News Items...

Interesting week in the news.  The CIA torturing prisoners with power drills.  A Nutjob with an assault rifle shows up at an Obama opposition rally in Phoenix.  A woman yells "Heil Hitler" at a Jew during a town hall meeting (and her actions are promptly defended by a couple of skinheads).  Out of all this absurdity, one thing caught my eye.  Hawaii is removing 168 female inmates from a private prison in Kentucky over charges of abuse by guards.  You'd think someone in Hawaii would have seen that one coming.  The story is bad enough, but one little tidbit blew my mind. 

In Kentucky, the rape of an inmate by a prison guard is a misdemeanor.

Oh, God...

Whenever anyone asks me if I believe in God, I usually rely on one of Einstein's famous quotes:

I believe in the God of Spinoza.  The God who presented himself in the harmony of all being.  I do not believe in a God who concerns Himself with the fate and actions of men.

This usually got me a blank stare.  Recently I came across an interview with Dave Matthews in Rolling Stone. He's more eloquent than I could ever be...

Rolling Stone: You've talked publicly about being an agnostic, which is pretty daring these days. Politicians are falling all over themselves. . . .

Dave Matthews: Yeah, "Get out of my way so I can get into the church." It's so small a view of things. Obviously, there's a source of all things, however big or small it is. But if you give it consciousness, it just gets smaller. If you give it concern for us, it gets smaller.

I use the word "God" in my songs all the time, because I don't know what the hell's going on. So that's God – everything that I don't know. But the idea of God as a fatherly figure who looks down on us and worries how we're doing or takes sides when we have fights – it's more irritating than Santa Claus. The world and the universe are far more wonderful if there's not a puppet master.

That says it all.