The most recent 20 comments posted to Electrolite by Daniel Martin:

Philadelphia is a city. As such, it contains millions and millions of people. That there should be some people from Philadelphia writing interesting blogs should not actually come as a surprise.

I'll grant you, Philadelphia doesn't have the cultural cachee of, say, New York, (driving between Baltimore and Philadelphia I was often struck how the I95 signs were labeled "New York" in one direction and "Washington" in the other - as though there weren't several other large cities in between) but I don't see where the impression of Philadelphia as the bottom of a septic tank comes from. We've (*) got all the cultural places you'd expect of a large city - an Ivy League university, large museums (even one with enough taste to decline the "honor" of a Rocky statue out front), historical interest destinations (if you're into American History, or the history of skater culture), big public-bond-money-funded arenas and concert halls. We've got our own stock exchange. We're one of the two cities in the country that mint coins. We've also got some of the problems of large cities - neighborhoods you don't want to end up in after dark, suburb-cities (Chester, Camden) that have been allowed to go to hell, the occasional trash pick-up strike, and old factories that are now just empty eyesores.

I am reminded when the WHYY radio program "Fresh Air" was first being syndicated; there were comments from the rest of the country along the lines of "that sounds too good to have come from Philadelphia". Get over it; Philadelphia is a place, not a cultural curse.

Be aware that a good part of the prevailing culture is filtered through a NYC distortion lens. It is for this reason that "New Jersey" conjures up images of factories, toxic waste dumps, and mobsters. (because the parts of NJ right next to New York are that way, even though 45% of the state is forrested and the pine barrens are as close to untouched wilderness as you're likely to find in any of the original 13 colonies) I'm certain that to New Yorkers, Philadelphia looks like a little, insignificant city - but it's the 5th largest city in the country.

So this wound up being longer than I'd planned, but you hit a nerve.

(*) I use "we" a little bit loosely, since I must admit that I've never lived in Philadelphia proper, just the PA and NJ suburbs. Still, Philadelphia is always what I mean when I refer to "downtown" or "center city", unless I'm being facetious and referring to the historic area of Burlington, NJ, where I currently live.

LauraJMixon:

Although I know nothing of your economic situation, I would ask you to reconsider carefully the question of whether homeschooling is in fact too expensive an option. There are homeschooling families that spend less than their neighbors spend on public schooling (materials for make-work projects, buying the stupid coupon books some school groups sell to raise money, assorted fees, etc.).

Also, depending on the age and maturity level of the children involved, homeschooling need not imply the loss of one income from a two-income household. The traditional image of homeschooling - that it looks exactly like school, complete with desk and workbook - is not the only viable homeschooling model. (Reference here the book "The Teenage Liberation Handbook" and other resources on the practice of unschooling) (Though I should note that some states might require full-time adult supervision for all ages; this is a state-by-state issue)

Homeschooling certainly isn't free, I'll grant you - there's a substantial investment involved in remaking your assumptions about public school (for example, that what happens when you shove a bunch of 13 year olds together with little to do is worthy of the name "socialization"), and depending on your experiences, remaking your assumptions about homeschooling (homeschoolers aren't all from the Christian Right, nor was homeschooling a movement with a particularly Christian Right flavor until the late 80s). And certainly, there will be some materials (read: books) to buy, depending on your children. Also, depending on the state, there's a serious investment in time puzzling out the necessary bureaucracy and paperwork to homeschool. (NJ is easy, but my parents - who just started homeschooling my sister in PA - have had a hellish time with the paperwork)

So, it's not necessarily an easy answer, but in terms of straight economic (dollars) cost, homeschooling is almost certainly much cheaper than you think.

I'll note that the incompatibility of the doctrine of the Trinity with the Sh'ma is one of those religious issues for which words such as "obviously" and "clearly" are best avoided.

Certainly Mohammed believed the two incompatible; the Quran is pretty explicit about that. Also, I'd wager that most present day Jews believe the two incompatible.

However, Christian doctrine (the source of the doctrine of the Trinity) believes the two are not: the Trinity is three persons, but one Godhead. Further than that into the doctrine of the Trinity makes me think that the triquetta symbol (traditional symbol for the Trinity; its overuse in the opening credits for the show "Charmed" always makes me do a double-take) is really not nearly complicated enough.

Um... "Pat Robertson", not "Pat Roberts", though maybe the Kansas Senator has also been quoting the prophet.

Christianity and Islam are sister religions: they both have the same "parent" religion, Judaism.

This statement embodies a mistake that many modern Christians (and, I imagine, quite a few Jews as well) make: that Christianity and Judaism share a parent/child relationship.

In actuality, Christianity and Judaism share a relationship more akin to that between French and Italian - both are descended from the same root and while one looks and sounds much more like the original than the other, the relationship is more accurately characterized as "sibling" than as "descendant". Although my knowledge of Islam is considerably more sketchy than my background on Christianity or Judaism, I could certainly believe that it too belongs as a sibling of the other two. (Albeit 700 years younger)

Rabinical Judaism (developed mostly during the diaspora after the ~ 70 AD destruction of the temple, though the roots were there beforehand) is a very different religion from Templar Judaism. It is a serious mistake to freeze Judaism at the point of Christ's ministry; that view contributes to the idea that Jews are this weird group who just can't get with the modern era and accept that their religious tradition has been fulfilled in the person of Christ. (reference here the number of conservative Christians who might recognize the term "Torah" but would balk at "Talmud" or "Mishna") True, there is still a special place in most Jewish congregations for the Kohenim, but everyone agrees that the temple is gone, and that this is a change.

I'm now adding to my tuit list (as in, "when I get around to it", i.e. probably never) to investigate more about the borrowing back and forth among Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I have read that Islamic scholars borrowed heavily from the Christian and Jewish scriptures (the story of Eve from Adam's rib is not in the Quran; I've been reading feminist critiques of fundamentalism), and certainly Christianity borrowed from post-Jesus Jewish traditions (some of the books of the "old" testament, and certainly bits of the Apocrypha, date from after the destruction of the temple). Now I just need Judaism borrowing from the other two (borrowings from Christianity may well exist in the Talmud - the thing's big enough to contain almost anything, and it was compiled in ~ the year 500. True, the Christian bible hadn't solidified by then, but Christians were certainly no longer an obscure little sect.), and Christianity borrowing from Islam. Maybe I'll find that Pat Roberts has been secretly recycling hadith for years.

Am I missing something here?

I suppose I can understand prisoners being banned from using the internet (real-time censoring isn't feasible, let alone the logistical nightmare of arranging for access that didn't introduce physical security issues). However, what's the point of this ban?

I don't mean, "what could justify this ban in the face of the overwhelming free speech issues". I mean "why would the DoC bother to ban printed internet material?" Isn't enforcing this ban more of a hassle to them than treating all incoming mail the same? What does the DoC gain from this rule? I don't see this behavior as rational, let alone justified.

Is there something inherently different about internet-originated content that makes this ban meaningful? Was this a reaction to prisoners being mailed whole printouts of the spr website? Were they having to daily throw out tons and tons of printouts from white supremacy sites? Do they have reason to believe that imposing this ban will significantly reduce their workload in terms of sorting and censoring incoming mail?

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