Ripping from the Headlines

Lately, I've been posting articles that I've come across in my meanderings through the web. This could easily become a daily habit, as my first notion upon finding something interesting is to share it, assuming that others will find it equally interesting. This may or may not be true. So, in the interest of my (few but wonderful) readers, I'm putting a poll on the left bar of the blog for the next few weeks, where you can cast your vote. I won't promise to stop doing it just because the majority find it boring, but I can at least maybe limit it.

That said, a couple of things I found this morning... ;)

• In a shockingly Orwellian move of revisionist history, Japan's Ministry of Education has ordered the alteration of high school textbooks, eliminating references to the army ordered mass suicides of civilians during the battle of Okinawa in World War II.
• Less shockingly, the nations expected to carry the brunt of the consequences of global warming are the poorest, and least responsible for the problem.
• Joan Walsh has a couple of opinion pieces about the My Sweet Lord exhibit that are worth reading. A summary...

It's not gory or sadomasochistic or pornographic, as Donohue's headline suggested. Chances are Jesus was naked when he was crucified, although most Catholic iconography shows him draped with cloth. The real issue seems to be depicting a chocolate Jesus, which to me slyly plays on the near-certainty that Jesus was more chocolate-colored than the vanilla man depicted in Western church art, as well as the commercialization of Easter, in which most Christians eat yummy chocolate eggs and bunnies rather than ponder the troubling mysteries of Christ's life and death.

• (Saint?) John Paul II may have cured a nun in France of Parkinson's disease - two months after his demise.
• It's hardly news, but this article details some of the struggles young women are facing under the immense pressure to be smart, athletic, talented, and well, hot. After all, "If you are free to be everything, you are also expected to be everything."