Ask The Popcorn Man

REMEMBER WHEN ON social occasions you responded with lightning quick accuracy to the question “What do you do?" You sat easily with family and friends in a circle of equality. That was then. Things have changed. Imagine. You are either unemployed or underemployed but you have memories of "gainful employment." Now you are increasingly angered by the embarrassing question, "...and what do you do?" The circle of equality now seems distorted by your presence. You feel unproductive and unacceptable. "All they need are good jobs," a friend of mine once bellowed. “Work projects - that would improve their images, get them

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Monsters at the Margin

VIRTUE IS FOUND at the margins of society more often than at its centre. If this is so, Mary Shelley's Monster is a real find! Her creature is an isolate of great sensitivity, kindness, and insight. Contrary to James Whale's 1931 film of the Creature as a lumbering dolt, Mary Shelley's Monster was modeled on Rousseau's notion of humanity as the "noble savage." The nobility of the Creature is evident as he unveils his chronicle to Victor Frankenstein upon the icy crags of Mount Blanc. Meet Frankenstein's Creature

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Introduction to Origen

Last class we studied Origen, a guy who was dedicated to understanding the Christian message at its depths and contributed the first systemic theology of Christian thought. Origen lived from 185-251 in Alexandria, a city rich in learning. The wealth of his family allowed him to study, and the martyrdom of his father for his Christian faith must have encouraged his own devotion to the message. Up until this time no one had really sat down and made sense of Christian thought so one of the responses to Christianity was a mocking disdain of it as a folk religion. Origen's

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