Who's failing ??

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain and the United States have the worst social inequality among a sample of eight rich nations due in part to failing education systems, according to researchers at a leading British university.
Measured against Germany, Canada, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland, Britain and the United States came joint bottom, a study said.

Hmm.. maybe one factor is the way the school system writes off so many bright kids just because they don't want to learn in the conventional way....can't sit still..get bored...want to get out and get on....but end up being labelled failures..?

Opium of the People?

Poor Charlie Marx-- never more misunderstood than on the subject of religion. As we watched the corpse of the Pope being carried shoulder high on what looked like an old door...accompanied by toy soldiers in tin helmets and pointy halberds...many wonder what on earth leads the human race into such illogical loopiness. The daft costumes...tea cosy hats and maternity robes. The mumbo jumbo ...the swinging buckets of smouldering incense.....stuff about eating bits of God's son and quaffing drops of his blood....not to mention the completely cuckoo bible thumping preachers on satellite TV...what's it all about? Well... Marx felt we were almost bound to invent something to help us deal with the horrors of life..
He said...... "Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress....and the protest against real distress.Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of an unspiritual situation. It is the opium of the people."

Not many of us would now expect the Proletarian revolution to cure all ills and end all distress..... there are bigger "existential" issues...death and disease...the loss of our loved ones... the evil of which we are capable... but ....like Marx..we shouldn't dismiss religion....we invent it because deep down..we care...we dream...we long for something more. many of us don't pray TO a God....we pray FOR a God.