Diggapedia

Another trip to Israel and the dichotomy surrounding is still pronounced and prevalent.   It also comes at a time when I find myself exploring Jewishness in the context of race and religion; a confounding concept to many non-Jews.   A concept that seems to be confounding many Israelis too. What is Jewishness?   A religion, a genetic marker, a way of life?   I have written previously about being a Good Jew (see http://diggapedia.blogspot.com/2012/04/being-good-jew-and-what-is-christian.html ), but is there a scientific explanation too?   There have been genetic studies that trace an Ashkenazi gene throughout millennia, and I can remember being confused by the concept that Jewish people had a higher risk to certain diseases than others.   How could religion make someone more likely to contract a diseases?   And yet recent studies have traced the male Y chromosomal DNA to the fertile crescent and the female Mitochondial DNA which, according to Beh...

Americans have a hard time dealing with nuance.   We love black and white and we need clarity on good guys versus bad guys. Maybe it’s the byproduct of Hollywood’s Cowboys and Indians movies, professional wrestling’s heels versus baby faces, or because we have been told to ‘root root root for the home team.’ And it certainly doesn’t help when President George W. Bush tells the world “you’re either with us or against us.”   Seemingly, during the 1 st half of the 20 th century things indeed were simpler, we fought the Huns, the Nazis, and the Japanese.   We were attacked and responded with fierce determined force; it was black and white.   But things started getting cloudier soon after, and perhaps ignoring President Eisenhower’s dire warning of the ‘military industrial complex’ we chose to rely almost exclusively on military solutions as opposed to diplomatic solutions.   We had no long game, just short game. And as we have seen in the last twenty years, t...

·          What happens when your national cyber alert center gets hacked? ·          Want to know why USPS is in free fall?   Bad processes, ineptitude, and worse attitude at too many branches. ·          Chris Christie could lose 200 pounds.   It’s called the Mitt Romney distancing surgery. ·          There were 26,000 reported cases of sexual assault in the U.S. Armed Forces.   If there was ever an organization in desperate need of reform…. ·          Meanwhile at the Air Force, its head of sexual assault prevention Lt. Col. Jeffrey Krusinski, was charged with sexual battery. ·          Progress comes in the form of negotiation and compromise.   When the Tea Party crazed GOP proudly calls itself the “Party of ...