Hearts and Minds

Once you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.

-Unknown; quoted by General Patton and Lindon Johnson

DNA Explodes Greek Myth About Women

Click the title. ... from Guardian.

Secrets

A Good Day for California

It is a bright, new day. The supreme court of California legalized gay marriage.

Secrets

When God Was a Woman

By Richard N. Ostling

To mark Earth Day last week, four women and two men stood on a hilltop outside Mount Horeb, Wis., literally praying to Mother Earth. "Sacred Earth Power, bring healing to planet Earth," intoned barefoot Selena Fox, priestess of Circle Sanctuary. Worshipers responded with a crescendo chant, "Clean soil. Clean soil," then pledged to do a variety of ecological good deeds and joined in a hug. Similar nature worship was part of Earth Day festivals from Boston, where the Goddess Gospel singers performed on the waterfront, to Berkeley, where devotees drummed and sang for a crowd.

The ceremonies were part of a growing U.S. spiritual movement: Goddess worship, the effort to create a female-centered focus for spiritual expression. Most participants are women who seek a deity other than God the Father, and a faith less patriarchal than the Judeo-Christian tradition seems to offer. Adherents claim the movement involves as many as 100,000 U.S. women.

Though such ancient goddesses as Isis or Astarte are often invoked, most worship occurs in the name of a vague generic "Goddess," often depicted as Mother Earth or Gaia in line with environmental awareness. "The Goddess is not just the female version of God. She represents a different concept," says Merlin Stone, author of When God Was a Woman. While the Judeo-Christian God is transcendent, the Goddess is located "within each individual and all things in nature," she says.

Various groups follow a mixed brew of Wicca (witchcraft), paganism, New Age ideas and evocations of female power, some inspired by Native American and African traditions. Though a minority enacts malevolent spell casting and magic (not Satanism, these worshipers insist), most embrace benign beliefs, especially harmony with nature. While some draw upon ancient rituals, others invent new ones.

Despite Christianity's centuries of opposition to paganism, some old-line churches are opening up to the Goddess. A witch teaches in an institute at the Roman Catholic Holy Names College in California. A book by two United Methodist pastors proposes experimental Bible readings about the crucifixion that replace Jesus with Sophia (Wisdom), a name for the divine personality used by Goddess-minded Christians.

Movement advocates say Goddess worship restores a prehistoric belief that was eradicated in Europe and the Middle East around 6,000 years ago by patriarchal invaders. The prepatriarchal utopia is portrayed as egalitarian, peace loving and "gynocentric." New scholarly backing for the creed comes from archaeologist Marija Gimbutas in The Language of the Goddess (Harper & Row) and the forthcoming Civilization of the Goddess. The author contends that worship of the "Old European Great Goddess" goes back to 25,000 B.C., though Gimbutas' major evidence stems from farming cultures in southeastern Europe from 6500 B.C. on, especially their ubiquitous female statuettes.

There are numerous skeptics, including female religious thinkers. Carole Fontaine of Andover Newton Theological School, for one, complains that feminist writers delete historical evidence that is "embarrassing or contradictory." Carol Meyers of Duke University argues that there is no proof that the figurines cited by Gimbutas were objects of worship, much less representations of a single Goddess. None of that, however, has deterred adherents. Whether they are reviving a vanished faith or inventing a new one, it is the gender of the deity that counts.

With reporting by Michael P. Harris/New York and Elizabeth L''Hommedieu/San Francisco

Find this article at:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,972894,00.html

Secrets

The Redemptive Power of Music, and Friendship

Territorial Changes of Iran in the 19th Century

ذغال اخته و گوجه سبز

I remembered of some of the links I had from a while ago among my bookmarks about the fruits are pretty popular in Iran and are hardly known here:

ذغال اخته

Can Eric

فرهنگ واژگان جواتی

from iranian.com

Balls

Amigo, the only thing in this world that gives orders is balls. Balls. You got that?

Tony Montana-Scarface

secrets

Scientists take drugs to boost brain power: study

It looks that the most "reasonable" parts of the society are bending for the "demands" of the rat-race.

World Leaders

This is really cool:

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/9576,features,world-leaders-episode-1

These are episodes based on the current heads of the states who are/have been visible in the show going on.

شاهتوت

There are some fruits that I miss from back home. شاهتوت is one of 'em. The white توت is another one. Sorry girls, zalzalak is not on the list.

Wikipeida calls شاهتوت black mulberry. Does anybody know of any orchards in the bay area or, sag khord, northern California who have شاهتوت ?

All About Weapons

I was bored out of my mind today at work; I think the economic downturn is showing up. Anyways, I started reading about weapons on Wikipedia. These are some of the links I could kill some time with:

List of individual weapons of the U.S. Armed Forces

List of martial arts weapons

Gun laws in the United States (by state)

I hope you have something to do ; )

Destiny

Destiny: A tyrant’s authority for crime and fool’s excuse for failure.

Dance

I would believe only in a God that knows how to dance.

Friedrich Nietzsche

FITNA

This is the movie which drew uproar from islamic fundamentalists.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2950045777974098302&hl=de

It is true and disturbing.