The singularity will give you eternal life

I read a few years ago in The Atlantic of an impending "death shortage," an unfortunate consequence of technological advancements that would turn 70 year olds into early-career professionals. These people -- we people -- would still die; it was just going to take a lot longer to happen.

But leafing through back issues of Wired last night, I came across an article about a technology prodigy trying to buy eternal life. Not the kind paid for with the blood of a lamb, but the kind that could be achieved here on earth if you were to download your brain to your laptop. You just have to live long enough.

Let me explain.

This ambition is based on a theory called the singularity, the point at which technology will surpass human intelligence and become independent, like Skynet without the nuclear winter. "AIs will help us see and hear better. They will give us better memories and help us fight disease. Eventually, AIs will allow us to conquer death itself," Gary Wolf writes in Wired. Believers say the singularity will arrive in phases:

First, lifestyle and aggressive antiaging therapies will allow more people to approach the 125-year limit of the natural human lifespan. This is bridge one. Meanwhile, advanced medical technology will begin to fix some of the underlying biological causes of aging, allowing this natural limit to be surpassed. This is bridge two. Finally, computers become so powerful that they can model human consciousness. This will permit us to download our personalities into nonbiological substrates. When we cross this third bridge, we become information. And then, as long as we maintain multiple copies of ourselves to protect against a system crash, we won't die.

So Ray Kurzweil, who has written a few books that are the Bible of the movement and is the focus of the article, is spending a lot of money, and taking 180 to 210 vitamins a day (so many he has a "pill wrangler"), to try to stay alive until the singularity arrives.

As a driver he is cautious. He frequently bicycles through the Boston suburbs, which is good for physical conditioning but also puts his immortality on the line. For most people, such risks blend into the background of life, concealed by a cheerful fatalism that under ordinary conditions we take as a sign of mental health. But of course Kurzweil objects to this fatalism. He wants us to try harder to survive.

His plea is often ignored. Kurzweil has written about the loneliness of being a singularitarian. This may seem an odd complaint, given his large following, but there is something to it. A dozen of his fans may show up in Denver every month to initiate longevity treatments, but many of them, like Matt Philips, are simply hedging their bets. Most health fanatics remain agnostic, at best, on the question of immortality.

(That last line could just as easily be a criticism of a lot of religious people, ambivalent agnostics "simply hedging their bets." See what the Apostle Paul's commentary on this.)

Clearly Kurzweil and the growing faithful have removed God from their religion. Oddly, though, Mark Anderson argues they've done away with science too.

Last of failed Hitler assassins dead

The last living man who tried to kill Adolf Hitler, the 1944 briefcase bomber Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager, died Thursday. He was 90.

Von Boeselager was part of a group of officers who tried to kill Hitler on July 20, 1944, supplying explosives for the operation led by Col. Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg.

The von Stauffenberg plot is the basis for the upcoming Tom Cruise film ''Valkyrie'' in which the American actor plays the aristocratic colonel.

Von Stauffenberg placed the bomb in a conference room where Hitler was meeting with his aides and military advisers but escaped the blast when someone moved the briefcase next to a table leg, deflecting much of the explosive force.

Almost immediately afterward, von Stauffenberg and many of his cohorts were arrested and executed in an orgy of revenge killings that saw some hanged by the neck with piano wire. Though many of those rounded up by Nazi officials were tortured in the hopes they would give up other conspirators, von Boeselager's name was never divulged and he was never found out.

Still, he carried a cyanide capsule with him until the end of the war in case his secret was revealed.

Von Boeselager, who lived in Altenahr, near Bonn, was first recruited by von Stauffenberg coconspirator Maj. Gen. Henning von Tresckow in 1942, he told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in an interview three weeks ago that was published Friday.

He said he knew that Jews were being systematically killed and that Germany was waging a war of annihilation along the Eastern Front with Russia and that he never considered declining taking part in the plot.

By 1942, he said that ''It was no longer about saving the country, but about stopping the crimes,'' the newspaper quoted him as saying.

Charlton Heston denied entry to heaven

Politico's Wuerker on Charlton Heston at the pearly gates of heaven.

The twilight of daily journalism

More from the Department of Dying Newspapers, I just got around to reading this article that appeared in the New Yorker two weeks ago, and I can't think of a better set of Cliff's Notes on what's happening to my industry. Here's a choice nugget near the top:

Few believe that newspapers in their current printed form will survive. Newspaper companies are losing advertisers, readers, market value, and, in some cases, their sense of mission at a pace that would have been barely imaginable just four years ago. Bill Keller, the executive editor of the Times, said recently in a speech in London, "At places where editors and publishers gather, the mood these days is funereal. Editors ask one another, 'How are you?,' in that sober tone one employs with friends who have just emerged from rehab or a messy divorce." Keller's speech appeared on the Web site of its sponsor, the Guardian, under the headline "NOT DEAD YET."

Vandals attack Muslim graves in France

Vandals desecrated 148 Muslim graves in France's biggest war cemetery, hanging a pig's head from one tombstone and daubing slogans insulting France's Muslim justice minister, officials said Sunday.

President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed "profound outrage" at the "sordid" attack on the Muslim quarter of the Notre Dame de Lorette cemetery, near the northern town of Arras on Saturday night. He vowed that those responsible would be punished.

The cemetery is France's biggest military graveyards and commemorates tens of thousands of victims of a series of long and bloody battles for control of northern France at the start of World War I.

The attack came almost exactly a year after a similar incident in which neo-Nazi vandals scrawled swastikas on 52 of the cemetery's Muslim graves.

"This is the most inadmissible kind of racism and the president of the republic shares the pain of France's entire Muslim community," said a statement issued by the presidency. France's Muslim community is Europe's largest at around five million.

"This hateful act is also a attack on the memory of all veterans of World War I, beyond the faith of each one," the statement added.

The state prosecutor for Arras, Jean-Pierre Valensi, said "the slogans directly target Islam and they gravely insult Rachida Dati, the justice minister," who is the daughter of north African immigrants.

He said a pig's head was hung from one of the graves.

Dati issued a statement condemning a "hateful act" that "hurts the memory of our dead, of the veterans who gave their lives for France".

"Through its racist connotations, it is an assault on the values of the republic and an insult to all French people."

Read the rest from AFP here. And I thought swastikas were only used to attack Jews.

Charlton Heston dead at 83

Charlton Heston, the legendary actor better known as Ben-Hur, Moses and that NRA spokesman, died today at home in Beverly Hills. More from the New York Times:

Every actor dreams of a breakthrough role, the part that stamps him in the public memory, and Mr. Heston’s life changed forever when he caught the eye of the director Cecil B. De Mille. De Mille, who was planning his next biblical spectacular, “The Ten Commandments,” looked at the young, physically imposing Mr. Heston and saw his Moses.

When the film was released in 1956, more than three and a half hours long and the most expensive that De Mille had ever made, Mr. Heston became a marquee name. Whether leading the Israelites through the wilderness, parting the Red Sea or coming down from Mount Sinai with the tablets from God in hand, he was a Moses to remember.

Writing in The New York Times nearly 30 years afterward, when the film was re-released for a brief run, Vincent Canby called it “a gaudy, grandiloquent Hollywood classic” and suggested there was more than a touch of “the rugged American frontiersman of myth” in Mr. Heston’s Moses.

Coincidentally, Passover begins in two weeks.

Sentenced to death for 'blasphemy'

Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is said to be the only unforgivable sin. I've never understood exactly what that looks like, or met anyone who could explain it to me, but I'm fairly certain that if you were the unfortunate, you wouldn't pay the price until death.

Sadly, the same can't be said for those who blaspheme Islam in the Muslim world. Just ask Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, the 23-year-old Afghan journalist, sentenced to death for his words, of which the exact nature I can't find online. He's appealing, and Reporters Without Borders said he caught a break yesterday when his case was moved to Kabul.

"His request for transfer to Kabul has finally succeeded, allowing Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh to be separated from other detainees in the vast Pul-i-Charki jail, in the east of the capital. His transfer to Kabul has given rise to hopes that his appeal will not be influenced by religious fundamentalists, as was the case when he was sentenced to death for “blasphemy” by a court in Mazar-i-Sharif, on 22 January 2008.”

Just simply: Why?

The Press-Telegram has an unbelievably powerful op-ed by the surgeon who tried to save the life of an 11-year-old boy gunned down Sunday. The story is awful in its evocativeness and it fully sapped the energy out of me, bit by bit as I read on.

I just finished sewing up a dead boy.

I pronounced him dead at 10:34 p.m. Sunday. It's now 11:27 p.m. I know I won't be able to get to sleep for a long time. I feel like I shouldn't.

I'm a trauma surgeon at St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach. I was sulking in my call room on Palm Sunday because I missed yet another important moment in my 5-year-old son's life. A tarantula crawled all over him at his best friend's birthday party, and my wife had e-mailed me a glorious photo of this big, hairy arachnid on my son's face. The phone rings, and I am summoned to the ER for a "gunshot wound to the chest." That's bad, but around these parts, sadly not a surprise. Then the ER secretary adds, "... in a 12-year-old." That changes things a bit. As I hurry down to the Emergency Department, I play out several horrific scenarios in my head - a mental exercise in preparation for what certainly was to be a difficult situation.

I arrive to a room filled to capacity with doctors, nurses, techs, volunteers, firemen, policemen and paramedics. The strictly medical people are swarming around an impossibly small figure, in a flurry of needle sticks in search of a vein, monitor-pad placement in search of a vital sign, stethoscopes vainly searching for a breath sound or a heartbeat. The non-medical personnel had formed a concerned and curious peanut gallery. One ER doctor blurts out the important points, "GSW to the chest, pulses in the field but ... ," while another ER doctor is prepping this small chest for an ER thoracotomy. In English, an "ER thoracotomy" is where you flay open a chest in a soon-to-be-dead patient, in the hopes of finding a hole you can quickly but temporarily fix. Once that is done, it gives you a chance to give the patient necessary things like blood and IV fluids (where they now will not simply flow out of those repaired holes), and get him to the OR so you can fix him properly. It is the trauma surgery equivalent of a Hail Mary football pass. This is not a "difficult situation"; this is a nightmare.

The ER doctor hands me the knife, as if to say, "Here. It's yours." I think the kid is dead, or if not dead, then he certainly is "unsalvageable," which is a horrible word to use for a human being. I don't think he's fixable. However, if he is to have any hope of survival, the only way to save him is to crack him open and try to plug up the holes. Cracking open an 11-year-old boy (he was two months shy of his 12th birthday) is going to tear my own heart in half, I think to myself, but this is part of what I do, so I slip the gloves on and take the knife.

There is precious little skin to cut through, and I'm in the chest in a few seconds. His chest cavity is filled with blood, which spills out of his chest like a macabre waterfall to the floor. There's a shredded tear in his lung, and a big, ragged hole in his heart. All the IV fluids that my associates are pouring into the patient are flowing out this hole and on to my shoes. I put my finger in this hole - such a big hole in such a small heart - but blood and fluids still flow unfettered. My other hand finds another, larger hole on the other side of his heart. My fingers touch. His heart is empty. Mine breaks.

I've read C.S. Lewis' "The Problem of Pain," and I know that God is wise beyond ways and endlessly merciful and just. But could somebody please explain to me again the mysteries of theodicy?

Pastor prays for foes demise

Sometimes Americans United for Separation of Church and State is misguided in its zeal. But, in this case, the one lacking wisdom was Pastor Wiley S. Drake, who last week used First Baptist Church of Buena Park letterhead and an affiliated radio program to endorse Mike Huckabee for president. That's a violation of tax laws for nonprofits, and Americans United filed a complaint. Drake response was a bit vengeful.

In an e-mail Thursday, Drake urged action against Americans United and the American Civil Liberties Union.

As he had in August, Drake quoted Psalm 109, which speaks of wicked and deceitful people and asks God to let such a person's days be few and let his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.

"In light of the recent attack from the enemies of God, I ask the children of God to go into action with imprecatory prayer," he wrote.

Imprecatory prayers have been defined as praying for someone's misfortune or as appeals to God for justice.

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director, called Drake's appeal to his supporters "reckless and repugnant."

"Introducing this kind of religious extremism into American life is reprehensible," he said.

What Daniel Pearl stood for

Judea Pearl reflected in the Wall Street Journal last week on how the murder six years ago of his son, journalist Daniel Pearl, changed the world.

The shocking element in Danny's murder was that he was killed, not for what he wrote or planned to write, but for what he represented -- America, modernity, openness, pluralism, curiosity, dialogue, fairness, objectivity, freedom of inquiry, truth and respect for all people. In short, each and every one of us was targeted in Karachi in January of 2002.

This new twist of killing journalists for what they represent has changed the course of journalism as well as the rest of society.

It was through Danny's face that people came to grasp the depth of cruelty and inhumanity into which this planet of ours has been allowed to sink in the past two decades. His murder proved that 9/11 was not an isolated event, and helped resurrect the age-old ideas of right and wrong, good and evil. Moral relativism died with Daniel Pearl in January 2002.

Correction of the year

This correction ran Tuesday in the San Antonio News-Express:

Nell and Wallace Crain, a couple who were featured in an Express-News Page 1A story and photo on "the secret to a happy marriage," died between the writing of the story last summer and its publication in the San Antonio Express-News on Monday. The deaths were not mentioned in the report.

The Express-News apologizes to family and friends of the couple, and to our readers, for the egregious omission.

J. Michael Parker, who wrote the story after spotting and interviewing the Crains at North Star Mall last June, said he learned of their deaths Monday via an e-mail from a Crain family friend. The friend put Parker in touch with Cheryl Crain Sanders, the couple's daughter, who was gracious in an e-mail to the reporter:

"Thank you for including my parents as an example of 'love until death.' The article was thoughtful and well written. ... Your article, while bittersweet to me, will be a great reminder to our family of their love and commitment."

The couple's daughter said Wallace Crain died the day before Thanksgiving last year and Nell Crain died Dec. 9. They had been married for 67 years.

Parker explained that he turned in his story to Express-News religion editor Arthur Santana late last summer. Santana said he edited the story, but essentially put it on hold until after the holidays. Two weeks ago, he gave the story back to Parker for updating. However, while he re-interviewed two other couples featured in the story, Parker did not seek new input from the Crains.

"I didn't feel like Mr. Crain's comments needed updating," Parker said. "... They were such a sweet couple. They were what really made the story a story."

It's fitting I would see this today because, due to production deadlines, I had a story published today that included some very old news. Most journalists know the frustration of watching an editor hold onto your story so long that you feel the reason for writing the article has passed and worry your subjects have too. But to have that actually occur ... Here's Parker's story, with grace and peace to Crain family.

More on the MySpace suicide

Remember the sad story of Megan Meier, the 13-year-old girl who killed herself after being ridiculed by a fictional "friend" on MySpace? A grand jury in Los Angeles is investigating charges that the mother who created or helped her daughter, a former friend of Megan's, create the Josh Evans identity committed fraud against the Beverly Hills-based company.

This story was, not surprisingly, at the top of the headlines across the country in November. For a better view, The New Yorker sent Lauren Collins to Dardenne Prairie, Mo. Here's her story.

Teen-age identities mutate so quickly online, and can be masked so easily, that by the morning after Megan was pronounced dead Josh Evans had vanished from MySpace. It wasn’t until a month after her death that a neighbor named Michele Mulford told the Meiers that Curt and Lori Drew, who lived four houses down, had created “Josh” in concert with their thirteen-year-old daughter, a longtime friend of Megan’s. (An eighteen-year-old girl who worked for the Drews was also involved.) The two thirteen-year-olds had recently quarrelled. Mulford’s own daughter, also thirteen, had been given the password to the account, and had sent at least one unkind message to Megan in Josh’s name. Megan had accompanied the Drews on several vacations, and they knew that she was taking medication.

For nearly a year, on the advice of the police, the Meiers had kept quiet about the Drews’ involvement in Megan’s death. After investigators determined that the Drews’ actions, if cruel, had not broken any laws, the Meiers spoke with Steve Pokin, a columnist at the local paper, the Suburban Journals. Pokin revealed the ruse in his column, “Pokin’ Around,” on November 13th of last year. “I know that they did not physically come up to our house and tie a belt around her neck,” Tina Meier told Pokin. “But when adults are involved and continue to screw with a thirteen-year-old—with or without mental problems—it is absolutely vile.”

(skip)

In the three weeks since Steve Pokin’s article appeared, public opinion against the Drews had been harsh, verging on violent. Much of the outrage was directed at Lori Drew as an exemplar of the micromanaging “helicopter parent,” a familiar image at least since the Wanda Holloway case. In Channelview, Texas, in 1991, Holloway, a homemaker, attempted to hire a hit man to eliminate a neighbor, Verna Heath, the mother of a girl, Amber, who had twice been elected cheerleader over Holloway’s daughter, Shanna. But Channelview and Dardenne Prairie, where teen-agers still have after-school jobs, are not type-A parent/overscheduled kid kinds of towns. Like Wanda Holloway, Lori Drew may not have represented a helicopter parent so much as a more ancient archetype: the resentful neighbor.

Lori Drew has shown little remorse, contending, through a lawyer, that she is the undeserving victim of an “avalanche of criticism.” Her statement suggests that she may have been less an overbearing parent than an indifferent one:

Although she was aware of the account, Lori Drew never sent any messages to Megan or to anyone else using this MySpace account. . . . Lori Drew was not aware of any mean, nasty or negative comments made by anyone against Megan until after Megan took her own life. . . .

Pam Fogarty, the mayor, had two hundred unanswered e-mails in her in-box. “People are shocked, and they’re pissed as hell!” she told me. Fogarty

'Honor killing' not Islam's fault

The Crunchy Con says no in a post in which he evaluates whether the double murder of two teenage girls in Texas even was a so-called "honor killing":

Police have not used the phrase "honor killing" in talking about the murder of the two Muslim teenage girls in Lewisville, allegedly by their father, Egyptian immigrant Yaser Abdel Said, but there are signs emerging that it might be something like that. Today's DMN story says:

Police did say they are looking into the possibility that the father was upset with his daughters' dating activities.

Like, what? Were they dating non-Muslims? Were they behaving in any way that fits the well-established "honor killing" pattern we've seen among some Muslim communities in the West?

Channel 11 has a bit more detail in its report:

Sisters, Amina, 18, and Sarah, 17, were each shot to death. Friends of the girls say their father was Egyptian and critical of popular American lifestyles. ""He was really strict about guy relationships and talking to guys, as well as the things she wears," Kathleen Wong, a friend of the dead teenagers. "I'm definitely 100% sure that it was her dad that killed her."

Honor killings are present in Middle Eastern Muslim societies, but it seems that the religion is not to blame -- that it's a relic of harshly patriarchal culture. Muslim countries outside the Middle East don't really have these things, it appears. You also see it lingering in non-Muslim Mediterranean societies.

I agree that such familial violence is not endemic to Islam. There was, however, a disturbing "honor killing" in Canada last month that allegedly was motivated by a teenage girl's refusal to wear the hijab.

'Welcome to Hell'

Speaking of commercials, it's been a long time since McDonald's had any ads worth making. Their late-night-partying-followed-by-sweet-McGriddle-cakes bit was a trite attempt at hip youthfulness. But this Israeli Micky D's ad is pretty good.



To be honest, I'd know I was in Hell if all I got to eat were Big Macs.

Evel Knievel rides into eternity

CLEARWATER, Fla. (AP) -- Evel Knievel is dead.

That sentence probably should have been written in 1968, when Knievel crashed his motorcycle spectacularly as he jumped the fountains at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas and wound up in a coma.

It probably should have been written in 1974, when his rocket-powered cycle failed as he tried to jump the Snake River Canyon and he almost landed in the raging water. Or the numerous other times when, while trying to jump something bigger than ever, he splattered.

Instead, it was written Friday. Natural causes. Age 69.

"It's been coming for years, but you just don't expect it. Superman just doesn't die, right?" said longtime friend and promoter Billy Rundle.

It's amazing he was only 69. Photos show a man much older. But then again, few lived life harder than Evel Knievel. The women, the alcohol, the broken bones.

Last Easter, Evel told the masses at Crystal Cathedral that he'd had a middle-of-the-night encounter with God.

"I don't know what in the world happened," Robert "Evel" Knievel said. "I don't know if it was the power of the prayer or God himself, but it just reached out, either while I was driving or walking down the sidewalk or sleeping, and it just—the power of God in Jesus just grabbed me. … All of a sudden, I just believed in Jesus Christ. I did, I believed in him! … I rose up in bed and, I was by myself, and I said, 'Devil, Devil, you bastard you, get away from me. I cast you out of my life.' … I just got on my knees and prayed that God would put his arms around me and never, ever, ever let me go."

Godspeed.

This is parenting?

This is one of the saddest stories I've heard in a long time. I've had friends who have lost a child, and for some it has been an absolute breaking point in their life. It's no wonder Megan Meier's parents are separated and seeking a divorce.

But the worst part about the Meier family losing their daughter to suicide has got to be the complicity of an adult neighbor in the harassment of 13-year-old Megan. The neighbor helped create a fake MySpace account belonging to "Josh Evans" that was used to torment Megan with promises of attention and affection and then to deliver devastating messages.

Suburban Journals has a powerful narrative of the end and aftermath of Megan's life. Here are her final moments.

Monday, Oct. 16, 2006, was a rainy, bleak day. At school, Megan had handed out invitations to her upcoming birthday party and when she got home she asked her mother to log on to MySpace to see if Josh had responded.

Why did he suddenly think she was mean? Who had he been talking to?

Tina signed on. But she was in a hurry. She had to take her younger daughter, Allison, to the orthodontist.

Before Tina could get out the door it was clear Megan was upset. Josh still was sending troubling messages. And he apparently had shared some of Megan's messages with others.

Tina recalled telling Megan to sign off.

"I will Mom," Megan said. "Let me finish up."

Tina was pressed for time. She had to go. But once at the orthodontist's office she called Megan: Did you sign off?

"No, Mom. They are all being so mean to me."

"You are not listening to me, Megan! Sign off, now!"

Fifteen minutes later, Megan called her mother. By now Megan was in tears.

"They are posting bulletins about me." A bulletin is like a survey. "Megan Meier is a slut. Megan Meier is fat."

Megan was sobbing hysterically. Tina was furious that she had not signed off.

Once Tina returned home she rushed into the basement where the computer was. Tina was shocked at the vulgar language her daughter was firing back at people.

"I am so aggravated at you for doing this!" she told Megan.

Megan ran from the computer and left, but not without first telling Tina, "You're supposed to be my mom! You're supposed to be on my side!"

On the stairway leading to her second-story bedroom, Megan ran into her father, Ron.

"I grabbed her as she tried to go by," Ron says. "She told me that some kids were saying horrible stuff about her and she didn't understand why. I told her it's OK. I told her that they obviously don't know her. And that it would be fine."

Megan went to her room and Ron went downstairs to the kitchen, where he and Tina talked about what had happened, the MySpace account, and made dinner.

Twenty minutes later, Tina suddenly froze in mid-sentence.

"I had this God-awful feeling and I ran up into her room and she had hung herself in the closet."

Megan Taylor Meier died the next day, three weeks before her 14th birthday.

Later that day, Ron opened his daughter's MySpace account and viewed what he believes to be the final message Megan saw - one the FBI would be unable to retrieve from the hard drive.

It was from Josh and, according to Ron's best recollection, it said, "Everybody in O'Fallon knows how you are. You are a bad person and everybody hates you. Have a shitty rest of your life. The world would be a better place without you."

Read the rest of the story and you will be dumbfounded regarding how the idiot mother who helped her daughter taunt Megan can still live just a few doors down from the Meiers. I know what you're not thinking, but in case you are -- yes, God commands us to forgive. That's a lot easier in the abstract, I'm sure. But, more importantly, this neighbor hasn't apologized or asked for forgiveness. So should it be expected?

Heaven or Hell?

Over at his blog, Daniel Radosh runs a weekly contest to see who can write the worst caption to a New Yorker cartoon. This was a finalist for the cartoon above:

"You know, I'm beginning to think, the halos and clouds and so forth notwithstanding, that this isn't actually Heaven, but is in fact Hell. For one thing, the boredom here is so oppressive that it feels like we're being punished, not rewarded. For another, I was a rapist."

The deadliest books ever published

A Croatian Web site offers its list of books that have "changed the world and because of which the bloodiest wars were waged." The Bible comes in second, right behind Mein Kampf and just ahead of the Communist Manifesto. Here's the analysis:

The book that founded three great world religions and on which, whether they would like to admit so or not, all societies of the West were founded. The book took milleniums to write. It originates from ancient Jewish texts that, at least as far as Christians are concerned, make up the foundation of the Old Testament. The book speaks of the salvation of the Jewish people and their arrival to the Promised Land, while the New Testament speaks about Jesus and his sacrifice for the sins of the world. Despite its relatively benign content, the text became one of the chief incentives for some of the biggest massacres mankind has seen.

Controversial idea: Jesus is not a common prophet, but the son of God.

Death toll: If we stick only to the Crusades which lasted a good 200 years, the death toll according to some estimates, is a respectable five million.

Not quite accurate because the "Bible" is not the same book for Muslims and Christians and Jews. But it's hard to argue that belief in a monotheistic God that began with Abraham has caused a lot of bloodshed.

The Communist Manifesto also seems to be given a free pass in the political killings of Joseph Stalin, whose victims range from 3 million to 60 million. I also wonder if "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and Luther's "On the Jew and Their Lies" deserve a place for influencing Hitler.

(Hat tip: DMN religion blog)

Who will love the dead?

East Los Angeles is at least two freeway interchanges and several generations removed from today's L.A. Jewry. But there the community's early history rests eternally, amid well-worn bungalows, rusted chain-link fences and canopy-free, sun-bleached streets.

Head north on Downey Street across Interstate 5, and you'll immediately be greeted by the tattered and peeling black-and-white sign of Beth Israel Cemetery, where hundreds of Jews have been buried during the past century and continue to be. Half a block north is Agudath Achim Cemetery, which similarly is operated by Chevra Kadisha Mortuary. Neither is regal or elaborate, mostly concrete crypts stacked side-by-side, only loose dirt for landscaping.

But between the two cemeteries is a more forgotten home. The wrought-iron gate, pinned shut with two Master locks, simply says "Mt Z." Inside is Mount Zion Cemetery, rows upon rows of headstones baring menorahs and the Star of David, Feldmans and Ungers and Goldbergs and Rosens and Nefts and Pearlmans and Schwartzes and Raskins and Segelmans. Some of the crypts are tagged with graffiti, others simply cracked. It's not maintained by a mortuary but by The Federation or, in essence, the whole Jewish community. It looks peaceful now, but throughout the years, the graveyard hasn't always fared well.

"Jewish law commands that people honor the deceased," a 1995 New York Times story began, "but the weeds thriving at Mount Zion Cemetery appear to have deeper roots than the local Jewish community, which long ago moved out of the neighborhood and stopped tending the graves."

This section is toward the end of an article I have in this week's Jewish Journal about the challenges fundraisers face in the new world of Jewish philanthropy. I thought this was a poignant example because there is nothing sexy about supporting the long-since dead -- it's not like providing aid in Darfur -- but somebody has to do it.

The 2,000-word article ran as a sidebar to my profile of new Jewish Federation chairman Stanley P. Gold. (Sheesh, when I was at dailies, rare was the occasion when a front-page story waxed for 2,000 words, let alone a sidebar.) Let me know what you think.

Gravedigging down with deaths in Iraq

NAJAF, Iraq — At what's believed to be the world's largest cemetery, where Shiite Muslims aspire to be buried and millions already have been, business isn't good.

A drop in violence around Iraq has cut burials in the huge Wadi al Salam cemetery here by at least one-third in the past six months, and that's cut the pay of thousands of workers who make their living digging graves, washing corpses or selling burial shrouds.

Few people have a better sense of the death rate in Iraq .

"I always think of the increasing and decreasing of the dead," said Sameer Shaaban, 23, one of more than 100 workers who specialize in ceremonially washing the corpses. "People want more and more money, and I am one of them, but most of the workers in this field don't talk frankly, because they wish for more coffins, to earn more and more."

This story from McClatchy Newspapers, courtesy of Luke Ford, puts a macabre twist on all that bloodshed. It reminds me of one of the best stories I've ever read: "Angels of Mercy and Death," by LA Timeser Bruce Wallace in the wake of the 2004 tsunami.