Josh Bertetta's Blog, page 3

The Clean-Sports Movement and Performance-Enhancing Drugs: A Mythological Perspective (re-blogged)

“Revealed: sport’s dirtiest secret; Third of medals won by athletes with suspicious blood tests.” So read a Sunday Times (London) headline on August 2, 2015. American newspapers reported on the claims, but primarily remained silent on the matter until November when a name was dropped: Russia. Then the news kept pouring in and almost daily […]

International Olympic Committee official says unclear if Rio de Janeiro doping lab will be ready in time

Visit ESPN to get up-to-the-minute sports news coverage, scores, highlights and commentary for NFL, MLB, NBA, College Football, NCAA Basketball and more. Source: International Olympic Committee official says unclear if Rio de Janeiro doping lab will be ready in time Tagged: Brazil, Drugs, Olympics, PEDs, performance enhancing drugs, Rio, sports, steroids

Music as a Vehicle for Religious Dialogue: An Interreligious Discussion of Sin, Salvation, and Redemption

Amidst the social and cultural upheaval of the 1960s, the Catholic Church opened the Vatican II council in 1962 in order to address issues of modernity. Until then, the Church had condemned modernity; Vatican II encouraged the church to engage with the changing world. The Church issues a number of documents that significantly altered the […]

Some Reflections on the Influence of Power of Creativity in the Religious Studies Classroom

In a day and age which brings more and more cultures closer together, processes of globalization, too, yoke religion and religious belief to closer points of contact and, of course, conflict. Yet as we live in a multicultural and thus multi-religious environment, religious literacy is alarmingly low as Diana Eck would note of Christians in […]

Tony Fitton–A British Powerlifting Original (A Visual History)

Ten months ago, a story broke that would alter the landscape of international sport. Results from drug-testing were leaked and a subsequent investigation revealed a massive cover up. Since then, hundreds of athletes, including many Olympic medal winners, were found to have taken performance-enhancing drugs. Russian track stars topped the list. Investigations into various doping allegation […]

Tony Fitton–The Godfather of Steroids (A Visual History)

Ten months ago, a story broke that would alter the landscape of international sport. Results from drug-testing were leaked and a subsequent investigation revealed a massive cover up. Since then, hundreds of athletes, including many Olympic medal winners, were found to have taken performance-enhancing drugs. Russian track stars topped the list. Investigations into various doping allegation […]

Conservative Christians: Consistent with Gospel or Modern Day Pharisees?

  Seven months have passed since my last blog post on the subject of religion and as I listen to 2016 Republican Presidential candidates speak about God, Jesus, and Christianity, I cringe. Ted Cruz (scary guy that he is) said recently “I’m Christian first, American second” and Pope Francis (quite correctly in my opinion) questioned […]

2015 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 11,000 times in 2015. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many […]

Presence in Absence

So I’d been out of writing flash for about the past three months, but could not not participate in this, the last Flash!Friday contest. Twas sad news indeed to learn Rebekah P. was shutting down what I have found in the past year and a half a wonderful place to push myself in writing and, […]

Mass Shootings & The American Dream

To begin, condolences for those who lost friends and family in today’s most recent mass shooting in San Bernadino, California. The news has not released who the gunmen are/were at the time of my writing. Surely there is already speculation about ISIS or some other Islamic militant group. Perhaps some other group. There will be […]