Roger the prophet

For people at high risk of depression because of a family history, spirituality may offer some protection for the brain, a new study hints.

Parts of the brain's outer layer, the cortex, were thicker in high-risk study participants who said religion or spirituality was "important" to them versus those who cared less about religion.
Continue reading: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/30/us-thicker-brain-sections-tied-to-spirit-idUSBRE9BT0LA20131230

A Wikipedia entry titled Prophets in Judaism lists the 48 Prophets and seven Prophetesses. Perhaps the list should be amended to include NYT columnist Roger Cohen, who finds time amongst his new year's celebrations to prophesy about the coming year.

But I am going to make one prediction for 2014. It is that, for all John Kerry’s efforts, this will be another year in which peace is not reached in the Middle East. (And if I am wrong, I vow Sisyphean penance in eternity.)

Of course, Israel is mostly to blame for the sorry state of affairs in an article titled My Jewish State.

Then there is the rebounding Israel-is-a-Jewish-state bugbear: Netanyahu wants Palestinians to recognize his nation as such.
...If Israel looks like a Jewish state and acts like a Jewish state, that is good enough for me — as long as it gets out of the corrosive business of occupation. Zionism, the one I identify with, forged a Jewish homeland in the name of restored Jewish pride in a democratic state of laws, not in the name of finicky insistence on a certain form of recognition, nor in the name of messianic religious Greater Israel nationalism.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/01/opinion/cohen-my-jewish-state.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0

Jeffrey Grossman opines about the NYT article.

Yes, Roger (Iran is "not totalitarian") Cohen is given to playing footloose with the truth, and my prediction for 2014 is that he will continue to rain manure down upon us.
http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.be/2013/12/roger-cohen-my-jewish-state-still.html

Who Cares What You Think, Roger Cohen?