Religion
Book Fair Clothing Controversy
Who knew book fairs could be so controversial? Iran’s clerics are urging the country’s cultural secretary to hand over the running of the Tehran book fair to them as they have been heartbroken on seeing that some women did not strictly observe the hijab, turning the event into ‘fashion salons’. Read more in the Literary [...]
Hip Hop Monk
ITN News reports that a Japanese Buddhist monk has become MC Happiness in an attempt to engage young people in religion via rapping. Watch him in action (via Three Billion):
Gay is the New Black
Dangerous Breed is home to political T-Shirts that make you think: the slogan that is provoking most comment at the moment is “Gay is the New Black”, which refers to the denial of gay marriage rights in the USA. Others include “Ski Iraq” (as seen on Six Feet Under), “Gaza Strip Club” and “Petrosexual”. Get [...]
Genesis Illustrated
Satirical cartoonist R. Crumb has turned his talents to the bible in The Book of Genesis Illustrated, which is essentially a graphic novel (“with nothing left out”). Read more in the Washington Post.
Three Die at Self-Help Retreat
The Huffington Post reports that two people (now three) people died when they took part in a sweat lodge at the end of a self-help retreat in Arizona run by spiritual guru James Ray. Sixty people had paid $10,000 to attend the retreat and were confined to a tent for several hours, as the temperature [...]
Jewish Elevators
Orthodox Jews in NYC are trying to work out whether they can use special Shabbos elevators that automatically stop at every floor on the Sabbath so its passengers don’t have to perform an action forbidden by the Torah (work, which includes using electrical devices is banned on the Sabbath). Many observant Jews have rejected the [...]
Wanted: What the Specialist Factual Commissioners Want in the UK
At the Intelligent Factual conference a couple of weeks ago, specialist factual channel execs talked about which programmes have recently worked well for them and what they are looking for in the future. Click through to see what BBC1, BBC2, BBC4, Ch4, BIO, History UK and Crime & Investigation want in their science, history, art, religion and natural history slots. (Photo by plagel under CC BY-SA 2.0)
Organ Brokers
Interesting – and disturbing – story about organ trafficking in Brooklyn. Brokers (including a rabbi) buy kidneys from people in impoverished circumstances, usually India for $2,000 to $10,000, and sell them on to desperate kidney patients for up to $180,000. Read more: Daily News
Murder Most Foul
US officials who visited a house to evict the tenants in Washington, DC, discovered the decomposing bodies of four children, aged 5-17 years old; their mother had been living with their bodies for months. Benita Jacks said that her daughters had been possessed by demons and that they had died in their sleep one-by-one. Forensics [...]
Sarah Palin Memoir
HarperCollins is publishing Sarah Palin’s memoir in the USA in spring 2010. She’s reportedly excited to use her journalism degree to set the record straight about her upbringing, her family and last year’s presidential race. Palin will work with a collaborator to produce the book, which has yet to be started. She’s going to have [...]
