The Guardian: Cardinals see red over Vatican McDonald's

The cardinals have complained that they were not consulted about the new McDonald’s and are worried that they will have to help pay for extra restructuring expenses to adapt the building, including a new flue for the kitchen.

The problems allegedly started when the cardinals were alerted this summer by Apsa, the Holy See agency that owns the property and manages the Vatican’s vast real estate holdings, that it had agreed to rent the ground floor space to McDonald’s.

The US fast food company was reportedly willing to pay “a few tens of thousands of euros per month” for the property – which faces Borgo Pio and Via del Mascherino – far outbidding any other potential tenants. [...]

It is unclear whether the angry cardinals – who include Gianfranco Ravasi, Giuseppe Versaldi and Gilberto Agustoni – will receive a sympathetic ear from Pope Francis, who has famously opted to live in modest accommodations in Casa Santa Marta and repeatedly pressed clergy to live as simply and frugally as possible.

Two controversial books released last year by Italian journalists Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi described how many cardinals live in the lap of luxury in apartments owned by the Vatican, with one former high-ranking official, Tarcisio Bertone, living in what was described as a “princely dwelling”, at very modest prices. Instead of rent, the cardinals usually only pay for utilities and, once they retire, are charged a monthly rental fee of €7 to €10 per sq meter.

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The Atlantic: Why People Fall for Charismatic Leaders

Just to get back to Sara's thing about "voiceless" and "powerless," there was actually an article in The Atlantic that looked at the characteristics of Trump supporters, and although it talked about the usual triad of male, poor, and white, the article said that the two most strong predictions of who supports Trump were not having a college degree and people who feel voiceless and powerless. So that voiceless and powerless trait looks like it aligns with both supporting Trump and being prone to believing in conspiracy theories. [...]

It’s really striking how he lines up with some of these anti-science charismatic leaders on some of the basic characteristics. One of the big things for him is that he’s positioned himself as an outsider and being on the fringes. That actually helps him build up his charisma and his identity as a charismatic leader because it creates a very strong sense of him being able to come in and create a totally different order and a revolution. But it also allows him to create a very strong us-versus-them narrative, in which he can really point to a very large group of people—no matter what party they're in—it's all of the government is against him and against us, the Americans. [...]

 I once heard a speech by Wayne LaPierre, the director of the NRA.  And you could insert almost any cause into that speech, because he almost never actually used the word gun. He talked all about freedoms, fairness, protection, family—you could imagine a far left person talking about their cause putting it in the same words. You’ll very rarely hear Wayne LaPierre talk about the data about whether personal gun ownership is actually safe or not. He’ll talk about, “I’m protecting your freedom.”

And you have the same thing when Trump talks about immigration. He’ll never cite actual data on the number of crimes committed by immigrants vs. non-immigrants. You probably heard if you listened to the VP debate when the moderator said to Pence, "but you know the most recent incidents were all done by American citizens, how do you account for that?" and he ducked that question and went right back to very loaded emotional words — “tragedies occurring to families.”  So what he does is deflect attention away from the data onto these base emotions, and then they tell you, “we’re the only ones who can save you." And if you already feel like you're a person who doesn't have a voice, that's an extremely attractive way to put things. [...]

I think the example we use in the book is in a healthcare setting. So if you have a patient who comes in and says “vaccines cause autism.” There’s a tendency is to just immediately say, "That's not true—here's the data against that, blah, blah, blah.” That really antagonizes the person and actually can backfire and make their beliefs stronger. Which is a little bit frightening. What you could do instead is say, "As I understand it," in a calm measured voice, "Andrew Wakefield argues," and sort of list the arguments out. And if you do that multiple times, people really do start to calm down. They disengage the emotional part of their brain, which frees up space to engage a more rational part of the brain.

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TED Talk: Atheism 2.0 | Alain de Botton

What aspects of religion should atheists (respectfully) adopt? Alain de Botton suggests a "religion for atheists" -- call it Atheism 2.0 -- that incorporates religious forms and traditions to satisfy our human need for connection, ritual and transcendence.

The Daily Beast: The Rise of Hateful Little England

Since then an extraordinary thing has happened. It seems that all along there have been two Johnsons living under the same blond mop. There is Johnson the loyal servant of Little England and then there is Johnson the lover of England’s global hegemony. He told his party’s annual conference, to great applause:

“When I go into the Map Room of Palmerston I cannot help remembering that this country over the last two centuries has directed the invasion or conquest of 178 countries.” [...]

It may be that Johnson’s apparent schizophrenia does actually embody the real tragedy underlying the Little Englander mentality. They dream of the power that subjugated the peoples of 178 countries but they also accept that it can now only ever be a dream. Simultaneously they accept the diminishment of their country’s world role. It is a price worth paying if it preserves the values they believe to be uniquely English—the values that enabled and underpinned the glory of empire. [...]

The London School of Economics is much more than its name implies. For generations it has been an incubator of progressive political and social ideas as well as educating 34 future heads of state and 18 Nobel laureates. Some of its graduates even went on to lead revolutionary movements that ended British rule in the colonies. It was, and is, a symbol of British academic open-mindedness.

Imagine, then, the outrage when May’s government announced that the group of experts who would be advising officials in Johnson’s Foreign Office on the technical details of negotiating British exit from Europe would be purged of anyone who did not have a British passport—even though LSE academics who were not British citizens had already been recruited. [...]

The surge of bigotry in the streets has been evident for some time. What is new is the way it has been made almost respectable by the recent actions of the government. A powerful editorial The Observer newspaper spelt it out. The paper said that ideas are emanating from senior ministers that are “as alarming as they are unpleasant. They carry a gross whiff of xenophobia. They convey an inescapable undertone of racism and intolerance. They are a return to the narrow, delusional world of Little England.”

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CityLab: The Golden Age of Gondolas Might Be Just Around the Corner

The gondola renaissance began, more or less, with Medellín. In 2004, the Colombian city built a gondola to connect one of its sprawling hillside neighborhoods to the trunk line of the Metro, which runs along the fold of the valley. The success of that project inspired the construction of two more lines, which in turn helped make the city an international destination for mayors and urban thinkers, and the winner of the Urban Land Institute’s Innovation City of the Year last month.

Medellín had imitators. In 2007, Portland, Oregon, built a tramway to connect a university campus to downtown. New York City renovated its Roosevelt Island Tram in 2010. In 2009, Manizales, Colombia, installed a gondola system in imitation of Medellin. The next year, Caracas built one; the year after, Rio de Janeiro did too.

Last year, London built an aerial cable crossing the Thames, and in the fall, La Paz announced it will build the world's largest gondola transit network, with eleven stations and over seven miles of cable. The French cities of Brest and Toulouse will complete cable transport in 2015 and 2017, respectively. [...]

And beyond that, according to Assman Ekkehard, a marketing director for Doppelmayr, there was an image problem. "Most people — politicians, the public itself, architects, the people who are doing the plans for cities, traffic specialists — they also had, and still sometimes have this association: ropeways are good for tourists, they're good for bringing people up the mountain, but they're not a good means of transport."

That's beginning to change, Ekkehard believes. "People see cities with ropeways and they see it works," he says. "It’s a very reasonable means of transit – you don’t need a lot of infrastructure. They need very little space. They're very environmentally friendly."

But perhaps more importantly in an era of diminished public funds, they can be built quickly and cheaply.

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