Michael Woloz, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade, said the number of pedicabs on the street was already unsustainable.

“Just because the industry has been allowed to grow unregulated for several years doesn’t mean the city should accept the current number of pedicabs that has only reached that level because of a lack of regulation,” Mr. Woloz said. “The city needs to come in and regulate this industry, and that includes a strict cap.”

# posted by Squach : 12:16 AM   |  0 comments

Ecofeminism is the social movement that regards the oppression of women and nature as interconnected. It is one of the few movements and analyses that actually connects two movements. More recently, ecofeminist theorists have extended their analyses to consider the interconnections between sexism, the domination of nature (including animals), and also racism and social inequalities. Consequently it is now better understood as a movement working against the interconnected oppressions of gender, race, class and nature.

# posted by Justine : 1:35 AM   |  0 comments

There is probably no saying of Jesus subjected to more abuse than this one. The very way in which it is translated into our English Bibles does violence to its profound and paradoxical meaning, for "you must therefore be perfect" brings to our minds the image of abiding by a perfectionist moral code that allows us no shadow, no taint of impurity or imperfection - in short, that does not allow us any possibility for reconciliation with the inner enemey. But this is a misleading translation, for, as we saw earlier, the Greek word rendered "perfect" means literally "brought to an end state." It is not a matter of achieving some impossible saintlike condition, but of being fulfilled as the person we were created to be. We are to be complete or whole, our lives and personalities brought to the conclusion that God has intended, not perfect in the narrow and one-sided meaning of the word. It is this completenesss, this paradoxical wholeness, that is the goal of the Kindgom of God, and it can be established only in persons whose very faults and failures have contributed to the development within them of their highest potential and greatest capacity for love. Such a person will not be otherworldly but this-worldly; he or she will not have fled from involvement with the things of the world but will be involved with the world, and yet will not have succumbed to the collective values of the world. People like this will be, in Jesus' words, "cunning as serpents and yet as harmless as doves." (Matth. 10:16) They will be wise as serpents because, like the serpent, they will be familiar with the things of the earth. Yet they will be innocent as doves because they will be conscious of their own motives and their own earth-nature, and in this way will remain innocent. Such wholeness will be extremely paradoxical. Among the radical descriptions of such a whole person are the parable of the crafty steward (Luke 16:1-8) and the story of the woman who was a sinner (Luke 7:36-50).

# posted by Justine : 6:23 PM   |  0 comments

So the guards went to the chief priests and Pharisees,
who asked them, “Why did you not bring him?”
The guards answered, “Never before has anyone spoken like this man.”
So the Pharisees answered them, “Have you also been deceived?
Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him?
But this crowd, which does not know the law, is accursed.”
Nicodemus, one of their members who had come to him earlier, said to them,
“Does our law condemn a man before it first hears him
and finds out what he is doing?”
They answered and said to him,
“You are not from Galilee also, are you?
Look and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.”

Labels: religion

# posted by Squach : 4:10 PM   |  0 comments

Most people know little about Matthew Fox other than that he is a very handsome guy with a knack for seeming noble on television. But considering that the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs invited a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize (Shirin Ebadi), and the business school a former Treasury secretary (Robert Rubin), Mr. Fox has the advantage of relative youth and inexperience.

Somewhat predictably, Mr. Fox’s invitation by the senior class officers has caused a stir on campus, where students have questioned everything from his speechifying bona fides to the wattage of his star power. The Columbia student body is famous for its protests, and extended that same demonstrative courtesy to last year’s speaker, Senator John McCain. At least as a Columbia grad, Mr. Fox knows what he is getting into and, we hope, will take whatever happens with a sense of humor.

# posted by Squach : 4:06 PM   |  0 comments

Labels: prolife

# posted by Squach : 2:23 PM   |  0 comments

But why, I asked, were the four priests in this parish kept busy with confessions each evening, not to mention on Saturday afternoons, when in neighboring parishes only a handful of people showed up at the once-a-week slot for confessions?

"Easy," said the pastor. "It's so easy that other priests don't believe how we do it."

Okay, I said. What's the secret?

"From the pulpit we tell our people that they are sinners, that they know they are sinners, and that they need to go to confession. We tell them that God loves them and wants to forgive them. We tell them that we will be waiting for them in the confessionals each night and on Saturday afternoon. We tell them this often and always gently, and so they come to confession. Lots of them."

That's it? I asked. No fire and brimstone? No bribes, spiritual or otherwise? No threats?

"Not necessary," said the pastor. "If you tell people the truth that they already know in their hearts--that they are sinners and need forgiveness--they will respond to that." And so they did.

Labels: religion

# posted by Squach : 12:09 AM   |  0 comments

Although 18- to 25-year-olds are the "least Republican generation" and "less religious than their elders," they are "slightly to the right of the general public" on abortion-related issues, The New York Times Magazine reports. According to the Times Magazine, 50% of people in the age group support some restrictions on access to abortion and 15% support banning abortion. About one-third support making the procedure "generally available," compared with 35% of 50- to 64-year-olds. [People ages 18 to 25] "give every indication of being attentive to the moral issues at stake: they aren't willing to ignore what is troubling about abortion and what is equally troubling about intolerant exclusion," the Times Magazine reports.

Labels: prolife

# posted by Squach : 8:47 PM   |  0 comments

Labels: programming

# posted by Squach : 11:29 PM   |  0 comments

Baghdad (AsiaNews) – “Non Muslim subjects must pay a contribution to the jihad if they wish to be allowed to live and practise their faith in Iraq”. These orders are being imposed on the Christians of Mosul and Baghdad by Islamic militias.

Labels: politics, religion

# posted by Squach : 7:31 PM   |  0 comments

Labels: computers

# posted by Squach : 7:22 PM   |  0 comments

In the morning, after Shacharit (morning prayers) and the Megillah reading for the day, which was much more calm, we started drinking in earnest, and did what any self-respecting drunk people should do, which is decide to dig barbeque pits in the yard, kasher (make kosher by cleaning and super-heating) some old grill tops, and cooking 20 rolling around playing with fire and drinking outside all day. At some point we all went in for Mincha (afternoon prayers), which consisted more of drunk people rolling around on the floor and singing than actual tefillah (prayer), but was holy nonetheless. Rav Yehoshua Kahan won at Purim this year by stripping down to his underwear and reading from the ‘Sermon on the Mount’(from the book of Matthew, in the Christian Bible) during the repetition of the Amidah. At some point in the afternoon, after more barbecuing, and yelling from the rooftops of caravans, we made our way to the houses of the Rebbeim (Rabbis) of the yeshivah, first going to Rav Daniel's, and then heading over to Rav Natan’s (together with Rav Daniel), where we witnessed the two Rav’s arguing about incredibly deep things. It’s interesting, how incredibly different the views of two people who live life within the same, very specific strictures can be, and Rav Natan and Rav Daniel are a perfect example of this.

# posted by Squach : 7:51 PM   |  0 comments

The fourth Sunday of Lent; - so named from the Latin word Lætare (rejoice), the first word in the antiphone of the introit sung that day in the Roman Catholic service.

Labels: religion

# posted by Squach : 7:48 PM   |  0 comments

It has been my contention for some time now that what is going on in the Roman Catholic Church is not reform but destruction. Even if all of the doctrines on the books continue to be the same as before the Second Vatican Council, the practice and atmosphere of the church is slowly mutating into something strange and different. As I have noted previously, many aspects of the traditional Christian and apostolic traditions of the West have either been dismissed as minutiae or consigned to the rubbish bin of history. Historical consciousness becomes an excuse to uproot and change, "reform" and destroy according to the fashions and wills of so called "experts". These technocrats are able find fault with everything from church architechture to traditional piety to sacramental praxis, and propose changes according to the latest theological fad of academia.

Such criticisms against this are not new, and they are formulated by a small minority in the Church known as traditionalists. Often, however, this so-called traditionalist rhetoric is embedded in its own positivist and authoritarian narratives of what the past was like and how the present should be. It is not enough to preserve in some sense the forms used in the past. One must go deeper, into the very foundations of these practices that were dismissed as medieval, baroque, and decadent. Traditionalism, as it has appeared as a movement since the 1960's, is not radical enough, in the sense that "radix" in Latin means the root of living things. Traditionalism tends to ossify liturgy, theology, and the Catholic ethos into an agenda that did not exist prior to the changes. In this post, I want to feature three distinct voices that characterize true meditations on what it means to be a Christian in the West in the 21 st century: Roman, Catholic and Apostolic. These voices not only analyze doctrine, but go to the root of art, literature, and culture to find a new way of adressing the question: Is it possible to be a true Roman Catholic in postmodernity?

# posted by Justine : 3:44 PM   |  0 comments

“Although the preoccupation of the author for the plight of the poor is admirable,” the Notification states, “the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has the obligation to indicate that the aforementioned works of Father Sobrino contain notable discrepancies with the faith of the Church.”

# posted by Squach : 7:18 PM   |  0 comments

When he first began running for New York City mayor in 1989, he said that he personally opposed abortion, favored overturning Roe v. Wade and opposed public financing of abortions. During that campaign he morphed into an unmodulated pro-choicer. He dropped talk of opposing Roe v. Wade and endorsed taxpayer funding of abortion. By the time he was mayor, he was declaring a "Planned Parenthood Day" in New York and all but pledging to perform abortions himself, should it ever come to that.

Now that's he's running for president he says that he "hates" abortion — something he didn't mention when he gave opening remarks at NARAL's "Champions of Choice" lunch in April 2001. (Back then, New Yorkers had a "distinguished tradition" of promoting abortion.) He now supports a partial-birth ban, which he had opposed. His aides say he supports — or wouldn't seek to change — the Hyde amendment banning Medicaid financing of most abortions, even though he once opposed it.

# posted by Squach : 8:51 PM   |  0 comments

That said, the film would probably have a much greater impact if its quality matched its good intentions. Though blessed with a handsome cast and sumptuous costumes, filmmaker Michael Apted would have done better to have commissioned a better script than the convoluted mess that spills onto the screen.

Though I suppose we must forgive it for its numerous conflations of characters and events in order to simplify things, it fails the basic test of maintaining a coherent narrative. The film travels back and forth throughout Wilberforce's career with a flexibility that recalls Kurt Vonnegut's method in Slaughterhouse Five. But while being "spastic in time" may have worked for that fantasy, it fails here, especially since it must surely confuse even that small percentage of the audience that may already know the history.

# posted by Squach : 9:51 PM   |  0 comments

Labels: programming

# posted by Squach : 10:42 PM   |  0 comments

Some years ago, I was involved in a discussion over an issue that was affected by time zones. In particular, the feature in question organized its data by hour, and since the raw data format was UTC, the items were grouped by hour UTC. This works great for time zones that are an integral number of hours from GMT, but if you're in a time zone that is not, then the grouping will come out weird.

The program manager for the feature dismissed my concerns. "You're talking about those oddball time zones that are like 3½ hours from GMT? I say, tough for them. We should be optimizing for the major markets, not the fringe cases."

"Um," I replied. "One of those so-called fringe cases happens to be the second most populous country in the world."

# posted by Squach : 6:14 PM   |  0 comments

St. Clement’s letter is also significant in that it concludes with a prayer for political leaders, Pope Benedict continued. This prayer is the first Christian invocation for public authorities, and “has guided the attitude of Christian towards politics and the state” since that day, the Pope noted.

The prayer is noteworthy, too, because it was written shortly after the death of the Roman Emperor Domitian, who organized the persecution of Christians. The Pope of that day, “though aware that the persecutions would continue, did not cease to pray for those same authorities that had unjustly condemned them,” Pope Benedict said.

Labels: politics, religion

# posted by Squach : 11:05 PM   |  0 comments

The New York Police Department has been going fishing. Not content to nab criminals when they break the law on their own, the department has been planting unattended bags in subway stations to see who might take them, at which point waiting officers pounce.

As NY1 News reported last week, 220 people were arrested last year in the sting, known as Operation Lucky Bag. In dismissing one of these cases, a Brooklyn judge said the police “do not need to manipulate a situation where temptation may overcome even people who would normally never think of committing a crime.”

# posted by Squach : 8:12 PM   |  0 comments

Labels: religion

# posted by Squach : 6:52 PM   |  0 comments

Therefore, when Judaism asserts that G-d is one, it does not mean "one" in the dictionary sense of "the opposite of many." The oneness of G-d is the power of love, which transcends and includes both "one" and "many." It includes opposites in a simple oneness. Although our logical minds cannot understand this paradoxical oneness, we get a taste of it on Purim, because the story of Purim aptly illustrates that even the evil person who denies G-d and rebels against His will ironically serves to reveal G-d's truth and — to the evil person's own dismay — actually end up bringing blessing to the world.

# posted by Squach : 1:31 PM   |  0 comments

Before he ran for senator against Kennedy in Massachusetts, he was pro-life. Then, as he ventured into America's most liberal state as a Republican candidate, he said that his experience with a relative who died after an illegal abortion led him to reconsider his stand on the issue. "I will protect and defend a woman's right to choose" he said as he campaigned for the governorship after losing his Senate bid against Kennedy. But after he had been re-elected as governor and began to focus on a possible presidential race, Romney rediscovered his roots and began to "evolve" on the issue back to a pro-life position, a change which isn't fooling anybody or satisfying either side.

Labels: politics

# posted by Squach : 8:13 PM   |  0 comments