The death of the Pope is not big news for those who’ve been paying attention to the news and knew of his critical condition. Personally, I assumed it would happen in the next day or two. But the list of potential successors to the Papacy, it looks rather interesting. If nothing else, it reinforces a sense of that non-monolithic nature of the Church that commenter Joshua occasionally mentions here.

Sociologist Frank Furedi recently published an article at Spiked about “Our unhealthy obsession with sickness”. The arguments he makes all, it seems to me, are mistaken. It’s rare I disagree with someone so completely on a topic outside of politics, so I thought I’d go ahead and explain why I disagree… not with a few simple facts, but with his assessment of those facts. Furedi writes: We live in a world where illnesses are on the increase. The distinguishing feature of the twenty-first century is that health has become a dominant issue, both in our personal lives and in public …

Ever think of comparing the Rightist academic freakout that’s been going on in the US with, say, the Chinese Cultural Revolution? Well, if you did, too late. It’s been done, and brilliantly.

Over at The Asia Pages Jodi talks about the differentiation of racism and nationalism, and Bluejives follows up with some quotes about nationalism (and thoughts on nationalism and war, plus a link to a funny comic). I find, as one commenter noted, that racism and nationalism are, of course, different, but that in largely homogenous nations, it’s sometimes hard to tell the difference.

When people talk about culture of life, but their decisions are based on a culture of money… When people invoke scripture against gays, but not against poverty… There’s a rhetoric gap. And it needs to be used. It needs to be used to cut the Republican party down to the ground, to smash it to pieces. (And maybe, once we raise consciousness enough, we can move past using two parties to polarize discourse, and politics can become a culture of discussion and compromise and responsibility, instead of a pathetic soccer game for a gang of greedy boys.) Kat provides this: …