Archbishop Desmond Tutu continued to criticise the Anglican Church?s obsession with homosexuality in November, saying in a BBC interview that that he wouldnt worship a homophobic god. Tutu called the church "extraordinarily homophobic", adding that he felt "saddened" and "ashamed" about the matter."If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldnt worship that God," he said in the interview.

Noah?s Ark

And Moses parting the Red Sea

God?s Eye View depicts Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden,

"They are honest people, they are professionals, they respect the rules, they felt so embarrassed, so sorry they had done something illegal," Laura Boldrini, one of the officials from the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees who interviewed the new arrival.

Boldrini was speaking of the veterinary surgeon and a 26-year-old Iraqi engineer with whom he made the crossing, who asked to be called Said.

"Compelling automakers to achieve higher mileage forces them to compromise automobile safety. To achieve fuel economy, they are forced to make vehicles lighter and smaller. But lighter, smaller vehicles are much more dangerous in an accident. Because the car absorbs less of the crash impact, the passengers absorb it instead.

This inadequate teacher preparation joins deficiencies in mathematics curriculum as reasons contributing to lower scores for American middle-schoolers.

An engraving of an anti-Chinese riot in Denver in 1880.

Huckabee, Obama enjoy huge night in Iowa

DES MOINES, Iowa (CNN) -- Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee have claimed victories in Iowas first-in-the-nation caucuses.

With all Democratic precincts reporting, Obama had the support of 38 percent of voters, compared to 30 percent for John Edwards and 29 percent for Hillary Clinton. "The numbers tell us this was a debate between change and experience, and change won," said CNN political analyst Bill Schneider.

Iowa delivered fatal blows to the campaigns of Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware. Both have decided to abandon their White House runs.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who finished fourth, said his campaign plans to "take the fight to New Hampshire." Watch an overview of the dramatic night »

New Hampshire holds the nations first primary Tuesday. Clinton and Obama are in a statistical dead heat in New Hampshire, according to the latest CNN/WMUR poll.

I used to say to my Western friends, "In Indonesia Christians worship Allah!"

United States Bill of Rights

When I last visited rural Sind, more than half a million Hindus, Sikhs, Shia and Sunni Muslims rubbed shoulders to dance the head-whirling dhamal, smoke hashish and pray in front of the tomb of the Sufi saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar. Benazir had contributed funds to the shrines renovation.

Benazir had a strong attachment to mysticism. As she arrived back from exile, her right arm was wrapped in amulets intended to ward off evil. In her final weeks she looked supernaturally elated. I was not sure whether she had accepted her fate or believed in her own invincibility.

A pie-eyed secretary to a Pir (a hereditary saint) served our party green whisky. "It will help you reach the infinity," he said. My notebook, mostly made illegible by the sweat of dancing, still smells of perfumed water and petals.

I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.

In adversity remember to keep an even mind

Anytime the going seems easy, you?d better check to see if you are going downhill.

You?ve got to sing like you don?t need the money. You?ve got to love like you?ll never get hurt. You?ve got to dance like there?s nobody watching. You?ve got to come from the heart, if you want it to work.

Remember the storm is a good opportunity for the pine and the cypress to show their strength and their stability.

I don?t measure a man?s success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom.

If the bull had no horns; everyone would be a matador

If you decide you are going to feel wonderful, strong, excited - then you have the power to move mountains!

A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.

Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great.

Do not wait to strike until the iron is hot but make it hot by striking.

God gives every bird its food, but He does not throw it into the nest. He does not unearth the good that the earth contains, but He puts it in our way, and gives us the means of getting it ourselves.

There?s only one corner of the universe you can be sure of improving, and that?s your own self.

Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs

Plough deep, while sluggards sleep, and you shall have corn to sell and keep.

Those who know ?what? and ?how? will always work for those who knows ?why?.

To youth I have but three words of counsel - work, work, work

You have to be first, different or great. If you?re one of them, you may make it

Always do more than is required of you.

No man can climb the ladder of success without first placing his foot on the bottom rung

Work as though you would live forever, and live as though you would die today.

Life has no limitations, except the ones you make.

Trust Is The Business Word For Love

"Tribal violence spirals in Kenya," screams the front page banner in the International Herald Tribune. "Kenya plunges into interethnic violence," says Le Monde.

But headlines can be misleading.

The reality of life on the worlds poorest continent is that most people live a marginal economic existence and rely enormously, for survival, on those nearest to them.

Rural villagers rely on each other, for example, to bring in the crop, or to share food in difficult times.

Urban dwellers often organise themselves to provide common services like schools because their governments are either too poor or too incompetent to deliver.

In these circumstances the people nearest to you - whom you can trust - are first, family, and second, tribe.

Do you believe in the Buddhist theory of reincarnation? Do you believe that "love survives death into eternity"?

BAGHDAD - It goes against religious taboos in Iraq to involve women in fighting, but three recent suicide bombings carried out by women could indicate insurgents are growing increasingly desperate.

The female suicide attacks come as U.S.-led coalition forces are increasingly catching militants suspected of training women to become human bombs or finding evidence of efforts by al-Qaida in Iraq to recruit women, according to military records.

Female suicide bombers are a small part of the insurgents battle to force U.S. troops from Iraq and rattle Shiites from newly acquired power. Women have been responsible for 14 of 667 suicide attacks since May 2005, or 2 percent. They have caused at least 107 deaths, or 5 percent of the 2,065 people killed during this time period, according to Associated Press statistics.

He added that SSE, which is already UKs second-biggest power producer, would now also become the countrys largest windfarm operator, and that the deal would take the group into Europe and Asia.

Marchant said the company now had "development opportunities" in Germany, Portugal, the Netherlands and China.

Meanwhile, Airtricity, Irelands largest windfarm operator which is 51%-owned by Irish waste management firm NTR, has been expanding operations in the UK, and last year it won approval to build a windfarm off the coast of England.

Rainer Maria Rilke quotes

Few results have ever proven Cuomos dictum as true as those from Iowa last night. In both parties, the poets - the candidates who understood that campaigns arent about specific policies but the larger vision of what kind of country the candidate envisions and will take us to - won

Some 500 train passengers were stranded for more than two hours during the Wednesday evening rush hour. The accident also heavily damaged 250 feet of rail, Brucker said.

The railroad said that the driver was issued a minor summons for obstructing a railroad crossing and that he and his rental company would be liable for the damage, estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"My guess is that she wont be seeing her kids for a while," said Cron, who teaches at Pepperdine University in Malibu.

Gordon has little option other than to further reduce the time Spears can legally spend with her children, Cron said, "at least for the time being until she gets some help. Shes obviously a very troubled person."

Fall seven times, stand up eight!

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination are omnipotent.The slogan ?press on? has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success.

Obstacles don?t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don?t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it

What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it?s the size of the fight in the dog

Some men succeed because they are destined to, but most men succeed because they are determined to.

Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich won?t accept his exclusion from ABC?s debates on Saturday without a fight.  Kucinich filed a complaint with the FCC Friday, claiming ABC is denying him equal time and noting that parent company Disney has made campaign contributions to the four invited Democrats.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Scientific advisers to the government emphasize in a report the importance of teaching evolution in public schools.

The report by the National Academy of Sciences and its Institute of Medicine follows up on similar past publications, the last of which came out in 1999. The new document includes recently discovered evidence supporting evolution, including an important fossil find.

The report released Thursday also takes swipes at creationism and other anti-evolution views.

"Despite the lack of scientific evidence for creationist positions, some advocates continue to demand that various forms of creationism be taught together with or in place of evolution in science classes," the report says.

Intelligent design holds that the universes order and complexity are so great that evolution cannot explain it.

Wired: What happened to the Web undermining institutions and empowering individuals?

Carr: Computers are technologies of liberation, but theyre also technologies of control. Its great that everyone is empowered to write blogs, upload videos to YouTube, and promote themselves on Facebook. But as systems become more centralized ? as personal data becomes more exposed and data-mining software grows in sophistication ? the interests of control will gain the upper hand. If youre looking to monitor and manipulate people, you couldnt design a better machine.

Wired: So its Google über alles?

Carr: Yeah. Welcome to Google Earth. A bunch of bright computer scientists and AI experts in Silicon Valley are not only rewiring our computers ? theyre dictating the future terms of our culture. Its terrifying.

Wired: Back to the future ? HAL lives!

Evolution and economics are both examples of a larger mysterious phenomenon

A Boltzmann brain is a hypothesized self-aware entity which arises due to random fluctuations out of some future state of chaos. The idea is named for physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, who had advanced an idea that the known universe arose as a random fluctuation, similar to process through which Boltzmann brains might arise.

[edit] Boltzmann brain paradox

Boltzmann brains are often referred to in the context of the "Boltzmann brain paradox" or "problem".

The concept arises from the need to explain why we observe such a large degree of organization in the universe. The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy in the universe will always increase. We may think of the most likely state of the universe as one of high entropy, closer to uniform and without order. So why is the observed entropy so low?

A beautiful butterfly is able to fool ants into rearing its young by masking them with the ants own smell, say researchers.

Caterpillars of the alcon blue butterfly have developed an outer coat that tricks ants into believing the young are its own, duping the ants into carrying the larvae back to their colonies to care for.

But what is more, the ant seems to "recognise" that it is being duped and one population appears to be engaging in an evolutionary arms race with the butterfly, says the team led by David Nash at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

II. The Sanas (etymology, secret knowledge) of Poker

Reminiscenses of Home: Aussies chaff-making in Flanders

Palestine: the Australian Light Horse

A

An ANZAC

An Australian

Aerial

Australian

1st Australian Flying Corps, Palestine

A flight of bombing planes, 1st Australian Flying Corps, Palestine

A

Machines

Infantry moving forward

The Front Line

Limbers carrying up ammunition at sunset

Battle scarred sentinels

Death the Reaper

The dawn of Passchendaele

Carrying in the wounded during the height of the battle

The Battle of the Menin Road

A Stretcher Case

Scene in an advanced dressing station during a battle

Attending to the wounded

Looking out

A windy outpost

A Hun Pill-Box

Voormezeele

A tired Battalion marching out of line

Registering up a battery of Australian Heavies

Sniping enemy planes with a Lewis gun

54 Battery Australian Siege Artillery in action

Unloading 15 inch Howitzer shells

Australian Pioneers salving a 4.5 Howitzer

Hauling

Here is just part of a description he offered Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! of being prepared for transport by CIA air taxi into black-site hell:

"After 19 months of imprisonment and torment at the hands of the CIA, the agency released him [in Yemen] with no explanation, just as he had been imprisoned in the first place. He faced no terrorism charges. He was given no lawyer. He saw no judge. He was simply released, his life shattered."

No charges, no lawyers, no judge. This is increasingly the norm of -- and a legacy of -- George Bushs world. In this way, the snarl at the borders melds with the screams of terror in cells worldwide.

Kidnapping Is the Law: According to the British Sunday Times, "A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under American law because the U.S. Supreme Court has sanctioned it." According to that lawyer, the precedent "goes back to bounty hunting days in the 1860s." This applies, it seems, not just to terror suspects in extraordinary rendition cases, but to white businessmen wanted for, say, fraud. "The American government has for the first time made it clear in a British court that the law applies to anyone, British or otherwise, suspected of a crime by Washington." International human rights lawyer Scott Horton writes at his No Comment blog:

Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico have found a way of using sunlight to recycle carbon dioxide and produce fuels like methanol or gasoline.

The Sunlight to Petrol, or S2P, project essentially reverses the combustion process, recovering the building blocks of hydrocarbons. They can then be used to synthesize liquid fuels like methanol or gasoline. Researchers said the technology already works and could help reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, although large-scale implementation could be a decade or more away.

If the New Hampshire Democratic Party?s 100 Club dinner is any bell weather ? Barack Obama will handily win here. When Obama, the dinner?s last speaker, took the stage the crowd surged forward chanting ?O-bam-a? and ?Fired Up, Ready to Go!? So many people pressed toward the stage that an announcer asked people to ?please take their seats for safety concerns.?

The real meaning, said Paul Macek, a historian in Webster, a community of about 17,000 just northwest of where Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts intersect, is "English knifemen and Nipmuck Indians at the boundary or neutral fishing place."

Alessija Dorfmann, 23, said: ?I am devastated. It has always been my dream to be a soldier and have a great figure.

?Now my fake boobs have cost me my job.?

She has appealed against the ruling by top brass in Hamburg, Germany, who said implants increased risk of injury.

January 3, 2008

On January 3, 11 people from around the world were charged with using botnets to run what is billed as one of the largest illegal spamming operations in the nation.

"Dont tell them what we did," paramedics heard 23-year-old Kulbir Dhaliwal tell his brother, Paul, 19.

Although the police still possess the cell phones and have impounded the brothers car, city attorney spokesman Matt Dorsey said that without the Dhaliwals permission, police cannot legally search the items as potential evidence. Among the items police say they have spotted in the car is an empty vodka bottle.

Vladimir Joska

Discuss: What destinations make you happy?

Anagram Hall of Fame

Dormitory = Dirty Room

Dictionary = Indicatory

Schoolmaster = The classroom

Elvis = Lives

Listen = Silent

Clint Eastwood = Old West Action

Madam Curie = Radium came

A telephone girl = Repeating "Hello"

Western Union = No Wire Unsent

The country side = No City Dust Here

Evangelist = Evils Agent

Astronomers = Moon starers / No more stars

A telescope = To see place

The eyes = They see

The cockroach = Cook, catch her

Waitress = A stew, Sir?

The centenarians = I can hear ten "tens"

Desperation = A Rope Ends It

The Morse Code = Here Come Dots

Slot Machines = Cash Lost inem

Conversation = Voices Rant On

Clothespins = So Lets Pinch

The Meaning of Life = The fine game of nil

MacDonalds = Clam and Sod

Heavy Rain? = Hire a Navy!

Tom Cruise = So Im Cuter

Animosity = Is No Amity

Funeral = Real Fun

Protectionism = Nice to imports

A Domesticated Animal = Docile, as a Man Tamed it

A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss = Stroller on Go, Amasses Nothing

At midday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 2.8 per cent over the first three trading days of the year, while the S&P 500 lost 2.9 per cent.

Europe?s FTSE Eurofirst 300 shed 3.3 per cent, while Tokyo?s Nikkei 225 Average fell 4 per cent on Friday, its first day of trade in 2008, taking it to a 17-month low.

Unemployment is forecast to rise by 150,000 to 1.8m next year, the highest level since 1997 when Labour came to power, according to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

The institute?s study follows a survey of independent forecasts published by the Treasury which predicted that the number of people claiming unemployment benefit would rise by 12 per cent to 910,000 by the end of next year.

Where the Champs Elysee, the Eiffel Tower and sprawling vineyards now stand, there might once have been an Amazon-like jungle.

A new analysis of amber fossils collected in France suggests that the country was once covered by a dense tropical rainforest.

The 55-milllion-year-old pieces of amber (fossilized tree sap) were found near the Oise River in northern France. The trees that once oozed them are long gone.

Amber from different sites tends to have different chemical compositions.

?The region corresponding to modern France could have been found in a geographically critical marshy zone belonging to Africa and a tropical zone 55 million years ago extending through North Africa to the Amazon,? the authors wrote.

Summary Of The Bush Crime Family History

Who Elected Sean Hannity? Conservative Talker Given Police Chauffeur In Cincy

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Peter Garvanovi?

While some critics of US President George W Bush have charged that his administration is pursuing policies of madness, such a charge is clinically incorrect, but it may convey an extraordinarily disturbing reality. Both an eminent psychologist and a noted political scientist perceive a particularly virulent social pathogen as the basis for much of the present global strife, with Washington at the center of the epidemic.

"It certainly seems that the world is going mad," Canadian psychologist Dr Daniel Burston told Asia Times Online, quickly noting that an increasing retreat into "social phantasy systems" would be more accurate. Burston - whose work has been acclaimed in the mainstream media - noted that famed social psychologist Erich Fromm had written on "socially patterned defects" that enabled large groups of people to adjust themselves comfortably to a system that, humanly speaking, is "fundamentally at odds with our basic existential and human needs".

Then he eats a full roast turkey lunch and watches the Queens Speech on video.

"It all started back in 1993. It was the middle of July and I was just feeling fed up. I was bored, so I went home and put the decorations up. Suddenly I was happy. I thought, this is fun.

So I did it again the next day, and the day after that.

"After that I open the presents Ive wrapped for myself. Ive given myself some nice ones over the years - one year I got a Mercedes!

"People do think Im crackers, but I enjoy treating myself and Im the only one in the world who does it. Others have tried to copy me, but they cant last. Im the only one who can hold out.

Czech artists charged in nuke bomb hoax

Economists viewed the report as the most powerful indication to date that the United States could well be falling into a recessionary downturn. Evidence of widening unemployment heightened anticipation that the Federal Reserve would further cut interest rates this month, perhaps by an unusually large half a percentage point, in a bid to prevent the economy from sliding into the muck.

?This is unambiguously negative,? said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody?s Economy.com. ?The economy is on the edge of recession, if we?re not already engulfed in one.?

Boredom is ... a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.

To escape boredom, man works either beyond what his usual needs require, or else he invents play, that is, work that is designed to quiet no need other than that for working in general.

Boredom rests upon the nothingness that winds its way through existence; its giddiness, like that which comes from gazing down into an infinite abyss, is infinite.

19. Demonize self-knowledge technology of all kinds. Throw around words like ?cult? and ?brainwashing.? Marginalize anyone involved in such pursuits.

21. Keep people?s attention on what really matters. Emphasize what?s wrong as much as possible.

22. Always give the impression that Everything Is Under Control ? but just barely so ? hammer into the populace the idea that their greatest fear could strike at any moment.

By sticking to these simple premises you should be able to produce entire societies capable of ending world hunger, but too selfish to care. You will be able to bring about massive consumer mindsets and buying habits so powerful that logic and reason become superfluous in making the sale. You will be the new face of media. Good luck!

" Prehistoric Japanese Shark "

It looks unlikely that medical science will abolish the process of ageing. But it no longer looks impossible

?IN THE long run,? as John Maynard Keynes observed, ?we are all dead.? True. But can the short run be elongated in a way that makes the long run longer? And if so, how, and at what cost? People have dreamt of immortality since time immemorial. They have sought it since the first alchemist put an elixir of life on the same shopping list as a way to turn lead into gold. They have written about it in fiction, from Rider Haggards ?She? to Frank Herberts ?Dune?. And now, with the growth of biological knowledge that has marked the past few decades, a few researchers believe it might be within reach.

If there are no meanings, no values, no source of sustenance or help, then man, as creator, must invent, conjure up meanings and values, sustenance and succour out of nothing. He is a magician.

A man may indeed produce something new- a poem, a pattern, a sculpture, a system of ideas - think thoughts never before thought, produce sights never before seen. Little benefit is he likely to derive from his own creativity. The phantasy is not modified by such "acting out", even the sublimest. The fate that awaits the creator, after being ignored, neglected, despised, is, luckily or unluckily according to point of view, to be discovered by the non-creative.

The creative breath "comes from a zone of man where man cannot descend, even if Virgil were to lead him, for Virgil would not go down there".

This zone, the zone of no-thing, of the silence of silences, is the source. We forget that we are all there all the time.

?A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.?

?Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes.?

?Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.?

ScienceDaily (Jan. 4, 2008) ? There is new hope for patients with chronic wounds: euroderm GmbH and the Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology IZI in Leipzig have been granted approval to produce artificial skin from patients? own cells.

The researchers expect to grow skin grafts for 10 to 20 patients a month in 2008, depending on how many doctors prescribe this therapy.

blackagendareport.com

But come Jan. 15, the name Obama will appear nowhere on Michigans Democratic primary ballot. A squabble between state and national party officials over the primary date led Obama and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards to withdraw their names from the ballot.

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton remains.