Rev. Danny Fisher

I recently wrote a piece for elephant journal in which I named my picks for the ten best films of the year. As part of my “research” for the piece, I ended up seeing just about all of the films that have dominated the various year-end awards and lists and so forth. I put all of the movie-watching to use again with a new piece today about the upcoming 81st Annual Academy Awards. In it, I offer my thoughts about who “will win,” who “should win,” and who was “robbed” of a nomination in each of the major categories. Please take a look and share your thoughts here, movie fans!

I also recently did a little post for elephant about my friend Ravenna Michalsen, whom I profile in the lastest issue of Tricycle. It’s full of links to help you find music, products, and other resources. You can read that post here.

Time Magazine presents a forum on “Faith and Healing” with the Rev. George Handzo, a chaplain with the HealthCare Chaplaincy of New York City; Dr. Andrew Newberg, a radiologist and psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania; and Dr. Richard Sloan, a psychiatrist at Columbia University. Buddhist chaplains, take note! Read the whole piece here.

The editors of The Irrawaddy, the news magazine founded in 1992 by Burmese exiles living in Thailand, present an editorial today calling for our new Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, to “speak out” on Burma.

On a political and humanitarian level, Clinton has a duty to raise the issue of political prisoners in Burma, including the detention of Aung San Suu Kyi and other prominent activists. She should tie in the issue of human rights with the democratization process, spelling out US expectations for the 2010 elections as well as for humanitarian aid in Burma.

As with North Korea, the US has an opportunity to set fresh conditions for normalizing ties with the regime.

Whatever Clinton says or fails to say about Burma while she’s in Asia will be carefully noted by the junta in Naypyidaw. We’ll keep our fingers crossed that the new US policy on Burma does not play into the hands of the regime.

Reuters reports today on the “fading allure” of Buddhism for some young Tibetans.

There are still peasants with religious duties handed down in the family or who prefer a life at a temple to one in the fields.

[...]

But three decades of modernisation across China have brought new money and a new way of life for many Tibetans, even if they are unhappy about other changes to their lives or the competition for jobs with migrants from other ethnic groups.

This via the great Phil Ryan over at Tricycle Editors’ Blog: The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released a study recently that finds Buddhism has the highest percentage of followers who believe in evolution in the U.S. I’ve posted before about problems with research methodologies in other Pew Forum studies, but their work is still worth checking out. Take a closer look here.