Fighting the Good Fight?

Well, Anne Rice has jumped into Catholicism, and plans to write the life of Christ, from Christ's perspective. I read the Vampire Chronicles up through Memnoch the Devil, where the Catholic mythology just annoyed me, and I read one of the Taltos books (summary: weirdness, sex, weirdness, sex, sex with weirdness, etc). Does anyone remember Maharat's rant about religion in Queen of the Damned? How it's all hokey little spirits who like to play games? :-) I would be amused if that perspective made it into her life of Christ, but I somehow doubt it will.

As for my own fighting style, I seem to be Sitting Bull:

Chief Sitting Bull You scored 70 Wisdom, 69 Tactics, 65 Guts, and 40 Ruthlessness!

You'd make a decent guerilla fighter. You are a tactical genius and you have the balls to back it up with some follow through. But that being said, you are most likely unwilling to torture an enemy soldier for information, because underneath all of the hides of the buffalo you killed yourself and that huge f***ing headdress, you have a heart. Chief Sitting Bull rose to prominence in the Sioux warfare against the whites and the resistance of the Native Americans under his command to forced settlement on a reservation led to a punitive expedition. In the course of the resistance occurred the Native American victory on the Little Bighorn, where George Armstrong Custer and his men were defeated and killed on June 25, 1876. Sitting Bull and some of his followers escaped to Canada, but returned (1881) on a promise of a pardon and were settled on a reservation. In 1885 he appeared in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, but his championship of the Native American cause was not at an end. He encouraged the Sioux to refuse to sell their lands, and he advocated the ghost dance religion. He was killed by Native American police on a charge of resisting arrest. Other leaders like yourself include: Francis Marion

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 79% on Unorthodox You scored higher than 46% on Tactics You scored higher than 84% on Guts You scored higher than 25% on Ruthlessness

Link: The Which Historic General Are You Test written by dasnyds on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

One part is not accurate. I would use torture if I saw no other option and lives were at stake. I wouldn't like it, but I would use it.

And this piece from the Guardian was quite interesting. There may be a genetic component in religious tendencies. The best part, though, is below:

A Harvard psychologist named Gordon Allport did some key research in the 1950s on various kinds of human prejudice and came up with a definition of religiosity that is still in use today. He suggested that there were two types of religious commitment - extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic religiosity he defined as religious self-centredness. Such a person goes to church or synagogue as a means to an end - for what they can get out of it. They might go to church to be seen, because it is the social norm in their society, conferring respectability or social advancement. Going to church (or synagogue) becomes a social convention.

Allport thought that intrinsic religiosity was different. He identified a group of people who were intrinsically religious, seeing their religion as an end in itself. They tended to be more deeply committed; religion became the organising principle of their lives, a central and personal experience. In support of his research, Allport found that prejudice was more common in those individuals who scored highly for extrinsic religion.

The evidence generally is that intrinsic religiosity seems to be associated with lower levels of anxiety and stress, freedom from guilt, better adjustment in society and less depression. On the other hand, extrinsic religious feelings - where religion is used as a way to belong to and prosper within a group - seem to be associated with increased tendencies to guilt, worry and anxiety.

The extrinsically relgious are the ones going because they think they're supposed to, and they use it as a means of and excuse for controlling and berating others. The intrinsically religious are the ones going because they believe it. And this fits. The more someone spouts off about how certain things are wrong, the less that person has internalized the values of his own religion. It's all about making people think he is religious, not about actually being religious. Whereas, the intrinsically religious (I suspect) are the ones who might describe themeselves as "spiritual but not religious" because they (we) get sick of all the extrinsic claptrap.

At Evolving Thoughts, a rather depressing essay on the chance of a New Dark Age in the United States. I hope that he's overestimating the extent of damage, but I can see where he's coming from.

Oh, and perjury is only a crime for Democrats, Mr. Hutchison? Apparently, lots of lies and dubious claims are perfectly all right for Republicans.

On a lighter note, your tax dollars at work...defending the President against the evils of satire and parody. "He use...sarcasm on them. Dramatic irony, even!"