With voting stations officially closed, exit polls at 10 p.m. suggested that Kadima would win the general elections on Tuesday.
However, due to the dramatic rise in support of the Likud and Israel Beiteinu, it seemed that Likud chairman BinyaminNetanyahu would have a better chance than Kadima head TzipiLivni of forming the next coalition.
Not sure exactly how the parliamentary stuff works with them. Maybe the Prime Minister's job is contingent on a plurality of seats. We'll see. read the rest, here.
Graphic Designer (and sometime 90&9 Youth Congress reporter) Rick Brewer has a chance at being the winner of the Album Cover Design Contest being run by the Rascal Flats. Fans were asked to submit their creations and the group narrowed the nominees to four possibilities. The winner, as voted by you, gets to see their creation produced for millions.
At least that's how it looks from some of the targeted polling and research by The Jerusalem Post. And since platforms regarding national security tend to ring a whole lot clearer over there than they do here, one can understand why:
"Jerusalem will not be divided and Gamla will not fall again," Likud chairman and prime ministerial candidate BinyaminNetanyahu said Sunday during a tour of the Golan Heights.
Accompanied by Likud members Moshe Ya'alon, YossiPeled, Bennie Begin and EfiEitam, Netanyahu arrived in the North to participate in Tu Bishvat tree planting.
"If Kadima wins," he said, "we will not have the Golan Heights and will only continue ceding territory. Peace is made with the strong, not the weak. Israel with the Golan Heights is a strong state and not a weak state which gives away its assets."
And even the dullest of military tacticians or even an array of guys that infuse TzunTzu rhetoric into their paintball tournaments know that self preservation and safety for one's people will not include a real estate deal that cedes the hills that overlook the valleys. And Tuesday, the world will find out whether the Israeli population assents to the primary crux of the election--that the Kadima party will try to advance the cause of peace by handing over the Golan heights. And the world will see whether or not Israel has learned the lessons of Gaza.
But Israel, for all their vain, backslidden fog, still seems to understand that they are surrounded--literally--by nations that want to eliminate them. Thus a less-euphonious-but-no-less-audible reverberation of the need for the strong man to guard the house.
It never occurred to me that Wikipedia's giant, user-edited database may actually garner most of its updates from a benevolent cabal of Trivial Pursuit Goliaths. And that's what my favorite tech-blogger, Jeff Atwood, tries to iron out:
When you visit Wikipedia's entry on asphalt, you get some reasonably reliable information about asphalt. What you don't get, however, is any indication of who the author is. That's because the author is irrelevant. Wikipedia is a community effort, the result of tiny slices of effort contributed by millions of people around the world. The focus is on the value of the aggregated information, not who the individual authors are.
So the pressing question of the day is this: When more journalistic and intellectual energy is devoted to Jessica Simpson's weight gain controversy than a Congressional mortgage that spends more money than we ever borrowed between the revolutionary war and the Carter Administration, what exactly does it say about our country?
Instead of endless reporting on something that isn't a flaw, just a collateral effect of affluence, comfortable living, hormones and age indexes (something that may affect a career), perhaps our media should focus their energies on an emerging weakness that may have a profound effect on our nation. A president's pedestrian rhetorical ability invested with preposterous spiritual gravity.
Captain Cook's claims of incarnation were quickly dashed, when, as Mark Twain put it, "betrayed his earthly origin with a groan." His entire protracted imperialist blueprint was obliterated--right along with him--when the Hawaiians discovered he was but a mortal.
Worth noting, as the days become more and more occluded and tumultuous. What's it going to take for America to lose its Brangelina trance?
Did you know that President Obama is revamping the faith-based initiatives program and that the new White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships is being headed by a 26-year-old Pentecostal minister?
Some background on Joshua DuBois, who calls Nashville home.
Seems Captain Sullenberger demonstrated the kind of coolness that doesn't befit the panicked opportunists in the halls of Congress right now. I wonder how a "stimulus bill" might go down if Captain Sully were at the helm?
On the invitation of someone that attends a denominational church in my town, I have attended for the last two weeks what is in reality, the second and third installments of a modular series called The Truth Project.
This work, produced by Focus on the Family, is a DVD series, each lesson broken down into hour-long segments. The group at large is then broken down into smaller "discussion groups," where what is taught during the lesson can be given at least a small degree of traction in the mind before one leaves.
This program is stunning. And though I am one who demurs from any real criticism of apostolic organizational issues (as I'd have to get in a very long queue do do it anyway), I do feel that this kind of thing is something we rarely see. And since apostolics are entering the world of academia at unprecedented rates, it would be wise to fully comprehend the philosophical, anthropological, musical, and humanistic poisons that await--not the blatant things that assault one's faith at face value, but the subtle "pernicious lies" as Dr. Tackett calls them--that place us in handcuffs we aren't even aware are being applied.
The Cosmic Cube
The video features a one Dr. Del Tackett, who using an apologetics framework derived from CS Lewis' Mere Christianity. The first session I attended involved a central theme of the program, involving the "Cosmic Cube," or "The Box." This box contains every philosophy, moray, theory and prognostication man can possibly conjure to explain the universe. God, of course, lives outside the box, where his Transcendency is ignored, impugned, and explained away. Dr. Tackett-- supremely gifted teacher--illustrates how luminaries like Carl Sagan, Rousseau, Maslow and Hawking, along with a myriad of ancient philosophers--all try to explain a cold, limited accidental existence, while battling with the very voice of creation which proclaims God is who He is.
What Is Evil?
The third installment details the over saturation of Abraham Maslow's teaching particularly his "Hierarchy of Needs." By the time one has written about this goofy, pyramidic chart for tenth consecutive class, Maslow becomes the default standard, even if it is from narcoleptic coercion.
Dr. Tackett doesn't shy away from the world's foremost humanistic thinkers, but plunges headlong into what they've really established. And using Maslow's assertions that there is no "inherent evil" in man, coupled with his "self-actualization" capstone, Tackett exposes alarmingly inconsistent theories, incapable of marrying at the altar of logic. Footage from various adversarial events, interviews from notorious killers claiming "self actualization devoid of a God," and man-on -the-street comments intersperse throughout, giving cultural snapshots of these theories in play.
But his main point being, that even atheists admit to there existing what they call "evil." They just can't see it emanating from a fallen state. And to do so means they have to admit to a "broken" plan, with an "unbroken" one being preferential. Thus an arrow--pointing upward.
I know I ran long here. Click here to view the trailer (see the long version), or the picture to see the events surrounding this. A smart, and scriptural, look at rebuilding our arts and sciences.
Okay, I don't live for music & I'm always late to the party on new releases, but...
Beyonce's "If I Were a Boy" makes me ache. Of all her songs (that I've heard), it's the first genuine hit that only she could have sung. (Which is the 2nd level of Greatness.) To me, she's a secular Sandi Patti--amazing voice without a signature sound. (Which is the 1st level of Greatness.)
But, when you're lovely to look at and barely clothed on your album photos, you don't need a signature sound. But that doesn't mean you're doing much besides making money.
So, I've always felt she was overrated and soon-to-be-forgotten; but now . . . maybe not. (Can't say the rest of her new album impressed me, but we'll see what else she sings in the near future.)
The music video is tepid and almost completely disconnected from the song lyrics, so if you haven't heard it, listen closely but don't bother watching it. Then let me know what you think.
So it had to happen - any technology can be used for positive or negative. Turns out the great freedom that cell phones give each user, also allows teens to send nude pictures of themselves to each other, mainly girls to guys ...
"Some teens send the graphic photos of themselves to boyfriends, and some teens send them to prospective boyfriends or girlfriends in a graphic update of the old calling card. Either way, the images might meet the legal definition of child pornography, and the trend is raising moral and legal dilemmas along with a heavy dose of good old-fashioned shock."
While this isn't a shock, just an unwelcome surprise, the legal ramifications are severe and largely uncharted. (I've even heard second-hand that this has been an issue at some of our youth camps, though I can't verify that.)
What's most interesting to me is a teenager commented on this story (at the bottom of the article) proclaiming:
"EVERYONE NEEDS TO STOP BEING SO PARANOID ABOUT THIS.
First, PLEASE stop calling it ''sexting''. No one uses that word. It's dumb. Second, guys don't pressure girls into sending nude pictures. EVER. They always ALWAYS ask (if they ask at all) "wanna send me some pix" and it is completely the girl's decision whether she will or not, and then if she does she can always just send a picture of her face. I was asked just the other day for these pictures, and I told him my camera was broken. He kept pushing, so I sent a picture of my face. He called me "stunning" and then proceeded to send me two pictures of himself with his shirt off without me saying anything! It was, needless to say, disgusting." So, is this our sex-crazed media latching onto a story of a few sex-crazed deviants and blowing it out of proportion, or is this the unveiling of a persistent problem that will always be with us?
A UGST graduate is celebrating Darwin's (upcoming) 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of The Origin of Species on February 12th (Darwin Day), by daily blogging on evolution, creationism, intelligent design, and the Genesis account of creation.
So go visit Creation Moment. It's definitely worth perusing.
Of course I say that last part tongue-in-cheek, as I currently retain both. This man, however, may not in a few months:
A member of parliament in the Netherlands who has been charged with "insulting" Muslims says he fears he will be found guilty and sent to prison in only a few months.
An appeals court on Wednesday overturned a previous decision by prosecutors not to charge GeertWilders, and ordered that he stand trial.
Sounds almost like Nancy Pelosi's running the Kangaroo court over there. This--is downright chilling. And anyone that believes these things will be isolated to the Dutch shores doesn't know the meaning of "Jihad." A man like me isn't given much hope in this life, anyway, when the new President's first concern in office was to make sure the genocidal maniacs at Guantanamo Bay aren't forced to acknowledge the five pillars in substandard housing, possibly moving them into a congressional district that doesn't even have a proper prison (the sheer irony of Jack Murtha, a congressman that slandered our Marines at Haditha with no evidence, would wind himself into a tortured little ball of hospitality for terrorists. next thing you know, tax evaders will be running the IRS).
As you acclimate to the tangible shift of gravity, may God be with you and your family, sir. I'll be praying for you. As will many. And though the upcoming days will have their sheer moments of ideological logrolling and dispute amongst peaceful men, today is not that day.
Bro. Curry asked us to provide our "predictions" for the year 2009, which was then pooled here. The above title refers to the non-clarivoiant nature of one of my predictions:
"That our new and energetic President will discover that those that hated America before he was president will hate America after he was president as well. "
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez apparently doesn't appreciate Barack Obama's classifying him as a supporter of Colombian terror group, FARC, likening the president-elect's odor to that of Chavez nemesis President Bush.
In an interview airing on Venezuelan television and reported by The Washington Post Monday, Chavez said Obama has "the same stench" as Bush. The comment harkens back to September 2006, when Chavez followed Bush at an appearance at the United Nations General Assembly opening and said he could still smell the "sulfur" left behind by the U.S. president's presence at the podium.
The thing that should be the most disconcerting isn't the fact that the nefariously addled, possessed and intoxicated are going to continue fulminating and calling for the death of America. The thing that should concern all is an insular media that will pretend that all dangers and perils facing this country face an exit on January 20th. The American press is far more than just a little infatuated with Mr. Obama, but are given to near intercessory moments in his presence. This is neither healthy for a press that--in my opinion--needs to die a structural death anyway, nor Mr. Obama, who will hopefully overcome the throng of "yes men" who actually see in him a messianic backdrop.
To the media, it was funny when Chavez told the UN General Assembly he could "smell" Mr. Bush's stench. Now it isn't so funny anymore to them. Looks like the only stench now is the one emanating from the New York Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencier.
I'm sure a higher-resolution video will manage to surface eventually, but this one gets more amazing every time I see it.
At 3:31:02 we see the plane enter from the left, already broaching the water.
By 3:31:41, after the Coast Guard camera zooms in, we already see a good number of people evacuated to both wings.
At 3:33:58, we see just how fast the Hudson River's current is actually moving.
At 3:34:42, we see the first ferry boat reach the plane to provide assistance. Let's do the math:
3:34:42
-3:31:02
_________
0:03:40
I'm downright blown away by this. 155 souls, including one infant. Saved. Quite possibly the most gratifying thing I will see for a very long time.
Honorable mention here. Notice how that ferry boat races to the plane, makes the proximal arrival, and immediately assumes a congruent, downward current trajectory with the plane. Those crew members--all of them--the pilot, the flight attendants, the rescuers--every last one of them--are my heroes.
As I'm currently in the market for a new job when I saw this one posted I KNEW it was for me.
It's being billed as "the best job in the world" - six months working as a "caretaker" on Hamilton Island in Australia's Great Barrier Reef. As if these weren't enough, the job comes with a pay packet of nearly £70,000 (that's almost USD$105,000) and a rent-free three-bedroom villa, complete with pool. In return, the successful applicant will be expected to spend the six-month contract exploring the idyllic surroundings, filing weekly blog, photo diary and video updates and conducting "ongoing media interviews".
The job is open to applicants from around the world, starts in July - which is Australia's winter but where temperatures on the island rarely drop below 80, and seems way too good to be true. So, now the question is how do I go about beating out the other 2 million unemployed people who are so busy trying to apply that they've crashed the website?
Kudos to the marketing genius who came up with this idea in an effort to bolster Australia's tourism industry.
We're a group of Apostolic bloggers trying to make sense of our beliefs and the popular culture around us. Here you can find commentary on Apostolics in the media, how our beliefs are affected by popular events and opinions on how we believe Christians in general (and Apostolics in particular) should react to the world we live in.
