Saturday, December 24, 2011
@NoradSanta
Tweet from @NoradSanta
Friday, December 23, 2011
In-Flight Conversation Between the Two Crying Babies That Sat Behind You
-Wow, that was some nap.
-Tell me about it. It's almost like I was drugged or something. Hey ... what is this place?
-I'll look out the window. ... Oh my God. I think we have a situation.
-What is it? Are we at the doctor's office?
-No. We're in the sky.
-What?
-We're just, like, flying through the sky.
-Do Mom and Dad know?
-Clearly not. They're just reading like everything's normal. (Looking around) Everybody's reading.
-How do we warn them?
-With screams.
-Which kind? Soft and whiny or piercing and crazy?
-Let's go with piercing and crazy.
Link
Previously on Neatorama: A Real Life Airplane Seating Chart | Read more kids and baby stuff over at NeatoBambino
http://www.neatorama.com/2011/12/23/in-flight-conversation-between-the-two-crying-babies-that-sat-behind-you/
For those who need prayers right now...
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
100-year-old Letter to Santa Found in Chimney
On Christmas Eve 1911, a brother and sister, who signed their names, "A or H Howard", penned their personally designed letter to Santa with their requests for gifts and a good luck message at their home in Oaklands Terrace, Terenure (or Terurnure, as the children spelled it) in Dublin.
They placed it in the chimney of the fireplace in the front bedroom so that Santa would see it as he made his way into the Howard household in the early hours of the morning.
A check of the 1911 census lead Byrne to believe the children were 10-year-old Hannah Howard and her seven-year-old brother Fred, who lived at the address with their parents and older sister. Link -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Eric Luke)
http://www.neatorama.com/2011/12/21/100-year-old-letter-to-santa-found-in-chimney/
Helen Keller
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Santa’s Voicemail Is Now Taking Calls, Courtesy Of Google [News]
Jane
----
Yes, modern technology is responsible for some annoying holiday habits, such as texting at the table (even Mom is doing it now!) Yet it also offers some additional ways to share in holiday cheer – such as personalized calls to and from Santa.
He has a call center and if you'd like to give him a shout, you can do so by ringing 855-34-SANTA. Business keeps him from taking calls, but you can leave him a message. It's the perfect bit of holiday fantasy for those with children.
If you'd like Santa to respond, you can even create a custom phone call from Santa that can be sent to, well, anyone. There's a lot of custom options to choose from, and Santa should even be able to say the recipient's name, as long as it's a somewhat common name. Voice quality from the call is good enough to fool young children and amuse adults, so this is the perfect way to ramp up excitement for a big holiday gift.
Both the voicemail and the Santa call creation tool is provided by Google and offered free of charge to US and Canadian users. Google is hinting that Santa is conjuring up "an extra special way to spread the holiday cheer" – but they aren't unveiling what it is until we're closer to the 25th.
Source: The Official Google Blog
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Makeuseof/~3/INiUP5P7x0Y/
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Postal Service hosting public meeting on possible closure
aboessenkool@bakersfield.com (Antonie Boessenkool Californian Staff Writer) The Bakersfield Californian
Tue, 13 Dec 2011 17:48:29 PST
Bakersfield post office officials will hold a public meeting Dec. 28 to hear comments on the possible closure of the local mail sorting facility.
The U.S. Postal Service plans to close about 250 processing facilities to cut costs. The closures and a proposed change in first-class mail delivery standards from one day to two or three are expected to save $2.1 billion a year. One of the facilities under review is the Bakersfield Processing and Distribution Center on Pegasus Drive.
The meeting will be from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 28, at the North of the River Veterans Hall, 400 Norris Road in Oildale.
An Area Mail Processing study will "determine capacity needs within the postal network in order to increase efficiency and improve productivity," according to a letter sent to major postal customers in the Bakersfield area.
It will establish whether consolidating mail processing in Bakersfield and Santa Clarita will be more efficient, according to the Postal Service's website.
Bakersfield postal service representatives will present the study results and ask for the public's response, said David Morrison, manager of processing and distribution for the Bakersfield facility.
The study won't involve a federal-level observer coming to Bakersfield, but rather will be done internally at the Bakersfield facility, Morrison said.
A private meeting is planned for this Friday to talk to "stakeholders" -- large postal service customers like mail presorting companies -- about the possible closure, Morrison said.
Dayna Nichols, CEO of Castle Print and Publication, said she has contacted city and county officials, nonprofit organizations and other mailing and printing companies encouraging people to participate in the meetings.
"Hopefully, we'll make a united stand and let the post office know how important the mail is to our businesses and community," Nichols said.
She said she and other big post office customers received notice in September that the Bakersfield facility was being considered for closure. But, she added, the opportunities to give formal input about the process have declined since a council of major postal customers in the Bakersfield area disbanded a few years ago.
Moreover, she said, there is short notice for the private meeting and timing of the public meeting just after Christmas make it difficult to organize people.
"We need to have the meeting," Nichols said. "To have four days to get the word out (for the private stakeholder meeting) is a little tough. There's a lot of people who this will affect."
Morrison said the meeting dates align with the timing of the study of the Bakersfield facility and that the time of year wasn't a factor in setting the dates.
The meeting dates closely follow the announcement from the U.S. Postal Service about the possible closures for a reason, he said.
"It (the meeting dates) is accelerated. We're losing a lot of money," he said. "For us to stay viable ... we've got to get going on this."
Morrison added that following the Dec. 28 meeting, the public will have 15 days to submit comments to the U.S. Postal Service about the Bakersfield facility's possible closing. Information on where to send those comments will be announced at the Dec. 28 meeting, he said.
Also being considered for closure are processing centers in Eureka, Long Beach, Pasadena, Redding, San Bernardino and Stockton. Closures have been approved for centers in Industry and Salinas and for mail originating from Stockton.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Fwd/Repost: Anabaptism / The third way of Christianity —Joe Kissell
Many of the divisions within Christianity arose because someone perceived a problem and, reasonably enough, tried to correct it. More often than not, attempts at reform resulted in still more violence and fragmentation. But a certain oft-neglected thread of church history also stands out as one of the bloodiest, quite ironically because those responsible for the movement were pacifists. The movement was known as Anabaptism, and it survives to this day as a form of Christianity that is neither Catholic nor Protestant—a third way.
The Protestant Reformation
The story begins in the early 1500s. The excesses and corruption of the Roman Catholic church had reached epic proportions. Immorality among priests and bishops was blatant and widespread, and the pope was selling indulgences to pay for construction of St. Peter's Basilica. Feeling that the church's mission had become one of greed, not of genuine spirituality, Martin Luther nailed his famous 95 theses to a church door in Wittenberg, Germany in 1517. Luther denounced the decadent state of the church and called for reform. He wanted to rid the church of practices that he felt were not supported by scripture—things like the authority of the pope, the veneration of Mary and the saints, the notion of purgatory, the celibate priesthood, and many others. Luther's complaints didn't make him any friends in Rome, but he did manage to attract quite a large following of people who wanted the Church to return to what they felt were its core values. This movement became known as the Protestant Reformation, because its followers were protesting the status quo of Catholicism.
At nearly the same time in Switzerland, another reformer named Ulrich Zwingli was making waves. Zwingli believed most of the same things as Luther, but wanted to take reforms even further. He wanted to dismantle the traditional church hierarchy and allow each congregation to choose its own leaders. Zwingli also insisted that communion was merely symbolic, whereas Luther kept to the notion of a "real presence" of Christ in the sacrament of bread and wine. Although Luther and Zwingli could not see eye to eye, they and their followers were after many of the same things, and were equally disliked by Rome.
Beyond the Reformers
Among Zwingli's followers in Zürich were Conrad Grebel and Felix Manz. Grebel and Manz agreed with the reforms proposed by Zwingli and Luther, but as they studied the Bible, they became convinced that neither set of reforms went far enough. What they wished for was a return to the simpler ways of the earliest first-century believers as depicted in the New Testament. The modern church had strayed far from this ideal, they felt, and needed much more than reform—it needed a complete rethinking of its basic tenets.
At the top of their list of gripes was the State Church. To be a citizen was to be a member of the church and subject to its rules. While the state government ultimately answered to Rome, it was also true that it could dictate locally what the church could and could not do. Grebel and Manz believed that church membership should be voluntary, and to this end proposed the shocking notion of the separation of church and state. The government, they felt, served one purpose and the church, another. To regard civil rulers as divine agents was asking for trouble, as history had shown all too often.
Grebel and Manz also held that the New Testament teaches pacifism, which ruled out believers participating in any sort of military service or condoning capital punishment. But the issue that caused the greatest stir was that of infant baptism. The Roman Church, in its state-sponsored mandate to assimilate all citizens, received newborns into church membership by way of mandatory baptism. Grebel and Manz, however, found no precedent for infant baptism in scripture. Instead, they argued, baptism was a symbolic act that should be undertaken voluntarily by adult believers as a sign of their faith. Since infants could not decide to believe, it was meaningless to baptize them. Accordingly, in 1525, Grebel took the daring step of rebaptizing an adult believer in his group, and others quickly followed.
Making a Splash
What's so daring about pouring water over someone? At that time, the church—which, recall, was inseparable from the state government—recognized two heresies worthy of death. One was denying the Trinity, and the other was baptizing someone a second time. The reason the church took this so seriously is that baptism symbolized control. To be baptized into the church implied obedience to the church; to accept another form of baptism was tantamount to treason. Grebel, Manz, and their followers were soon labeled "Anabaptists"—a Greek word meaning "rebaptizers." This was no mere description, either, but a cruel epithet, spoken with venom and scorn. It had the psychological import of calling someone a "terrorist" today. True or not, it could get you in very deep trouble. The early Anabaptists themselves did not use that term, not only because it was dangerous but because they disputed its accuracy. If an infant was baptized, they reasoned, that was not a true baptism because it was not by choice; so baptizing that person as an adult was not really rebaptism at all.
The Anabaptists were considered the worst kinds of heretics—not only by the Roman Catholic church, but also by the reformers, with whom they shared so many other beliefs. Both camps saw Anabaptists as a tremendous threat to their authority and control, and began to hunt them down and persecute them relentlessly. Unlike the reformers, Anabaptists rejected the use of violence or force, which, alas, made them easy prey. The classic 1660 Dutch book Martyrs Mirror details the lives and deaths of thousands of Anabaptists who were martyred for their beliefs in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
Spreading the Faith
Despite this persecution—and in some cases, because of it—Anabaptists multiplied and spread across Europe. In 1536, a Dutch Catholic priest named Menno Simons joined the Anabaptist movement and soon became one of its leaders. Within a decade, Dutch Anabaptists came to be known as "Mennists," which later evolved into "Mennonites." But Mennonites are not the only group to trace their origins back to the sixteenth century Anabaptists. Other offshoots of this movement developed into the Amish, Quakers, Brethren, Hutterites, and (of course) Baptists—among others.
Historically, although Anabaptists are neither Catholic nor Protestant, in a way they're hyperprotestant—they outreformed the reformers, and paid dearly for it. Adult baptism will no longer get you burned at the stake, and the doctrine of the separation of church and state, far from being heretical, is now accepted dogma in most western nations. But the Anabaptist ideals of a simple faith and a simple lifestyle are just as interesting today as they were in the 1500s—and the principle of nonviolence just as radical. Walk into a Mennonite church today and you may see a popular poster that reads: "A Modest Proposal for Peace: Let the Christians of the world agree that they will not kill each other." See what I mean? Utterly crazy. —Joe Kissell
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More Information about Anabaptism...
There are many histories of Christianity in general, and Anabaptism in particular, on the Web. Here are a few to get you started. The Church History Project is a good overview—start with The Dawn of the Reformation and work your way through to The Anabaptists and The Radicals. The Anabaptists.org Web site is a bit on the preachy side, but their section on history has a number of interesting articles.
The Third Way Café is run by Mennonite Media, representing Mennonite churches in the U.S. and Canada. The language tends toward the self-consciously PC, which obscures some of the harsh history, but the section Who Are the Mennonites? does have plenty of useful information.
The book Martyrs Mirror is available in its entirety online. You can also purchase the massive volume in hardcover, paperback, or leather. This is not exactly bedtime reading, mind you.
In 1971, a small publisher began printing a magazine called "The Wittenburg Door"—the misspelling stuck even after it was pointed out and became sort of an inside joke. This magazine, full of religious satire, was (as its name suggested) a call for reform through humor and parody. After many years ownership of the magazine changed hands and the title was shortened to "The Door," though it recently changed back. It's neither as funny nor as thought-provoking as it once was, but it still serves as a much-needed call for Christians not to take themselves too seriously—especially the ones with TV shows.
The poster "A Modest Proposal for Peace" is available for free in either of two sizes from Mennonite Central Committee.
First Mennonite Church of San Francisco is full of extremely interesting people.
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