Richard Dawkins

News:

As long as the grass grows and the poverty shows During the election cycle we tend to ask: What does America mean; where are we going? And then someone decides to check on the Indians to find out the answer, as though Indians represent America’s soul hidden in the attic. And of course politicians have long stood next to their “souls” and posed for pictures on the campaign trail. Within the last year, Diane Sawyer and “20/20” did a special on the sorry conditions at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, and the New Yorker featured a grim photo essay on Pine Ridge too. The New York Times published a piece on brutal crime at the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming and another on the deep financial problems at Foxwoods, the Pequot-owned “world’s largest” casino in Connecticut. Indians make the news, but the news isn’t really news, it’s just a way for the country take its temperature. Read full story from latimes.com

‘Witch’ killings described in book
A 350-year-old notebook which describes the execution of innocent women in East Anglia for consorting with the devil has been published online.

Puritan writer Nehemiah Wallington wrote passages on his attitudes to life, religion, the civil war as well as the witchcraft trials of the period.

By 1654 Wallington had catalogued 50 notebooks, of which only seven are known to have survived. Four are in the British Library, one in the Guildhall Library, one in the Folger Library in Washington DC, and one at Tatton Park in Cheshire.

**Toronto’s one-stop Occult Shop**The next time you’re satisfying a serious ice-cream craving at Dutch Dreams on Vaughan Road, wander a little bit north and you’ll find a large, white building containing an inconspicuous store framed by clouded windows. The red, weather-beaten, wooden sign hanging above the entrance reads, “The Occult Shop,” and despite its humble facade, the store serves as a gathering place for a range of spiritual subcultures in Toronto.