I haven’t blogged about an issue in a long time, but the controversy over The Golden Compass is really intriguing me. The religious right is up in arms over a fantasy film that they say promotes anti-religious thinking. But yet, when a fantasy film comes out that they say they can relate to…The Chronicles Of Narnia…they are all for it. We live in a free world…to an extent. Why should Christian-geared films (of which I personaly still don’t see how Narnia is) be embraced, while non-Christian films be boycotted? That only shows that The Golden Compass has a very good point…the religious right wants total control over everyone with no room for free-thinking of any kind. The fact that they are afraid that after seeing the movie, parents will buy the books for their kids shows that as well. Gods forbid, that our children actually pick up a book, read it, and enjoy it. Gods forbid, our children actually learn that there is more than one way to think and believe.
My family saw Narnia in the theaters and loved it…and we now own the DVD. My boys have no idea that film has Christian overtones…and neither did I until I read the articles about it at the time…and I even read the book when I was younger! I’m planning on taking them to see The Golden Compass, and I’m sure my boys will love it…and have no idea that it has “anti-religious” overtones to it. The way I see it, it is like any other movie out there…a fight between good and evil. And if it shows that an all-controlling government is “evil”, no matter what religious affilliation, then that’s alright with me…as I’m one who thinks that any all-controlling body is not a good one.
All in all, it looks like a great fantasy film and one I won’t hesitate to take my kids to.

There’s a new video game that’s been released recently…Left Behind: Eternal Forces. This game was apparently released about a month ago, but I just heard about it tonight while watching the news. The object? To convert as many people as you can to Christiainty. While that’s not so bad, as many Christains do that on a daily basis, what is bad is what the Christians in the game can do to the non-Christians they don’t convert…kill them with quite a bit of armed-force firepower!

Now the creator of the game states it’s a “pacifist” game, as you lose “spirit points” every time you kill someone. I’d really like to know what this guy’s definition of “pacifisim” is if he thinks blowing up a bunch of innocent non-Christians isn’t violent. And if you do happen to pull the trigger…well, that’s no biggie. You gain “spirit points” back simply by praying. Ah, the free life a Christian must lead…a life of no accountability. Kill someone? Who cares! All they gotta do is pray for forgivness and all is well…and they are free to kill again.

Is this really something we want our children to learn? That it’s ok to go out and convert the “Antichrist’s children” and kill them if they don’t succeed? That by simply praying on that murderous deed it makes everything ok? This game teaches intolerance of other beliefs at a level that no one (child or adult) should ever consider…convert or die. That campaign was used before in the past, though the battlefield was real, not digital. But does that make any difference? Should our children be brainwashed into thinking holy wars are a good thing, as long as we pray to the right person…in this case, Jesus? The obvious answer is a resounding NO. This game should be yanked off the shelves of any retailer that sells it. Problem is, it brings in money, and as our economy, not to mention our greed, thrives on the almighty dollar, the game will stay on the shelves for young minds to absorb.

Intolerence will be the death of the human race…and this video game is only helping in that death.

Link to article…read for yourself the controversy this game has wrought.

When has breastfeeding your baby become taboo? It is one of the most natural things in the world…and yet so many people in the U.S. protest it. I have two children of my own, and both were breastfed…my first until he was 8 months, my second until 18 months. I never had a problem nursing in public (or seeing others nurse in public) or watching tv programs where mothers nursed their children. But according to a recent poll, 57% of those polled are opposed to breastfeeding in public, while a whopping 72% are opposed to tv programs showing a mother nursing her baby. What is the U.S. coming to when women are so programmed that seeing a naked breast of a nursing mother finds them turning their head and blurting “gross”? What a sad state we are living, when it’s thought that formula is better than mother’s natural milk for baby. Women need to wake up and realize that we have breasts for the purpose of nursing a baby. Sexuality comes in second. So stop looking at it as gross, but as a mother giving her child the very best start in life…an all-natural diet made specifically for that baby.
Read Article - Breast isn’t best: readers tell US parenting magazine

Death to anyone who intensionally kills a child. That’s my opinion, anyway. The kidnappers in Italy who kidnapped a toddler and then killed him because he wouldn’t stop crying deserve nothing short of death themselves. It’s horrendous and sick that anyone could kill a child.

Here’s the news story:

Killing of Abducted Toddler Roils Italy
By FRANCES D’EMILIO, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 12 minutes ago

ROME - The killing of an abducted toddler — apparently because his alleged kidnappers thought he cried too much — left police officers in tears and drew horrified condemnation Sunday from Pope Benedict XVI and Italy’s president.

Late Saturday, state television reported that authorities, guided by one of the alleged kidnappers, found the body of 17-month-old Tommaso Onofri buried near a stream close to his home outside Parma in northern Italy.

Nicola Vitale, head of Parma police special operations team, told The Associated Press that the two suspected kidnappers and a female companion of one of them were being interrogated about the March 2 abduction.

Vitale said police were inspecting the area where the body was found. No date had yet been set for a formal hearing, he said.

“I saw police officers cry,” Parma’s police chief, Vincenzo Stringone, told state radio on Sunday. “Until the end we had hoped that the child was alive.”

News reports said the kidnappers told authorities the boy was killed about a half-hour after he was kidnapped.

The reports said the kidnappers, with the child between them on the seat of a motorbike, fell over as they rushed from the boy’s house. When the toddler started crying, they tried to strangle him, then hit his head with a shovel until he went silent, newspapers quoted investigators as saying.

State radio said Sunday that the kidnappers, who had done remodeling on the family’s house, knew that the boy’s father was in charge of a local post office and hoped to demand about $1.2 million in ransom, presumably from funds from the post office, where many Italians have savings accounts.

Benedict told pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday: “We are all touched by the case of little Tommaso, barbarously killed.”

In a statement, President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi said the death had touched every Italian family.

“Since last night, when we learned the terrible news, my wife and I have felt a bone-chilling horror that took our breath away,” Ciampi said.

Hold onto your hats boys and girls…we’re going back to the days of back-alley abortions. South Dakota governor, Mike Rounds just signed an aborion ban into law. I am all for a child living to see the light of day…but a line has to be drawn…and Roe vs. Wade was it. To overthrow it spells disaster.

PIERRE, S.D. - Gov. Mike Rounds signed legislation Monday banning nearly all abortions in South Dakota, setting up a court fight aimed at challenging the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.

The bill would make it a crime for doctors to perform an abortion unless the procedure was necessary to save the woman’s life. It would make no exception for cases of rape or incest.

Planned Parenthood, which operates the state’s only abortion clinic, in Sioux Falls, has pledged to challenge the measure.

Rounds issued a written statement saying he expects the law will be tied up in court for years and will not take effect unless the U.S. Supreme Court upholds it.

“In the history of the world, the true test of a civilization is how well people treat the most vulnerable and most helpless in their society. The sponsors and supporters of this bill believe that abortion is wrong because unborn children are the most vulnerable and most helpless persons in our society. I agree with them,” Rounds said in the statement.

The governor declined all media requests for interviews Monday.

Read full article here.

It looks like the boys and I will be stuck up here in Susanville until next weekend. ‘J’ was supposed to come up this weekend to celebrate New Year’s with us and we were all going to go home tomorrow or Monday. Well, considering California is flooding due to a major storm, he can’t get up here. I-80 is closed for the next 2 days due to a massive landslide. All other ways up here are either closed becasue of landslides or snow. Many of California’s roadways and highways are closed because of flooding and landslides. Reading the local paper for my hometown, The Union, there is a lot of flooding happening there, too. ‘J’ had to take a detour of about an hour and half to get home from work this morning since the roads were either washed out or blocked by landslides.
Meanwhile, up here in Susanville, we’re getting a mixture of rain and snow. It rained all night and snowed this morning. There’s a little bit of snow on the ground, but because it’s been raining, it’s slushy. Don’t know if we’ll get anymore snow, but rain is predicted for most of this week. Since ‘J’ can’t make it up this weekend and he has to work all week, we’ll be here for an extra week…untile next weekend. But hey…we got plenty of “drinks” to keep us occupied at least for tonight.

This caught my eye on the Yahoo main page. I am actually studying the Celtic shamanistic and Druidic ways, so I thought it was kinda neat that I saw this.

(AFP/File/Emmanuel Pain)

LONDON (AFP) - Druids recreated an ancient ceremony at Britain’s largest mistletoe market to honor the festive plant, traditionally held over the heads of those in the mood for a cheeky Christmas kiss.

Devotees of the Celtic religion also revealed the little-known — and surprising — reasons why the festive sprig is just the job for those feeling both festive and frisky.

Out to rediscover the plant’s spiritual side, druids performed the blessing in England’s self-styled “Mistletoe Town”, Tenbury Wells, in Worcestershire, central England.

The druids believe mistletoe is special because it never touches the ground, and possesses symbolic fertility qualities.

Druid Stefan Allen, from the Mistletoe Foundation, revealed just what makes mistletoe so appropriate to smooch beneath.

“Traditionally mistletoe was considered to be the semen of the gods and of the forest, because the berries contain a liquid that looks like and has the texture of semen,” he said.

“This is the real reason we kiss under it at Christmas, this and because mistletoe blooms in the dark womb of wintertime.”

Huddled in a circle, the druids clasped bunches of mistletoe and performed a ritual asking for the plant to bring blessings to all the homes it was going to.

After the ceremony, an auction of mistletoe and its prickly Christmas bedfellow holly began at the town’s Old Cattle Market, with bunches predicted to fetch up to 100 pounds (147 euros, 173 dollars).

Mistletoe expert Jonathan Briggs said it was boom-time for his favourite plant while the outlook for holly was “sad”.

“This year is a very good year for mistletoe. We have got a large number of berries and they are very white,” he said.

“Conversely, holly is looking pretty sad, with not so many berries on it at all, but we have large quantities of mistletoe and it’s looking absolutely perfect.”

Mistletoe received a further seal of approval after members of Britain’s lower House of Commons proposed a motion backing the creation of an annual national Mistletoe Day, planned for December 1 each year.

Source - http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051206/lf_afp/afplifestylebritain_051206161534

Mother Nature tops Time person of the year list

By Ellen Wulfhorst
Mon Nov 14, 6:14 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Time magazine’s annual “Person of the Year” for 2005 may not be a person at all.

Mother Nature topped the unofficial list of nominees at a panel discussion held on Monday by the weekly magazine to debate who will grace the cover of the issue that hits newsstands on December 19.

Time does not prepare or publish a formal list of nominees; instead, its editors make the selection privately after reporting by the staff.

The choice is supposed to remain a secret until December 18, when it will be disclosed on the magazine’s Web site, but it does become a parlor game in America to ponder who fits the criteria as “the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or for ill, and embodied what was important about the year, for better or for worse.”

Mother Nature — encompassing natural disasters from the Asian tsunami to Hurricane Katrina and the Pakistan earthquake — evokes issues ranging from presidential politics to race to oil to infrastructure and leadership, said NBC news anchor Brian Williams, one of the panelists gathered to debate the annual selection.

“It has laid bare so many cracks and fissures in our system,” he said.

Other suggestions included so-called first responders to emergencies; Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, commander of military relief operations after Katrina; Jordanian-born Abu Musab al Zarqawi, leader of al Qaeda in Iraq; U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates for the money he has donated to fight malaria; Pope Benedict; and J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books.

The person of the year is not always a person. Time selected “The American Soldier” in 2003, the “Endangered Earth” in 1988 and “The 25 and Under Generation” in 1966.

The tradition grew out of an editorial embarrassment in 1927 when Time failed to put pilot Charles Lindbergh on its cover after his historic solo transatlantic flight. At the end of that year, the editors decided to make him man of the year to remedy the oversight, Time said.

Some selections have been notoriously unpopular with Time readers, such as Adolf Hitler in 1938, Joseph Stalin in 1939 and 1942 and Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979.

Time’s 2004 Person of the Year was U.S. President George W. Bush.

Source - http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051114/en_nm/media_time_dc

You know it’s Halloween-time when a body hanging from a tree in a busy neighborhood goes unreported for 3 hours. People thought the body of a 42 year old woman was a Halloween decoration or prank….little did they know it was a suicide.

FREDERICA, Del. - The apparent suicide of a woman found hanging from a tree went unreported for hours because passers-by thought the body was a Halloween decoration, authorities said.

The 42-year-old woman used rope to hang herself across the street from some homes on a moderately busy road late Tuesday or early Wednesday, state police said.

The body, suspended about 15 feet above the ground, could be easily seen from passing vehicles.

State police spokesman Cpl. Jeff Oldham and neighbors said people noticed the body at breakfast time Wednesday but dismissed it as a holiday prank. Authorities were called to the scene more than three hours later.

“They thought it was a Halloween decoration,” Fay Glanden, wife of Mayor William Glanden, told The (Wilmington) News Journal.

“It looked like something somebody would have rigged up,” she said.

Not long after hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the Gulf coast, hurricane Wilma looms off of the coast of Florida. Emergency officials are now evacuating parts of the Florida mainland and the Keys as well. Wilma has been dubbed the strongest hurricane on record. She went from a Catagory 1 to a 5 within a day and her pressure was at an all time low…882 millibars. She has since weakened a bit to a Catagory 4, but still poses quite a threat to Florida. Read the article here: Evacuations Begin As Wilma Nears Florida