[Quote:]

In late October, Newsday, the Long Island daily that the Dolans bought for $650 million, put its web site, newsday.com, behind a pay wall. The paper was one of the first non-business newspapers to take the plunge by putting up a pay wall, so in media circles it has been followed with interest. Could its fate be a sign of what others, including The New York Times, might expect?

So, three months later, how many people have signed up to pay $5 a week, or $260 a year, to get unfettered access to newsday.com?

The answer: 35 people. As in fewer than three dozen. As in a decent-sized elementary-school class.

[Quote:]

Toronto’s Classical Theatre Project has discovered that Shakespeare is a little too bawdy for some parents in the city of Nashville, Tenn.

The company, which has performed productions of Twelfth Night, Macbeth and Oedipus Rex to more than 100,000 Ontario high school students, is in the country music capital this week to perform Romeo and Juliet.

Artistic director David Galpern says he was astonished by the reaction of some teachers and parents who saw the production Sunday night, when it was in dress rehearsal.

“They came to us with what appeared to be a list of objectionable moments that they wanted us to tone down before the students came on Monday,” he told CBC News on Tuesday.

[Quote:]

While Doctors without Borders was struggling to get anesthetics for amputations into Haiti, an Albuquerque group queued up aid of their own sort: 600 solar powered talking Bibles. Even now, food, water, and medicine are having trouble reaching Haitians because of damaged transportation facilities and supply lines, but the missionary group says some of their Bibles are “on the way.”

Like many others, I read about the solar Bible effort with a sense of revulsion. But as a former Evangelical believer, I also read about it with some sympathy for the people packing the boxes. There is no doubt in my mind that they think what they are doing is kind and good. I would bet my psychology license that their behavior is driven by genuine concern for the people of Haiti. I simply believe also that the Evangelical mindset has tremendous power to co-opt and redirect a believer’s moral priorities and sense of compassion.

One of the most pernicious attributes of ideology, whether secular or religious is its power to disconnect true believers from moral emotions like empathy, shame, and guilt. In fact, what often happens is that the ideology repurposes both these emotions and the rest of a believer’s moral machinery in the service of the ideology itself.

Some say his skin has the texture of a dolphin’s, and that wherever you are in the world if you tune your radio to 88.4 you can actually hear his thoughts…

All we know is, he’s called the Stig

Next time you hear somebody complain that people walking out on their mortgage (via “jingle mail”) are immoral and should just take a few extra jobs to make ends meet, ask them why Speyer and BlackRock aren’t picking up extra jobs to make ends meet.

Oh, right. It’s just business.

[Quote:]

Pope Benedict XVI decried Monday what he called “growing aversion” to the Christian faith in the world.

[..]

‘”In a world marked by religious indifference and even by a growing aversion toward the Christian faith, a new, intense activity of evangelization is necessary,” the pope said.

He urged Christians to overcome their differences through dialogue so that they can unite their efforts to influence debates in society on ethical issues like abortion, euthanasia and the limits of science and technology.

Good to see him worried. And how typical: when an ideology is in decline people suddenly decide that factional differences of previous generations are not so important after all.

Try it, I’m going for yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, no, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, no, yes, no, no, no, no, yes, yes, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, yes, no, no, yes, yes, yes, no, yes, yes.