MATTOON, IL— Proud to be known as the heart of the Illinois Bible Belt, the residents of Mattoon fill dozens of Christian churches. Theres also one Jewish congregation, which has the distinction of being the smallest Reform synagogue in North America. The membership? Four households. The Mattoon Jewish Community Center isnt a center at all but a group of dedicated congregants who meet in Trinity Episcopal Church. Even at Yom Kippur — the holiest of Holy Days, when this week synagogues in Chicago were packed — the worshippers at this prairie outpost strained to hit double digits. via Smallest Jewish…
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Also cross posted at Daily Kos, Glenden Brown offers a perspective on Mitt Romney from behind the Zion Curtain. In Mormon culture, hierarchical status confers respect.  Authority in Mormonism is rarely questioned.  Mormon authorities are bad at explaining why they’re doing what they’re doing because within Mormonism they have the ultimate conversation stopper – “God said so.† I think Romney is genuinely confused when his public assurances aren’t simply accepted as fact.  Why should people want to see his taxes when he’s said there’s nothing illegal in them?  His odd, robotic public persona is the political version of the Mormon…
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UPDATE: Fixed my dumb typo in the title. Also too, added the latest poll for the district: Joe Walsh, Flailing in the Polls, Sticks it to the 47 Percent Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) probably could have picked a better time to come rushing to the defense of Mitt Romney. On Tuesday, a new survey from Public Policy Polling showed the first-term tea partier trailing Democratic challenger and Iraq war vet Tammy Duckworth by 14 points (52–38) in his Chicagoland district. Just 35 percent of voters said they approved of his job performance. Oooh, BURN. What a delicious update. Hee!! I forgot that I’d…
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And now we’re headed to dinner to commemorate our friend Steve’s Night of The Spiny Lobster.
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It’s a nice fall day, and here it’s my double-nickel birthday. Whut? Need more coffee.
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We both have transponders, and the original one used to make a cheerful BEEP! as we passed through the old-style I-PASS tollbooths. A few years ago, while Blago was still governor, Illinois started installing high speed scan lanes, and phased out the old transponders as they were no longer being made. I admit, we used to say BEEP back to the transponder. We also meow at each other like a certain pair of actors in an obscure science fiction show, but that’s another post. When the time comes to replace either transponder (one in each of our two cars) we’ll…
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It’s not easy getting Last.fm to work on an iPad… there’s only partial functionality (I suspect that due to Apple’s well known aversion to all things Flash, and also to their reluctance to grant control of the iTunes player to third parties). Now that I’m working from home, music is becoming more and more a necessity. I couldn’t listen before in the office environment, which could have helped me tune out distractions. Now I can listen, and it helps me stay focused while working on records in “waiting for calls” mode. I have a normal clock radio in my home…
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I’m watching an H2 program called Civilization Lost, covering little-known sites that hint at entire civilizations that have been lost to history, the segment on the Turkish site Gobekli Tepe was striking to me. The History 2 channel seems to be slightly more “woo-woo ancient aliens!1!” than the regular History channel. Also covered: Varna, Tel Hamoukar, the Minoan culture, and others. Six miles from Urfa, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey, Klaus Schmidt has made one of the most startling archaeological discoveries of our time: massive carved stones about 11,000 years old, crafted and arranged by prehistoric people who had…
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The future will be brighter, more colorful, and easier to navigate for all us Baby Boomers, so we’d better start thinking about the custom paint jobs and pinstriping we want on our Hoverrounds and Rascals. Oy. CHARLOTTE, N.C — CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Easier-to-chew foods, brighter lights in stores and bigger, clearer fonts on packaging: Those are a few of the changes marketers discussed at a conference Friday about how to sell to aging consumers. via Companies set sights on aging consumers | McClatchy
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I’ve turned off a couple of auto-post features for now, at least through the end of the political season. The Twitter Tools plugin has a “create daily or weekly post from tweets” feature, I’ve turned off the weekly tweets posts as my usage has spiked, probably to an annoying degree, on my main account. I’ll migrate the political and topical news commentary and reaction to a different account, and pare my “follows” back to more personal topics on the main account. I’d rather not irritate my real-life friends and acquaintances further with my current interest with the political process. It’s…