Conservative Episcopalians to form new Conservative group

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Tired of fighting a losing cause, conservative Episcopalians have agreed to form a new group. It includes many churches that either have fled or are in the process of fleeing the liberal dominated Episcopal Church. It includes the CANA group of churches led by the Nigerian Anglican Bishop.

The founders are a mix of groups with varying ties to the Episcopal Church and the world Anglican Communion. Among the members will be Episcopal dioceses and parishes that have broken away or plan to split from the national church, congregations that have never been part of the Episcopal Church and fellowships that are considered schismatic by the Anglican Communion.

Bishop Duncan said that forming a separate North American church structure for conservatives is "necessary because of the drift of the church in the West."

Belichek's New Weapon

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No one will ever know.

Orwellian Chicago

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A car circles a high-rise three times. Someone leaves a backpack in a park.

Such things go unnoticed in big cities every day. But that could change in Chicago with a new video surveillance system that would recognize such anomalies and alert authorities to take a closer look.

On Thursday, the city and IBM Corp. are announcing the initial phase of what officials say could be the most advanced video security network in any U.S. city. The City of Broad Shoulders is getting eyes in the back of its head.

"Chicago is really light years ahead of any metropolitan area in the U.S. now," said Sam Docknevich, who heads video-surveillance consulting for IBM.

Back when I was working in sales, I'd go around the block about eight times looking for the exact address. With people on your bumper, people walking in front of the car, and cars slamming on their brakes in front of you, it isn't always easy to find the exact address. They're nuts if they're going to check on someone simply because they circled the block three times.

Nuns Excommunicated

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They believe they are following the reincarnated Mary who is supposedly in the body of Marie Paule Giguere. She founded this heresy in 1971 and the church has excommunicated all followers of this group.

Dionne said she does not know if Giguere is the reincarnation of the Virgin Mary, but said she believes God communicates through the sect's founder.

"She is doing only what God and Mary tells her to do," Dionne said.

Mary elevated the the level of God...

Diplomats certainly act like children

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When Ahmadinejad was ushered to the podium of the General Assembly to speak, the U.S. delegation walked out, leaving only a low-ranking note-taker to listen to his speech, which indirectly accused the United States and Israel of major human rights violations.

This a day after the Cuban Delegation left the room because Bush called Castro a dictator.

Walking out make as much sense as boycotting elections so the opposition wins.

Wow we conservatives are such a backward lot

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The ultimate effect of conservative fundamentalism upon the Church is one of cultural irrelevance. Fundamentalism tends to see the world as something to oppose rather than to engage and influence. As a result there naturally follows a disregard for anything deemed “worldly” and this includes among other things, intellectualism. Fundamentalists will say “The only book I need is the Bible” and thus remain uniformed about the world and incapable of meaningful influence. This same attitude is expressed toward the study of theology and Church history, which results in a sophomoric theology – wholly inadequate to shape a coherent biblical response to the complexities of life and culture.

Is this why my favorite science is biology? Why I enjoyed getting the animal cards until I had them all and they started sending duplicates? Or why I enjoy John Grisham novels? Or why I like Michael Crichton's novels? Or like The Lord of the Ring? Or like Dragonlance? Or that my all time favorite fictional character is Raistlin from the Dragonlance books? Or the fact that I like comic books? Or that I really enjoyed the three Jurassic Park movies? (Ok the second one I could have lived without the LA stuff) Or perhaps why I enjoy a good game of Madden on my Xbox? Or maybe why I like Edgar Allen Poe short stories? Or John Steinbeck? Or Hemingway? Or Twain? Or Swiss Family Robinson? Or Robinson Crusoe? Or Jack Londson?

Also if I'm so intellectually deficit, why do I know Latin, Hebrew, and Greek? And why do I have the book checked out of the PTS library for learning French? (Up to chapter 2)

If you want to read intellectual deficiency, go read a liberal introduction to the Old Testament like Michael Coogan's The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Intro to the Hebrew Scriptures. Now compare it to the conservative Eugene Merrill's a Kingdom of Priest. Check the footnotes in Merril where he goes into great detail on where you can find out about information that HE DOESN'T agree with. Now try the same thing with Coogan. BTW, there are no footnotes in Coogan. Which one is more intellectual?

Vick won't be serving 40 years

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While indicting him on some charges, the grand jury passed on the eight animal cruelty charges that would have seen Vick serving 5 years for each offense. If there was ever a time a jury should be compelled to explain its decision this is it. Vick should not get out of jail until he is a very old man. I don't buy his apology. The only thing he is sorry about is he was caught.

Woe to 5:30

Ok I'm so ready to see if I can be a resident student next term. I am tired of getting up at 5:30 on MWF so I can catch the 6:25 bus to Pittsburgh so I can switch over to the 7:40 500 to the Seminary and be on campas at 8:12 for a 9:00 Hebrew class.

So you might ask why not catch the 7:00 bus to Pittsburgh. Oh that's because the 500 leaves that stop TWO minutes before the 7AM bus arrives in Pittsburgh. Two minutes so I have to get up at 5:30.

But don't feel to bad for me. If I just drove, I could leave my house at 7:30 and be at the seminary at like 8:40. But gas would probably bankrupt me.

Huntington is the New GM of the Pirates

LInk

Ok my benchmark for actually judging him and the new Pirates front office is going to be really simple. This spring during the draft if the first round pick is a high school position player with the potential of Barry Bonds, they're going to get passing marks. If on the other hand its a pitcher or a college player, they fail and I'm probably never going to watch another Pirates game.

Scientists say Velociraptor had feathers

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A close study of a velociraptor forearm found in Mongolia shows the presence of quill knobs, bumps on the bone where the feathers anchor, researchers report in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

"Finding quill knobs on velociraptor ... means that it definitely had feathers. This is something we'd long suspected, but no one had been able to prove," Alan Turner

The velociraptor the researchers studied was about three feet tall and weighed about 30 pounds. The size of these animals was exaggerated in the movie.[Jurassic Park]

I find this interesting. Of course dinosaurs have fascinated me since I was in 2nd grade when they were introduced to me. Of course I had to then have a pet lizard because back then dinosaurs were thought to be large lizards. It was some type of lizard that was larger than a chameleon that was kept in an aquarium but it died after a few years and then I had chameleons. At one time I had three chameleons with one having a shorter tail because it was snapped off and it grew a new one only smaller.

But I'll just point out that the animals were not exaggerated in the movie. Raptors could grow to over 6 feet tall and that's about how tall I remember the Raptors being in Jurassic Park. After all they could go through doors and open doors. And I don't remember them towering over Grant.

Heartland Presbytery decides once in, always in

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An administrative commission established by Heartland Presbytery has rejected the requests of two Kansas congregations – one that sought to be dismissed from the Presbyterian Church (USA) to the smaller Evangelical Presbyterian Church and another that sought be dismissed to join the New Wineskins/EPC Transitional Presbytery – even though both congregations previously had voted overwhelmingly in favor of those actions.

On June 10, Hillsdale Presbyterian Church in Hillsdale voted 77-5 to request dismissal from the PCUSA in order to join the New Wineskins/EPC Transitional Presbytery. On June 24, First Presbyterian Church in Paola voted 200-81 to request dismissal with its property from the PCUSA in order to join the EPC.

What a difference from the attitude taken by a truly Christian presbytery like Beaver-Butler. The Heartland Presbytery should be ashamed but instead they are probably gloating. They should read over the Gospels and Epistles and determine who they are most like.

In response, the session of First Presbyterian Church, in a letter to the congregation signed by Clerk Pro-Tem Stacy Boan, wrote that:

"The Heartland Presbytery administrative commission met with the elders (session) of First Presbyterian Church on Sunday night, Sept. 9. We had hoped this meeting, our first face-to-face contact, would be a time to share the details of our current ministry and heart for Christ, to ask and answer questions about our mission, ministry goals and reasons for seeking dismissal to the EPC. We hoped to spend time considering the needs of all the members of the church in light of the understandable duties of the presbytery. Instead, we discovered that the administrative commission had already made up their mind - they had already reached a decision and had come to meet with us to tell us what they had decided.

There are times where I think the best thing to do would be to follow the Mexican bandit in Joe Kidd, "One day there was a fire."

Unemployment applications drop unexpectedly

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The number of laid-off workers filing claims for unemployment benefits fell to the lowest level in seven weeks, an unexpected sign of improvement for the jobs market.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that new applications for unemployment benefits totaled 311,000 last week, a drop of 9,000 from the previous week. It marked the lowest level for jobless claims since July 28.

The decline came as a surprise for economists who had been forecasting a rise in claims of around 6,000.

Perhaps its because some people, like me, have no idea how to apply for unemployment or welfare benefits. Or perhaps its because businesses, like the one I used to work for, threaten to take people to court to fight the unemployment claims and argue that the claimees weren't doing their jobs and failed to meet benchmarks. It didn't matter how hard someone worked, they still were lazy bums when it came to unemployment court fights.

Fanatical Islam is a Result of Defamation of Islam?

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a report to the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) written by U.N. Special Rapporteur Doudou Diene, who recommended that the international human rights covenants be “reinterpreted and amended” to deal with Islamophobia.

According to Diene, the "defamation" of Islam generates dangerous Islamophobia, which leads to the repression of Muslim rights and in turn drives Muslims to extremism.

He believes that Islamophobia should be defined as ”a baseless hostility and fear vis-avis Islam, and as a result a fear of and aversion towards all Muslims or the majority of them ….”

I guess the fact that its founder was rejected by Mecca and then surrounded himself with a hoard of men and robbed and killed people along the caravan trail to Mecca has nothing to do with the ease that Muslim fanatics have at killing people.

Or that once he had starved Mecca economically and they surrendered to him, he established his rule there and then began to spread Islam out with the sword to other areas doesn't have anything to do with it either.

Languages disappearing

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While there are an estimated 7,000 languages spoken around the world today, one of them dies out about every two weeks, according to linguistic experts struggling to save at least some of them.

Losing languages means losing knowledge, says K. David Harrison, an assistant professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College.

"When we lose a language, we lose centuries of human thinking about time, seasons, sea creatures, reindeer, edible flowers, mathematics, landscapes, myths, music, the unknown and the everyday."

As many as half of the current languages have never been written down, he estimated.

That means, if the last speaker of many of these vanished tomorrow, the language would be lost because there is no dictionary, no literature, no text of any kind, he said.

If its never been written down then there isn't a whole lot that can be researched. And does anyone really think one speaker of the language knows all the myths, knowledge, ect... that was known in the that language?

No written records equals useless language.

Cleveland Browns: The Refs Cheating

Ok I just watched a few minutes of the Browns game since the Steelers are at half time. Let's see...

15 yard penalty
5 yard penalty
5 yard penalty (and this one was absolutely ridiculous. Illegal contact about 6 yards from the line of scrimmage and the flag was thrown after it was incomplete thirty yards downfield.)

Then I just got told there was a 97 return by the Browns called back as I wrote this.

This is blatant cheating. And obvious sign that the Browns are SUPPOSED to lose this game.

Update: I can't believe the Browns ended up winning that game. The referees must have been informed to call the game down the middle during half time. The way they were calling the game the short time I watched, there's no way the Browns could have won.

I wonder if the great Chad Johnson will continue to parade around in his fake HOF jacket still. I just must point out that a HOF receiver would have got out of bounce at the end of the half and he didn't so he should pack away his jacket and hope that the HOF voters overlook his stupid plays.

And the dog pound should have ripped his helmet off when he jumped into it and then passed his helmet up until it could be dumped outside.

A way to Improve the Pirates Broadcast

Fire Weiner!

Hire Doug Drabek. This has been one of the most enjoyable games in recent memory.

Now if the blasted satellite would come back on. I hate this rain.

Pirates new CEO is Frank Coonelly

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Chuck Greenberg, believed to be the only other candidate in the Pirates' search for a new president, today said he'd been told by chairman of the board Bob Nutting that he wouldn't get the job and that the Pirates "have selected Frank Coonelly."

Coonelly is Major League Baseball's chief labor counsel.

It's still unclear when the Pirates will make the official announcement about Coonelly.

Coonelly, 47, who began working for Major League Baseball in 1998, helps teams with salary arbitration cases and determines signing bonus slots for the amateur draft. He also is part of the negotiating team for collective bargaining agreements with the union and the umpires.

And then there's this little tidbit

A story in USA Today in April ranked Coonelly 12th on a list of the 50 most influential people in baseball.

Apparently he wanted to be somewhere in the 500s or so instead of 12th.

Peters Creek Church votes to leave PCUSA

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At a standing room only church service this morning, the congregation of Peters Creek Presbyterian Church voted 273-86 to be dismissed from the Presbyterian Church (USA) into the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.

Thats a 76% majority if my math is right. I think if it hadn't been 75% the church would have faced the administrative committee taking over the congregation. So that was a close vote.

Penguins hand deliver Season Tickets

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Hockey is far far down on the list of sports I like. But it would be pretty cool to open your door and find...

"I can't believe it's Sidney Crosby delivering my tickets!" Alice Kilgore blurted when she opened the front door of her Castle Shannon home.

I doubt there will ever be a Steeler hand delivering season tickets.

I'm tired of the Big Ten Network

Commercial after commercial crying because Comcast won't buckle and put them on regular cable. It is enough that I'm ready to campaign to ditch Directv just to give Comcast my support in their struggle not to inflict on everyone yet another useless channel that one person out of a hundred might want. I don't want it. I don't like college sports. And I am fed up with their constant whining about it.

Mattel to recall third batch of China made toys

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Part of me says serves them right for sending jobs overseas. Another part of me says serves them right for having no morals at all by using what amounts to slave labor. I just can't decide which one to condemn them more for.