Saturday Night For The Freethinker Christopher Hitchens

“THE VALUE OF HETERODOXY”

‘It matters not what you think,’ Hitchens wrote, ‘but how you think.’ Many assume Hitchens was such a pugnacious debater and polemicist because he was temperamentally inclined toward rhetorical combat. As Amis put it: ‘He likes the battle, the argument, the smell of cordite.’ This is true, but another source of Hitchens’s ferocity in print and on the stage was the fact that his positions were natural extensions of his core principles. It is easier to hold and defend a controversial position when you have internally coherent reasons for doing so.

What you think – or at least what you purport to think – tends to matter more than how you think these days. The best path toward a lucrative career as a political or cultural commentator is the development of a brand that serves a particular set of information consumers. There are plenty of fiery pundits and Twitter warriors out there today, but how many reliably outrage and alienate their own ‘side’? How many are willing to publish an article or a podcast that will result in a loss of followers and prestige within the group?

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Saturday Night For The Freethinker Lorraine Hansberry

Lorraine Hansberry was born in Chicago in 1930, the daughter of civil rights activists and intellectuals. Her play, “A Raisin in the Sun” (1959), the first drama by a black woman to be produced on Broadway and winner of the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, was loosely based on her own experiences. When she was 8, her parents bought a house in a white neighborhood, where Lorraine witnessed a racist mob and her parents’ resulting civil rights case.

She studied at the University of Wisconsin for two years, then moved to New York to become a writer, working as an associate editor of Paul Robeson’s “Freedom.” She married Robert Nemiroff in 1953, whom she met on the picket line while protesting discrimination at New York University. Hansberry divorced her husband in 1964.

Hansberry selected the title of her play from a line in a poem by Langston Hughes: “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun, Or does it explode?” Sidney Poitier starred in both the play and film versions. The play’s central protagonist is Beneatha, an eager young woman determined to fight social convention and go to medical school. Beneatha is a “self-avowed” atheist (who gets slapped by her mother for admitting it).

Hansberry wrote “The Drinking Gourd,” commissioned by the National Broadcasting Co., in 1959. About the American slave trade, it was considered too hot for television and was never produced. Her play, “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window” (1964), was about a Jewish intellectual. It played on Broadway while Hansberry was hospitalized for cancer that cut her life short at age 34. “To Be Young, Gifted, and Black” was posthumously adapted from her writings and was produced off-Broadway in 1969, also appearing in book form (1970). D.1965.

Source: https://ffrf.org/news/day/19/05/freethought/…

Saturday Night For The Free Thinker: Carl Sagan (Part 1) Questioning Religion

I love Carl Sagan scientific life. He was a scientist who, despite his passing on December 20, 1996 keeps on educating us with his intellectual abilities and philosophical analysis on life.

Books, articles, journals signed by several Nobel Prize winners, conferences about science, astrophysics, astronomy, philosophy and more.

Carl Sagan was a passionate advocate of scientific and critical thinking.

“The major religions on the Earth contradict each other left and right. You can’t all be correct. And what if all of you are wrong? It’s a possibility, you know. You must care about the truth, right? Well, the way to winnow through all the differing contentions is to be skeptical. I’m not any more skeptical about your religious beliefs than I am about every new scientific idea I hear about. But in my line of work, they’re called hypotheses, not inspiration and not revelation.” —— Carl Sagan

American Football Player Freddie Steinmark a True Inspiration for all and for Cancer Patients

I love heroes, men and women who have strong spirits and radiant-brilliant minds, and Freddie Joe Steinmark is one of them. Read more about him below the images.

Freddie Steinmark, an American college football player back in the 60’s. He played at the position of safety for the University of Texas Longhorns. He has inspired millions of people around the globe, patients with cancer or other terminal or incapacitated diseases. He is an inspiration to many, even to people who enjoy good health but want to be stronger everyday.

Yes, I admire him greatly. Last night I was watching the movie about his life: “My All American”. Needless to say I was crying at the end. I was inspired by Freddie’s heart, his powerful mind, his tremendous and furious courage, fearless to pain, always with a smile and kind attitude for everyone around him: a true hero.

He was born January 27, 1949, in Denver Colorado and died at the age of 22 in June 6, 1971, at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States. Diagnosis: Congenital Osteosarcoma (bone cancer).

The amputation of his left leg, from the left hip, and the knowledge that his survival rate after the surgery was about a year, didn’t stop him from living!

OFFICIAL SITE of Freddie Joe Steinmark

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