11 Sep 2005
Dear America

Outstanding writing by Chris Rose of the New Orleans Times-Picayune:

Dear America,

I suppose we should introduce ourselves: We're South Louisiana.

We have arrived on your doorstep on short notice and we apologize for that, but we never were much for waiting around for invitations. We're not much on formalities like that.

Read it and laugh, read it and cry, read it and be moved.

(link) [TalkLeft]

via within the crainium

00:00 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

The Real Story of the Masons

Fascinating historical overview of American Freemasonry.

The 1820s looked as though they would be the best of times for the special relationship between the fraternal order of Freemasonry and the young American nation. It wasn't just because so many prominent members of the founding generation--George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and indeed 13 of the 39 signers of the Constitution--had been members. It was also because the rapidly growing republic and the fraternal society still held so many ideals in common. American republican values looked like Masonic values writ large: honorable civic-mindedness, a high regard for learning and progress, and what might be called a broad and tolerant religiosity. Indeed, says Steven Bullock, a historian at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and a leading scholar of the Masonic fraternity in America, Freemasons "helped to give the new nation a symbolic core."

(link) [U.S. News & World Report]

00:00 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

Bush administration eases strict mad cow safeguard

Probably not a stupid move in and of itself: small intestines are very unlikely to carry the vector for prion disease. But it does show something else about our food supply that most folks never even think about: your bologna might have a first name, but what's it really made from?

The Bush administration on Tuesday eased regulations restricting the use of cattle parts in human food, a safeguard considered the main defense against mad cow disease.

(link) [Yahoo! News]

00:00 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link