Tag Archives: church

Watch President Obama Break Into "Amazing Grace" During His Extraordinary Charleston Eulogy

by RoxannaZiq Posted on June 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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President Obama came before a grief-stricken but ebullient crowd in Charleston, South Carolina, on Friday afternoon to eulogize the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was among the nine people gunned down on June 18 in the massacre at the historic Mother Emanuel church. Obama delivered more than a presidential speech—he gave a sermon, a powerful and lively invocation of Pinckney’s life, punctuated by applause, cheers, and notes from the church organ. He drew on the history of pain and survival of the church community that Pinckney led, and situated Pinckney’s life within the broader historical struggle for civil rights for black Americans.

But it was Obama’s rendition of “Amazing Grace”—begun a cappella by the president in a moment of quiet pause near the end, and soon joined by the church band and the entire audience—that will surely be the most remembered part of this extraordinary presidential address. (The song starts around the 35:20 mark.)

Taking the stage after a series of passionate eulogies and moving gospel numbers at a packed arena at the College of Charleston, Obama called Pinckney “a man who believed in things not seen, a man who believed there were better days ahead, off in the distance. A man of service who persevered” and was “wise beyond his years.”

“Rev. Pinckney embodied a politics that was never mean, nor small,” Obama said, to regular vocal agreement from the crowd. “He encouraged progress not by pushing his ideas along, but by seeking out your ideas.” Pinckney, Obama said, “embodied that our Christian faith demands deeds, not just prayer.”

“Our pain cuts that much deeper because it happened in a church,” the president continued, going on to detail the history of the struggles faced by black churches—what he called “hush harbors,” “rest stops,” and “bunkers” along the turbulent path to freedom, desegregation, and beyond. “A foundation stone for liberty and justice for all,” he said. “That’s what the church meant.” He was met with more than one standing ovation.

In the aftermath of the Charleston massacre, Obama has spoken forcefully both about race and gun violence. As the eulogy crescendoed, he all but merged the two subjects. First, he said, “None of us can or should expect a transformation of race relations overnight. Every time something like this happens, somebody says, ‘We have to have a conversation about race.'” He then said emphatically, “We talk a lot about race. There’s no shortcut. We don’t need more talk.”

After the applause subsided, he turned to guns. “None of us should believe that a handful of gun safety measures will prevent every tragedy—it will not,” he said, acknowledging that worthwhile policy arguments will go on. “There are good people on both sides of these debates.” Obama continued:

But it would be a betrayal of everything Rev. Pinckney stood for, I believe, if we allowed ourselves to slip into a comfortable silence again. Once the eulogies have been delivered, once the TV cameras move on—to go back to business as usual. That’s what we so often do, to avoid the uncomfortable truths about the prejudice that still infects our society. To settle for symbolic gestures without following up with the hard work of more lasting change. That’s how we lose our way again.

The president appeared with first lady Michelle Obama, alongside Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill Biden. House Speaker John Boehner was also in attendance (the White House confirmed to CBS News reporter Mark Knoller that it had been Boehner’s first time aboard Air Force One with Obama).

The eulogy in Charleston capped an extraordinary two days for Obama in which he hailed two landmark Supreme Court decisions. The first, handed down Thursday, saved a key part of his signature health care law. The second, on Friday morning, cleared the path for marriage equality across America. Then the president strode onto a stage to inspire a grieving community, and nation, using words and song like no president had before.

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Watch President Obama Break Into "Amazing Grace" During His Extraordinary Charleston Eulogy

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We Have Some Bad News For You About the Pope’s Big Climate Push

by FlorentDuckett Posted on June 18, 2015

Mother Jones

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The story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Liberals love nothing better than a religious figure who takes their side, and the media loves nothing more than the man-bites-dog story of a conservative force or figure staking out a progressive position. Consider all the hype given to pro-social justice evangelical Christians like Jim Wallis, or the statistically nonexistent “Creation Care” movement of green evangelicals.

So the Monday leak of Pope Francis’ forthcoming encyclical on climate change naturally triggered triumphant statements from green groups. In the draft, Francis says that climate change is mostly human-made, and that a failure to mitigate it would be an abrogation of our responsibility to protect God’s creation and have “grave consequences for all of us.”

He’s right, of course. But will it matter to the conservative political movements that stand in the way of taking climate action?

Some greens certainly think so. 350.org declared that it will “add momentum and moral weight” to the fossil-fuel divestment campaign. Rev. Fletcher Harper, executive director of GreenFaith, an interfaith environmental group, said in the same statement, “The pope’s encyclical will be a powerful game-changer.” Leading Senate climate hawk Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) told Grist, “I think it’ll have a really profound impact…Not only does it have the clout of an encyclical, but I think this very, very charismatic pope intends to drive the message.”

Unfortunately, there is little reason to believe that the pope’s position paper will alter the politics of the biggest, most problematic climate-polluting nations. None of the top four climate polluters–China, the US, India, and Russia–are majority Roman Catholic. Russia, India, and Japan have all sent worrying signals about their approach to the climate negotiations in Paris this fall. There is no reason to think the pope’s views matter to them at all. The European Union nations are heavily Catholic, but they are already committed to reducing emissions. The second-biggest emitter, the US, would therefore seem to be the most fertile ground for the pope to make inroads on the issue. The US is 24 percent Catholic, and Catholic voters are an important swing constituency for both major political parties.

But Democratic Catholics, like most Democrats, are already on-board to address climate change–just look at House minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) or Secretary of State John Kerry. The problem is the Republicans, regardless of their religion. Will the Pope’s words make any difference to them?

No. Pope John Paul II strongly opposed the Iraq invasion, and every pope in recent memory has favored more spending on social programs for the needy. But Republicans, despite their efforts for the last half-century to win over Catholic voters, remained steadfast in their support of starting foreign wars and in their opposition to housing the homeless, caring for the sick, or feeding the hungry. As liberal Catholic pundit Bill Press notes, “In their encyclicals, popes have always talked about controversial issues of the day…perhaps most famously, Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum (1891) affirmed the right of workers to form labor unions and receive a living wage.” One hundred and twenty-four years later, Catholic Republicans remain opposed to labor unions or raising the minimum wage. The Catholic Church is clear in its condemnation of the death penalty, but Catholic GOP presidential contenders Rick Santorum, Jeb Bush, Bobby Jindal, and Chris Christie all support it. Why should climate change be any different?

Even before the encyclical was leaked, Republicans—both Catholic and Protestant—were dismissing it. The Guardian‘s Suzanne Goldenberg reported on Saturday:

“The pope ought to stay with his job, and we’ll stay with ours,” James Inhofe, the granddaddy of climate change deniers in the US Congress and chairman of the Senate environment and public works committee, said last week, after picking up an award at a climate sceptics’ conference.

Rick Santorum, a devout Catholic and a long-shot contender for the Republican nomination, told a Philadelphia radio station: “The church has gotten it wrong a few times on science, and I think we probably are better off leaving science to the scientists and focusing on what we’re good at, which is theology and morality.”

Goldenberg argues that being on the wrong side of the Catholic Church will cause tension within the GOP: “It also puts conservatives in an uncomfortable spot—not unlike the Reagan era of the 1980s when bishops came out against nuclear weapons.” That example, though, seems to prove the opposite point: The church’s anti-nuke stance didn’t slow Reagan’s vast nuclear buildup in the least, and the GOP remains less supportive of nuclear disarmament to this day. In April, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) announced its support for President Obama’s negotiations with Iran to avert it from developing nuclear weapons, something conservative congressional Catholic leaders such as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) opposed.

And the USCCB isn’t as liberal as it was in the 1980s. As the New York Times reported on Saturday, most American Catholic bishops are skeptical of the pope’s embrace of action to reduce climate change:

Some bishops said they were wary about getting the church enmeshed in the debate over climate change, a contentious issue in the United States. They also expressed concern about allying with environmentalists, some of whom promote population control as a remedy, since the church sees abortion and contraception as great evils.

Some bishops said they had received hate mail from Catholics skeptical of climate change. Their wariness is one of many signs of the challenges Pope Francis faces with American Catholic leaders, who are more cautious and politically conservative than he seems to be on certain issues. Most in this current generation of bishops were appointed and shaped by Francis’ more conservative predecessors, Popes Benedict XVI and John Paul II.

Liberals ought to think twice before wishing that American Catholics would take their political cues from the pope’s playbook. Lots of Democratic Catholics disagree with their church’s doctrine on abortion and gay rights. Catholics have demonstrated that they hold diverse opinions and that they don’t take political marching orders from the Vatican. Catholic American politicians and voters pick and choose which Catholic teachings they apply to politics. The majority of American Catholics disagree with their church’s opposition to gay rights and contraception, and about half support abortion rights. Catholic Republicans oppose welfare and support warfare, in defiance of Church doctrine. Now we can add climate change to the list.

This actually ought to make enviros hopeful. Francis’s encyclical may help move American public opinion at the margins. (Imagine, for example, how much more widely available abortion might be if the Catholic Church did not oppose it.) But the more fundamental good news is that the politics of climate change aren’t subject to the whims of foreign clergy. Americans will make up their own minds about the issue—and the responsibility for convincing them rests on each of us, as it should.

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We Have Some Bad News For You About the Pope’s Big Climate Push

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The Lawyer Who Handled Dylann Roof’s Drug Case Says He Seemed Like "Just a Normal Kid"

by RondaMoonlight Posted on June 18, 2015

Mother Jones

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After Dylann Storm Roof was arrested Thursday morning for allegedly shooting nine people at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, Ken Mathews, an attorney who has been representing Roof in an ongoing drug-possession case, was, he says, “very shocked” to hear about what Roof had allegedly done. He tells Mother Jones, “The dealings I had with him, he was just a normal kid.”

Mathews, a Columbia, South Carolina, attorney, notes that so far in the drug case he has had “very limited dealings” with Roof. He says he saw “nothing that would indicate that Roof would take this type of action.”

The local police have called the shooting a hate crime. Mathews says he has seen no signs that Roof harbored any racial animus: “I had no inkling of anything like that in the dealings I had with him.”

Mathews has known the Roof family for years, dating back to a custody dispute between Dylann’s father Ben and mother Amy over visitation rights concerning Dylann. Mathews says he spoke to Dylann’s father this morning, and “it’s very, very difficult.”

Mathews became Roof’s lawyer after Roof was arrested in March at the Columbiana Centre, a mall in Columbia, and charged with possession of suboxone, a narcotic painkiller. Mathews says Roof had gone into some stores and “asked people some questions, which made some people uncomfortable,” including what time the stores closed. Someone at one of the stores contacted the authorities. Roof was stopped and searched, according to Mathews, and the police found he was carrying suboxone and arrested him. Roof was also given a trespassing warning, which he violated a couple of weeks later, Mathews notes, and Roof was subsequently cited for trespassing.

Here’s what else we know about Roof:

Roof, 21, was arrested midday Thursday in Shelby, North Carolina, about a three and a half-hour drive from the historic Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. The shooting of nine black churchgoers happened at about 9 p.m. Wednesday.
Charleston police chief Greg Mullen said he believed the shooting to be a “hate crime.”
Roof’s uncle told Reuters that Roof was introverted and soft-spoken.
The uncle also said Roof’s father had recently given him a .45-caliber handgun as a birthday present. “I don’t have any words for it. Nobody in my family had seen anything like this coming,” he said.
Roof is from Lexington, South Carolina, and attended White Knoll High School, which a high school friend said had a mix of black and white students.
An ornamental license plate on the front of Roof’s car had a Confederate flag on it.
Roof’s roommate told ABC News that Roof was a “bit into segregation and other stuff,” and “said he wanted to start a civil war. He said he was going to do something like that and then kill himself.”

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The Lawyer Who Handled Dylann Roof’s Drug Case Says He Seemed Like "Just a Normal Kid"

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Here’s What We Know About the People Who Lost Their Lives in Charleston

by Cynthia Trevino Posted on June 18, 2015

Mother Jones

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Nine people were killed in the shooting at the historic Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, on Wednesday night. On Thursday afternoon, Charleston County Coroner Rae Wooten officially identified all of the victims, some of whose names had leaked out over the course of the day. Here are brief sketches of their lives.

State Sen. Clementa Pinckney

Pinckney, 41, was a pastor at Emanuel AME and a widely respected state senator. “Sen. Pinckney was a legend,” said fellow state Sen. Marlon Kimpton on CNN. “He was the moral compass of the state Senate.” Pinckney’s desk in the statehouse was covered with a black cloth after news broke of his death:

During his remarks on Thursday afternoon, President Obama said he knew Pinckney personally, along with other members of the church. “To say our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families and their community doesn’t say enough to convey the heartache and the sadness and the anger that we feel,” he said.

Sharonda Coleman-Singleton

Coleman-Singleton, also a pastor at the church, was a coach at Goose Creek High School near Charleston. South Carolina’s high school sports governing body mourned her death on Twitter after it was announced on Thursday morning:

“I saw her at work everyday and she always had a smile on her face,” Chris Pond, the baseball coach at Goose Creek, said to the Berkeley Independent.

Cynthia Hurd

Hurd, the manager of the St. Andrews branch of the Charleston County Public Library, was identified by her employer as one of the victims.

“Cynthia was a tireless servant of the community who spent her life helping residents, making sure they had every opportunity for an education and personal growth,” the library said in a statement on Facebook.

The library announced it would shut all of its branches on Thursday to honor Hurd.

TYWANZA SANDERS

Lady June Cole, the interim president of Allen University, said on Thursday that Tywanza Sanders, a 2014 graduate of the small historically black university in Columbia, S.C., was killed in the shooting. Cole called Sanders a “quiet, well-known student who was committed to his education” and who “presented a warm and helpful spirit.”

It’s not about how much money you got it’s not about materials you possess its about love faith belief hope determination perseverance passion pain patients. God gives his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers. I love these instruments but my love for God is greater. This acoustic guitar and my first musical love my trumpet my sacrifice will bring joy to others #moneymotivatemoney #grindovermatter #success #loveyours #giveGodcredit #trustinGod

A photo posted by TyWanza Sanders (@freshwanza) on Apr 19, 2015 at 7:30am PDT

MYRA THOMPSON

Archbishop Foley Beach of the Anglican Church of North America wrote in a Facebook post on Thursday that Myra Thompson, the wife of the Rev. Anthony Thompson of Charleston’s Holy Trinity REC Church, was killed in the attack.

Ethel Lee Lance
The 70-year-old grandmother had worked at Emanuel AME for more than three decades. Her grandson Jon Quil Lance told the Post and Courier newspaper in Charleston that Lance was a hardworking Christian and “the heart of the family.”

Susie Jackson
The 87-year-old was a longtime church patron and Ethel Lance’s cousin, according to the Post and Courier.

Daniel L. Simmons Sr.
The 74-year-old was a ministry staff member at Emanuel AME and the former pastor of Greater Zion AME Church in the nearby town of Awendaw. His daughter-in-law, Arcelia Simmons, told ABC News that Simmons attended services at Emanuel on Sundays as well as weekly Bible study. Simmons died in the hospital after the attack.*

Depayne Middleton
The 49-year-old mother of four sang in the church choir.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Allen University is located in Charleston. It is actually located in Columbia, S.C.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misspelled the town of Awendaw.

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Here’s What We Know About the People Who Lost Their Lives in Charleston

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A Ground-Level View of Baltimore’s Protests: Hope, Anger, and Beauty

by JeffreyBaylebri Posted on May 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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Eyewitnesses: How the Baltimore riots really started

On April 12, Freddie Gray was arrested by Baltimore police. One hour later he was comatose. A week later he was dead, succumbing to spinal injuries inflicted while in custody. On Monday, Gray’s funeral was followed by peaceful protests as well as looting, arson, and confrontations with police.

Photographer Andrew Renneisen was on the streets that night and the following day as the city took stock of the riots’ aftermath, capturing images of violence and destruction, but also hope and courage.

All photos by Andrew Renneisen.

A protester picks up a tear gas canister after it was fired to disperse a small crowd that stayed past a 10 p.m. curfew.

Baltimore residents watch the scene of a fire at Baker and North Mount Streets.

A car burns on Fulton Avenue.

Residents watch the fire at Baker and North Mount Streets.

Freddie Gray’s friends and family pray at the New Shiloh Baptist Church the night of the riots.

A police officer across the street from the fire at Baker and North Mount Streets.

The fire’s aftermath.

Citizens clean up a CVS that was looted and set on fire during protests.

A protester on the morning after Monday’s massive protests.

Police create a wall on West North Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.

A peace walk in honor of Freddie Gray Andrew Renneisen

A helicopter hovers over a rally following the peace walk. Andrew Renneisen

Protesters link arms together after bottles were thrown at police.

Black baby dolls hang from a tree to protest Gray’s death.

Police form a line and deploy tear gas to disperse protesters.

Roller skating amid the protests.

Tear gas floats behind a protester.

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A Ground-Level View of Baltimore’s Protests: Hope, Anger, and Beauty

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Even Anti-Gay Activists Predict Victory for Same-Sex Marriage at the Supreme Court

by MarcyHamblin Posted on April 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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As oral arguments in the highly anticipated gay-marriage case Obergefell v. Hodges got underway on Tuesday morning, hundreds of same-sex-marriage supporters gathered outside the Supreme Court to celebrate what they were convinced would be a major victory. A few dozen gay-marriage foes showed up as well, including members of the notorious Westboro Baptist Church, but even they seemed resigned to the fact that their pro-marriage-equality opponents would prevail.

In Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court is considering the legality of same-sex-marriage bans; the case turns on the question of whether the 14th Amendment guarantees the right to same-sex marriage and whether states are required to recognize same-sex unions from other states. After the oral arguments, the New York Times reported that the justices were closely divided on whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right. A decision is expected at the end of June.

Ben Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church

“I know it’s a fait accompli,” said an unhappy-looking Ben Phelps, 39, a member of the Westboro Baptist Church, the Kansas-based group known for its anti-gay activism and categorized as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Phelps and a small group from his church were protesting on the outskirts of the rally. He held two signs, one that read “God Hates Fags” and the other “Same-Sex Parents Doom Kids.” Phelps predicted the court will rule in favor of same-sex marriage “because we’re in the days of Sodom.”

David Grisham of Repent Amarillo

About 30 yards away, David Grisham, the leader of an anti-gay-marriage group called Repent Amarillo (an outfit the Texas Observer described as a “militant evangelical group that advertises itself as ‘the Special Forces of spiritual warfare'”), shouted into a microphone: “Folks, I’m telling you right now, you’re going to lose your rights if you don’t wake up.”

“I believe the Supreme Court will rule in favor of gay marriage,” Grisham told me after passing the mic to another member of his group. The result, he predicted, would be “persecution for Christians.” He added, “The structure of the family will continue to break down” and “society” will unravel with it.

Gay marriage supporters surround anti-gay protesters.

Grisham and Phelps were in the minority. The overwhelming majority of the crowd had gathered at the court to support marriage equality. “I’m confident,” said Maria Mascaro, 34, who drove down from Philadelphia to attend the rally. “There’s going to be a cocktail after this.”

Albino Periera, 50, and his husband, Joe Kowalcheck, 36, as well as their two dogs, Lola and Nero, made the trip to DC by car from Ormond Beach, Florida. “We’re all very optimistic,” Kowalcheck said. “It would be hard to go backward.”

Nero, gay marriage supporter

Many supporters were optimistic that Justice Anthony Kennedy, who authored the 2013 opinion striking down part of the Defense of Marriage Act, would be the swing vote in favor of marriage equality. “Public opinion is so in favor” of same-sex marriage, said Barbara Stussman, 48, of Maryland, whose daughter is a lesbian. “I think Justice Kennedy takes that into account.” During oral arguments, however, Kennedy expressed concern about changing the conception of marriage that “has been with us for millennia,” according to the New York Times.

“I think if Kennedy found DOMA to be discriminatory…he’ll find state bans to be discriminatory too,” said Jeremy Cerutti, 35, a lawyer from Philadelphia. “This is our 1960s moment.”

Opponents of gay marriage likewise see this case as a watershed moment.

“This is the case,” said Grisham of Repent Amarillo. “This is like a Roe v. Wade moment.”

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Even Anti-Gay Activists Predict Victory for Same-Sex Marriage at the Supreme Court

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Pope wants you to stop popping out babies — but don’t even think about using birth control

by DelorisScullin Posted on January 21, 2015

Pope wants you to stop popping out babies — but don’t even think about using birth control

By on 20 Jan 2015commentsShare

Yesterday, in a huge change of position for Ye Olde Catholic Churche, Pope “Swaggy F.” Francis spoke out against people reproducing “like rabbits.”

From BBC:

He replied with an unexpected turn of phrase: “Some people think that — excuse my expression here — that in order to be good Catholics we have to be like rabbits.”

“No. Parenthood is about being responsible. This is clear.”

Thanks, Papa! Abandoning the “be fruitful and multiply” and “every sperm is sacred” view of reproduction is a crucial step toward a more reasonable approach to population growth. And since addressing climate change also means ensuring that those disproportionately affected by it — women, minorities, people in developing countries — aren’t continuously trapped in cycles of poverty and suffering, we are especially pleased to see the Leviathan-esque Catholic church take a slow, creaky turn in the right direction.

However, an excellent way to two-fer-one your climate- and gender-equality goals is to give women access to contraception and reproductive healthcare. Around the world, an estimated 222 million women want but don’t have access to modern methods of birth control. So: Where does the Pope stand on birth control?

Still “firmly against,” per the BBC report. No surprises there, as his position is consistent with the rest of the Church: In the U.S., bishops are even trying to abolish sterilization procedures — the second-most popular form of birth control in the country, with 15.5 percent of reproductive-aged women choosing to get their tubes tied — from Catholic hospitals. With this and other forms of contraception off the table for practicing Catholics, that leaves so-called “natural” methods — or as I like to call it, the “Pull Out and Pray Plan.” These are not nearly as dependable as long-acting contraceptives or hormonal birth control.

To declare — after millennia of advocating for the exact opposite — that people stop popping out kids willy-nilly while simultaneously refusing to support modern contraception is the equivalent of asking someone to build a house with their hands tied behind their back. It makes absolutely zero sense. In the race to catch up to women of the 21st century, it looks like the Catholic Church got stuck somewhere around 1912.

Cool! At this rate, we’ll see you guys around 2400 — but all life on Earth may have sizzled away by then, so maybe we won’t see you at all.

Source:
Pope Francis: No Catholic need to breed like ‘rabbits’

, BBC.

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Pope wants you to stop popping out babies — but don’t even think about using birth control

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Scientists Want to Make a Malaria-Resistant Mosquito

by AnneKappel Posted on November 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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Malaria has long bedeviled those who have sought to eradicate it, particularly in Africa. According to the World Health Organization, in 2012, the disease caused an estimated 627,000 deaths—the majority of those were African children. But now scientists are focusing on a promising new line of research: genetically manipulating the mosquitoes that carry the deadly illness.

On this week’s Inquiring Minds podcast, George Church—a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and the author of Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves—described the cutting-edge mosquito research that’s taking place at his university in Massachusetts and around the world.

In the past, scientists have attempted to control certain insect populations in part by irradiating the males, rendering them sterile. But that hasn’t worked as well with mosquitoes as it did with other species, such as the Mediterranean fruit fly. Genetic engineering, Church says, offers a new, faster tool to more precisely target and create specific mutations. In June, a team of researchers published a paper in the journal Nature Communications that detailed a method by which mosquitoes were made to produce primarily male offspring. Male mosquitoes feed on plant nectar, not human blood, and thus don’t transmit malaria. These mosquitos were shown to be able to interbreed with wild mosquitos (in cages), passing on their genetically engineered traits. Because they produce so few female offspring, whole mosquito populations could simply die off within a few generations.

And in August, Church and his colleagues published papers in the journals Science and eLife describing how a new genetic engineering procedure called Crispr—a tool borrowed from bacteria that enables much speedier and more precise genetic manipulation—could be used to develop mutations in mosquitoes that could be spread throughout wild populations. One approach, for instance, is to create malaria-resistant mosquitoes, which would then pass the mutation down to subsequent generations. “You don’t have to affect that many species or sub-species,” said Church, “because not that many different types of mosquitoes carry the most dangerous types of malaria.” This technique could also be useful for other insect-borne diseases, such as sleeping sickness, dengue fever, and Lyme disease.

Church acknowledges that these ideas are controversial, to say the least. In-depth ecological research and detailed mosquito studies will be necessary to understand any potential unforeseen consequences before releasing genetically engineered mosquitoes into the wild. Such studies will evaluate what plants the mosquitoes (or other vectors) pollinate and whether other animals also pollinate the same plants. And they’ll look at which fish, amphibians, and birds feed on the mosquitoes, and whether these animals have other food sources. Church hopes that the promise of a new weapon against malaria will motivate funders to support these kinds of studies. “We need to fund these basic ecological studies at a higher level,” he says. In addition, the initial attempts to implement this type of malaria-eradication system could take place in a bounded location, such as on an island.

The technology poses other potential dangers, as well. As Church explains, genetic engineering tools are becoming so easy to use that they’re accessible to practically any researcher who wants to utilize them. That’s why Church and his colleagues have produced a series of journal articles that focus on precautionary policy components and specific regulations for the technology. “Almost everybody has some species that they don’t like,” he says. “Maybe it killed someone in their family. It doesn’t mean you know immediately what to do with this powerful technology. Even if your goal is to rectify the situation, there are many ways to do it. We just need to be sure that people are thoughtful.”

To hear more from Church on everything from HIV/AIDS research to efforts to engineer an animal that will closely resemble the long-extinct woolly mammoth, listen to Inquiring Minds below:

Inquiring Minds is a podcast hosted by neuroscientist and musician Indre Viskontas. This week’s episode was guest-hosted by Cynthia Graber, an award-winning journalist who co-hosts the Gastropod podcast. To catch future shows right when they are released, subscribe to Inquiring Minds via iTunes or RSS. We are also available on Stitcher. You can follow the show on Twitter at @inquiringshow and like us on Facebook. Inquiring Minds was also singled out as one of the “Best of 2013” on iTunes—you can learn more here.

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Scientists Want to Make a Malaria-Resistant Mosquito

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No, the Culture Wars Haven’t Heated Up. It Just Seems Like They Have.

by Ilaria3pl Posted on November 20, 2014

Mother Jones

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Andrew Sullivan cogitates today on the seemingly endless outpouring of outrage over relatively small lapses in decent behavior:

I wonder also if our digital life hasn’t made all this far worse. When you sit in a room with a laptop and write about other people and their flaws, and you don’t have to look them in the eyes, you lose all incentive for manners.

You want to make a point. You may be full to the brim with righteous indignation or shock or anger. It is only human nature to flame at abstractions, just as the awkwardness of physical interaction is one of the few things constraining our rhetorical excess. When you combine this easy anonymity with the mass impulses of a Twitterstorm, and you can see why manners have evaporated and civil conversations turned into culture war.

I’m as guilty of this as many….

Why yes! Yes you are, Andrew.

On a more serious note, I actually disagree with his diagnosis of the problem, which has become so common as to be nearly conventional wisdom these days. Here’s why: I have not, personally, ever noticed that human beings tend to rein in their worst impulses when they’re face to face with other human beings. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. Most often, they don’t. Arguments with real people end up with red faces and lots of shouting constantly. I just flatly don’t believe that the real problem with internet discourse is the fact that you’re not usually directly addressing the object of your scorn.1

So what is the problem? I think it’s mostly one of visibility. In the past, the kinds of lapses that provoke internet pile-ons mostly stayed local. There just wasn’t a mechanism for the wider world to find out about them, so most of us never even heard about them. It became a big deal within the confines of a town or a university campus or whatnot, but that was it.

Occasionally, these things broke out, and the wider world did find out about them. But even then, there was a limit to how the world could respond. You could organize a protest, but that’s a lot of work. You could go to a city council meeting and complain. You could write a letter to the editor. But given the limitations of technology, it was fairly rare for something to break out and become a true feeding frenzy.

Needless to say, that’s no longer the case. In fact, we have just the opposite problem: things can become feeding frenzies even if no one really wants them to be. That’s because they can go viral with no central organization at all. Each individual who tweets or blogs or Facebooks their outrage thinks of this as a purely personal response. Just a quick way to kill a few idle minutes. But put them all together, and you have tens of thousands of people simultaneously responding in a way that seems like a huge pile-on. And that in turn triggers the more mainstream media to cover these things as if they were genuinely big deals.

The funny thing is that in a lot of cases, they aren’t. If, say, 10,000 people are outraged over Shirtgate, that’s nothing. Seriously. Given the ubiquity of modern social media, 10,000 people getting mad about something is actually a sign that almost nobody cares.

The problem is that our lizard brains haven’t caught up to this. We still think that 10,000 outraged people is a lot, and 30 or 40 years ago it would have been. What’s more, it almost certainly would have represented a far greater number of people who actually cared. Today, though, it’s so easy to express outrage that 10,000 people is a pretty small number—and most likely represents nearly everyone who actually gives a damn.

We need to recalibrate our cultural baselines for the social media era. People can respond so quickly and easily to minor events that the resulting feeding frenzies can seem far more important than anyone ever intended them to be. A snarky/nasty tweet, after all, is the work of a few seconds. A few thousand of them represent a grand total of a few hours of work. The end result may seem like an unbelievable avalanche of contempt and derision to the target of the attack, but in real terms, it represents virtually nothing.

The culture wars are not nastier because people on the internet don’t have to face their adversaries. They’re nastier because even minor blowups seem huge. But that’s just Econ 101. When the cost of expressing outrage goes down, the amount of outrage expressed goes up. That doesn’t mean there’s more outrage. It just means outrage is a lot more visible than it used to be.

1I’ll concede that this is potentially a problem with a very specific subset of professional troll. Even there, however, I’d note that the real world has plenty of rough equivalents, from Code Pink to the Westboro Baptist Church lunatics.

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No, the Culture Wars Haven’t Heated Up. It Just Seems Like They Have.

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Film Review: "The Overnighters"

by CharoleBlohm Posted on October 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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The Overnighters

MILE END FILMS

This engrossing film is set in Williston, North Dakota, where locals are freaking out about the hordes of desperate men in need of cash and a fresh start who pour into their tiny town in search of fracking jobs. A local pastor takes pity on them, converting his Concordia Lutheran Church into an ad hoc shelter. He’s resolute, even as his family reels from the criticism of angry neighbors and congregants who want him to be a little less Christian. But he risks losing everything when the local paper reports that sex offenders are among the visitors. Up through its devastating reveal, The Overnighters questions the motivations behind (and consequences of) our choices and convictions.

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Film Review: "The Overnighters"

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