T Mobile Flash Home for the Holidays
Thank you, Hayfa, this is glorious!
Thanksgiving and Christmas are some of the hardest times of the year for American expats to be away from home and family – so we gather together, create our overseas family, and celebrate. Some of our very best celebrations have been overseas, pot-lucking with friends from many nations.
Bridle the Tongue
From today’s reading in the Lectionary . . . hmmmmm . . . . do you think blogging counts?
James 1:26-27
26 If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. 27Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.
The Power of Kindness to Change Lives
This week AdventureMan and I have been blessed, greatly blessed. We have met some wonderful people and heard some amazing things. Two stories in particular have shaken the earth for me.
“How It Happened for Me”
The first story is about a friend we met from the newest country on earth, South Sudan. A group of us were sitting together when one woman turned to this man from the South Sudan and asked “How did you find Jesus?”
This was not a religious gathering, so it is an unusual question on a social evening. But this quiet, modest man responded “I will tell you. It is a long story. It starts when I was only five months, not a baby, five months in my mother’s womb.”
He told us of a life with no security. His parents and family fled to the forest, and were on the run continually most of his life – until recently. He told of a life trying to find safe places, sometimes being separated from his parents.
He told of a priest who, when he and his brothers and sisters were very young, taught them to say “God bless Mother and God bless Father and God bless my brothers and sisters and watch over us always.” He was kind to the children, and taught them that God loves them, that God is kind. He said they did not know who this God was, but he and his brothers and sisters said this prayer every night, to keep his family safe. He said they learned other simple prayers. There would be rare times when someone would teach them a letter, or some numbers, drawing in the sand, or the floor of the forest, simple, quick lessons.
“So I don’t know all the stories you do,” he said. “I don’t even know the bible very well, we never had educated priests, just simple men who taught us simple prayers. Only later did we become more educated.”
As we listened, we had huge lumps in our throats. I could hear Jesus’ voice saying that we must believe as little children, and this man had the pure simple faith of a child, a memory from his earliest years, as he prayed for his family to be safe in a world where life was continual chaos and a struggle to survive.
“When I understood about God,” he went on, “there wasn’t even a church or a pastor-man who could baptize me; I had to believe for many years before I could become a Christian.”
As a footnote, he told us that somehow, most of his village managed to survive, helping one another. His entire family made it through, his parents are still alive. The village children little by little gained education, becoming doctors, lawyers, professionals of all kinds. His village now has a church, a simple church, not always staffed, but a church. The war is ended. For him, the simplicity of peace is all he ever wanted.
We will never forget his, and his story. We have met an extraordinary human being.
Today, we went to a lunch, invited by a friend, to raise funds for public education. LOL, this is what I used to do; I worked for an education foundation and raised money for public education. I love this kind of thing. I knew just what to expect – lots of success stories, stellar achievements, and a gentle pitch.
Whoa! Wrong! Darling kids – check. Recognition of important guests – check. Gentle pitch – no way! They got right to business; you will see this form, please take your pens RIGHT NOW and fill it out and give what you can, education funds seem to get cut more every year and we are trying to do more with less and less. Give NOW. CHECK!
The final speaker was a local businessman and patron-of-just-about-everything, a man who also brought baseball to Pensacola. He talked about his own public education. He talked about his speech impediment, and his deafness, he talked about his short stature and his inability to sit still and concentrate. He talked about teachers who identified him and instead of treating him as an obstacle, made him believe they were glad to have him in their class. He talked about teachers who gave him special assignments, who taught him math by having him calculate baseball averages. He knew their names, these saints who kept him in school, no matter how discouraged he might be.
He graduated with a 1.9 grade point, and had no intention of going to college, but ended up astonishing everyone by doing well on the ACT test and having a guidance counselor who found him just exactly the right environment where he could flourish on the college level.
Important people usually enjoy telling you the great things they have done. This man focused on his disabilities, his humiliations and his weaknesses, and how the kindness of educators had pulled him out of a very dark place and set him on the road for the success he is today.
I am willing to bet that the education foundation gained a lot of donors today. We were caught by surprise. We can defend against the powerful and successful, but when the heart speaks from vulnerability and failure, our hearts respond. This man is a success, but he gives credit to those who looked at him with caring eyes, with caring hearts, who lifted him and helped him on his way to the incredible (wealthy) success he is today, with a flourishing business and innumerable local charities who are grateful for his support.
What a week! And it’s only Tuesday! I wonder what the rest of the week will bring?
Kuwait Celebrated Constitutional Jubilee with World Record Breaking Fireworks
Wooo Hooooo! And thank you, John Mueller, for forwarding this fabulous article. Holy smokes, it looks like double the number of viewers on the coast were in gridlock on the roads. For the original article, and to see a video of the fireworks live, go to Daily Mail:
Celebrating a golden jubilee Kuwait style: Gulf state spends £10million to put on the biggest firework display of all time
By PHIL VINTER
PUBLISHED: 21:12 EST, 10 November 2012 | UPDATED: 03:09 EST, 12 November 2012
For the paltry sum of just £10million Kuwait earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records last night as it celebrated the golden jubilee anniversary of its constitution in style by laying on the biggest fireworks display of all time.
A dazzling array of colours illuminated the skies above the country’s capital of Kuwait City as a staggering 77,282 fireworks were launched over the period of an hour.
A representative of Guinness World Records announced the achievement on Kuwait television at the end of the display which had been watched by tens of thousands of Kuwaitis and expatriates on the Arabian Gulf Road by the sea.
The visual presentation marked 50 years to the day since the late emir Sheikh Abdullah al-Salem al-Sabah announced that Kuwait had become the first Arab state in the Gulf to issue a constitution and have a parliament.
Before the festivities Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah pledged the government’s continuing commitment to democracy and made a plea for national unity as the wealthy Gulf state struggles with a political crisis.
Scroll down for video
Exploding fireworks illuminate the sky over Kuwait City, Kuwait, last night, during celebrations on the occasion of the 50th Constitution Day jubilee
The firework show which lasted for an hour was the largest of its kinds in the world and cost a reported £10million
A dazzling array of colours illuminated the skies above the country’s capital of Kuwait City as a staggering 77,282 fireworks were launched over the period of an hour
A representative of Guinness World Records announced that the display was the biggest of all time on Kuwait television at the end of the display which had been watched by tens of thousands of Kuwaitis and expatriates on the Arabian Gulf Road by the sea
In the past 50 years parliament has been dissolved on nine occasions, while some articles of the constitution itself were frozen twice to suspend parliament for a total of 11 years in the 1970s and 1980s.
Last night’s celebration came as the government and opposition are locked in one of the worst standoffs in the country’s history, with the opposition accusing the government of staging a coup against the constitution.
More than 150 people and 24 policemen suffered minor injuries during three massive demonstrations held by the opposition to protest against the amendment of the electoral law ordered by the emir last month.
The opposition claims the amendment is in breach of the constitution and allows the government to influence the outcome of parliamentary polls due on December 1. It insists that the emir must repeal the amendment.
The opposition is marking the constitution anniversary with a huge rally in Kuwait City on Sunday.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2231223/Celebrating-golden-jubilee-Kuwait-style-Gulf-state-spends-10million-biggest-firework-display-time.html#ixzz2C1ZtoiKL
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How Monsanto Tricked California Voters
What I love about this article is that although the proposition did not pass this time, journalists are writing about the lies and misrepresentations made, and the issue will come up again and again until it passes. Big money calls the tune in a lot of places, but idealists can be pesky and persistent, and in the long run, persistence can outplay big money.
As for me, I follow the great advice “shop the perimeter,” looking for the least processed food. We also have a wonderful store in Pensacola, Everman’s, where you can buy local and organic foods. It is a treasure.
Did Monsanto Trick California Voters?
Ocean Robbins
Author, speaker, http://www.foodrevolution.org
The “No on 37” campaign spent $46 million burying the state’s voters in an avalanche of misleading ads and outright falsehoods. Their efforts defeated the proposition, 53 percent to 47 percent.
But Monsanto and their peeps didn’t just spend $46 million promoting their opinion. They also lied and got away with it. Check out these examples:
1) They illegally included the FDA logo in a “No on 37” mailing to state residents, and made up a quote from the FDA, which the FDA refuted. The FDA did not and cannot express an opinion on ballot initiatives.
2) They used the Stanford logo in TV ads and mailers, when the University also did not take a stand on the issue. And they said that Henry I. Miller, their hired gun, is a professor at Stanford when in reality, he works for the Hoover Institution — which rents office space on the campus.
3) They paid a PR firm with expertise in fighting recycling legislation (on behalf of the soda pop industry) to generate a misleading “study” that was designed to show the proposition raising food prices by hundreds of dollars per state resident per year. This despite independent economic analysis concluding that it would not raise prices in any meaningful way, and that in Europe, mandated labeling was not linked to an increase in food prices. (Do you really believe the pesticide and junk food companies would spend $46 million trying to save you money?)
4) They said there have never been any documented ill-effects from GMO consumption. But many allege that 37 direct human deaths and 1,500 disabilities linked to a toxic batch of the supplement Tryptophanwere caused by a genetically engineered strain of bacteria used in production. And there are numerous reports of livestock that have died as a result of grazing on GMO cotton. There could be far more widespread ill-effects, but without labeling, it’s nearly impossible to find out conclusively.
5) They said Prop 37 was full of exemptions for special interests. But in reality, the exemptions were modeled after those adopted throughout the European Union and every other country that calls for labeling. For instance, livestock that are fed GMO grains don’t have to be labeled genetically engineered unless the animal, itself, is genetically engineered. That’s not a special interest exemption — it’s basic science.
What’s Next For The Food Movement?
In the last decade, the movement for healthy, sustainable food has been growing exponentially, with consumption of organic foods growing from $8 billion in 2000 to $31 billion in 2011. We’ve seen an equally dramatic rise in the number of farmer’s markets and CSAs. Still, it’s a big jump to move from 4 percent market share, to changing national food policy. Tobacco was found to be harmful to health in 1950, and it took nearly half a century to meaningfully change laws.
The food movement is growing fast, but as a political force, it’s still in its infancy. Big agribusiness still controls the purse strings in Congress, and runs the show at the FDA. At least for now.
An ABC News poll found that 93 percent of Americans want to know if their food is genetically engineered. Even after a narrow loss against a heavily financed and deeply entrenched food industry, the rapidly growing food movement may be just getting started.
“The arc of history is long,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told us, “but it bends towards justice.” As we’ve seen time and time again, when enough people demand it, eventually, change does come.
Ocean Robbins is founder and co-host (with best-selling author John Robbins) of the 60,000 member Food Revolution Network, an initiative to help you heal your body, and your world… with food.
The End of Days
My good friend was visiting, and was late the first day of our visit, arriving breathless, and with her arms full of flowers.
“I am so sorry! I am late!” she apologized, “but I could not find a single florist!”
The truth is that she could arrive empty armed and I would love her as much. She doesn’t need to bring me anything, just her coming to see me is enough. It was a wonderful visit, full of laughter and shared moments, time with family and friends.
Florist shops have almost disappeared in Pensacola, and I suspect elsewhere, as hard times continue. Fresh cut flowers are such a luxury, and one of the first things to go when people start cutting back. Times are getting better, but slowly. Flowers are still a luxury. There are a couple shops I know still open, but not many.
Today’s reading is from Revelations, about the end of times, and set my mind adrift about the identity of Babylon (there are many ideas about this) and about God’s time. We may be in the end of times, I muse, but we don’t even know it because God’s time is so different from our earthly time. An instant can be a couple thousand years – we don’t know.
The author of Revelation uses symbolic language and can be a sort of Rohrshach test which tells more about the interpreter than the text interpreted.
Revelation 18:1-14
18After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority; and the earth was made bright with his splendour.2He called out with a mighty voice,
‘Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great!
It has become a dwelling-place of demons,
a haunt of every foul spirit,
a haunt of every foul bird,
a haunt of every foul and hateful beast.*
3 For all the nations have drunk*
of the wine of the wrath of her fornication,
and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her,
and the merchants of the earth have grown rich from the power* of her luxury.’
4 Then I heard another voice from heaven saying,
‘Come out of her, my people,
so that you do not take part in her sins,
and so that you do not share in her plagues;
5 for her sins are heaped high as heaven,
and God has remembered her iniquities.
6 Render to her as she herself has rendered,
and repay her double for her deeds;
mix a double draught for her in the cup she mixed.
7 As she glorified herself and lived luxuriously,
so give her a like measure of torment and grief.
Since in her heart she says,
“I rule as a queen;
I am no widow,
and I will never see grief”,
8 therefore her plagues will come in a single day—
pestilence and mourning and famine—
and she will be burned with fire;
for mighty is the Lord God who judges her.’
9 And the kings of the earth, who committed fornication and lived in luxury with her, will weep and wail over her when they see the smoke of her burning; 10they will stand far off, in fear of her torment, and say,
‘Alas, alas, the great city,
Babylon, the mighty city!
For in one hour your judgement has come.’
11 And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn for her, since no one buys their cargo any more, 12cargo of gold, silver, jewels and pearls, fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet, all kinds of scented wood, all articles of ivory, all articles of costly wood, bronze, iron, and marble, 13cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, olive oil, choice flour and wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots, slaves—and human lives.*
14 ‘The fruit for which your soul longed
has gone from you,
and all your dainties and your splendour
are lost to you,
never to be found again!’
Drunk Nate Silver
My favorite statistitian is parodied on Twitter #Drunk Nate Silver. Don’t worry Nate, they’re just jealous 🙂 :
Twitter commandeered by ‘Drunk Nate Silver’
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This story started on
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By Dorrine Mendoza, CNN
updated 5:36 PM EST, Thu November 8, 2012 | Filed under: Social Media
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CNN iReport
- Poll-cruncher Nate SIlver has inspired a parody hashtag on Twitter
- Silver correctly predicted who would win all 50 states in Tuesday’s presidential election
(CNN) — You may not have heard of Nate Silver. But the statistician, who crunches political polls for The New York Times, is having a moment.
Silver has received a flood of acclaim since his blog,FiveThirtyEight.com, correctly predicted who would win all 50 states in Tuesday’s presidential election, even as pundits were saying the race was “too close to call.”
Named one of the 100 Most Influential People by Time magazine in 2009, Silver first gained fame for developing a statistical system for forecasting the performance of pro baseball players.
He’s really good at math. And predicting things.
Now the jokesters of Twitter are paying homage with a #DrunkNateSilver hashtag that re-imagines him as a belligerent, know-it-all prognosticator.
Here are some of our favorites:
If you cannot see the Storify below, click here.
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Drunk Nate Silver stumbles through traffic on the Jersey Turnpike, screaming out what time each driver will get home. #DrunkNateSilver
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#DrunkNateSilver goes to Africa, finds the butterfly, asks it not to flap its wings, prevents the hurricane. -
#DrunkNateSilver knows the actual probability of Taylor Swift ever, ever getting back together. -
@thisisdannyg Drunk Nate Silver knows why the caged bird sings. #DrunkNateSilver -
Drunk Nate Silver knows what you did next summer.#DrunkNateSilver -
When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, he discovered 3 missed calls from me.#DrunkNateSilver -
#DrunkNateSilver stopped a robbery with cluster analysis. -
Drunk Nate Silver shouting at jukebox blasting Biggie, “No! Mo money only correlates with a 42% chance of mo problems!” #drunknatesilver -
I knew Darth Vader was Luke’s father before he did.#drunknatesilver -
#DrunkNateSilver knows precisely how many boys your milkshake will bring to the yard (spoiler: not all of them) -
Drunk Nate Silver in the parking lot of Yankees stadium, spray painting the spots where next years’ home runs will land. #drunknatesilver -
#DrunkNateSilver launches his own economic recovery program: yells out next winning lottery numbers at area 7Eleven -
#DrunkNateSilver predicted I would type this. And this. -
Drunk Nate Silver knows when Ice Cube’s next good day will be. #DrunkNateSilver -
Drunk Nate Silver only reads his Choose Your Own Adventure book one time. The correct way.#drunknatesilver -
#DrunkNateSilver already knows how much employee time was wasted today with #DrunkNateSilver tweets -
Drunk Nate Silver gets home 30 seconds before the Comcast installer shows up #drunknatesilver
Woman’s Fertility Predicted by Mom’s Age at Menopause
From today’s BBC News:
Fertility ‘predicted by mother’s age at menopause’
Women whose mothers had an early menopause had far fewer eggs in their ovaries than those whose mothers had a later menopause, a Danish team found.
Women with fewer viable eggs have fewer chances to conceive.
The study, of 527 women aged between 20 and 40, was reported in the journal Human Reproduction.
Ovarian reserveResearchers looked at two accepted methods to assess how many eggs the women had – known as their “ovarian reserve” – levels of anti-Mullerian hormone (AMH) and antral follicle count (AFC).
Currently there is no test that can accurately predict fertility” Dr Valentine , Fertility Society
Women are born with all the eggs they will ever have. These are released from the ovary cyclically, usually one every month after puberty, until menopause.
The AFC and AMH give readings doctors an idea of how many yet-to-be released eggs remain in the ovary.
In the study of female healthcare workers, the researchers found both AMH and AFC declined faster in women whose mothers had an early menopause (before the age of 45) compared to women whose mothers had a late menopause (after the age of 55).
Average AMH levels declined by 8.6%, 6.8% and 4.2% a year in the groups of women with mothers who had early, normal or late menopauses, respectively.
A similar pattern was seen for AFC, with annual declines of 5.8%, 4.7% and 3.2% in the same groups, respectively.
Start youngPast research suggests there is about 20 years between a woman’s fertility starting to decline and the onset of menopause. So a woman who enters the menopause at 45 may have experienced a decline in her fertility at the age of 25.
Lead researcher Dr Janne Bentzen said: “Our findings support the idea that the ovarian reserve is influenced by hereditary factors. However, long-term follow-up studies are required.”
Also, having fewer eggs does not necessarily mean that the woman will go on to have fewer babies.
Dr Valentine Akande, a consultant gynaecologist and spokesman for the British Fertility Society, said the findings were helpful, but that women should not be overly concerned if their mother did have an early menopause.
“There is a huge amount of variation among women. Some will have more eggs and some will have less.
“Whilst it is assumed that lower egg number is associated with more challenges at getting pregnant this study did not look at that.
“Currently there is no test that can accurately predict fertility.
“The advice remains the same – the younger you start trying for a baby the more likely you are to be successful.”
He said, in general, women are most fertile between the ages of 18 and 31.
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