Daily HotShots! 19*11*06

Football day brings hot shots in oodles. In that spirit and without the mind to keep pace with the game on TV, computerized updates on my team, as well as news on RawStory and Bloglines, I put these together for your viewing pleasure.

Radical hospitality The notion of hospitality is crucial to ideas of how humans care for each other. This exegesis of Jewish scripture suggests how radical that experience can be.

From suicide bombings to bus routes: one mosque's journey out of extremism So when you hear people talking about the disease of jihadism, think about this and how humans are not vermin or germs.

Thoughts from Salman Rushdie He's on something of a personal crusade but it's important to remember that personal experience says much when it comes to showing other people what dangers

Olmert's drums of war Imagine that.

Opening up Fortress Europe The German philosopher proposes that a more ethnically diverse Europe is the basis for freedom, not its threat as most Islamaphobes will have you believe.

Time Out with Nick Cohen: This week: Ted Honderich Honderich is one of the more logically rigorous and well-informed Leftists you will find, without being an ideologue.

Islam Recognizes Truth and Wisdom in Other Faiths Presents the views of a Muslim professor on how Islam understands other faiths. Contrary to anti-Islamic propaganda, this man's informed understanding of his faith shames the hate-mongers.

Report Links Homelessness To Federal Spending Priorities You mean they do want to work? and they really don't want to be homeless? Can't they just go somewhere out of sight, they make me nervous like MJ Fox does Rush Limbaugh.

The Uncovered War: Permanent Bases in Iraq When you hear the Democrats tackle this issue--one that should be front and center in the news--then you will know that they mean to carry through on serious questioning of the Bush admin. Mideast strategy. Anything else and it's just changing the picture on the TV.

The Hopeless Stupidity of 9/11 Conspiracies I am hopelessly skeptical about conspiracy theories, green men from alpha centauri, etc etc. A huge percentage of the US public believes that the government has covered something up about the bombings of 911. jodi dean studies these theories as part of a larger intellectual project. I think she gets it right.

Book Review: You Hide, They Seek Like much of my aesthetic tastes, it tends to the grotesque, the spoof and lampoon that spurs to serious thoughts. Pynchon has written some of the best literature in America in the last half century. Of course, I think he's a genius much as I do Sam Shepherd, someone the more learned despise. I once wrote NPR when they had someone on who was touting a 100 greatest characters of western literature. I said mine was Tyrone Slothrop, eponymous (anti)hero of Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, one of the great American novels... okay, I'll stop now. But read the interview. This novel promises to be better than the last one Pynchon wrote, which I could not finish.

More Book Talk: The unbearable wait is over as Kundera's lost novel goes home I mean this in the best possible way: I loved the movie.