Another weekend gone, and I’m less than two weeks from leaving for Nicaragua. The closer I get, the more real it actually feels, so I’m starting to get a little rush of anxiety over the whole trip. I’m nervous just about traveling out of the country, as I’ve only done it once before. I’m nervous about being away from my family for 11 days. And, strangely enough, I’m nervous about leaving the church for two weekends as well.One of the continual struggles for me from a pastoral sense is to kee
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Catching up on Monday
I have asserted that the hardest day of running is better than the easiest day of filing TPS Reports, bearing witness to incidents of blowhard-on-blowhard psychic violence, or otherwise frittering life away in a chicken-shit bureaucracy, and in support of that claim, I offer this map and elevation profile of Portland’s SW Bancroft Street. There’s nothing especially special about it — it’s just a more or less quiet quarter mile stretch of residential street at the foot of Portland’s West Hills, neither the most nor least tony or scenic of its kind. If it’s famous or infamous for anything, word of that has not made it to me.
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The Lure of Bancroft
The Los Angeles Times reported Sunday that Pakistan had admitted to India that the terrorists who laid siege to Mumbai last November, killing 166, had been members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a radical Muslim groups formed two decades ago to fight Indian rule in the Kashmir region. The Mumbai terror attacks were rife with religious depth, much of which went unexplored , and Pakistan’s mea culpa for letting a group of extremists from within its borders terrorize a neighbor was met with optimism.
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India and Pakistan’s cold war
San Marcos, Texas City Council has responded to complaints by Americans United and the ACLU that invocations opening Council meetings have almost always been specifically Christian in content. The Austin American Statesman reported last Friday that Council has directed City Attorney Michael Cosentino to develop a policy that prohibits prayers which proselytize or advance one religion. Also, the invocation at tomorrow’s Council meeting will be delivered by Rabbi Kerry Baker from Austin’s Congregation Kol Halev.
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Texas Town Is Changing City Council Invocation Policy
In Iran, popular singer-composer Mohsen Namjoo — described as Iran’s Bob Dylan– has been sentenced in abstentia to five years in prison for dishonoring the Quran. Reports last week by Press TV , AFP and the blog Freemuse give details. An Iranian Quran scholar filed a complaint against Namjoo charging that he had presented “an insulting, sneering performance of Quranic verses with musical instruments.” Namjoo, who has now moved to Vienna, says that his private recording made four years ago was released without his authorization.
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Iranian Singer Sentenced In Abstentia To 5 Years For Recording of Quranic Verses
Welcome to a special edition of Not Me Monday! Remember, everything preceded with the word not in italics – actually happened. That’s right! This week, join MckMama as we say, “Not my child!” and share the horrendous, embarassing or regrettable things that there is no way our precious children were caught doing! There is no way my sweet girls were yelling “No! My baby!” ” No, it’s mine!” They were not fighting over a… sweet potato. One of my sons was laughing at something his
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Not Me Monday: Not MY Child
The current struggles between religion and science in areas such as evolution and “intelligent design” are thrown into sharp relief in a new book on the great Italian astronomer Galileo and his trial by the Roman Inquisition. Author Dan Hofstadter says the Galileo affair was “the great religion-science clash of 1633 that in some form has persisted into our time.” Indirectly verifying Hofstadter’s thesis, a Vatican official — Monsignor Sergio Pagano, head of the Vatican’s secret archive
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Author of new Galileo book says old trial has current relevance
The Turn Verein library in Sacramento – formally known as the German-American Cultural Center Library – has about 100 volunteers who keep it running. If you want time schedules for trains that haven’t run for generations, try the library at the California State Railroad Museum. Other libraries in the Sacramento region enable readers to research esoteric points of law, rare diseases or fabled gold mines.
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The culture keepers
We had vacation bible school last week. I was in charge of the story telling room, and built -in this order- a mountain top and a burning bush, Pharaoh’s palace, an Israelite village, the upper room in Jerusalem, and the Red Sea-parted. (That reminds me of my favorite lyric in Love Shack, “ Tiiiiiiin Roof—Rusted “ . Now whenever I say the Red Sea I sing it, “Reeeed Sea–Parted” . ) What was I talking about? Oh yes, vacation bible school. I would say I probably spent about 40 hours this pa
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Hupdates. Alternate title: Dear blog, I have been having an affair with real life.
In Bruges (2008) re-encoded by me | 350MB Title:……………………In Bruges Release year:……………..2008 Genre:……………………Comedy | Crime | Drama | Thriller Source:…………………..BluRay 720p DTS Resolution:……………….960 x 416 Format:…………………..Matroska (.mkv) Bit rate:…………………483 Kbps Frame rate:……………….23.976 fps Aspect rate:………………2.308 : 1 Audio:……………………48000Hz stereo Original runtime:………….01:46:49 Runtime:………………….01:41:13 (Credit Removed) File size…………………349 MB NOTE: English subtitles included! A Christmas stor
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In Bruges (2008) 720p.brrip.x264 | 350mb