Our Faddah

I couldn't say it better myself...

The Nativity Story (told in the digital age)

This is one of the most imaginative Christmas videos that I've seen in a long time... ENJOY!

Bible - Misconceptions

A Yale University course on the Hebrew Bible presented by Professor Christine Hayes, Professor of Religious Studies in Classical Judaica. Before joining the Yale faculty in 1996, she was Assistant Professor of Hebrew Studies in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University for three years. A specialist in talmudic-midrashic studies, Hayes offers undergraduate courses on the literature and history of the biblical and talmudic periods (including Introduction to the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible and Introduction to Judaism). The course's complete playlist is at
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=C47C268DDAF2B5AC


A Course on Hebrew Bible, Part 4: Bible - Misconceptions

Head-bangin' Capuchin friar...

Even Spud liked this one:

We like being Catholic

Promo from the Illinois Catholic Prayer breakfast group last month... don't know why I hadn't seen this until now: YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y97tyVWL214

SIMPLY CATHOLIC

All I can say to that....

From Mark Rubio's speech:
" And yet there have always have been those who haven't seen it this way. There have always been those that don't recognize this. They think that we need a guardian class in American government to protect us from ourselves. They think that the free-enterprise system is unfair, that a few people make a lot of money, and the rest of us get left behind. They believe that the only way business can make its money is by exploiting its workers and its customers. And they think that America's enemies exist because of something America did to earn their enmity."

more obstructionism...

Has anyone else had enough of this?

I've been complaining about this for two years:

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Stop GOP Obstructionists: Bi-Partisanship Starts At Home

I watched C-Span a lot over the summer, and the hypocrisy of the GOP's actions really started to get to me. My impression was that they were deliberately throwing monkey wrenches into the legislative process in order to condemn the failure of the legislative process. Were they breaking government by the people in order to keep it permanently broken?

Just out of curiosity, I went to the Thomas.gov archive for Congress. I researched how often the term "cloture on the motion" appeared in the record when the Dems were in the minority vs when the Reps were.

YEAR No. of times cloture invoked
2000 32
2001 26
2002 20
2003 20
2004 67
2005 20

LOOK AT THIS!
2006 86 <---start of the Democratic majority
2007 124
2008 138 <--as of 8/28/08

Sure enough, the GOP's abuse of the government was atrocious. We should all give a sigh of relief if the Dems can achieve a filibuster-proof majority.

Posted by CFinNaples at 6:20 AM

A Most Peculiar Man (P. Simon 1965)

I've been thinking quite a lot about those who live without eschatological hope, which reminded me of this old Paul Simon song:

mp3:

Simon & Garfunkel - a most peculiar man (live) download

found at bomb-mp3 search engine

He was a most peculiar man.
That's what Mrs. Riordan said and she should know;
She lived upstairs from him
She said he was a most peculiar man.

He was a most peculiar man.
He lived all alone within a house,
Within a room, within himself,
A most peculiar man.

He had no friends, he seldom spoke
And no one in turn ever spoke to him,
'Cause he wasn't friendly and he didn't care
And he wasn't like them.
Oh, no! he was a most peculiar man.

He died last Saturday.
He turned on the gas and he went to sleep
With the windows closed so he'd never wake up
To his silent world and his tiny room;
And Mrs. Riordan says he has a brother somewhere
Who should be notified soon.
And all the people said, "What a shame that he's dead,
But wasn't he a most peculiar man?"

Five Minute University: the playlist

5 videos from the classic "Father Guido Sarducci" (aka Don Novello)

Dust in the wind - cries from the Ukraine

This day started out in a sad way for me. I've been following the riots in the Malay peninsula, where young Muslims are destroying and vandalizing Christian Churches as a result of a lawsuit denying government claims for 'Allah' as exclusively the name of God in Islam. So, it was fitting that I read an email from my dear friend Lori in Honduras, with a memorial to all of those who suffer when society turns to violence and/or war. Thank you, dear friend! We all need to remember, to cry, and to pray...

=========

This video shows the winner of " Ukraine’s Got Talent", Kseniya Simonova, 24, drawing a series of pictures on an illuminated sand table showing how ordinary people were affected by the German invasion during World War II.

Her talent, which admittedly is a strange one, is mesmeric to watch, the images, projected onto a large screen, moved many in the audience to tears and she won the top prize of about £75,000.

The Great Patriotic War, as it is called in Ukraine , resulted in one in four of the population being killed with eight to 11 million deaths out of a population of 42 million.

Kseniya Simonova says: I find it difficult enough to create art using paper and pencils or paintbrushes, but using sand is my way, the art, especially when the war is used as the subject matter, even brings some audience members to tears. And there’s surely no bigger compliment.

She begins by creating a scene showing a couple sitting holding hands on a bench under a starry sky, but then warplanes appear and the happy scene is obliterated.
It is replaced by a woman’s face crying, but then a baby arrives and the woman smiles again. Once again war returns and Miss Simonova throws the sand into chaos from which a young woman’s face appears. She quickly becomes an old widow, her face wrinkled and sad, before the image turns into a monument to an Unknown Soldier. This outdoor scene becomes framed by a window as if the viewer is looking out on the monument from within a house. In the final scene, a mother and child appear inside and a man standing outside, with his hands pressed against the glass, saying goodbye.