV, where all of television has to be shot on new equipment. Why set the ban so far out?) Anyway, given all the blowback, can you make a PC foie gras? The NYT explores:

It may make the birds feel better. But yet to be seen is whether it will please the animal rights activists who helped California enact a law that will ban foie gras starting in 2012, got Chicago to outlaw the sale of foie gras last year and are threatening similar action in other parts of the country.

Mr. Brock and other producers in the United States and Europe have been trying to find ways to make foie gras that will overcome the objections of those who see their work as an act of cruelty while still pleasing chefs and connoisseurs.

But unlike producers of beef, pork and chicken, who can respond to criticism of their practices by returning to kinder, preindustrial methods of raising cattle, pigs and chickens, foie gras producers have no such bucolic past to fall back on. Since the time of ancient Egyptians, making foie gras has involved doing something unnatural to ducks or geese: fattening their livers by force-feeding them, typically, nowadays, for the last 12 to 21 days of their lives.

Opponents say the procedure using feeding tubes is painful and sickens the birds. Foie gras advocates say the birds do not mind because their gullets are naturally expandable, to let them gorge before migrating.

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:00 AM 0 comments  

Georgia Pioneers Teaching the Bible
Thursday, May 3, 2007

The idea of teaching the Bible in schools -- the important and positive idea -- is getting an exciting test in Georgia.

Georgia's public schools walk a delicate line as they decide whether to offer the nation's first state-funded Bible classes -- measuring the difference between preaching and teaching with the likelihood of costly lawsuits looming for those that miss the mark.

The state school board approved curriculum in March for teaching the Bible in Georgia's high schools, but there hasn't been a rush of schools to start up the classes. Only a handful of the state's 180 school districts have agreed to offer the elective classes so far.

"It has been a very thoughtful, healthy process," said Robin Pennock, deputy schools superintendent of Muscogee County, where the school board decided to offer the Old Testament and New Testament classes next fall. "Most people do realize that this is an area that many people can feel very passionate about."

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:10 AM 0 comments  

The Holocaust at Virginia Tech

I got this circulated email from some activist friends in the Jewish community:

Most of you have heard about the Holocaust survivor who gave his life to protect his students from the mentally ill student at Virginia Tech.

Sign the petition to rename Norris Hall To Librescu Hall (in memory of Dr. Liviu Librescu.)

http://www.petitiononline.com/04172007/petition.html

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:05 AM 0 comments  

Gore: The New Gideon

What about the CAKE BIBLE or the BARBECUE BIBLE or any of the other books like that I see in the bookstore?

Visitors to the Gaia Napa Valley Hotel and Spa won't find the Gideon Bible in the nightstand drawer. Instead, on the bureau will be a copy of ``An Inconvenient Truth,'' former Vice President Al Gore's book about global warming.

They'll also find the Gaia equipped with waterless urinals, solar lighting and recycled paper as it marches toward becoming California's first hotel certified as ``green,'' or benevolent to the environment. Similar features are found 35 miles south at San Francisco's Orchard Garden Hotel, which competes for customers with neighboring luxury hotels like the Ritz-Carlton and Fairmont.

``I'm not your traditional Birkenstocks and granola type of guy,'' said Stefan Muehle, general manager of the Orchard Garden, who said green measures are reducing energy costs as much as 25 percent a month. ``We're trying to dispel the myth that being green and being luxurious are mutually exclusive.''

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:01 AM 0 comments  

"Michael Chabon Makes Me Sad"

A reader writes:

Hearing all this talk of the new Chabon release makes me sad… A year ago, I would have been thrilled and probably obtained an advanced reading copy. He’s been my “favorite” author since I first read his debut novel THE MYSTERIES OF PITTSBURGH back in the early 90s.

But I can no longer support the work of an author who has no regard for the story and characters that put him on the literary map.

In case you haven’t heard, there’s a film version of MOP coming out later this year… Written and directed by the guy who brought us DODGEBALL, in which he’s CHANGED 85% of Chabon’s original story.

And the sad part is… Michael Chabon himself APPROVED of the script! WHY would he do this? I can only think of one possible answer: $$

If you are a Chabon fan, esp MOP, I suggest you do NOT see this movie. You will be sadly disappointed at the COMPLETE removal of the gay character, Arthur Lecomte, and the fabrication of a romantic love triangle between Art Bechstein, Jane Bellwether, and a bi-sexual Cleveland Arning. And really, what is MOP without the presence of Phlox Lombardi? Alas, she’s barely in it.

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:00 AM 0 comments  

Reverend McGreevey
Wednesday, May 2, 2007

This will go over well in some circles:

The nation's first openly gay governor has become an Episcopalian and been accepted into a seminary, according to a published report.

Former Gov. James E. McGreevey, who was raised as a Roman Catholic, was officially received into the Episcopal religion on Sunday at St. Bartholomew's Church in New York, said the Rev. Kevin Bean, vicar at the church.

McGreevey has entered the church's "discernment" phase, which usually precedes seminary work, Bean told The Star-Ledger of Newark in a report posted Wednesday on its Web site.

It's unclear whether McGreevey hopes to become a priest.

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Posted by B Feiler at 9:52 PM 0 comments  

"The Other Angry Muslim Kids"

One answer to terrorism: Become punk rockers.

There can't be that many female playwrights who are deaf, punk and Muslim, so Sabina England is something of a find. With a lurid Mohawk and leather jacket slathered with slogans, she looks every inch the rebel and has an attitude to match.

Sabina, who says she lives in the "shitty midwest of the United States" or the "HELL-HOLE OF BOREDOM AND YUPPIES", is part of a subculture that, until a few years ago, existed only on paper.

The Taqwacores - a novel about a fictitious Muslim punk scene in the US - has spawned an actual movement that is being driven forward by young Muslims worldwide. Some bands - such as the Kominas - have a cult following. Others, such as Sabina, are virtually unknown.
My favorite answer:
"It's gonna get bigger. A lot of Muslim kids are tired of being told what to do, how to think, what to believe in, and how to act, by their parents. There are 'the angry muslim kids' who wanna grow beards and pray five times a day, and then there are the OTHER 'angry Muslim kids' who wanna get drunk and say a huge big 'fuck you' to the Muslim population. Or maybe they just don't care and wanna sit at home and not think about Osama's video speeches about how America is the Great Satan."

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:01 AM 0 comments  

Makes Fat Kids Seem Appealing

.... if this is the alternative. Few things have got me going in recent days more than this: A squib in the NYT about a stationary, exercise bike for kids so that when they're sitting around watching TV they can avoid getting fat. (Note the cables to connect it to the TV.) Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrr?!?! Turn off the TV!!

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:00 AM 0 comments  

"Judaism and Zionism Are Not One"
Tuesday, May 1, 2007

One of the chapters in WHERE GOD WAS BORN that gets the biggest reaction is the one on the time Mrs. Feiler Faster and I spent in the Jewish Community in Iran. "Jews in Iran?" many say. Yes. The Jewish community in Iran is the largest in the Middle East outside of Israel -- 35,000 people. The CSM checks in:

Iran's Jews are buffeted by inflammatory rhetoric from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad about "wiping Israel off the map" and denying the Holocaust, and a politically charged environment that often equates all Jews with Israel and routinely witnesses the burning of the "enemy" flag.

But despite what appears to be a dwindling minority under constant threat of persecution, Iranian Jews say they live in relative freedom in the Islamic Republic, remain loyal to the land of their birth, and are striving to separate politics from religion.

They caution against comparing Iran's official and visceral opposition to the creation of Israel and Zionism with the regime's acceptance of Jews and Judaism itself.

"If you think Judaism and Zionism are one, it is like thinking Islam and the Taliban are the same, and they are not," says Ciamak Moresadegh, chairman of the Tehran Jewish Committee. "We have common problems with Iranian Muslims. If a war were to start, we would also be a target. When a missile lands, it does not ask if you are a Muslim or a Jew. It lands."

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:03 AM 1 comments  

"My Wife Made Me Do It"

It's been a busy week for Noah -- a new movie, a new museum exhibition, and now a new yacht in the Netherlands. Er, ark. Real life! Real size! His wife made him do it!

The massive central door in the side of Noah's Ark was thrown open Saturday -- you could say it was the first time in 4,000 years -- drawing a crowd of curious pilgrims and townsfolk to behold the wonder.

Of course, it's only a replica of the biblical Ark, built by Dutch creationist Johan Huibers as a testament to his faith in the literal truth of the Bible.

Reckoning by the old biblical measurements, Johan's fully functional ark is 150 cubits long, 30 cubits high and 20 cubits wide. That's two-thirds the length of a football field and as high as a three-story house. (Watch a tour of the replica Ark Video)

Life-size models of giraffes, elephants, lions, crocodiles, zebras, bison and other animals greet visitors as they arrive in the main hold.

"The design is by my wife, Bianca," Huibers said. "She didn't really want me to do this at all, but she said if you're going to anyway, it should look like this."

A contractor by trade, Huibers built the ark of cedar and pine -- biblical scholars debate exactly what the wood used by Noah would have been.

Not to nitpick a tourist attraction (or an AP writer) but that would be 5,000 years...

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Posted by B Feiler at 8:01 AM 0 comments  

Noah's Arc

Even the arthouses are going biblical these days.

In the Romanian mountain resort of Sinaia, two hours north-west of Bucharest, the film-maker Darren Aronofsky is contemplating the extinction of mankind. An extreme response, you might think, to a few uncomprehending reviews of his last movie, the ecological science-fiction fantasy The Fountain. After all, it has as many passionate fans as it does sniggering detractors; it's that sort of film. But the 38-year-old Aronofsky isn't in Romania to escape anything. He is accompanying his fiancee, the actress Rachel Weisz, who is here shooting a movie. And his thoughts have turned to the demise of civilisation because he is several drafts into a screenplay about Noah. I hear the narrative has an impressive arc.

Aronofsky and Noah go way back. When the writer-director was 13, he won a United Nations competition at his school in Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn; it was for his first poem, a little effort about the end of the world as seen through Noah's eyes. "That story has interested me ever since," he says, squinting through his yellow-tinted shades and pulling a striped woolly hat on to his head. We are on the decking in front of his hotel, with the snow-dusted mountains spread out before us. Henry, Aronofsky and Weisz's 10-month-old son has just been whisked off on a sightseeing trip with his nanny, and all is tranquil.

The script, Aronofsky tells me, is no conventional biblical epic. "Noah was the first person to plant vineyards and drink wine and get drunk," he says admiringly. "It's there in the Bible - it was one of the first things he did when he reached land. There was some real survivor's guilt going on there. He's a dark, complicated character."

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