text:
Festival Dates: Friday June 21st | Saturday June 22nd | Sunday June 23rd - 2013
Festival Hours: 7:00pm - 5:30am
Age: 18+ to enter, 21+ to drink. ID required (please see acceptable forms of ID below) Minimum age for VIP is 21 and older
Food and beverage stands are located throughout the event, with roaming vendors carrying water, snacks, and other beverages. Cash and credit accepted. Free water refill stations will be marked on the venue map.
Bars serving beer and liquor are located throughout the festival for those 21 years of age and older. Alcohol service hours will be released later in 2013.
ATMs are located inside and outside the venue, with locations clearly marked on the festival map.
Official Insomniac merchandise will be available for purchase, including t-shirts, jackets, steel water bottles, and some fun suprises!
The Insomniac General store is back, stocked with basic necessities you may have forgotten.
Locate Info Booths on the festival map, both inside and outside of the venue. Lost & Found will be moved outside of the venue after doors close. The lost and found booth will be located next to will call from 4pm-7am each day.
The use or possession of any illegal drugs will not be tolerated anywhere inside or outside the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Narcotics officers will be working both areas and enforcing all drug related laws. Do not bring any illegal substances to the event as violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. If you are found inebriated at the door, security will not allow you to enter the venue. Event staff reserves the right to refuse entry to anyone. Please come with a smile and be prepared to enjoy three nights of music, dancing, and the full festival experience of Electric Daisy Carnival.
Every attendee will be searched prior to entry into the event. This include members of the media. By purchasing a ticket, you agree to submit to a thorough TSA-style search, including emptying your pockets and bags, a full pat down, having all of your items examined and possibly removing your shoes. Police officers will be working inside and outside of the event. All narcotics laws will be strictly enforced. We reserve the right to refuse entry to anyone.
Insomniac is dedicated to providing a safe environment for the fans, the staff, the artists, and everyone else who helps make this event a reality. Public and private security and professional medical staff will be present throughout the entire event. If you need any assistance please look for Medical and Information tent(s), or seek out a peace officer or event staff member.
Drinking plenty of water and keeping hydrated throughout the entire weekend is vital to your health and safety. Drink water at regular intervals, especially in hot weather, and be sure to stay hydrated during the day when you're not at the festival. During the show, there are several Free Water Refill Stations available where you can fill any empty beverage container or your Insomniac water bottle for free. These Free water Refill Stations will be clearly marked on the map.
Lockers are available for rent, click here for more info.
The festival will take place rain or shine. Please keep up to date on weather reports for Las Vegas/Clark County and plan your attire and preparations accordingly. The high desert can vary dramatically in temperature and conditions even in a single day, including high winds, very dry weather, and quick onset of rain or storms.


text:
Web-based Administration
Like the majority of current day switches with routing features, you have the ability to manage the switch through an Internet browser, making life very easy. This switch from X-Micro is no different - you have the ability to manage quite a few different options for the switch as well as monitor connections and so forth. Let's take a closer look, shall we?
When you first login to the router, you are presented with screen above which gives you a summary of the status of various aspects of the switch.
We'll first look at the options available to us in the "Wireless Basic Settings" area. Here you are able to change what your wireless network is called through the SSID. This is the name which is given to your network which shows up in Windows. You've got a few other options here but will likely not need to be changed unless you have more than one wireless network in the same vicinity.
Here we have the "Wireless Advanced Settings" area which allows us to change some of the more advanced options. Unless you have an extensive knowledge in wireless networks, I wouldn't recommend changing any of these settings. The only option you may consider changing is the option to broadcast your wireless network's SSID (the name of your network). For privacy reasons, you may wish to disable it and then your wireless network will go unnamed.
Next up we have the all important "Wireless Security Setup" area which is where we are able to enable and disable WEP which helps secure your wireless network. You can choose from 64-bit and 128-bit WEP. Do remember though, by enabling WEP your wireless network transfer speeds will be reduced slightly. However it is still recommended you have WEP enabled if you consider yourself to be in a vulnerable part of town or just want a little piece of mind.
For even greater wireless network security, we have the "Wireless Access Control" area which allows us to add the MAC address of wireless adapters to what could be considered a "white list" of clients you want to allow to connect to your wireless network. This should effectively stop all intruders right away, but you never know
Next up we move away from wireless options and get our first taste of LAN options. In the "LAN Interface Setup" area we are able to change the IP address of the router (not advised) as well as being able to adjust the DHCP IP address range. Just quickly, DHCP is a networking method which automatically assigns an IP to a newly connected computer to the network. Instead of manually having to adjust your LAN adapter settings, just enable DHCP and the router will take care of the rest with minimal fuss and will have you on the network, with your own IP, in only a few seconds.
Next up we have the "WAN Interface Setup" area which allows us to make changes to our Internet connection. If you are using a cable modem, all that is required is to choose "Attain IP Automatically" and the rest is done for you. If you have an ADSL connection, you need to choose "PPPoE" and enter in your username and password as given to you by your ISP. Under connection type you are able to choose how the switch connects you to the Internet. I choose "Manual" since we had a few problems initially when first setting up the router. However, the option for "Connect on Demand" works just fine now.
The rest of the options of the router are fairly standard. You have a whole bunch of firewall options like you would expect - Port Filtering, IP Filtering, MAC Filtering, Port Forwarding and DMZ (takes your PC out of the Militarized Zone to provide Internet services without sacrificing unauthorized access to other computers on the network).
Find the lowest price on Networking Gear!

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Shermans Travel » Blog » Buenos Aires
Shermanstravel Blog
Please enable an RSS reader on Google Chrome.
Buenos Aires
As much as we appreciate hotel loyalty programs, accumulating points from just one hotel brand can feel like quite a slog, and a little uninspiring — who, besides the very frequent business traveler, wants the same brand experience each and every time they check in?
Just over a year ago, Preferred Hotel Group introduced a loyalty program, iPrefer, that honors stays at the more custom, bespoke hotels over the big box brands; it's the world's only loyalty program available at a global collection of truly independent hotels. Here's how it works, and how you can join.
It's not uncommon for upscale hotels and resorts to offer guests extraordinary excursions and activities, but Four Seasons takes it to a whole new level. From dining center stage at a historic opera house to designing a custom pair of Lucchese boots, here are a few exclusive Four Seasons that we love dreaming about.
Miami might be steamy right now but, with this bumper list of new hotels, now is the time to enjoy off-season and introductory rates at the newly opened properties– or to start planning a trip around those that will be opening later this year and next.
Ever wanted to see all – and we do mean all – of South America's coastline? Holland America's newest Grand Voyage for 2015 will let you do just that. The 68-day journey will make a complete loop around the continent from Fort Lauderdale, with a few additional ports of call in the Caribbean, Central America, and, weather permitting, Antarctica.
Across the globe, urban planners have beautified some of the most basic (and essential) city structures: subway stations. Through murals, sculptures, temporary installations, or just fancy signage, they have helped turn otherwise drab transportation hubs into dazzling, and sometimes even whimsical, works of art. From Tom Otterness' miniature bronze sculptures in New York City to Dubai's jellyfish-like chandeliers, here are nine underground masterpieces that can't be missed. Click here to view our slideshow.
From top tango shows to savory steaks, Buenos Aires offers plenty to keep travelers busy. But for those looking for a little outer-city adventure, there are plenty of exciting day trips set within just an hour or two of the big city. From learning to horseback ride out on the Pampas (the plains known for their cowboy culture), to cruising through the Tigre Delta, to playing polo (one of Argentina's most beloved sports), these three day trips offer those without much time – or money – to spare, a unique taste of greater Argentina, set within easy reach of the capital. Read more
Buenos Aires is a city made for walking, but that doesn't mean your ambling should be aimless. For visitors to BA on a budget, several local companies offer free walking tours in a number of neighborhoods, with guides working solely for tips. Read on for a vetted roundup of three of the city's best, free, English-language walking tours… Read more
If you ever wished that walls could talk, Buenos Aires can make it happen. With a vibrant and ubiquitous street arts scene that transforms public spaces into a collective canvas, graffiti and street art here go far beyond quickly scribbled "tags." You'll see a rich mix of styles and mediums – "bombs," stencils, "paste-ups," "pieces," murals, and more. (And you'll know what all those terms mean if you take one of the tours mentioned below.) The art serves as both a soapbox and a showcase for the city's historical complexities, political and social pulse, and contemporary culture. Far from galleries and museums, Buenos Aires's buzzing arts scene is perhaps best explored by simply strolling through its many barrios. I recently set out to sample the tours from a trio of unique street art-focused companies based in the Argentinian capital, each offering budget-friendly outings that are sure to have you looking at graffiti in a brand-new light. Read more
This summer, take the international vacation you've always dreamed of with Accor Hotels' Super Sale. Enjoy a romantic vacation to Paris, explore the sights of Hong Kong, soak up the arts and culture of Sydney, and many more international destinations. With this sale, you'll save up to 50 percent on seasonal rates at the same hotels. Valid for stays from July 6 through September 1, select properties include: Read more
Oasis Collections, an American-run, South American-based short-term apartment rental agency – and self-dubbed "curators of stylish pads" – has recently launched a series of budget-friendly upscale vacation rentals, spanning some of South America's hottest destinations, for under $250/night. Read more
It's no secret that there are countless unknown holidays that are celebrated around the world (Talk Like a Pirate Day, Margarita Day…you get the idea), but International Dance Day should be one that is on your radar every year. Founded over 30 years ago, the day's message is one that transcends all barriers, "The intention of International Dance Day is to celebrate dance, to revel in the universality of this art form, to cross all political, cultural, and ethnic barriers and bring people together with a common language – Dance." To celebrate in our own way we're bringing you four cities to visit to experience this international language. Read more
The cream color conjured up memories of the 1980s. It looked like the brassieres that my grandmother wore when I was a kid (unfortunately, I remember seeing them hanging in the bathroom). It fit very snuggly around my torso. When I finally unhooked the clasp, I noticed that I had indentations in my skin from the elastic band and sweat had collected where the belt made the most intimate contact with my body. I'd spent a day in Quito, Ecuador wearing a money belt and felt like I should have complemented it with a pair of control top pantyhose.
Money belts have been around for decades, and travelers have relied on them to thwart pickpockets all around the world. Are these people – and in Quito, I was one of them – being smart or paranoid? Petty crime happens almost everywhere. Certain cities, such as Rome, Paris, and Buenos Aires, have developed reputations for being rife with pickpockets. These thieves prey on tourists, especially those who announce to the world that they're visitors by carrying large bags, donning souvenir shirts, and taking pictures of famous landmarks. Stop paying attention for just a moment and you could find that your wallet is no longer in your pocket.
Make way for some revelry à la Rio during the annual Carnival celebration, courtesy of Crystal Cruises' brand-new "Samba Serenade" sailing, set to embark on February 20. The luxury cruise line's 12-night itinerary debut will feature five maiden calls in Brazil (Buzios, Ilha Grande, Paraty, Santos/São Paulo, and Itajai), kicking off with an overnight stop in Rio during the height of the samba- and caipirinha-fueled Carnival festivities. The cruise then continues on to Uruguay, where guests can explore wineries in Montevideo, or lap up the high life on the glamorous beaches of Punta del Este, before rounding out the trip in legendary Buenos Aires. Read more
$140+: Special Opening Rates at New Buenos Aires Hotel and ShermansTravel.com Exclusive Perks
Opened May 1 in the up-and-coming Palermo Hollywood neighborhood of Buenos Aires, stylish Palermo Place features 26 well-apponted rooms, each with French balconies, kitchenettes, and free Wi-Fi. The hotel is offering opening rates of $175/night or $189/night with breakfast – a 25 percent discount over regular rates – as well as a "stay five, pay four" deal that brings rates down to $140/night (or $151/night with breakfast). ShermansTravel.com readers also receive a bottle of wine at arrival, a pastry each day from local bakery Pani, and late 2pm checkout. Book by July 1 for travel through August 31.
THE VALUE: If you combine the opening rates with the fifth night free promotion, you save almost $100/night!
THE CATCH: Winter is about to start in Buenos Aires and can mean some rainy days, but temperatures never get too cold.
THE DETAILS: Book the special rates online or by calling 800-281-5951. Once you get your confirmation number, email firstname.lastname@example.com and mention ShermansTravel.com to get your bonus perks.
WE'VE GOT MORE: Use our Travel Search price comparison tool to find the lowest rates and travel deals on flights to Buenos Aires.
For general trip-planning information, see our Buenos Aires Travel Guide.
If you need any extra incentive to add a dash of adrenaline to your next trip, consider this: Americans came in dead last in a recent survey designed to gauge travelers' taste for adventure, behind Kiwis, Canadians, Australians and Brits (in order of most to least adventurous).
The survey, done by adventure travel specialist Intrepid Travel, asked 1,000 respondents from five countries to reveal how likely they were to try a variety of travel experiences. The "intrepid" survey choices included eating a deep fried tarantula, sleeping in village hut, going on safari, haggling at local markets and exploring ancient ruins.
Of course, surveys like this should be taken with a grain of salt, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who doesn't consider haggling in a local market or traipsing around ancient ruins all that intrepid (though yes, eating a hairy arachnid, deep-fried or not, would certainly earn you that honor in my book). But the survey did provoke a fun trip down memory lane to some of my most exciting – and, therefore, cherished – travel moments. Here are a few: Read more


text:
Yeah so the Where the Wild Things Are movie comes out today! HELLA YES!!!
I found out that my friend G who prefers to be called Kila (huge deathnote fan) decided to start the rumor. She just wanted to see how I'd react. She also found out the 2 girls I was talking about the homecoming thing: Attracta and Penelope. I love the name penelope, it looks so cool XD
Oh yeah, it was my friend Casey who helped me solve the turmoil :D
If you look back to the previous journal i mentioned, you'll see I listed the initials of the girls, so casey helped me clear that up.
Yeah so I haven't been on in quite a while.
Lemmie start with recent stuff and work back, cuz it's easier to remember that way XD
Part of the reason I haven't visited, I think, is b/c I've been off one of my meds for about a week, but I got it yesterday so's I'm set :D. Yeah, my doc wrote the wrong prescription >:o... He's been getting very bad with things like that, even tho it was only like 2 letters (XR... or is it ER?) to denote it's extended release.
I had a panic attack last thursday. It sucked really bad. At least I was able to get to the nurse right away and start to control it. The major problem was that it wasn't provoked by anything that I can think of >:o
I've been feeling bipolar recently. Or detached. Or something. Like, my eyes feel tired as hell, I'm sore from doing a 5k, but I want to like, skip around or sing to some song playing really loud or something. I feel like one of those little kids in a home video, sitting there playing quietly with fascinated eyes before suddenly crying...then being comforted and squealing happily and throwing their arms around. Especially the throwing arms around part. I'm kinda rambling aren't I?
Oh. My. Fuckin. God.
PATHETIC NONSENSE, people need to FUCKING GROW UP!
Fuck my FUCKING LIFE!!!!!!!!
Life does NOT stop for people. The fabric of the universe will continue to undulate with the movement of strings, people are going to die no matter what, and dammit, everyone (including me) thinks that their little EGO is SO IMPORTANT! Well you know what? FUCK YOU! FUCK ME! FUCK EVERYTHING, cause none of it matters.
I want coffee now.
Good News and Bad. Im home sick :(
Good news is...NO SCHOOL!!!!
Bad news. I feel horrible and Im away from my 4 awesome friends. Yes i only have 4 friends....sad i know. They are all girls but i dont mind :) They are sooooo funny and i always laugh with them :) I have no guy friends....Odd since i AM A GUY! But no guys like me....I think its how I dress :-/ Im not sure but they are all @$$ and can suck my....I wont fniish that sentence for ur sake.


text:
You may have recently noticed the addition of a small orange box on the right of page saying 'Donate'. This box has been added as the costs of keeping the Website online are very high. Any money received from this Donate button will keep the website you are looking at right now alive.
It helps to pay the costs of the Website hosting. By donating we will advertise your website in a supporters page as this website gets over 50 hits a day. If you don't want your money to go towards the hosting then we will put it towards a future project of your choice. If you want to put your money in a Team Fortress 2 server or another Game server sure we will be willing to use the money to buy one. Money goes to where you want it, as this community is your community. If you are interested in keeping the site alive click the button below or click the button on the right which say on them Donate.
You do not need a PayPal account to donate to MattsTechUK just click use your Credit Card or Bank Account at the bottom of the page. We do not give out refunds!
Thankyou for your continuing Support of the website.


text:
I chose Fairmont State because my sister used to go here and she had taken me on a tour one day. I loved how all the buildings were so close to each other compared to WVU. I wanted to not have to stress out about being late getting from one class to the next, like I assumed I would if I attended WVU. Also, there are fewer students per classroom at Fairmont versus WVU, which is great because I would much rather be a "name" than "number."
What has surprised me the most since I arrived at Fairmont State is how fast everything moves in my classes. I believe this is because I was used to the high school pace and college is much different. It is a little bit of a challenge, but I like a challenge.
So far, the Honors Program has been pretty great. The events that the Honors Program holds are entertaining and the classes are challenging. I have enjoyed everything so far.
Look at into the schools that have what major you are seeking first and foremost. After you find the schools providing your major, think about whether you are looking to be more of a "number" or a "name" and narrow which schools are known for the specific area you chose. Also, look at locality. See how close your final options are and decide if you want to live far away or closer to home.
My Honors courses are definitely more challenging and at a faster pace than my high school courses.


text:
Spirax Sarco Canada
Tel: (1) 905 660 5510
Fax: (1) 905 660 5503
Fax: (1) 905 660 5503
Savings Calculator
Will I benefit from a steam trap audit?
Answer the three questions below to give an indication of the possible savings, which could be achieved through steam trap surveys and maintenance schedules.
Whatever your steam system requirement
Spirax Sarco have experienced engineers available to offer information about our steam trap audits.
Arrange a visit to your plant by Spirax Sarco
Ask us a question about our products and services


text:
Riding The Wave Of Spring
I am quite pleased to have an opportunity to touch base with the readers during the spring rush. Having been a grower myself for 30 years, I remember how crazy it gets when you're still planting and shipping at the same time. As we get pulled in so many directions at once, it's easy to


text:
5. Bellwether
Class things up by watching the games at this new-ish meetinghouse and eatery. Catch the action in the main dining room in the company of some beef tenderloin skewers and smoked bacon-wrapped shrimp. Or head upstairs for a more authentic (read: rowdy) experience with the assistance of a massive 100-inch screen.
On special: $4 Bud Light, Stella, Guinness and Coors Light, and $5 select craft beers.
302 E. Illinois St., River North (312-222-1800)


text:
noun \ˈsȯ-ˌfish\Definition of SAWFISH
: any of a family (Pristidae) of large elongate rays that resemble sharks but have a long flattened snout with a row of serrate structures along each edge and that live in tropical and subtropical shallow seas and in or near the mouths of rivers
First Known Use of SAWFISH
Rhymes with SAWFISH
batfish, billfish, blackfish, blindfish, blowfish, bluefish, bonefish, catfish, codfish, cold fish, cowfish, crawfish, crayfish, death wish, deep-dish, dogfish, filefish, finfish, flatfish, fly-fish, game fish, garfish, globefish, goatfish, goldfish, goosefish, hagfish, hogfish, Irtysh, jewfish, kingfish, knish, lungfish, lumpfish, milkfish, monkfish, moonfish, oarfish, panfish, pigfish, pinfish, pipefish, ratfish, redfish, rockfish, rough fish, sailfish, shellfish, side dish, spearfish, sport fish, starfish, stonefish, sunfish, swordfish, tilefish, toadfish, trash fish, trunkfish, unwish, weakfish, whitefish
noun (Concise Encyclopedia)Any of about six species (genus Pristis, family Pristidae) of sharklike ray. Sawfishes have a long head, long body, and a long, toothed, bladelike snout. The largest attain lengths of 23 ft (7 m) or more. These bottom-dwellers inhabit shallow waters of subtropical and tropical bays and estuaries and sometimes swim up rivers. Some live in the freshwaters of Lake Nicaragua. They are not generally dangerous. Their saws are used either to dig out bottom animals or, when lashed about, to kill or maim schooling fishes. Sawfishes are good to eat when small; they are fished in some areas for food, oil, skins, and other products.
Learn More About SAWFISH
Ask The Editor Videos
Seen & Heard
What made you want to look up sawfish? Please tell us where you read or heard it (including the quote, if possible).


text:
SPENCER Two months shy of its 100th birthday, Copperhead looks great for its age.
For decades, the great locomotive was a puffing, chugging, clanging symbol of the immense muscle of the industrial age. Now in its second retirement, the two-story tall, 10-wheeled giant still inspires awe as a relic of the industry that revolutionized travel and commerce and, because of the confluence of 19th-century rail lines, turned Charlotte into a modern trade center.
Carolinians have a strange love affair with their railroads. Museums from the Smokies to the coast celebrate the golden era of the rails and tens of thousands visit annually to admire the massive artifacts.
On Saturday, the N.C. Transportation Museum in Spencer will launch its Museum in Motion Festival celebrating the rails with various rides including an excursion made of cabooses and hobbyists displaying elaborate model railways. Former hobos will talk about what life was like bumming on the rails and experts will discuss Copperhead and its restored steam colleagues.
Formerly known as Rail Days, the festival at the beginning of the tourist season is one of the regions largest gatherings dedicated to historic railroading.
Its an audience that never seems to grow old, says Rob Van Camp, known for his UNC-TV documentaries about historic railways. From each generation from the Thomas the Tank Engine crowd to those susceptible to a flood of memories triggered by a distant steam whistle people are fascinated by old trains, particularly the magnificent coal-powered locomotives, he says.
Its the mechanics, I think. There are about 3,000 moving parts in a steam engine, says Van Camp. Old timers say its alive the closest thing man has built to something being human. Its got to eat, its got to drink
North Carolinas Transportation Museum in the old Spencer Yards north of Salisbury is the biggest repository in the Carolinas relics of the rail and draws 80,000 visitors annually.
Diesels doomed Spencer
Plopped midway between the hubs of Washington and Atlanta, Spencer was chosen by Southern Railway Co.s president J.P. Morgan for locomotive shops. Steam engines needed a lot of maintenance and in 1896 Southern built a huge complex for their care. At its peak, 3,000 people worked for the yard.
Half a century later, diesel engines efficient, durable and far less needy rode to the front of the pack. As the railroads adopted diesels, Spencer ran out of steam.
In 1977, Southern Railway began turning the site over to the state of North Carolina,. In 1983 the museum was born. Preserved at its heart is the largest standing roundhouse in North America, complete with a working turntable to guide old engines into its bays.
Here reside the sleeping titans of the steam age, what Van Camp calls monstrous beasts that breathe air. Copperhead, nicknamed for the bright copper rings that its smokestack originally bore, is one of six steam engines in the museum.
It hauled freight and passengers for the Wilmington-based Atlantic Coast Line and roved from Jacksonville, Fla. to Richmond. When newfangled diesels shoved it aside in the 50s, it took what work it could find on branch lines in Tarboro and Lumberton.
Finally, in 1959, its furnace finally went cold. For the next 37 years it served as a lawn decoration behind the Florence, S.C., train station. In 1994, the city of Florence gave it to the Spencer museum, which affectionately spiffed the engine back to its 1940s heyday appearance.
In its new life, it pulls no load but still draws ahhhhs. With shining steel wheels shoulder high to a man, the Copperhead occupies its own roundhouse stall near mighty companions like the Seaboard Air Line No. 544.
Heritage passed down
It was built by American Locomotive Co. for the Russian State Railroad, but that was one journey it never made. While it was under construction, the Revolution of 1917 swept the Czars empire and voided the deal. No. 544 was instead drafted by the U.S. government to haul vital supplies to ports in World War I. It stayed busy into late 50s and was restored at Spencer in 1996.
When the museum opened 30 years ago, it found willing volunteers in local Southern retirees, whose skills were revived for restorations.
So many of them have died off, says museum historian Walter Turner. They had a huge role. Over the years, they taught a younger generation of volunteers that came from all kinds of backgrounds.
Turners domain includes many noted exhibits, including two rail cars built for industrial titans.
First is the Loretto, with ornate carvings finished in gold leaf and stained glass windows. It was built in 1902 to carry steel magnate Charles Schwab. It was later owned by Springs Mill in Fort Mill.
Then theres the rail car owned by Southern Power and American Tobaccos James B. Duke. He named it Doris, after his daughter. Turner says it is modest compared with Schwabs ride, though Duke didnt skimp on amenities he spent $400 alone on embroidered napkins for the car.
A town built for trains
No Carolinas train tour can omit quaint Hamlet, just east of Rockingham. It was here that the rails of the Seaboard Air Line crossed, and headed into the four cardinal directions. At the turn of the 20th century, more than 30 trains a day paused on journeys to New York, New Orleans, Norfolk and Florida.
Hamlet was like the Charlotte airport is today, says Miranda Chavis, who manages the rail museum beside the restored 1900 passenger station built in grand Queen Anne Victorian style. Small town, big railroads.
It was one of the nations earliest tourist traps. There were seven hotels and many boarding houses for transferring passengers in the town nicknamed Hub of the Seaboard. Shops and restaurants catered to visitors. There was an opera house where tenor Enrico Caruso once performed. Lavish accommodations were to be found at the Seaboard Hotel, which fronted the tracks.
Hamlet, pop. 6,000, is still a railroad town. Amtrak stops twice a day and Seaboards successor railroad CSX has a massive switching yard just outside of town. In front of the Hamlet station, the tracks still cross and trains constantly thunder through, attracting train watchers. In the book Guide to North American Railroad Hot Spots by J. David Ingles, Hamlet is listed as the prime watching spot for train fans in North Carolina.
Some train watchers spent the day at the crosstrack listening to radio chatter from the CSX yard and enjoying the passing freights. Chavis says some magnificent trains pass through, some of them a string of steel 200 cars long. Shes seen Army trains en route to Fayetteville and the circus train headed to its next gig.
Hamlets museum has had visitors from all 50 states and more than 30 countries, says Chavis. Attractions include exhibits that explain the various jobs on the railroads, how rail wheels changed over time and an 1898 map of the Seaboard line that lights up its key routes.
Mountains to the coast
Other destinations celebrating rail are scattered across the Carolinas:
• One of the great excursion railways in the nation originates in Bryson City. Through river gorges, two tunnels and over 25 bridges runs the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad, whose credits include being used for the 1993 movie The Fugitive. Widely considered a rare gem among tourist railways because of its primitive surroundings, the railroad is marking its 25th anniversary this year.
• When it was completed in 1840, the Wilmington & Weldon Railroad was the longest continuous rail line in the world 161 miles. It eventually became the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, based in Wilmington. In an 1883 freight warehouse is the Wilmington Railroad Museum, which enshrines the history of the railway and, more famously, the legend of conductor Joe Baldwin, decapitated in a train wreck. He is believed by some to be the apparition associated with the famed Maco Lights, an eternal spirit holding a lantern in search of his head.
• A museum in the old depot at Branchville, S.C., preserves the heritage of the town, which claims to be the site of the first railroad junction in the world in the 1830s when the South Carolina Railroad branched out. Presidents William H. Taft, William McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt stopped at the depot and the town holds an annual Raylrode Daze festival.
Van Camp, the UNC-TV documentarian, says hes encouraged that so much of the rail history of the Carolinas has been preserved. He understands the fascination that draws people to the trains.
Its the backbone that built our country, he says. It opened up the West. Theyre engrained in the fabric of our county. And theyre beautiful pieces of work, absolutely magnificent.
Washburn: 704-358-5007.
Subscribe to The Charlotte Observer.
The Charlotte Observer welcomes your comments on news of the day. The more voices engaged in conversation, the better for us all, but do keep it civil. Please refrain from profanity, obscenity, spam, name-calling or attacking others for their views.
Have a news tip? You can send it to a local news editor; email email@example.com to send us your tip - or - consider joining the Public Insight Network and become a source for The Charlotte Observer.
Read more


text:
Terry Hardwick is a 23 year old photographer, film maker, writer, and artist, working as CFO and writer of Native Mother Production with his wonderful friend, Ermelinda Cortes. Our current projects "We Are Still Here. The Native American Experience." A documentary about the native Taino people of Puerto Rico. Other projects are Hangin' With Hardwick, a weekly (Whenever I feel like it) podcast about funny stories, to trips to museums. If you would like to know more, please follow, terry on twitter and Tumblr. And if you would like to throw in a few coins to the cause, buy one of his prints at his Society6 page. http://society6.com/terryjr91
Veronica Belmont - about.me user since 2010
"First, customize your page. It's easy and fun to design!"
Hi! I'm currently living in (City), where I work at (Work Place) doing (Job Title). When I'm not working I like to (Hobby), (Interest) and (Passion). Connect with me!
"Next, connect services and send people to your page."
"That's it! Let about.me do all of the work for you."
Showcase a 360 degree view of who you are
Help people find and follow you on your social networks
Be found for new opportunities


text:
Welcome to tree_oracle's Member Page
See my Clippings See my Journal See my trade list Send me an email
I am a Ph.D. (Wisconsin-Madison, Go Badgers!) organic chemist with a passion for golf and gardening. My grandfather got me interested in planting trees, shrubs, vegetables, etc. when I was a very young kid. I�ve been doing so ever since. I started Rose gardening in 2003 and it has become a very addictive hobby. I bought a new home in 2001 and have spent the last few years landscaping the place. I�m particularly fond of Black Gum trees and have planted several on my property along with many other species.
A list of trees that I�ve planted on my property:
2 Autumn Gold Gingko
2 Zelkova Serrata (Village Green)
2 Autumn Blaze maples
1 October Glory maple
1 Red Sunset maple
21 Green Giant arborvitae
4 Black Gum
1 Ruby Katsura
4 Whitespire birch clumps
4 Serbian spruce
3 Fat Albert blue spruce
1 Acer Griseum
1 Acer palmatum "Hogyoku"
1 Acer palmatum "Fireglow"
1 Acer palmatum "Suminigashi"
1 Acer palmatum "Orange Dream"
Acer shirasawanum "Autumn Moon"
1 Cherokee Brave dogwood
1 Cornus Kousa var chinesis "Big Apple"
1 Butterflies magnolia
1 Magnolia soulangiana "Alexandrina"
2 Fuji apple
2 Granny Smith Apple
1 Montmorency cherry
2 Asian pears
1 Prairiefire crabapple
1 Sassafras
2 London Planetrees (Exclamation)
1 Yoshino cherry
1 Weeping Higan Cherry
2 Kwanzan cherry
1 River birch
2 Eastern Redbuds
1 Vanderwolf pine
1 Apple serviceberry
Shrubs that I have planted
6 Hinocrimson azaleas
8 Tradition azaleas
4 Rosebud azaleas
1 Blue Baron rhododendron
3 Roseum Elegans rhododendrons
3 PJM rhododendrons
3 Trilby rhododendrons
1 Crete rhododendrons
2 Blue Prince hollies
3 Blue Princess hollies
3 Hopi crape myrtles
2 Red Rocket crape myrtles
1 Acoma crape myrtle
1 Pokomoke crape myrtle
1 Red Heart rose-of-sharon
1 Lucy rose-of-sharon
1 Blue Satin rose-of-sharon
1 Arnold's Promise witchhazel
1 Wedgewood Blue lilac
6 Nikko Blue hydrangeas
4 All Summers Beauty hydrangeas
2 Madame Emille Mouillere hydrangeas
2 Glowing Embers hydrangeas
3 Endless Summer hydrangea
1 Snowball Viburnum
2 Minnesota Snowflake mockoranges
3 Burning Bushes
2 Showoff Forsythia
1 Royal Purple smokebush
1 Purpleleaf sandcherry
40 Ibolium Privet
I live in: United States
My zone is: z6b MA
My favorite forum 1 is Trees.
My favorite forum 2 is New England Gardening.
First registered on November 06, 2003 .


text:
Please login or register to enjoy the benefits of CGSociety! | ||||
Welcome to CGTalk, the world's largest online forum for digital artists! CGTalk is the official forum for The CGSociety (Computer Graphics Society). To enjoy all that The CGSociety has to offer, please register here. | ||||
Forum | Last Post | Threads | Posts | |
What's Going On? | |
Currently Active Users: 605 (44 members and 561 guests) | |
Most users ever online was 9064, 11-30-2014 at 09:10 PM.
superamoeba, jonfinger, ftaswin, liquidminduk, ghangalex, willanie, dawestsides, Scuderia, LegoBlock, satsukichiyo, slothsfordays, rsquires, RainEVE, jenzonblopy, graphicthug, Himinglaeva, kamalpahuja, Hammerhead8, RockinAkin, BrianDyak, tnvonstadjona, Blacknaag, taxguy, didierf, SheepFactory, benjamindonnelly, Cyberone, MichaelWBell, Vidar3d, CGIPadawan, goldenmantis, boumay, AlexAndrieL, Bender83, ArsMod, israelyang, mlokeshkumar, luckyzwl, PhoenixCG, castles, Malkalypse
CGTalk Statistics | |
Threads: 1,003,888, Posts: 7,414,412, Members: 570,542
Welcome to our newest member, smrun


text:
Welcome to Smogon! Check out the Smogon Starters Hangout for everything you need to know about starting out in the community. Don't forget to introduce yourself in the Introduction and Hangout Thread, too!
Welcome to Smogon Forums! Please take a minute to read the rules.
Season 8 (Week 8 [DPP UU #3]) Won by Deep Thought
Discussion in 'Smogon Tour' started by Great Sage, Jul 12, 2009.
- Thread Status:
- Not open for further replies.
Page 1 of 3
Page 1 of 3
- Thread Status:
- Not open for further replies.


text:
Estero Bay Preserve State Park
Welcome to Estero Bay Preserve State Park
The first aquatic preserve established in Florida, this is one of the most productive estuaries in the state. The bay is home to a wide variety of wildlife, including the bald eagle. The preserve protects the water, inlets, and islands along 10 miles of Estero Bay. Visitors can canoe or kayak in the bay or on the Estero River. Launch facilities are available at Koreshan State Historic Site and Lovers Key/Carl E. Johnson State Park. Miles of trails offer visitors the opportunity to hike, bicycle, or study the variety of wildlife and native vegetation protected here. There are gopher tortoises, fiddler crabs, slash pines, and live oaks. Located near Estero, between Fort Myers and Naples. Take the Corkscrew Road exit from I-75, go west on Corkscrew Road, turn right on U.S. 41. Turn west (left) on Broadway West. Public access point is on the north (right) side of the road next to the Florida Power & Light substation.


text:
Select () or exclude () categories to narrow your recipe search.
As you select categories, the number of matching recipes will update.
Find exactly what you're looking for with the web's most powerful recipe filtering tool.
Sort by: Date | Rating | Most Helpful
"And I don't give anything a 5 star rating. It was absolutely wonderful. Thank you for posting this recipe."


text:
Select () or exclude () categories to narrow your recipe search.
As you select categories, the number of matching recipes will update.
Find exactly what you're looking for with the web's most powerful recipe filtering tool.
I have been on Weight Watchers since 9/17/01 and have lost 40 pounds by the fall of 2002. I am loving the new me. I enjoy sweets and am trying all sorts of low fat dessert recipes. My family also enjoys eating all the new things that I am making.
I love to eat just about anything that is not spicy.


text:
Pixel Defenders Puzzle, one of our favorite puzzle games of the year, has received a significant update with numerous gameplay tweaks. Now you'll be able to undo a turn, move units, and view the requirements for each three-star ranking. You'll need all of these new abilities to survive the game's biggest addition: A final boss fight.
In the latest update, the 36th level has been changed into a massive boss battle. You'll have to defeat a single demonic champion with a huge amount of health, who can attack multiple VIPs at once. It's a great addition to the game, and we hope more boss battles are added in the future.
Pixel Defenders Puzzle is still one of our favorite iOS puzzle games after all these months. Even if you haven't played it recently, these new updates make it worth revisiting.
Update published 8/2/2013
What is it about combat that makes plain old Match-3 games into something extraordinary? In the same way that turn-based combat made Bejeweled's familiar formula far more addictive in Puzzle Quest 2, the Triple Town style of strategically matching objects gets a much-needed boost in Pixel Defenders Puzzle. This puzzle game adds more than just orcs and archers, though– it goes above and beyond with super-powered units, devious game variations, and adorable retro graphics.
If you're not familiar with Triple Town's style of gameplay, it's distinct from the Bejeweled school of tile-swapping. Instead of starting with a grid full of objects, you start with a blank field and must place randomly-assigned objects anywhere you like. When you place three similar objects together, they'll merge into one larger object, which earns you more points.
The doctor will infect you now.
Pixel Defenders Puzzle isn't just about getting a high score– it's about forming units who can fight back against a line of invaders at the top of the screen, and protect the V.I.P. who is wandering aimlessly around the battlefield. Like the bears in Triple Town, these V.I.P.s tend to get in the way, but they're also the target of enemy attacks. The more matches you make, the more action points you'll have to target enemies with various spells and weapons.
The strength of your defense is based on the types of units you've created on the battlefield. Different colored "pixels" can merge to create units like barbarians and rangers, which can then be matched in triplicate again to create stronger units like vikings and ninjas. If you're really skillful, you can summon high-end units like plague doctors, assassins, magicians, scientists, and space marines.
Send in the space marines.
This is where we really fell in love with Pixel Defenders Puzzle. High-end units have extremely powerful attacks, but they're difficult to obtain. The top-level scientist, for example, can turn enemy units into chickens, and the magician can make enemies disappear altogether. The space marine can call down a laser airstrike, and the plague doctor (complete with a medieval perfume-stuffed beak) can infect enemies with disease. Each unit has fanciful visual touches, like the magician's top hat and mustache, or the space marine's sci-fi communicator.
But Pixel Defender Puzzle's cutesy look can be deceiving, because the game is extremely challenging in later levels. With fields that are cluttered with obstacles, multiple colors of pixels to match, and tough enemies that heal themselves and freeze your units, some of the later levels in Pixel Defender Puzzle can become frustrating. You have the option to purchase special tiles through in-app purchase, or earn them throughout the game by earning three stars on each level, but that's no replacement for the brainpower required to complete each of the game's 36 levels. There is also an optional endless mode, but it lacks online high scores.
Ooh eeh, ooh ah ah, ting tang, walla walla bing bang.
Pixel Defenders Puzzle has lots of charm and challenge, and that's exactly what we look for in a great puzzle game. Although the main gameplay is somewhat similar to another title, Triple Town, the combat elements make Pixel Defenders Puzzle feel fresh and exciting. The detailed characters are magnificent, and the touchscreen mechanics are simple and direct. We highly recommend Pixel Defenders Puzzle three times over.
Review originally published on January 7, 2013


text:
Posted: Dec 27, 2012 11:49 PM
Updated: Dec 27, 2012 11:51 PM
Consumer Product Safety Commission is recalling over 45,000 Hug N' Tug baby toys made by Sassy and Carter's due to a choking hazard to infants.
The problem with the toy has to do with the plastic sphere in the center, which contains small beads that could possibly fall out and cause babies to choke if they try to ingest them.
So far, 12 reports have come in from people who had the beads fall out of their Sassy Hug N' Tug toy, though thankfully, no babies have been injured. There haven't yet been reports of beads falling out of the Carter's toy, but the CPSC is still recalling them as a precaution.
A lot of baby toys tend to look very similar, but the ones in question have either a monkey or a puppy as the face of the toy. Sassy models were sold between July 2012 and October 2012, and Carter's models were sold between August 2011 and October 2012.
The following styles are included in the recall: Sassy Hug N' Tug Puppy, style #80213; and Sassy Hug N' Tug Monkey, style #80214. Also included: Carter's-branded Hug N' Tug Monkey, #61083 style, sold on a blue packaging card, and style #61540, sold on a gray card.
All you have to do if you have one of these toys (besides obviously taking them away from your baby) is to contact Sassy, and you will be given another toy as a replacement at no cost. You can either call 800-323-6336 between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, or go to the Sassy website for more information.


text:
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - View original article
Nick Carter-Killmaster is a series of spy adventures published from 1964 until 1990, first by Award Books, then by Ace Books, and finally by Jove Books. At least 261 novels were published. The character is an update of a pulp fiction private detective named Nick Carter first published in 1886.
No actual author is credited for the books, with the Nick Carter name being used as a house pseudonym. Volumes varied between first person and third person narrative. Authors known to have contributed entries in the series are Michael Avallone, Valerie Moolman, Manning Lee Stokes and Martin Cruz Smith.[1]
The title character of the series serves as Agent N3 of AXE, a fictional spy agency for the United States government. The novels are similar to the literary James Bond novels - low on gadgets, high on action. Sexual encounters in particular are described in detail.
The definitive description of Nicholas J. Huntington Carter is given in the first novel in the series Run, Spy, Run. Carter is tall (over 6 feet / 1.83 m), lean and handsome with a classic profile and magnificently muscled body. He has wide-set steel gray eyes that are icy, cruel and dangerous. He is hard-faced, with a firm straight mouth, laugh-lines around the eyes, and a firm cleft chin. His hair is thick and dark. He has a small tattoo of a blue axe on the inside right lower arm near the elbow - the ultimate ID for an AXE agent. At least one novel states that the tattoo glows in the dark. Carter also has a knife scar on the shoulder, a shrapnel scar on the right thigh. He has a sixth sense for danger.
Carter practices yoga for at least 15 minutes a day. Carter has a prodigious ability for learning foreign languages. He is fluent in English (his native tongue), Cantonese,[2] French,[3] German,[3][4] Greek,[5] Hungarian,[6] Italian,[3] Portuguese,[7] Putonghua (Mandarin),[8] Russian,[8][9] Sanskrit,[10] Spanish[11] and Vietnamese.[12][13] He has basic skills in Arabic,[14] Hindustani,[15] Japanese, Korean,[16] Romansch,[3] Swahili,[14] and Turkish.[17] In the early novels, Carter often assumes a number of elaborate disguises in order to execute his missions.
The name Nick Carter was acknowledged by the series as having been inspired by the early 20th century pulp fiction detective of the same name in the 100th Killmaster volume (labelled Nick Carter 100) which included an essay on the earlier Nick Carter and included a Nick Carter detective short story alongside a Killmaster adventure.
Nick Carter uses three main weapons during the course of the series, all of which are named, and have histories. The gun, Wilhelmina, is a stripped down German Luger. In the earliest stories, Carter got the gun off a German officer during a harrowing mission during World War II. Later stories state that he has had a series of Lugers, all named Wilhelmina. The knife, Hugo, is a pearl-handled 400-year-old stiletto crafted by Benvenuto Cellini. The blade retracts into the handle, and the whole thing is worn on a special sheath on the wrist, designed to release the knife into the user's hand with a simple muscle contraction. The third member of the triad is Pierre, a poison gas bomb, which is a small egg-shaped device, usually carried in a pocket but sometimes as a "third testicle" at his scrotum. Activated with a simple twist, it would, within seconds, kill anybody, or anything, that breathed its odorless and colorless gas.
Carter often takes with him other weapons as the mission demands. These have included:
Carter has used a variety of equipment in the novels most of which have nicknames. These have included:
The agency Carter works for is described as being smaller and far more secret than the CIA, mostly concerned with assassinations. In the first novel of the series, Run, Spy, Run, AXE is described as "the trouble-shooting arm of the US secret services". AXE headquarters are located in the 6th floor offices of a building in DuPont Circle, Washington, DC under the cover of the Amalgamated Press and Wire Service. AXE is purported to contain several different departments with specific functions including Editing (later called "Special Effects and Editing") - headed by Mr. Poindexter - which, among other things, creates false biographies for agents and provides appropriate props (e.g. fake latex fingerprints); Documents - whose role is to plant stories in the media to support specific activities and create false identification and travel documents; Records - which provides background information on suspects; and Operations - which provides logistic support for specific missions. AXE has a branch office near Columbus Circle, New York and affiliate offices in countries around the world.
Agents are given code designations; Carter's N3, which has at least once been stated as standing for Number three, identifies him as one of the elite Killmasters. It has been stated in some novels that there are 4 Killmasters in AXE with Carter the most senior.[18] The meaning of the code N3 is described differently in different novels - sometimes it is Carter's personal designation, other times it is considered a rank, with N1 being the highest, in other novels we are told that Carter is the third Killmaster to have worked for AXE with both his predecessors having been killed in action. David Hawk, described in early novels as looking a lot like Uncle Sam, is the head of AXE and Carter's personal boss. Della Stokes, Hawk's personal secretary, is a character similar to Bond's Miss Moneypenny - flirtatious but serious. Ginger Bateman is Hawk's personal secretary in later novels. Geoffrey Poindexter, AXE's equivalent to Q, runs the Special Effects and Editing department, in charge of weapons, gadgets, disguises, and papers.
In the first novel in the series (Run, Spy, Run), AXE is described as comprising 24 agents. They are identified by alphanumeric code. The following agents / codes have been described:
A2 Unnamed (mentioned in "Hanoi")
A4 Unnamed (mentioned in "Fraulein Spy")
A7 Alec Greenberg (based in AXE London office, mentioned in "The Weapon of Night")
A12 using pseudonym "Alfred" (mentioned in "Fraulein Spy")
A24 Unnamed (mentioned in "Run, Spy, Run")
B5 (mentioned in "Hanoi")
B12 Unnamed but further nicknamed "Vitamin" (mentioned in "Fraulein Spy")
C4 Unnamed (mentioned in "Fraulein Spy")
D5 Dan Eiger (based in Iraq, killed in "The Weapon of Night")
E14 Red Turner (mentioned in "A Bullet for Fidel")
H19 Hakim Sadek (Egyptian policeman and academic, mentioned in "The Weapon of Night")
K7 Unnamed (mentioned in "Run, Spy, Run")
J2 Unnamed - briefs Carter on his trip to Japan (mentioned in "The China Doll")
J20 Jean Paul Turnier (mentioned in "The Terrible Ones")
N1 Unnamed (stated killed in "The Red Guard")
N1 Stuart Hample (mentioned in "The Peking Dossier (1975)")
N1 David Hawk (in "Trouble in Paradise (1978)")
N1 Theodore Salonikos (dies in "Hide And Go Die (1983)")
N2 Unnamed (stated killed in "The Red Guard")
N3 Nick Carter
N5 McLaughlin (mentioned in "Dr. Death (1975)")
N6 Joe Banks (stated dead in "Six Bloody Summer Days (1975)")
N7 (stated dead in "Hide And Go Die (1983)")
N12 John Sparks (mentioned in "Under the Wall (1978)") (stated dead in "Hide And Go Die (1983)")
N17 Dennis Gordon (dies in "The Golden Bull (1981)")
N17 Bill Qualley (mentioned in "Hide And Go Die (1983)")
N30 Kiki Pederson (dies in "Trouble in Paradise (1978)")
P3 David Trainor (murdered in "A Bullet for Fidel")
P4 Unnamed, described as a mole in the Kremlin (mentioned in "Safari for Spies")
Q7 Ellie Harmon, briefs Carter on his mission in "Hanoi"
Z4 Zeke, works in AXE Psycho Lab, featured in "Hanoi"
N.B. the listing here is in series order (not necessarily by publication date, which is given)


text:
Fax rolls and toner cartridges for your Brother Intellifax printer are available at LDProducts.com! Our incredible selection coupled with an unbeatable 100% money-back guarantee will make us your one-stop shop for all your Brother Intellifax supplies.
Shop for cartridges by:
Brother Printer Model
Shop for cartridges by:
Brother Part Number


text:
Another Milestone Moment
Posted on October 22, 2010 by Daniel W. Yohannes, Chief Executive Officer
Last week marked another milestone moment in MCC's history—the completion of MCC's compact with Cape Verde. The last time I was in Cape Verde, I visited the unfinished Port of Praia project being implemented by MCA-Cape Verde with funds from MCC. What a difference eight months makes! Together with Prime Minister Jose Maria Neves, I witnessed the inauguration of Phase I of the Port of Praia. The port is now more efficient, with a new access road, cargo village for storage, and a strengthened security system.
Also on this visit, I traveled to the island of Santo Antao, which has the largest population of farmers in Cape Verde. There, we inaugurated the post-harvest center. At this modern facility, farmers can now have their produce inspected by trained sanitary inspectors and store their agricultural products to maintain freshness and quality.
One of the most moving experiences for me was meeting Cape Verdean farmers. Celso Duarte, a young farmer who leads his farmer association in Paul, told me that, thanks to MCC's assistance, he received training and acquired the necessary skills to use the new watershed management system. As a result, he now has drip irrigation on his land. Sousa told me how he ensures that he and his fellow farmers are using the technique properly to diversify their crops and get them to market. And he added: "I wanted to personally thank you and the American people for funding my training and giving me and my family the chance to improve our lives."
Hearing words like this further convinces me that we are making a difference.
Partnering for Progress in Africa
Posted on October 8, 2010 by Daniel W. Yohannes, Chief Executive Officer
During a week that showcased MCC's commitment to Africa's economic growth and development, I joined Donald Kaberuka, President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), to sign an agreement today under which MCC and AfDB will work together in promoting economic growth and poverty reduction in Africa.
AfDB and MCC will share their core competencies and expertise to support country-led economic development initiatives, focusing on such key sectors as infrastructure, water and sanitation, land, agriculture, transportation, environment, health, and gender integration. AfDB and MCC are already finalizing the details of our first collaboration: a pilot project in water and sanitation infrastructure in Mozambique.
When President Obama announced his new U.S. Global Development Policy last month in New York, he called for working with foundations, the private sector, NGOs, and multilaterals to maximize the impact of U.S. foreign assistance. The President emphasized that development "cannot be the work of governments alone." Smart and deliberate collaboration with AfDB is one way MCC is implementing this new approach to development. This continues MCC's commitment to broadening the scope of our engagement with a range of traditional and non-traditional partners to achieve sustainable development and deliver results in the fight against global poverty.
MCC's Commitment to Africa
Posted on October 7, 2010 by Daniel W. Yohannes, Chief Executive Officer
I had the opportunity yesterday to showcase MCC's commitment to poverty reduction and economic growth in Africa at two great events.
In the morning, I met with U.S. ambassadors working throughout Africa, including in many MCC partners countries. I briefed the African Chiefs of Mission on MCC's work throughout the continent and, more importantly, learned from them how we can work together more effectively. Deepening our cooperation and coordination allows us to maximize the impact of MCC investments in Africa.
Last evening, I was honored to deliver the keynote speech as part of the Africa Society's Ambassador Andrew Young Lecture Series on Africa. The Embassy of Ghana opened its doors to over 200 guests; it was exciting and energizing to be among so many friends of Africa, who share MCC's commitment to partnering with African countries to achieve sustainable economic growth. We recognize that the best way to realize the continent's promise is through partnerships grounded in mutual respect and responsibility, accountability, sound policies, and results.
Next week, I'll be travelling to Cape Verde for the first, full-term completion of an MCC compact in Africa. This marks an important milestone to assess what worked well in the fight against poverty and what lessons we've learned to improve future programs. I look forward to sharing our findings. I am firmly committed to making sure that MCC's work in Africa creates stronger economies and more prosperous communities by promoting good governance, expanding trade capacity, building infrastructure, and engaging the private sector. It is in our own strategic, economic, and moral interests to work together with Africa to realize the global growth that will benefit all of us.


text:
The first half of the 2011 baseball season is in the books, and so obviously, like all of the other hacks out there, we're going to relive it. Join us at 3:00 PM this afternoon to talk about anything semi related to baseball that you want, including predictions gone awry, favourite memories from the first half and looking forward to what's going to happen in the second half of the season. We can also talk about tonight's Home Run Derby and tomorrow's All-Star Game. It's all up to you.
Click here to open the live stream window.
Tweet your questions, comments, observations and nude pics to @DustinParkes and @AndrewStoeten, or use the hashtag fail: #HeyEveryoneWe'reMoreThanHalfwayThroughTheBaseballSeason. And for those who have better things to do than embrace social media, join our live chat to contribute your thoughts. We'll have someone monitoring the chat to bring up the best questions and comments on the show.


text:
Deborah Gyapong: March 2012
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Friday, March 30, 2012
Father Z rants about the role of lay people in the public square
He writes:
Let's keep something clear. My role as a priest, and the bishops' role as bishops, is to form and support the laity for their proper role in the public square. It is the role of lay people to shape the world around them according to their vocations. I (or, even more, the bishops) will teach, give you the sacraments, and support you. The work of the public square is really your work, lay people, not mine. Remember that when you think bishops aren't being strong enough in the public square. We clerics know that you lay people often face in your daily lives challenges that would make many of us roll up in a ball and hide under the covers. On the other hand, the Enemy of your soul hates priests and bishops with surpassingmalice. We live every day knowing that we go to our judgment with Holy Orders upon our souls and to those to whom God has given much, more will be expected. As Augustine said, "I am a bishop for you, but I am a Christian with you." Neither portion of God's poor little servants should fall into the trap of thinking that the other has anything easy in life.
If you are p.o.'d that a bishop isn't jumping around with his hair on fire in front of the White House, waving his arms, and telling you whom to vote for, then maybe you should be doing that according to what Holy Church has taught you and in keeping with your vocation. And if the priests and bishops in your life have not been stellar in their roles of teaching (read = they are human, they are sinners, they are … x, y, z….), then put on your own big-boy underwear and get to work anyway. Things will improve. Priests and bishops will find their way to the spines they need, or in some cases abandoned. And they will do it faster if you are with them rather than against them. Believe me: carping at priests doesn't generally make them do things either faster or better. I know this by experiential knowledge and not merely by theoretical. Help them out by prayers and encouragement and example.
There is only so much the bishops can accomplish in the public square on their own: the rest is yourjob. Don't shirk your role even if you think bishops and priests are being lazy or craven. Stand up and get to work right now, even if you are disappointed that bishops aren't beaming lasers out of their eyes or issuing decrees of excommunication while they levitate to the strains of Verdi's Dies Irae.
Richard Fernandez on truthiness and fake news
Please read this whole article about faked news, truthiness, and the Orwellian manipulation of tyrants.
Not that it will make any difference. The main thing about faked news is that it shouldn't matter whether it is in the slightest degree true. It is far more important for the news to confirm what we want to hear: our deepest suspicions about our neighbor or our wildest vanities about ourselves. People will believe it because they want to. As for the truth, well what about it?
Even the most basic facts becomes surprisingly irrelevant. Media Matters, for example, apologized to Matt Drudge after accusing him of being a "racist demagogue" for running a fake photo of the victim — only to discover it was actually a real photo. You would have thought Media Matters would know true from fake to play the fact-check game, but really, why would factuality be important?
Winston Churchill once observed that "a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." The immense power of kuryente consists in that it operates in the world of myth. It does not belong in the universe of fact. Hence what happened when, who liked what, what reasons there were for which: these are irrelevant.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Why we loved our Bishop Robert Mercer so much
Finally, he is getting a little of the recognition our now Father Robert Mercer, who was ordained a Catholic priest this week.
From the Catholic Herald:
From the Catholic Herald:
A former Anglican bishop ordained a Catholic priest is one of the stars of an anti-apartheid musical in South Africa, it emerged today.
Fr Robert Mercer, 77, was deported from South Africa in 1970 for his stand against apartheid, along with several other Anglican priests.
He and other members of the Anglican Community of the Resurrection defied segregation laws by running a multi-racial parish.
They were, says Fr Mercer, "deemed to be a corrupting influence on students" at Stellenbosch University, where they worked as chaplains. One of the Anglican priests was jailed.
Their stand has been dramatised in a multi-media pop musical calledBrothers, which ran for five nights at Stellenbosch University, the country's top Africaans university.
The musical was performed in September 2010 in a mix of Africaans and English and was directed by playwright Peter Krummeck.
Fr Mercer, who grew up in Zimbabwe, went on to become Bishop of Matabeleland, Zimbabwe, in the Anglican Province of Central Africa, in the midst of a civil war.
He was bishop for 11 years before leaving the Anglican Communion to join the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada, part of the worldwide Traditional Anglican Communion. He served as metropolitan bishop from 1988 to 2005, when he retired to England.
Fr Mercer became a Catholic in January and was ordained a priest for the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham on Monday.
He said today that Pope Benedict XVI's offer of an ordinariate to Anglicans in 2009 was "an answer to our prayers, to our dreams".
He said he had been longing for Christian unity since the early 1980s, when Pope John Paul II and Robert Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury, issued a joint declaration thanking God for "the progress that has been made in the work of reconciliation".
He and his clergy in Zimbabwe began working through ARCIC documents and even met Vatican officials in Rome.
In 1985 Fr Mercer met Cardinal Johannes Willebrands and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to talk about the prospect of Anglicans reconciling with Rome.
Fr Mercer said that Cardinal Ratzinger was "the humblest, gentlest, most sympathetic person I think I've ever met".
He said: "I could never understand, therefore, all the talk of 'the Rottweiler' and 'Panzer cardinal'… I came away thinking if ever I had done wrong and wanted to tell someone about it, it would be him I'd want to tell."
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Quebec pro-euthanasia recommendation called dangerous betrayal
Living with Dignity (LWD), a network of anti-euthanasia groups in Quebec, has condemned the province's Select Committee on Dying with Dignity report's support for euthanasia as "dangerous" and a "profound act of political betrayal."
After holding consultations across the province last year, on Mar. 22 the committee recommended the legalization of euthanasia for people experiencing constant, unbearable physical or psychological suffering.
"From the outset of the committee's consultation, Quebecers were guaranteed that their voices would be heard and that the direction they gave would be followed," said Dr. Andre Bourque, president of LWD. "On the basis of that promise, Quebecers spoke forcefully against opening the door to euthanasia and assisted suicide."
"The committee has arrogantly and dangerously broken its word to the very people it promised to heed," he said.
An independent analysis revealed two-thirds of persons submitting briefs to the committee opposed any loosening of laws against euthanasia or assisted suicide, Bourque pointed out. One third supported euthanasia, while only two per cent supported assisted suicide.
After holding consultations across the province last year, on Mar. 22 the committee recommended the legalization of euthanasia for people experiencing constant, unbearable physical or psychological suffering.
"From the outset of the committee's consultation, Quebecers were guaranteed that their voices would be heard and that the direction they gave would be followed," said Dr. Andre Bourque, president of LWD. "On the basis of that promise, Quebecers spoke forcefully against opening the door to euthanasia and assisted suicide."
"The committee has arrogantly and dangerously broken its word to the very people it promised to heed," he said.
An independent analysis revealed two-thirds of persons submitting briefs to the committee opposed any loosening of laws against euthanasia or assisted suicide, Bourque pointed out. One third supported euthanasia, while only two per cent supported assisted suicide.
Theology of the booty? Whoops. Theology of the Body
The Catholic Organization for Life and Family (COLF) gave Pope John Paul II's teachings on the Theology of the Body (TOB) top billing at its 3rd Seminar on the Family March 22-23 in efforts to overcome challenges even Catholics face in the area of marriage and human sexuality.
The percentage of Catholic weddings has dropped 74 per cent in Canada over the past 34 years. The picture is similar in the United States or other western countries, said Christian and Christine Meert, directors of the Colorado Springs diocese's office of marriage and family life.
And of those Catholics who do want a Church wedding, 90 per cent of engaged couples are already sexually active, using artificial contraception and plan to continue using it after marriage, they said.
The Meerts said Catholic priests and marriage preparation leaders may be afraid to bring up the Church's teachings on human sexuality for fear of scaring young people away.
The Meerts have developed an approach based on John Paul II's teachings on the Theology of the Body (TOB) that lays a theological foundation step by step, so couples can receive the tougher questions concerning abstinence and family planning. By the time the questions of contraception and abstinence come up, most are willing to consider natural family planning and refraining from sex until after marriage, the Meerts said.
The percentage of Catholic weddings has dropped 74 per cent in Canada over the past 34 years. The picture is similar in the United States or other western countries, said Christian and Christine Meert, directors of the Colorado Springs diocese's office of marriage and family life.
And of those Catholics who do want a Church wedding, 90 per cent of engaged couples are already sexually active, using artificial contraception and plan to continue using it after marriage, they said.
The Meerts said Catholic priests and marriage preparation leaders may be afraid to bring up the Church's teachings on human sexuality for fear of scaring young people away.
The Meerts have developed an approach based on John Paul II's teachings on the Theology of the Body (TOB) that lays a theological foundation step by step, so couples can receive the tougher questions concerning abstinence and family planning. By the time the questions of contraception and abstinence come up, most are willing to consider natural family planning and refraining from sex until after marriage, the Meerts said.
Cardinal Ouellet in Cuba
In interview with Vatican Radio here.http://188.8.131.52/audiomp3/00308700.MP3
Monday, March 26, 2012
Great article entitled Why I am not a Libertarian by Nathan Schlueter
Read the whole thing. It sums up and articulates what I have found troubling about Libertarianism. It also gives an answer to those who oppose all group rights, such as the religious freedom of groups to worship and to build institutions such as schools and hospitals. Here's the section on that aspect.
3. "Only individuals exist, therefore there is no such thing as a 'common good.'" The statement reflects the corrosive nominalism that Richard Weaver decried in Ideas Have Consequences, and which fatally undercuts the principled limits to coercive authority identified above. Every human association, whether a marriage, business partnership, or sports team, has a common good, or why would it exist?
Common goods are not substantial entities standing over and against individual persons; they are the good of individual persons. But this does not mean common goods are always divisible into individual shares, like a cake. An orchestra, a marriage, an army cannot be divided without being destroyed. Within such associations individual persons exist as bandmates, spouses, and soldiers.
The common good of the political association consists in the ensemble of conditions in which persons and associations can more easily flourish. These are nicely summarized in the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States: "to . . . establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Friday, March 23, 2012
I'm beat but it was a great conference
I got back earlier this evening from the Catholic Organization for Life and Family's annual seminar, which I think was the biggest ever that I can recall in terms of attendance. It was like old home week. Got to see lots of friends from across the country. And I even got to meet Colin Kerr, of Theology of Dad fame, and creator of the Society of Canadian Catholic Bloggers. Soon I hope to get the RSS on this blog fixed so my posts can go to the top of the SCCB blog roll when I post.
Many interesting and important talks, including a series of talks blasting the pernicious effects of gender theory and the narcissicism and subjectivism it substitutes for objective reality.
Anyway, I'm too tired to post much more but among the highlights for me was seeing Archbishop Christian Lepine who was just named Archbishop of Montreal. Only last June, I and a friend had asked the Nuncio, Archbishop Pedro Lopez Quintana, if he minded our suggesting names to him of priests we thought would make good bishops. We told him about then Fr. Christian Lepine. Of course the Nuncio did not give anything away but obviously he already knew of this priest, because only a few short weeks later, +Lepine was named Auxiliary Bishop of Montreal.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
The Marian antiphons
Bishop Carl gave us a lesson on these seasonal Marian antiphons last Saturday and I think he expects us to know them by April 15!
Here they are, though not in the seasonal order.
Here they are, though not in the seasonal order.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
The GOP on Obama's war on women
Pretty hardhitting stuff. And frankly, the attacks on Conservative women and on Sarah Palin's Down Syndrome son are beyond the pale. And they NEVER apologize.
The weirdness of Rick Santorum
Mark Steyn contemplates it from a number of angles. Thanks to Dumb Old Housewives, who are as weird as I am for the link (my emphases):
Let's take it as read that Rick Santorum is weird. After all, he believes in the sanctity of life, the primacy of the family, the traditional socio-religious understanding of a transcendent purpose to human existence. Once upon a time, back in the mists of, ooh, the mid–20th century, all these things were, if not entirely universal, sufficiently mainstream as to be barely worthy of discussion. Now they're not. Isn't the fact that conventional morality is now "weird" itself deeply weird? The instant weirdification of ideas taken for granted for millennia is surely mega-weird — unless you think that our generation is possessed of wisdom unique to human history. In which case, why are we broke?
Sunday, March 18, 2012
We begin our Eucharistic Fast
Today we began our Eucharistic Fast in preparation for our reception into the Catholic Church on Divine Mercy Sunday, April 15, 2012 at St. Patrick's Basilica in an Anglican Use Mass and initiation celebrated by Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast.
So we had Solemn High Mattins, the Liturgy of the Word and Spiritual Communion.
I can scarcely contain my joy as I write this. What a difference ever since we made a collective decision across the country among parishes and groups in the pro-diocese of Our Lady of Walsingham of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada, a temporary diocese to accommodate those of us who want to join an Ordinariate. All the anguish of the past year is gone.
Today, Bishop Carl quizzed the Sunday school children, asking them what they noticed was different about today. The Tabernacle was empty; the veil lifted, only the Office candles lit. You'll notice our Simnel Cake on the altar, which was blessed along with flowers for the ladies, to mark Mothering Sunday.
Nancy is our Mother of the Year. She got to cut the Simnel Cake. We had a formal tea---with cups and saucers and lots of sandwiches and other goodies.
What's wonderful about April 15, is that parishes and groups across the country will be received by bishops in their respective dioceses into the Catholic Church on the same day or on a day soon-to-be-determined.
In our March newsletter there is information about how this decision came about and a list of the parishes or groups and clergy who will be coming in. I hear there will also be a group in Vancouver. It's been a difficult haul over the past year and a half or so, and we are a lot leaner than we were but we have been through purifying fires and it is all to the good.
On a personal level, I am so happy that it will be Archbishop Prendergast receiving us as he has been such a good friend, spiritual father and encouragement to me and to all of us.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Wow! Here's what happened at the U.S. National Prayer Breakfast
Read the whole piece on the Prophet and the President by Mark Joseph over at The Corner, National Review Online:
Metaxas, a Yale grad and humor writer who once wrote for the children's seriesVeggie Tales, began his speech with several jokes and stole the show early on when he noted that George W. Bush, often accused by his critics of being incurious, had read Metaxas's weighty tome on the German theologian Bonhoeffer; he then proceeded to hand a copy to the president while intoning: "No pressure."
Obama came to the prayer breakfast with a tidy speech that was clearly designed to lay those doubts to rest. He spoke of his daily habit of prayer and Bible reading, his regular conversations with preachers like T. D. Jakes and Joel Hunter, and even told a story of the time he prayed over Billy Graham.
But before the president could utter a word, it was Metaxas who delivered a devastating, albeit apparently unintentional critique of such God-talk, recounting his own religious upbringing which he described as culturally Christian yet simultaneously full of "phony religiosity."
"I thought I was a Christian. I guess I was lost," he matter-of-factly stated.
Standing no more than five feet from Obama whose binder had a speech chock full of quotes from the Good Book, Metaxas said of Jesus:
"When he was tempted in the desert, who was the one throwing Bible verses at him? Satan. That is a perfect picture of dead religion. Using the words of God to do the opposite of what God does. It's grotesque when you think about it. It's demonic."
"Keep in mind that when someone says 'I am a Christian' it may mean absolutely nothing," Metaxas added for good measure, in case anybody missed his point.
The eerie feeling that Metaxas was answering Obama on a speech he had yet to give continued, as he spoke about the uniqueness of Jesus Christ and the Christian religion. Moments after Metaxas finished his speech and sat down, Obama took great pains to describe the other great religions of the world as mirroring his own Christian faith.
Friday, March 16, 2012
Catholics now, Jews next warns David P. Goldman
Having had the misfortune to have spent half my life among the atheists and religion-haters, though, I know how embittered and unrelenting are the supposed disciples of science. They are in fact religious fanatics of the worst kind. You can't make a deal with them. After they come for the Catholics, they will come for us. They already are coming for us all over the world.
It isn't happening in the United States — not yet, except for a laughable referendum in San Francisco last year to prohibit circumcision. But it's happening in England, where the country's highest court has ruled that the religious definition of Jewish identity is racist. It's happened in several European countries as well as New Zealand, which have banned or might ban kosher slaughter.
Contraception is not the issue. The issue is whether science has the right to decide the ultimate matters of life and death, or whether this is reserved to faith. We can argue the practical consequences all day and not get anywhere. It's not as if contraception has ushered in a glorious era of human reproduction in which every child is planned and wanted. More than half of births to American women under 30 now occur outside of marriage, the New York Times reported Feb. 18, and overwhelmingly to working-class women who are economically unprepared for single motherhood. And 71% of total African-American and 53% of Hispanic births are out of wedlock as well. The cultural shift from the nuptial mystery of religion to the blandishments of recreational sex has left us with a catastrophic rate of illegitimacy and the prospect of a self-perpetuating underclass.
Please read the whole thing.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Friday, March 09, 2012
Mark Steyn on "Miss Fluke goes to Washington"
Read the whole thing:
She's had the courage to stand up in public and demand that someone else (and this is where one is obliged to tiptoe cautiously, lest offense is given to gallant defenders of the good name of American maidenhood such as the many prestigious soon-to-be-former sponsors of this column who've booked Bill Maher for their corporate retreat with his amusing "Sarah Palin is a c***" routine ...)
Where was I? Oh, yes. The brave middle-age schoolgirl had the courage to stand up in public and demand that someone else pay for her sex life.
Well, as noted above, she's attending Georgetown, a nominally Catholic seat of learning, so how expensive can that be? Alas, Georgetown is so nominally Catholic that the cost of her sex life runs to three grand – and, according to the star witness, 40 percent of female students "struggle financially" because of the heavy burden of maintaining a respectable level of pre-marital sex at a Jesuit institution.
The Obama administration is organizing a prayer vigil
And Father Z responds !!!!!!:
One of these days we will see a shift from blatant Kulturkampf to Kirchenkampf, the battle of the American Patriotic Catholic Association under its leader against the Holy Catholic Church. Parish priests: If you hear about some prayer rally organized by enemies of the Church and the 1st Amendment, please think about organizing your own "rally", perhaps in the form of Exposition with a sermon and confessions.
One of these days we will see a shift from blatant Kulturkampf to Kirchenkampf, the battle of the American Patriotic Catholic Association under its leader against the Holy Catholic Church. Parish priests: If you hear about some prayer rally organized by enemies of the Church and the 1st Amendment, please think about organizing your own "rally", perhaps in the form of Exposition with a sermon and confessions.
Thursday, March 08, 2012
John Robson's must-read column
Here's an excerpt. Go over and read the whole thing and recognize the huge threat that statism poses to families:
Strip-searching a father because his four-year-old sketched a toy gun at school paints a perfect picture of progressive public education: absurd yet sinister.
On the Keystone Kops side, if police took the girl's now-vanished doodle of her father fighting monsters and bad guys seriously, why not search his home for villains, or werewolves, before a gun? And why handcuff Jesse Sansone then strip-search him, including making him lift his personal bits? Don't cops know a gun won't fit down there? Did they also check his armpit for a tank, or his ear for a sword?
On the Big Nurse side, the police arrested Sansone for illegal possession of a firearm without any credible evidence he even had a gun, let alone illegally. They "walked through" his home without a warrant. Social services grabbed his three eldest children and interrogated his pregnant wife. And they are unrepentant.
Waterloo Regional School district superintendant Gregg Bereznick told QMI Agency's Kris Sims: "We do work hand-in-hand with these families because we co-parent, so we hope that we could move forward."
Co-parent? Neither Sansone nor anyone else ever went on one knee to his beloved then invited the school board into the marriage as co-parent. And the state clearly regards parents as subordinates, not partners. Note how Leviathan's tentacles converge on hapless citizens like Sansone, from school boards to social services to police and beyond.
Canada's Supreme Court just said parents can't withdraw kids from Quebec's religion and ethics class because such conduct "amounts to a rejection of the multicultural reality of Canadian society and ignores the Quebec government's obligations with regard to public education." Which trump parental desires.
Meanwhile, Alberta's new Education Act won't let home-schoolers and religious schools express "disrespect for differences". A ministry spokesperson burbled: "You can affirm the family's ideology in your family life, you just can't do it as part of your educational study and instruction." But doesn't instruction include what you teach at the dinner table? Again, the state overrules parents in classrooms, and if they home-school it follows them home.
This is not co-parenting. It is taking over.
Tuesday, March 06, 2012
Brilliant Mark Steyn column on The Church of Big Government
Some excerpts of must-read article entitled The Church of Big Government:
The state no longer criminalizes a belief in transubstantiation, mainly because most people have no idea what that is. But they know what sex is, and, if the price of Pierre Trudeau's assertion that "the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation" is that the state has to take an ever larger place in the churches and colleges and hospitals and insurance agencies and small businesses of the nation, they're cool with that. The developed world's massive expansion of sexual liberty has provided a useful cover for the shriveling of almost every other kind. Free speech, property rights, economic liberty, and the right to self-defense are under continuous assault by Big Government. In New York and California and many other places, sexual license is about the only thing you don't need a license for.
And so the peoples of the West are enlightened enough to have cast off the stultifying oppressiveness of religion for a world in which the state regulates every aspect of life. In 1944, at a terrible moment of the most terrible century, Henri de Lubac wrote a reflection on Europe's civilizational crisis, Le drame de l'humanisme athee. By "atheistic humanism," he meant the organized rejection of God — not the freelance atheism of individual skeptics but atheism as an ideology and political project in its own right. As M. de Lubac wrote, "It is not true, as is sometimes said, that man cannot organize the world without God. What is true is that, without God, he can only organize it against man." "Atheistic humanism" became inhumanism in the hands of the Nazis and Communists and, in its less malign form in today's European Union, a kind of dehumanism in which a present-tense culture amuses itself to extinction. "Post-Christian Europe" is a bubble of 50-year-old retirees, 30-year-old students, empty maternity wards . . . and a surging successor population already restive to move beyond its Muslim ghettoes.
The irrationalism of the hyper-rational state ought by now to be evident in everything from the euro-zone crisis to the latest CBO projections: The paradox of the Church of Big Government is that it weans people away from both the conventional family impulse and the traditional transcendent purpose necessary to sustain it. So what is the future of the American Catholic Church if it accepts the straitjacket of Obama's "freedom to worship"? North of the border, motoring around the once-Catholic bastion of Quebec, you'll pass every couple of miles one of the province's many, many churches, and invariably out front you'll see a prominent billboard bearing the slogan "Notre patrimoine religieux — c'est sacre!" "Our religious heritage — it's sacred!" Which translated from the statist code-speak means: "Our religious heritage — it's over!" But it's left every Quebec community with a lot of big, prominently positioned buildings, and not all of them can be, as Montreal's Saint-Jean de la Croix and Couvent de Marie Reparatrice were, converted into luxury three-quarter-million-dollar condos. So to prevent them from decaying into downtown eyesores, there's a government-funded program to preserve them as spiffy-looking husks.
The Obama administration's "freedom to worship" leads to the same soulless destination: a church whose moral teachings must be first subordinated to the caprices of the hyper-regulatory Leviathan, and then, as on the Continent, rendered incompatible with public office, and finally, as in that Southampton homeless shelter, hounded even from private utterance. This is the world the "social justice" bishops have made.
Do Muslims and Christians worship the same God?
A most interesting analysis by Robert Spencer at Crisis Magazine:
t certainly seems as if we worship the same God. After all, we call God by the same name. Arabic-speaking Christians, including Eastern Catholics such as Maronites and Melkites, use the word "Allah" for the God of the Bible.
But are they the same God?
The question is not answered by simple linguistic identity, as evidenced by St. Paul's complaint to the Corinthians: "For if some one comes and preaches another Jesus than the one we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you submit to it readily enough" (2 Corinthians 11:4). The "other Jesus" that was being preached among the Corinthians was not a different person of the same name, but a view of Jesus of Nazareth that was so radically different from Paul's that he termed it "another Jesus" altogether.
In the same way, it is possible that the Qur'an and Islamic tradition present a picture of God so radically different from that of the Bible and Catholic tradition that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to maintain the proposition that they are the same Being in both traditions, apart from some minor creedal differences.
But wait a minute. Don't Catholics have to believe that Christians and Muslims worship the same God, because the Second Vatican Council says so? The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church tells us that the "plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator. In the first place amongst these there are the Mohammedans, who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge mankind." (Lumen Gentium 16)
Monday, March 05, 2012
Breitbart out-Acorned Acorn
Victor Davis Hanson writes about the late Andrew Breitbart, RIP. I was trying to explain to a friend what was significant about Andrew Breitbart. I think this column by VDH nails his significance, especially this:
In other words, he out-ACORNed ACORN, and that, I think, spurred most of the venom against him: It was not just that he had countered the message of the Left, but he often humiliated it by employing its own tactics in a way that made himself either safe from their criticism or the critics of his technique abject hypocrites.
Under the old "truth to power" orthodoxy, considerations of race, class, and gender supposedly excused the boisterous conduct and occasional crass invective of the Al Sharpton, Michael Moore, Code Pink, or Cindy Sheehan sort. Breitbart demolished that exemption, and more or less warned that he could employ the same sort of agitation as the Left, but to endorse and enhance the ideals of a free-market and individual liberty, and he dared his opponents to reject his methods on grounds that they were somehow crude or unfair.
Concerned about those robocalls?
Here's a different take from my colleague Brian Lilley, host of Byline on Sun TV (my emphases):
Let me explain something to you here. This robocall controversy is less than meets the eye. There is far more smoke than fire.
Let me say it again, if there is any evidence of illegal activity prosecute those responsible. Put them in jail. Even if it is the prime minister.
But something really stinks about this idea that tens of thousands of Canadians spontaneously contacted Elections Canada nine months after the election because they suddenly remembered getting a strange phone call.Simply put, this hasn't happened.
What has happened is that the left has imported what they claim they hate.
That's right Pat, American-style dirty tricks from your side to try and force a public inquiry and push for by-elections in key ridings so that the results of the election can be overturned.Think I'm nuts, look at the website of this group, Leadnow.ca.
This group has an entire campaign to push people to contact Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the other party leaders, RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson and William Corbett, the Commissioner of Canada Elections – he's the lead investigator for any wrong doing in the election.
They have a full template set up right there to email all these guys at once and they are bragging about how many people they have put on to Elections Canada.
Avaaz.org is doing the same thing.
Avaaz is out of New York City, this is a group that tried to get Sun News shut down before we even launched.
These are high level Americans with deep ties to the left wing of the Democratic Party are now trying to overturn Canadian democracy.-snip-
This is not a grass roots movement, this is an orchestrated campaign – not even one to deal with legitimate complaints but one aimed at making as much noise as possible, to push for a public inquiry and to overturn Canada's democracy.
Having worked at the CBC . . .
I can identify with a lot of this Hollywood screenwriter's lament, even the language, which, I will give you fair warning about, but do go on over and read what he has to say. H/t FFoF
My awakening took place before 9/11 and I was already out of the stifling political correctness of the Mainstream Media at that time.
My awakening took place before 9/11 and I was already out of the stifling political correctness of the Mainstream Media at that time.
But last night, something snapped.
12 years of silence. 12 years of cowardice. 12 years of humiliating self-censorship. 12 years of hiding what I think, who I am and what I believe in order to protect my livelihood.
And Andrew Breitbart is dead.
It all just started bleeding out of me, white hot, 140 characters at a time. All my rage. All my indignation. Like the jetting pulse from a slashed carotid, for the whole world to see.
Real charity is voluntary not coerced
Great Father Z post here on how some confuse a religious community with the modern state. An excerpt:
In the national conversation Americans are currently having over the federal government takeover of health care, what gets obscured is the distinction between the public sector and the voluntary sector, that is, between the state and the Church.
It's the role of members of any church to practice charity. The state's role in our lives is, with our consent, coercive. But its coercive power should be limited.
If you allow the distinction between the political and religious spheres to be blurred, and if you begin romantically to think of the state as a kind of big religious community, you will end up thinking just like Mussolini: the state should own everything and provide you with all your needs.
When religious behave like this we call them a community.
When states behave like this we call them fascist.
Saturday, March 03, 2012
Friday, March 02, 2012
Ordinariate members make pilgrimage to Rome
I can't wait until we can organize one of these for our Ordinariate-bound Canadians!