Friday, April 17, 2009

Modern Pirates


"Armed pirates chased, boarded and hijacked a fishing trawler underway southeast of Mogadishu, Somalia."

"Several persons armed with machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and machetes attempting to climb onboard with use of rope at Lagos anchorage, Nigeria."

Reading the International Maritime Bureau's Live Piracy Report a catalog of piracy reports from around the world, two names crop up with disturbing frequency: Somalia and Nigeria.

Piracy off the coast of Somalia has more than doubled this year, threatening to make international trade more expensive and offering terrorists a new source of income, says one report.

During the last three weeks those Somali pirates have attacked over 20 ships and hijacked 9 of them.

The level of violence associated with the attacks is rising, with serious harm and even murder of seamen becoming increasingly common.

I find it very strange that the International community can not handle these pirates as the trash they are. Is this what the combined military forces of the western world is worth these days?

Monday, April 13, 2009

Playing around with Lego


While most Christians mark Easter with prayers and song, one Swedish church opened its mass Sunday by unveiling a life-size Lego statue of Jesus Christ.

Churchgoers had donated nearly 30,000 Lego bricks to build the 1.78 metre (5.8 foot) high statue, said Per Wilder, the pastor of the Önsta Gryta Church in Västerås, about 110 kilometres (70 miles) west of Stockholm.

"This work began a year and a half ago so we saw that the initiation date was fitting in well (with this year's Easter holiday)," the local pastor Per Wilder said.

"It is a fantastic installation and it will be there as long as we think it is in a good spot," he said.

"All those I spoke with were full of praise, saying how fantastic the model looks and how much good work we put into this," Wilder said.

The model was based on Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsens's 19th century work Christus, which depicts the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Wilder said the statue would remain permanently at the church and there were no plans to sell it to raise funds.

It took the 40 volunteers about 18 months to put all the tiny plastic blocks together, and their creation shows a standing Jesus facing forward with his arms outstretched.

The Protestant church was filled to capacity with about 400 worshippers on Sunday when the statue went on display behind the altar, and some of the children in the congregation couldn't help but touch the white art work.

Friday, April 10, 2009

Good Friday


Good Friday, also called Holy Friday, Great Friday or Black Friday, is a religious holiday observed primarily by adherents to Christianity commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus and his death at Golgotha, an event central to Christian theology. The holiday is observed during Holy Week as part of the Paschal Triduum on the Friday preceding Easter Sunday, and often coincides with the Jewish observance of Passover.

So what holy and good things do we find from this day in our news. Let's have a look so far:

....

Guessed so. What I find is the normal Crucifictions we se every average day:

- American held hostage by Somali pirates fails in escape bid. Richard Phillips jumped into sea and tried to swim away but was recaptured by the pirates.
- Iraq suicide bombing kills five U.S. soldiers. Five U.S. soldiers were killed Friday in a suicide bombing in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, the U.S. military said.

and:
- Wells Fargo boosts stocks. U.S. bank Wells Fargo (WFC.N) forecast a record profit, South Korea steered clear of recession, and Chinese export data beat expectations, all offering hope that the worst of the financial crisis had passed.

Now.
I am not a very religious guy, but I DO like to hear some good news, that aren't based on economy only, every once in a while. Eastern should be made out of soulsearching.

Happy Eastern to all of You's - Do NOT kill eachother out there. Let's NOT make a Black Friday out of this Good Friday!

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Chatterbox, 1905

THE WAY TO WIN.


'I wish I could win one!' a lassie was sighing,
When sitting quite still in a meadow one day,
And thinking of prizes not won without trying--
Not won by mere wishing as time slips away.

And as she sat wishing she heard a hen clucking;
She lifted her eyes and that hen she could see,
And soon it was rapidly scratching and chucking--
As gay and as busy and glad as could be.

She watched how it struggled to upturn a treasure,
A thing it was wishing for, something to eat,
A worm to be dug for with patience and pleasure!
'Twas found, and it gave Henny-Penny a treat!

That worm the hen wished for she could not have eaten
Unless she had scratched it right up from the ground;
And Mabel had seen that the hen was not beaten--
By carefully _working_ the prize had been found.

So Mabel thought quietly over the matter,
And learnt the good lesson, 'No prize can be won
By thinking and wishing, by waiting and chatter!'
And soon she jumped up and to work she begun.

D. H.


Wednesday, April 1, 2009

April Fools' Day

April Fools' Day or All Fools' Day, although not a holiday in its own right, is a notable day celebrated in many countries on April 1. The day is marked by the commission of hoaxes and other practical jokes of varying sophistication on friends, family members, enemies, and neighbors, or sending them on fool's errand, the aim of which is to embarrass the gullible.

Some of the most famous hoaxes throughout history:

1957: The respected BBC news show Panorama announced that thanks to a very mild winter and the virtual elimination of the dreaded spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop. It accompanied this announcement with footage of Swiss peasants pulling strands of spaghetti down from trees. Huge numbers of viewers were taken in. Many called the BBC wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. To this the BBC diplomatically replied, "place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best."

1962: In 1962 there was only one tv channel in Sweden, and it broadcast in black and white. The station's technical expert, Kjell Stensson, appeared on the news to announce that, thanks to a new technology, viewers could convert their existing sets to display color reception. All they had to do was pull a nylon stocking over their tv screen. Stensson proceeded to demonstrate the process. Thousands of people were taken in. Regular color broadcasts only commenced in Sweden on April 1, 1970.

1976: The British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on BBC Radio 2 that at 9:47 AM a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event was going to occur that listeners could experience in their very own homes. The planet Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, temporarily causing a gravitational alignment that would counteract and lessen the Earth's own gravity. Moore told his listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact moment that this planetary alignment occurred, they would experience a strange floating sensation. When 9:47 AM arrived, BBC2 began to receive hundreds of phone calls from listeners claiming to have felt the sensation. One woman even reported that she and her eleven friends had risen from their chairs and floated around the room.

1998: The April 1998 issue of the New Mexicans for Science and Reason newsletter contained an article claiming that the Alabama state legislature had voted to change the value of the mathematical constant pi from 3.14159 to the 'Biblical value' of 3.0. Soon the article made its way onto the internet, and then it rapidly spread around the world, forwarded by email. It only became apparent how far the article had spread when the Alabama legislature began receiving hundreds of calls from people protesting the legislation. The original article, which was intended as a parody of legislative attempts to circumscribe the teaching of evolution, was written by physicist Mark Boslough.