1. Symbol Challenge. This game is based on Sudoku. If your shaded areas do not form nice, even squares (on in each quadrant), then click “new game” a few times until you get one to make it easier.
   “Please name the symbol on Robert Langdon.” blade
2. Restoration Challenge. Move the blotches around. When you click on one, it will hilight the possible blotches with which you can swap. Move them such that they cover the “re” at the beginning but leave “na” and “me” (’name’) uncovered. “Name the symbol on Manuel Aringarosa.” Greek cross.
3. Observation Challenge. Answer the questions based on the video.
   • “In the video, we see Robert Langdon dusting off a classical symbol, one associated with a character we only see a brief glimpse of in the video. What is the name of that oft-gilded symbol?” Fleur-de-lis, also associated with France and Quebec.
   • “Symbols, and symmetry, can be seen in the most unlikely of places. One such example is the position of the body at the crime scene, which resembles a drawing also depicted on the obverse of the Italian one-euro coin. What is the name of that famous Leonardo Da Vinci drawing?” Vitruvian Man
   • “One of the most iconic symbols of the movie is the cryptex, a small cylinder of stacked marble disks, embossed with letters and sealed with brass caps at either end. The twenty-six letters allow for almost twelve million possible password combinations — 11,881,376; to be exact. Armed with that knowledge, can you tell us how many dials it has?” 5 (26ⁿ=11,881,376, n=5)
4. Curator Challenge. A puzzle where you have to hang the paintings around. Start with the big pictures (click the back/left arrow under the painting in the left pane) and hang them first, as there are only one or two possible ways to hang them both at the same time. Keep working your way backwards with the medium-sized paintings followed by the small ones.
   “The symbol shown on Sophie Neveu (pictured at left) is called” a chalice.
5. Chess Puzzle
   • “What is the spiked belt that Silas wears called?” cilice
   • “What are the second, third, and fourth leading members of the Priory of Sion called?” Sénéchaux
   • “The engraved tablet that is supposed to reveal the hiding place of the Holy Grail is called the” keystone.
6. Geography Challenge. Note that a few of the pieces have text on them; these go in the lower right. When you put a piece into the proper place it will lock. You’re aiming for an aerial view of New York (actually lower Manhattan and western Brooklyn; note Ground Zero and the [southern-most] Brooklyn Bridge).
7. Symbol Challenge. Another take on the Sudoku puzzle, but this time without the luxury of even regions. The general strategy is to pick a shaded regions, see what pieces it needs, and put a piece in place only if it cannot go anywhere else in the region. Then there will be a math question. You can use a simple Google search for many of these, for example query “10 miles in kilometers“.
   • “What are 10,879 fortnights in years (to the nearest whole number)?” 417 (a fortnight is two weeks)
   • “What are four score Scottish ells in hands?” 740
   • “Which is longer, a TeX point or an ATA Pica point?” TeX point
   • “What is 1500 arcminutes in degrees?” 25
   • “How many nails in 138 nautical miles?” 4472021
   • “How much is one divided by phi, plus one, minus phi?” 0 (zero)
8. Restoration Challenge. Keep shuffling the blotches around keeping the numbers uncovered. This took me a couple times. Keep the numbers uncovered; this provides you with an ISBN number which you can search for at Amazon. My question was about ISBN 0860784843

, which is a book titled “Banks, Palaces and Entrepreneurs in Renaissance Florence”. Dropping ‘banks’ and ‘palaces’, as suggested by the Quest’s question, left me with the answer, entrepreneurs.

9. Curator Challenge. Another hang-the-painting puzzle. Again, start with the bigger ones.

   You can find the answers very quickly on Wikipedia: Charles Nodier (born 1780, died 1844), Isaac Newton (born December 1642), Mont Blanc (Pennine Alps), France (547030 sq km), Victor Hugo (died 1885), Galileo Galilei (born in February, died in 1642), Italy (unified March 17, 1861).

10. Observation Challenge. You can have the video opened in a separate tab for reference (use the slider below it to skip around and re-watch), or use the answers below. After filling in each answer you can press enter to see if it was correct.
    • “A seemingly-important stone-object is extracted from the ground by Silas. What is its shape?” octagon
    • “An interesting viewpoint is the vantage point from which we last see Silas. What is the last thing we see him touch?” holy water
    • “During the action in the video, we see many things shattered and destroyed, but what is it that will ultimately be broken?” silence
11. Chess Challenge.
    • “A word that can be read the same backwards or forwards is called” a palindrome (my favorite palindrome: “go hang a salami, I’m a lasagna hog”)
    • “Jacques Sauniere’s body was found in which part of the Louvre?” the Denon Wing
    • “The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog is an example of” a panagram
12. Geography Challenge. Again, find the words with the text and assemble them in the lower right corner so that they lock into place. The pieces with the river (greenish) go in the lower left. The answer is Rome (note the Colosseum in the lower left). Then it will ask you to “find the Palazzo Venezia by clicking on a Greek Cross hidden in the city”, which is just to the left of the red dot on this map. Your cursor won’t change when you hover over it, so just give it a click.
13. Symbol Challenge. Another Sudoku-like puzzle. When you’re done it will ask you to translate a word ‐ be sure to use Google’s translator because other dictionaries can give you slightly different answers (for example, my favorite translator produced ‘environments’ while Google’s answer was “atmosphere’s”).
14. Restoration Challenge. Uncover the message, then use an Atbash decoder to translate it.
15. Curator Challenge. Hang the pictures again; remember to start with the big ones.
16.  
17.  
18.  
19. Symbol Challenge. First do the six-piece Sudoku puzzle. If at first you only get a few pieces on the board, start anew until you get a dozen or so. Then it will ask a question. The one I got:
    • “During his Italian Journeys, William Dean Howells notes that there are engineers of this nationality on all the Mediterranean steamers.” English. You can read the entire book for free at Project Gutenberg; I did a quick page-search for ‘engineer’ and the first instance gave me the answer.

Here’s how it played out on the show:

[Sawyer walks up; voices being spoken normally]
Saywer: “Yo, Daddy-o!”
Jin: “Sawyer.”
Saywer: “Way to go, papa-san. You didn’t waste much time. I’d give you a cigar, Bernie, but I’m fresh out.”
Bernard: “Sun’s pregnant?”
Sawyer: “Keep it down, there, Susie. I don’t think Jin senior here knows yet.”

[audio reverses and becomes indistinguishable as Jin looks confused]
Sawyer: “Let sunshine tell ‘em.”
Sawyer: “Hell, no.”
Bernard: “You should tell him”
Bernard: “Well…”
Sawyer: “Not my place”
Bernard: “Well aren’t ya gonna tell him?”
Sawyer: “Well I got my sources.”
Bernard: “Well, well how do you know?”

What really happened is that the dialog for the “confused” part was recorded in order, then the order of the lines were reversed, then the audio track was played backwards.

Clip of the reversed dialog, unreversed (i.e. listenable) [MP3]

The Arab media run cartoons depicting Jews and the symbols of the Jewish faith with imagery indistinguishable from that used in the Third Reich. But I have yet to see Jews or Israelis threaten the lives of Muslims because of it.

In my last post I mentioned that an Iranian newspaper is holding a contest for creating holocaust cartoons. (It should be noted that the newspaper is owned and operated by the city of Tehran in alliance with the holocaust-denying President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.) This is not an act of revenge which would upset Jews in the way that Muslims are upset now — while the Holocaust certainly makes one think of Jews, it is not a symbol of Judaism in the way that Muhammad is of Islam. Rather, the cartoons will be endorsements of fascism and genocide.

And finally, a topical political cartoon by Tom Toles.

Mirrors: Time editorial, cartoon.

Less serious but also noteworthy:

• The Danish embassy in Beirut was burned down
• Two executives from a Jordanian newspaper which reprinted the cartoons have been arrested
• The 12 cartoonists are currently in hiding with police protection

In a fit of immaturity, an Iranian newspaper is now holding a contest for the best Holocaust cartoon.

Here are the cartoons in question.

Mirrors: AFP article, Reuters article, cartoon gallery

This week [late April 2005] the Times Union ran an article about how our military has been using equipment known to be faulty in the line of fire. This is just the latest in a series of stories about faulty or lacking equipment that has been coming in throughout the Iraq War. Many may remember the candid pow-wow Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld held with members of the armed forces a few months ago where soldiers pressured him to explain why they had to use scraps of metal found on the ground to patch up their “armored” vehicles. It’s bad enough that these men and women have been thrust into an unnecessary war, but it’s even worse that the richest military in the world can not keep them properly equipped.

At home, taxpayers must be concerned about what the $437 billion spent by the Department of Defense in 2004 is being used for. Does it really cost that much to run a force of 1.2 million soldiers? I doubt it — China, which has a force twice the size of ours and 4 times the total population, spends only one-sixth as much on their military. In fact, the United States spends more on its military than the next twenty nations combined.

So either the U.S. military is spending the $437 billion poorly or it is using the momentum of the fear of terrorism procured by 9/11 and the war to stock up on funds for the future. Either way, everyone has a reason to be outraged. American taxpayers should be concerned about the first scenario, while the second scenario paints the U.S. as a threat to the rest of the world. What must be the intentions of a nation who stockpiles nuclear weapons with the same aggression as people stockpiling food and water in the path of an impending hurricane? Does the U.S. military have a particular ‘hurricane’ in sight?

Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are [a] few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.

Too bad he was proven wrong.

I thought this Slashdot comment from Rei summed it up best:

In Future News today, the RIAA headquarters in sunny Washington, DC was completely destroyed when a large mass of irony accidentally fell off an aircraft and crashed into the building.

Rescue workers were quick to arrive at the scene, but surprisingly found no casualties.

“Apparently, the building was only staffed by vampires - bloodthirsty creatures who feed on the blood, sweat, and tears of the living - and they proved immune to the effects of such irony” said a broke-musician turned fireman that was among the first to arrive at the scene.

The irony broke free shortly after a Boeing-767 carrying lawyers to file papers against an entire sixth-grade class stopped at Ronald Reagan National Airport to take RIAA head Mitch Bainwol to a charity dinner for the school of the same children.

According to witnesses, the irony could be seen by bloody everyone; however, apparently it was not visible from within the RIAA headquarters itself. Washington DC mayor Anthony Williams has discussed potential legislation to force all employees of businesses within city limits to remove their blinders during working hours.

Source: Kansas City Star

Overview
We flew on United Airlines, coach class:

• Albany [ALB] > Washington (Dulles) [IAD] (322 miles, 1hr 35mn, seats assigned at booking)

• Washington > Paris (Charles de Gaulle/Roissy) [CDG] (3845 miles, 7hr 20mn, seats assigned at booking)

Arrived early on the morning of the 14th

• Paris > Chicago (O’Hare) [ORD] (4142 miles, 9hr 40mn, seats assigned upon check-in)

• Chicago > Albany (715, 2hr 6mn, seats assigned at booking)

Arrived around 9pm the evening of the 18th

€1 = $1.33, or $1.50 in tourist areas

Albany Airport
The check-in was done by an automated touchscreen. I had to insert a major credit card to verify who I was and it automatically brought up my itinerary. Despite this, I still had to enter all of my info, including passport number, name, address, birthdate, etc. The interface was slow and you could not go back; I misspelled my middle name and had to start the entire process over again. This took way too long and seemed unreasonable as the computer clearly had all the information for my entire trip before I arrived. We got our boarding passes (for both flights) printed on cheap flimsy receipt paper. We checked one bag and each had a carry-on. We immediately moved to the metal detector/x-ray area. I had to show my passport first. People wearing non-sneakers had to take them off, and all items (coats, etc) passed through the x-ray. After this short venture we were free to peruse all of the shops/restaurants of the airport (even a meditation room) while waiting for the plane.

Flight to Dulles
We boarded an Embraer RJ145. The jet was tiny; only three seats wide with a very narrow aisle. Leg and elbow room was almost non-existant. People with full-size carry-on bags (such as mine) had to have them checked into the cargo of the plane to be picked up on arrival in Dulles. The flight was outsourced to a small regional company called Chautauqua. There was only one captain and one flight attendant, and I found them to be both very unprofessional and unconfident. I didn’t feel like they had a control on the situation, which was a loaded plane of cramped people and not enough room for baggage. They were having trouble getting the plane weight properly, so some of the checked carry-ons had to be put inside the cabin. The flight attendant threatened to kick people off the plane if we didn’t make room in the overhead bins. My bag was one of the ones to come into the cabin, so upon arrival I had to wait for the plane to empty before I could go look for it. No galley and therefore no drinks or snacks. The flight was uneventful, though the seatbelt sign was only off for about five minutes. Never use Chautauqua again.

Dulles
No additional security was required. We just walked to our new gate to wait for the next flight; it was pretty close and didn’t require a shuttle. Our checked bag was automatically routed to Paris. We had access to a lot of shops/restaurants. Boarding time was 45 minutes prior to scheduled take off.

Flight to CDG
Boeing 777, 9 seats across (2-5-2). There were monitors on the back of each headrest showing movies controlled by the crew (they paused it to make announcements, but we had no control other than volume and channel). There were 5-6 movies, each in English and French, as well as a couple TV stations. There was also a map ‘channel’ that cycled through altitude/time and a map in English and French and English and metric units. Headphones, pillow, and blanket were given, though the headphones were collected at the end. Armrests could not be pushed all the way up. The crew was very confident and professional, which put me at ease. Acceptable leg room, tolerable elbow room. Dinner was beef and tomato sauce with potatoes and peas. Drink selection was excellent and unlimited, alcohol was $5/€4 each. Breakfast was decently sized.

Charles de Gaulle
We were immediately sent to the baggage claim area. I called the shuttle while Kim waited for her bag. We then passed quickly through customs, getting our passports stamped and handing in an immigration card that we filled out on the plane. No intimidating questions like in 2000. No xrays or metal detectors. It took us some time to find the right gate for our shuttle because of the various levels of the building. We shared the minivan with another group of 4. Our Senegalese driver spoke good English as he darted cooly from lane to lane in the dense traffic. We got to our hotel in about an hour, being the last to get dropped off.

Gare du Nord and Chantilly
The metro dumped us directly into the station. Exchange rates were high. We went to an English-speaking counter and she very helpfully gave us a train schedule and left the return time unspecified. Tickets were €10 round trip. Our train left within 10 minutes and took about 25 minutes to get to Chantilly. It was smooth and there were only a couple people on each car. At the station in Chantilly there was a free bus to take us to the Chateau. On the way back it didn’t go to the station, and the driver had a hard time expressing this to us (most people in town didn’t speak much English). We had to get out and walk the last half-mile or so.

Metro
The metro is safe even up until closing time (12:30-1am). The longest wait time was 5 minutes at 6:45am; otherwise it was always under one minute. Much cleaner trains and less-sketchy people than in 2000. People openly carried shopping bags and iPods at all times without much concern. The recent addition of line numbers helped immensely.

Charles de Gaulle
We had another fast and daring (but calm and smooth) shuttle driver who got us to the airport in under an hour despite picking up another person. The line was pretty short to have our bag checked and to obtain our boarding passes for both return flights (real cardboard tickets this time). We walked through the shopping areas and eateries. The xrays and metal detectors were specific to our flights, right next to the gate. Once we passed through there was no more access to food or shopping. Boarding time was 40 minutes before departure.

Flight to O’Hare
Boeing 767-300, seating 2-3-2. We were in “Economy Plus” or something, and the leg room was excellent. Same monitors, pillow/blanket, headphones, etc. as flight to CDG. Different movie selection, but still accessed and controlled in the same manner. Armrests could not be pushed all the way up. We got two snacks (beginning and end) and lunch. It was a surprisingly comfortable flight with a professional crew. Landed in about 8 hours.

O’Hare
The first thing we did was walk what seemed like a mile. We had to pick up our checked luggage and re-check it. The line for U.S. citizens/residents wasn’t long, but it was for non-citizens. We had our passports stamped and handed in a statement to customs that was given out during the flight. We had to take a shuttle to another building to get to our next flight. There we and our carry-ons were rescanned. We were then free to peruse a very large shopping and eatery area, all accessible from our gate.

Flight to Albany
Boeing 737-300, seated 3-3. Two flight attendants; drinks and small snack. Headphones were left in the pouch and each middle seat had an old-looking phone that required a credit card to use. One of the audio channels was the transmission between the captain and the ground, which was available from taxi to taxi. Armrests completely disappeared between the seats; tolerable leg and elbow room. Nice view of the Illinois/Lake Michigan line soon after takeoff. Uneventful flight; landed 20-30 minutes early.

The Bush administration’s secret program to transfer suspected terrorists to foreign countries for interrogation has been carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency under broad authority that has allowed it to act without case-by-case approval from the White House or the State or Justice Departments, according to current and former government officials.

The unusually expansive authority for the C.I.A. to operate independently was provided by the White House under a still-classified directive signed by President Bush within days of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the officials said.

The process, known as rendition, has been central in the government’s efforts to disrupt terrorism, but has been bitterly criticized by human rights groups on grounds that the practice has violated the Bush administration’s public pledge to provide safeguards against torture.

Source: NY Times, March 6, 2005

No. 1?
By Michael Ventura

No concept lies more firmly embedded in our national character than the notion that the USA is “No. 1,” “the greatest.” Our broadcast media are, in essence, continuous advertisements for the brand name “America Is No. 1.” Any office seeker saying otherwise would be committing political suicide. In fact, anyone saying otherwise will be labeled “un-American.” We’re an “empire,” ain’t we? Sure we are. An empire without a manufacturing base. An empire that must borrow $2 billion a day from its competitors in order to function. Yet the delusion is ineradicable. We’re No. 1. Well … this is the country you really live in:

• The United States is 49th in the world in literacy (The New York Times, Dec. 12, 2004).
• The United States ranked 28th out of 40 countries in mathematical literacy (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
• One-third of our science teachers and one-half of our math teachers did not major in those subjects. (Quoted on The West Wing, but you can trust it – their researchers are legendary.)
• Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the Earth. Seventeen percent believe the Earth revolves around the sun once a day (The Week, Jan. 7, 2005).
• “The International Adult Literacy Survey … found that Americans with less than nine years of education ’score worse than virtually all of the other countries’” (Jeremy Rifkin’s superbly documented book The European Dream: How Europe’s Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream, p.78).
• Our workers are so ignorant, and lack so many basic skills, that American businesses spend $30 billion a year on remedial training (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004). No wonder they relocate elsewhere!
• “The European Union leads the U.S. in … the number of science and engineering graduates; public research and development (R&D) expenditures; and new capital raised” (The European Dream, p.70).
• “Europe surpassed the United States in the mid-1990s as the largest producer of scientific literature” (The European Dream, p.70).
• Nevertheless, Congress cut funds to the National Science Foundation. The agency will issue 1,000 fewer research grants this year (NYT, Dec. 21, 2004).
• Foreign applications to U.S. grad schools declined 28% last year. Foreign student enrollment on all levels fell for the first time in three decades, but increased greatly in Europe and China. Last year Chinese grad-school graduates in the U.S. dropped 56%, Indians 51%, South Koreans 28% (NYT, Dec. 21, 2004). We’re not the place to be anymore.
• The World Health Organization “ranked the countries of the world in terms of overall health performance, and the U.S. [was] … 37th.” In the fairness of health care, we’re 54th. “The irony is that the United States spends more per capita for health care than any other nation in the world” (The European Dream, pp.79-80). Pay more, get lots, lots less.
• “The U.S. and South Africa are the only two developed countries in the world that do not provide health care for all their citizens” (The European Dream, p.80). Excuse me, but since when is South Africa a “developed” country? Anyway, that’s the company we’re keeping.
• Lack of health insurance coverage causes 18,000 unnecessary American deaths a year. (That’s six times the number of people killed on 9/11.) (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005.)
• “U.S. childhood poverty now ranks 22nd, or second to last, among the developed nations. Only Mexico scores lower” (The European Dream, p.81). Been to Mexico lately? Does it look “developed” to you? Yet it’s the only “developed” country to score lower in childhood poverty.
• Twelve million American families – more than 10% of all U.S. households – “continue to struggle, and not always successfully, to feed themselves.” Families that “had members who actually went hungry at some point last year” numbered 3.9 million (NYT, Nov. 22, 2004).
• The United States is 41st in the world in infant mortality. Cuba scores higher (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005).
• Women are 70% more likely to die in childbirth in America than in Europe (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005).
• The leading cause of death of pregnant women in this country is murder (CNN, Dec. 14, 2004).
• “Of the 20 most developed countries in the world, the U.S. was dead last in the growth rate of total compensation to its work-force in the 1980s. … In the 1990s, the U.S. average compensation growth rate grew only slightly, at an annual rate of about 0.1%” (The European Dream, p.39). Yet Americans work longer hours per year than any other industrialized country, and get less vacation time.
• “Sixty-one of the 140 biggest companies on the Global Fortune 500 rankings are European, while only 50 are U.S. companies” (The European Dream, p.66). “In a recent survey of the world’s 50 best companies, conducted by Global Finance, all but one was European” (The European Dream, p.69).
• “Fourteen of the 20 largest commercial banks in the world today are European. … In the chemical industry, the European company BASF is the world’s leader, and three of the top six players are European. In engineering and construction, three of the top five companies are European. … The two others are Japanese. Not a single American engineering and construction company is included among the world’s top nine competitors. In food and consumer products, Nestlé and Unilever, two European giants, rank first and second, respectively, in the world. In the food and drugstore retail trade, two European companies … are first and second, and European companies make up five of the top 10. Only four U.S. companies are on the list” (The European Dream, p.68).
• The United States has lost 1.3 million jobs to China in the last decade (CNN, Jan. 12, 2005).
• U.S. employers eliminated 1 million jobs in 2004 (The Week, Jan. 14, 2005).
• Three million six hundred thousand Americans ran out of unemployment insurance last year; 1.8 million – one in five – unemployed workers are jobless for more than six months (NYT, Jan. 9, 2005).
• Japan, China, Taiwan, and South Korea hold 40% of our government debt. (That’s why we talk nice to them.) “By helping keep mortgage rates from rising, China has come to play an enormous and little-noticed role in sustaining the American housing boom” (NYT, Dec. 4, 2004). Read that twice. We owe our housing boom to China, because they want us to keep buying all that stuff they manufacture.
• Sometime in the next 10 years Brazil will probably pass the U.S. as the world’s largest agricultural producer. Brazil is now the world’s largest exporter of chickens, orange juice, sugar, coffee, and tobacco. Last year, Brazil passed the U.S. as the world’s largest beef producer. (Hear that, you poor deluded cowboys?) As a result, while we bear record trade deficits, Brazil boasts a $30 billion trade surplus (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
• As of last June, the U.S. imported more food than it exported (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
• Bush: 62,027,582 votes. Kerry: 59,026,003 votes. Number of eligible voters who didn’t show up: 79,279,000 (NYT, Dec. 26, 2004). That’s more than a third. Way more. If more than a third of Iraqis don’t show for their election, no country in the world will think that election legitimate.
• One-third of all U.S. children are born out of wedlock. One-half of all U.S. children will live in a one-parent house (CNN, Dec. 10, 2004).
• “Americans are now spending more money on gambling than on movies, videos, DVDs, music, and books combined” (The European Dream, p.28).
• “Nearly one out of four Americans [believe] that using violence to get what they want is acceptable” (The European Dream, p.32).
• Forty-three percent of Americans think torture is sometimes justified, according to a PEW Poll (Associated Press, Aug. 19, 2004).
• “Nearly 900,000 children were abused or neglected in 2002, the last year for which such data are available” (USA Today, Dec. 21, 2004).
• “The International Association of Chiefs of Police said that cuts by the [Bush] administration in federal aid to local police agencies have left the nation more vulnerable than ever” (USA Today, Nov. 17, 2004).

No. 1? In most important categories we’re not even in the Top 10 anymore. Not even close.

The USA is “No. 1″ in nothing but weaponry, consumer spending, debt, and delusion.

More than 200 Fish and Wildlife researchers cite cases where conclusions were reversed to weaken protections and favor business, a survey finds. (LAtimes.com, mirror)

Those two phrases (emphasis mine) are oversensationalized and cliché. They epitomize what I consider propaganda — statements that are relentlessly repeated to convince people of what the facts are.

A group or person wants to “defeat freedom”? Just think about that for a second. First of all, the people in question are possibly just ensuring their own freedom — whether that be done by becoming a dictator, attacking an oppressive state, etc. Secondly, it’s rendered meaningless by its vagueness. What freedom? This leads to the third point, twisting of words. When American’s hear “freedom” they first think of a handful of civil liberties like free speech and flag waving or whatever. Bush et al. use terminology like “defeat our freedom” to try and insinuate that Saddam or Osama bin Laden wants to take away our right to free speech. I highly doubt that is anywhere on Saddam’s or OBL’s agenda.

Then Rice uses “perverting Islam.” The first word is not really accurate and is used for sensationalism — like people saying “George Lucas raped my childhood memories with the horrible Star Wars prequels.” Secondly, toss an “Islam” in there anytime you want to drum up a little anxiety or resentment in the base of the American right. Since the gay marriage issue has already put perceived perversion on the minds of many Americans, “perverting Islam” is a real double-whammy in the conservative dialect.

So to sum it all up, members of the Bush administration continually repeat key phrases that invoke fear or hatred of Middle Easterners in Americans, which is propaganda.

College: Yale — where his father and Grandfather went and which is in Connecticut which his Grandfather represented in the Senate until 1963. Yale has a policy of preferred admissions to students who are “legacies” of parents who graduated from the school.

Graduate School: Harvard Business School. Bush has acknowledged that he was a poor student at Yale and was a “C” student. It’s unclear how he got into B-school at the best university with a 2.35 GPA at Yale.

National Guard: Bush got into the national guard and avoided service in Vietnam, skipping over a long waiting list of applicants. Bush has acknowledged that calls were made on his behalf by friends of the family to get him this posting.

Professional: Started Arbusto Oil with college funds and the investment by William H Draper (college friend of GHW Bush), James R. Bath (another member of Bush’s “champagne Squadron” in the Guard), and prominent conservative Lewis Lehrman. Why would Lehrman back a recent B-School graduate with no actual experience in a venture as fraught with risk as oil exploration? Maybe because his father was recently the chair of the Republican National Committee and the Director of the CIA. It would be nice if people like me could start multimillion dollar businesses right out of grad school, but unfortunately, my grandfather was a plumber, not a US Senator.

Bush used his position with Arbusto (Spanish for “shrub”) to get positions with Spectrum 7, and Harken Oil (where he served as a director), a series of transactions which kept him employed even though his companies didn’t have much success. Coincidentally, at the time, his father was the sitting vice president of the US.

Shortly after his father was elected president, Bush was offered a minority (2%) interest in the Texas Rangers. He bought in with a bank loan covering almost all the cost; he later paid the loan off by selling his interest in Harken. Bush was aware that Harken was in precarious financial shape, and had insider information to that effect. Despite getting a clear statement from the corporate counsel, Bush went ahead and sold anyway. The next quarter Harken reported a loss of $23 million and share prices dropped from $4 to $1.25.

He ran for Governor of Texas in 1994. But for his sharing the name of the just-defeated President, he could never have gotten the nod. His family connections helped him run for President in 2000.

Copied from this post

In Europe, religious education is the rule from the elementary grades on. So Austrians, Norwegians and the Irish can tell you about the Seven Deadly Sins or the Five Pillars of Islam. But, according to a 1997 poll, only one out of three U.S. citizens is able to name the most basic of Christian texts, the four Gospels, and 12 percent think Noah’s wife was Joan of Arc.

The full text:

A deeply religious America, deeply ignorant about religion

By Stephen Prothero
Sunday, January 23, 2005

The sociologist Peter Berger once remarked that if India is the most religious country in the world and Sweden the least, then the United States is a nation of Indians ruled by Swedes. Not anymore. With a Jesus lover in the Oval Office and a faith-based party in control of both houses of Congress, the United States is undeniably a nation of believers ruled by the same.

Things are different in Europe, and not just in Sweden. The Dutch are four times less likely than Americans to believe in miracles, hell and biblical inerrancy. The euro does not trust in God. But here is the paradox: Although Americans are far more religious than Europeans, they know far less about religion.

In Europe, religious education is the rule from the elementary grades on. So Austrians, Norwegians and the Irish can tell you about the Seven Deadly Sins or the Five Pillars of Islam. But, according to a 1997 poll, only one out of three U.S. citizens is able to name the most basic of Christian texts, the four Gospels, and 12 percent think Noah’s wife was Joan of Arc. That paints a picture of a nation that believes God speaks in Scripture but that can’t be bothered to read what he has to say.

U.S. Catholics, evangelicals and Jews have been lamenting for some time a crisis of religious literacy in their ranks. But the dangers of religious ignorance are by no means confined to those worried about catechizing their children or cultivating the next generation of clergy.

When Americans debated slavery, almost exclusively on the basis of the Bible, people of all races and classes could follow the debate. They could make sense of its references to the runaway slave in the New Testament book of Philemon and to the year of jubilee, when slaves could be freed, in the Old Testament book of Leviticus. Today it is a rare American who can engage with any sophistication in biblically inflected arguments about gay marriage, abortion or stem cell research.

Since 9/11, President Bush has been telling us that “Islam is a religion of peace,” while evangelist Franklin Graham has insisted otherwise. Who is right? Americans have no way to tell because they know virtually nothing about Islam. Such ignorance imperils our public life, putting citizens in the thrall of talking heads.

How did this happen? How did one of the most religious countries in the world become a nation of religious illiterates? Religious congregations are surely at fault. Churches and synagogues that once inculcated the “fourth R” are now telling the faithful stories “ripped from the headlines” rather than teaching them the Ten Commandments or parsing the Sermon on the Mount (which was delivered, as only one in three Americans can tell you, by Jesus). But most of the fault lies in our elementary and secondary schools.

In a majority opinion in a 1963 church-state case (Abington vs. Schempp), Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark wrote, “It might well be said that one’s education is not complete without a study of comparative religion … and its relationship to the advance of civilization.” If so, the education of nearly every public school student in the nation is woefully inadequate.

Because of misunderstandings about the First Amendment, religious studies are seldom taught in public schools. When they are, instruction typically begins only in high school and with teachers not trained in the subtle distinction between teaching religion (unconstitutional) and teaching about religion (essential).

Though state educational standards no longer ignore religion as they did a decade or so ago, coverage of religion in history and social science textbooks is spotty at best. According to Charles Haynes, senior scholar at the First Amendment Center in Arlington, Va., “It is as if we got freedom of religion in 1791 and then we were free from religion after that.”

Now that the religious right has triumphed over the secular left, every politician seems determined to get religion. They’re all asking “What Would Jesus Do?” — about the war in Iraq, gay marriage, poverty and Social Security. And though the ACLU may rage, it is not un-American to bring religious reasoning into our public debates. In fact, that has been happening ever since George Washington put his hand on a Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. What is un-American is to give those debates over to televangelists of either the secular or the religious variety, to absent ourselves from the discussion by ignorance.

A few days after 9/11, a turbaned Indian American man was shot and killed in Arizona by a bigot who believed the man’s dress marked him as a Muslim. But what killed Balbir Singh Sodhi (who was not a Muslim but a Sikh) was not so much bigotry as ignorance. The moral of his story is not just that we need more tolerance. It is that Americans — of both the religious and the secular variety — need to understand religion. Resolving to read either the Bible or the Quran (or both) might not be a bad place to start.

Stephen Prothero teaches at Boston University and is author of “American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon” (2003). He wrote this article for The Los Angeles Times.

“At the same time, those polled said they were growing bolder about pushing their beliefs on others — even at the risk of offending someone.” Fewer people feel that evangelicals should be careful to not offend people when spreading their word. Fewer church-goers are willing to compromise on abortion. Fewer feel that politicians should set aside their convictions when making laws — and let me remind you that Congresspeople represent and make laws for the people, not themselves. This trend of course is covering Bush’s first term in office.

Non-secularism is bad, m’kay? Can/will our country ever return to normalcy? Can we possible be a people of tolerance and peace?