Posts Tagged ‘Photography’

News & Submissions 7/26/2011

Tuesday, July 26th, 2011

Headlines:

Jacobs, Benefiel To Spend 40 Days Laying Spiritual “Seige” To Washington DC
Last week we posted a video John Benefiel, head of the Heartland Apostolic Reformation Network, explaining how he had gone to Washington, DC in order to exercise his “spiritual authority” to “divorce Baal” and rename the city “the District of Christ.” Read full story from rightwingwatch.com

Why Pagans Need Community Centers
In response to the Sacred Paths Center’s financial situation, opinions have been circulating that Pagans don’t need community centers.  I realized that we assume the reasons for community center projects are obvious.

In some of the conversations online, the feeling that we get is that some folks are looking at just what they need instead of the needs of other people and the whole of the Pagan community.  If your first response is that you don’t need X (be it a building or whatever) to practice your religion, so that X isn’t a valid reason for Pagans to have a center, ask yourself this…  Are there are a lot of other folks who would benefit from that function of the community center?  What would having X mean for the Pagan community.  Just think of all of the Pagans in just the DC region.  What about the regions with large numbers of Pagans? Think of all of the Pagan groups and all of the Pagan event organizers.  Just because you don’t feel that you’re in need of a community center doesn’t mean that the Pagan community wouldn’t greatly benefit from a community center. Read full story from openhearthfoundation.blogspot.com

Arts & Entertainment:

10 Creepy, Sexy Fairy Tales That Should Be Films
— If there’s one thing we learned this past week at Comic-Con, it’s that Hollywood is obsessed with fairy tales. They’re magical, they’ve got instant recognition… and they’re public domain. But Hollywood keeps hitting on the same five stories.

With all due respect to both Emma Watson and Guillermo del Toro, the absolute last thing we need is yet another take on Beauty and the Beast. We also don’t need a Sleeping Beauty or Snow White, and god forbid someone try again with Cinderella or Little Red Riding Hood. Rather than returning to the same well-worn stories, here are ten slightly lesser-known fairy stories worthy of Hermoine and the Hellboy director, as well as anyone else in Hollywood. Read full story from io9.com

News:

S.African ‘corpse’ wakes up, scares off morgue staff: report
A 50-year-old South African man thought to be dead woke up in a chilly morgue on Sunday and shouted to be let out, scaring off two attendants who thought he was a ghost, local media reported.

“His family thought he had died,” health spokesman Sizwe Kupelo told the Sapa news agency.

“The family called a private undertaker who took what they thought was a dead body to the morgue, but the man woke up inside the morgue on Sunday at 5:00 pm and screamed, demanding to be taken out of the cold place.”

This caused two mortuary attendants on duty to flee the building in the small town of Libode in the rural Eastern Cape as they thought it was a ghost. Read full story from yahoo.com

Saudi Arabia’s ‘Anti-Witchcraft Unit’ breaks another spell
The unit, established in 2009, is charged with apprehending sorcerers and reversing the detrimental effects of their spells in the Gulf country.

When the severed head of a wolf wrapped in women’s lingerie turned up near the city of Tabouk in northern Saudi Arabia this week, authorities knew they had another case of witchcraft on their hands, a capital offence in the ultra-conservative desert kingdom.

Agents of the country’s Anti-Witchcraft Unit were quickly dispatched and set about trying to break the spell that used the beast’s head. Read full story from jpost.com

Photography:

Photographers Capture Mysterious, Beautiful Patterns in Sand
One day these shells and rocks will be sand. See photos at wired.com

Religion:

Atheist group wants to stop World Trade Center cross
(CNN) — A group of atheists has filed a lawsuit to stop the display of the World Trade Center cross at a memorial of the 9/11 terror attacks.

The “government enshrinement of the cross was an impermissible mingling of church and state,” the American Atheists say in a press statement.

The group says it filed the lawsuit this week in state court in New York and posted a copy of the lawsuit on its website. Read full story from cnn.com

Anders Behring Breivik: Christian terrorist? Right-wing extremist? Madman?
When news broke about the bombing in Olso, many commentators assumed links with Islamic extremism. When reports came of the massacre on Utøya island, perpetrated by a “tall, blonde, Nordic, man,” speculation quieted down until Anders Behring Breivik was identified. News reports first described Breivik as a “Christian terrorist,” largely on the basis of his Facebook profile and his postings to Christian fundamentalist Web sites. After his manifesto became public, Breivik was characterized as a “right-wing extremist.” To most, the Christian terrorist/right-wing extremist distinction makes little real difference: Only a madman could engage in such wanton killing. REad full story from washingtonpost.com

Science:

The Science Behind Dreaming
For centuries people have pondered the meaning of dreams. Early civilizations thought of dreams as a medium between our earthly world and that of the gods. In fact, the Greeks and Romans were convinced that dreams had certain prophetic powers. While there has always been a great interest in the interpretation of human dreams, it wasn’t until the end of the nineteenth century that Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung put forth some of the most widely-known modern theories of dreaming. Freud’s theory centred around the notion of repressed longing — the idea that dreaming allows us to sort through unresolved, repressed wishes. Carl Jung (who studied under Freud) also believed that dreams had psychological importance, but proposed different theories about their meaning. Read full story from scientificamerican.com

“Spectacular” Double Meteor Shower This Week
A celestial traffic jam may be on tap this week as two meteor showers combine forces to put on a brilliant sky show.

One of the best shooting star events of the year is the annual August Perseid meteor shower. (See Perseids pictures.) However this year’s peak, on August 12, happens to coincide with a bright full moon—drastically cutting down the number of meteors visible to the naked eye.

Yet while the main event might be blocked out by the blinding moonlight, the opening act promises to be much better. Read full story from nationalgeographic.com

Where House Cats Roam: Researchers Compare the Mysterious Wanderings of Pet and Stray Felines
Anyone who has ever owned an outdoor cat knows that it tends to disappear for hours, sometimes days, at a time. Where do cats go when they are lurking out of sight? The question is of interest not just to pet owners but also to conservation scientists who study the impact of free-roaming cats on wildlife populations.  Scientists at the University of Illinois and the Illinois Natural History Survey recently attached radio transmitters to the adjustable collars of 18 pet and 24 feral cats in southeastern Champaign-Urbana and tracked the animals by truck and on foot for more than one year. Read full story from scientificamerican.com

Media:

Norway attacks show why you can’t blame the muslims
In the immediate aftermath of 1995’s Oklahoma City bombing, much of the news media rushed to suggest that a Muslim, or at least a Middle Eastern connection, was behind the attacks.

News reports on television and in print featured Middle East terrorism experts claiming the Oklahoma City attack echoed a World Trade Center bombing two years earlier and that it contained parallels to recent Mideast attacks.

The FBI picked up Ibrahim Ahmad, a Jordanian American, for questioning in an initial dragnet.

Does ‘Christian fundamentalist’ label fit Norway terror suspect? Read full story from cnn.com

Breivik Attorny Speaks Out (Source – CNN)

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Thanks for stopping by! Well wishes to you all, have a great day!

Lisa

News & Submissions 5/17/2011

Tuesday, May 17th, 2011

Arts & Entertainment:

Vodun: African Voodoo exhibition – picture preview
Vodun: African Voodoo is an exhibition of the amazing private collection of Voodoo art collated by African and tribal art expert Jacques Kerchache.

Kerchache, a key cultural adviser to Jacques Chirac, was instrumental in introducing African and tribal art to the Louvre in 2000.

The success of the Louvre’s new galleries led to Kerchache’s biggest achievement – the creation of the Musée du Quai Branly in 2006, France’s first major institution devoted to indigenous art, cultures and civilizations from Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas. Read full story from independent.co.uk

News:

Police watch as mob kills suspected witches
A couple accused of witchcraft was killed after the body of an eight-year-boy was discovered in a maize plantation Monday morning in Nyahera Village, Kisumu.

Residents were shocked when they found the partly mutilated body dumped in a maize plantation.

Although circumstances under which the child died were not immediately established, enraged villagers descended on the man and his wife, who they suspected of causing the boy’s death.

Residents stormed the home of the suspects where they argued with the man before killing him. They then turned on his wife. Read full story from standardmedia.co.ke

Scots site may hold the key to Arthurian mystery
IT is a mystery that has baffled generations of historians, but the secrets of King Arthur’s round table could finally be laid bare thanks to modern technology.

A circular earthen mound near Stirling Castle has been linked variously to the legendary king, to British aristocrats and to Roman invaders, but its origins remain shrouded in history.

Now, for the first time, a team of archaelogists from Glasgow University is preparing to use hi-tech scanners to survey the ground beneath it, providing a clear insight into the mound’s beginnings.

The structure, often referred to as the King’s Knot, has long fascinated national historians. Despite the mysteries it may contain, however, it has remained undisturbed for fear of damaging it. The new project, scheduled to run next week, will provide a full geophysical survey of the entire area.

Stirling Local History Society (SLHS) and Stirling Field and Archaeological Society have secured funding from Historic Scotland and Stirling City Heritage Trust for the operation. Read full story from heraldscotland.com

Syrian mass grave found near Deraa, residents say
Thirteen bodies have been retrieved from a mass grave in Deraa, the hub of Syria‘s protest movement, according to residents cited by rights organisations.

People from the southern city say hundreds are unaccounted for since a crackdown on protests began on 18 March and intensified when the army moved in on 25 April to try to quash unrest against Bashar al-Assad’s 11-year rule.

Radwan Ziadeh, the US-based head of the Damascus Centre for Human Rights, said so far seven bodies had been identified by residents. Read full story from guardian.co.uk

Photography:

Best Night-Sky Pictures of 2011 Named
Organized by astronomy-education projects The World at Night (TWAN) and Global Astronomy Month, the contest honors pictures that meet one of two criteria: “either to impress people on how important and amazing the starry sky is, or to impress people on how bad the problem of light pollution has become.” In total, ten winners were announced May 9 in either the “Beauty of the Night Sky” or “Against the Lights” category. Read full story from nationalgeographic.com

Religion:

Tens of thousands celebrate Buddha’s birthday at temple in southern Nepal
LUMBINI, Nepal — Tens of thousands of devotees chanted sutras and lit incense Tuesday at a temple in southwestern Nepal to celebrate the anniversary of Buddha’s birth.

Police said they expect up to 50,000 people to visit the forested Mayadevi temple, built where Buddha is believed to have been born 2,555 years ago.

Devotees chanted and offered fruits and flowers at the temple.

Buddha was born as Prince Sidhartha in Lumbini, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) southwest of Katmandu. Followers believe he left his family and kingdom and meditated in the jungles of Nepal and India before achieving enlightenment. Read full story from washingtonpost.com

Huckabee announcement puts evangelical votes up for grabs
(CNN) – With former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s announcement this weekend that he won’t seek the presidency, one of the largest voting blocs in the Republican Party is now officially up for grabs: evangelical Christians.

As a presidential candidate in 2008, Huckabee – a Baptist minister who focused on faith-related issues like opposition to abortion – rode evangelical support to victory in Iowa and seven other states during the primaries and caucuses. John McCain eventually won the GOP nomination.

With Huckabee on the sidelines, other Republican White House hopefuls will have a better chance of picking up evangelical votes, which accounted for more than half the GOP electorate in Iowa and South Carolina in 2008, according to polling. Read full story from cnn.com

Media:

New Vatican Sex Abuse Guidelines Don’t Require Reporting Abuse To Authorities (Source: YouTube – MOXNEWSd0tCOM)

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Feel free to leave comments regarding the articles posted.

If you’re interested in guest blogging or would like to submit an article or event, contact me at pagansworld.org@gmail.com.

Thanks for stopping by! Well wishes to you all and have a great day!

Lisa