One of the pedagogical blessings of cyberspace is a service called turnitin.com, which exposes students who copy passages verbatim from internet sites. With the proliferation of websites of mundane term-paper-quality papers for sale, the detective work that now surrounds grading term papers turns even the meekest of professors into forensic hounds. You might expect a temptation for a struggling student to cheat in history or psychology, but surely not on the topic of religion. Imagine assigning a paper on “A Biblical View on Plagiarism†and finding out that it is not a blessing to give the material received a passing grade because the students had less than divine inspiration. What might a pragmatic student be thinking by starting off such a paper with “In the beginning God created…†Continue reading That Next Quran Term paper
Second Thoughts
[Clocks ticking Iraq clock repairmen work at their shop on a Baghdad street (AFP/Karim Sahib) April 11, 2006]
In a commentary yesterday in the New York Times, columnist Nicholas D. Kristoff started off with a startling figure. “For every additional second we stay in Iraq, we taxpayers will end up paying an additional $6,300.†Most Americans make less than this in a month, which by my count for the 30-day variety has a total of 2,592,000 seconds. My math faculties start to break down with the thought of computing the cost per month of this war in seconds on the U.S. Budget. Continue reading Second Thoughts
Not Knowing the Enemy
In an eye-opening commentary in yesterday’s New York Times, Jeff Stein (the national security editor at the Congressional Quarterly) clues us into the clueless state of this administration’s national security apparatus. “Can you tell a Sunni from a Shiite?†he asked a number of counterterrorism officials and members of Congress. The responses, often dumbfounded “I dunno†looks, reveal one of the reasons the so-called war on terror is going so badly. “Too many officials in charge of the war on terrorism just don’t care to learn much, if anything, about the enemy we’re fighting. And that’s enough to keep anybody up at night.†Anybody, it seems, but our self-assured Bush League presidency. Continue reading Not Knowing the Enemy
“Hath Slain His Thousandsâ€
… Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands, and Saul was very wroth, and the saying displeased him; and he said, They have ascribed unto David ten thousands, and to me thousands: and what can he have more but the kingdom? I Samuel 18:7-8
Saddam was no King Saul and most certainly George Bush is no David (although perhaps the Democrats wish he would cast his eyes clintonesque on an intern named Bathsheba). But the sentiment of the ancient Israelite king renowned for slaughtering the Philistines (who incidentallty lived in what we now call Gaza) may be reverberating in the scandal-defying offices of Karl Rove. Earlier this year President Bush estimated the Iraqi dead after our invasion in the 30,000s. The site Iraq Body Count has yet to hit 49,000 for its maximum, as of today. So imagine the wrothness of Bush and Blair defenders when a respected medical journal, The Lancet, releases a study that puts the number of Iraqi casualties as close to 655,000 or 2.5% of the population in the study area. And this does not include deaths since last July. Continue reading “Hath Slain His Thousandsâ€
Homeland Security in Wolf’s Clothing
The PBS documentary series Frontline broadcast a special report yesterday on “The Enemy Within: A Case Study of America’s Response to Homegrown Terrorism.†This is available for viewing online, along with a website with interviews, readings and links. The focus of the report is on several high-profile cases intitially reported as al-Qaida terror cells on American soil. Now that the judicial process has taken its course, not always in the interest of justice as the report shows, it turns out that there is no evidence anywhere of al-Qaida terror cells here in America. This administration has made protecting Americans from terror such a mantra that security agencies have sent out agents cock-sure radical Muslim extremists are swarming out of suburban mosques. We have heard the cry “Wolf†so many times now, that it should come as little surprise that most of the time all we are seeing are sheep fleeced into wearing wolves’ clothing. Continue reading Homeland Security in Wolf’s Clothing
Headless in Saudi Arabia
[â€Traffic sign in Saudi Arabia. The man-without-a-head symbol indicates a pedestrian sidewalk.â€]
I recently came across a rather plebian junior high school level text on The Middle East: History, Culture, People (by Thomas G. Kavunedos and Harold E. Hammond, Bronxville, New York, Cambridge Book Company, Inc, 1968). The book is quite forgetable, but some of the illustrations bring you to a full stop. My favorite is the illustration above. If indeed this was once the sign for a crosswalk, no wonder everyone seems to drive Mercedes in the kingdom.
Daniel Martin Varisco
How Pundits Fuel Nonsense
There are multiple ways of looking at polygamy, but in an op-ed piece this summer William Tucker did so with blinders on. His July 26 op-ed piece, called “How polygamy fuels terrorism†foolishly fuels nonsense instead.
I suppose enterprising American pundits like William Tucker need to find things to say for weekly (or shall I say weakly?) columns. Continue reading How Pundits Fuel Nonsense
Where Are We Beheading?
The search engine Google can easily become a kind of ouija board for those of us engaged in connected scholarship. There is much useful information just a click away, but also much out there of which to be wary. It is worthwhile to take time out every once in awhile to see what Goggle will offer up for an innocent query. Out of curiosity on October 4, 2005, I decided to type “beheading†into Google and see what came up.
The first 10 sites (of 1,890,000) are instructive (you can see for yourself) of the problem facing the representation of Islam on the internet. Continue reading Where Are We Beheading?