Atheist Summer Camp

@____@

O....kay.

Check out the New York Times article about it that's linked on the site too.

Ah, Patrick Henry College.

Read this. It's freaky.

"God and Country" excerpt:

Patrick Henry’s president, Michael Farris, is a lawyer and minister who has worked for Christian causes for decades. He founded the school after getting requests from two constituencies: homeschooling parents and conservative congressmen. The parents would ask him where they could find a Christian college with a “courtship” atmosphere, meaning one where dating is regulated and subject to parental approval. The congressmen asked him where they could find homeschoolers as interns and staffers, “which I took to be shorthand for ‘someone who shares my values,’ ” Farris said. “And I knew they didn’t want a fourteen-year-old kid.” So he set out to build what he calls the Evangelical Ivy League, and what the students call Harvard for Homeschoolers.

You know what's freaky? These kids have more of a social life than I do now.

:P

To Terrorists: If you hate America, attack America. If you hate our government and our armies and our guns, attack those. We will be waiting for you. Don’t attack our friends, people who have nothing to do with our war, people who are good and decent or maybe not, but don’t deserve to die. Don’t attack our colleagues. Don’t attack our relatives, our children, our teachers, our scientists, our doctors, the people who make a city live and breathe.

Today should have been happy. Today should have been about the Olympics, a global event, though a flawed event, a celebration of peace. And for the first time in years, leaders of great countries were arming themselves against poverty, disease, and ignorance. There is urgency to it now.

To G8: don’t stop until the horror is over, don’t stop until the rage is over, don’t stop until the despair is over, don’t stop for anything because more than ever we need you.

To the people of London from the people of America: We love you as our own. God bless you, the Merciful, the Compassionate. Peace be with you, wherever you go.

Because We Love Bono

I'm an econ major and I've been hoping for G8 to succeed for a long time now. What is G8? Well, it's a summit of eight developed countries around the world deciding how to combat global poverty and environmental depredation. They're trying to do it by getting debt cancellation for third world countries and dedicating 0.7 percent of gross national product (among developed countries) for foreign aid. For those of you who are going "Huh?" basically this means that every one hundred dollars you spend, seven cents goes overseas. Currently, at least for the US, only 0.18 percent of GNP goes overseas, or ... 1.8 cents per $100. To put *that* into perspective, that's $15 billion dollars for foreign aid per year compared to $450 billion dollars for military expenditure. $15 billion dollars for all of Africa. Our $15 billion dollars is $12 per sub-Saharan African per year. That means you could probably buy an African like... a t-shirt. 0.7 percent of GNP would be $70 per African per year, which could buy them safe water, anti-malarial and anti-AIDs drugs, contraception, the beginning of investment in improved farming, like, say, fertilizer and irrigation. The village could afford, oh, a truck.

Another thing to think about: The top 400 richest people in the US put together earn 69 billion dollars. The combined citizenry of Botswana, Uganda, Nigeria and Senegal earn.. $57 billion. So basically the 400 richest people in the US earn more than 161 million people in Africa.

It's about time for G8.