Paul McCartney broadcast 2 songs live into space on November 12th to wake Astronauts who were finishing up 44 consecutive days above the earth. This was the first time this had ever been done. The performance featured ”Good Day Sunshine,” an old Beatles standard and ”Time for Tea,” from his most recent album.
On November 19th, 1969 a second Apollo mission landed a manned spacecraft on the moon’s surface. The BBC offers a commemorative article about the mission. Click Here
The Global Language Monitor has issued its 2005 list of politically incorrect phrases. They are:
The Top Politically inCorrect Words and Phrases for 2005:
1. Misguided Criminals for Terrorist: The BBC attempts to strip away all emotion by using what it considers neutral descriptions when describing those who carried out the bombings in the London Tubes. The rub: the professed intent of these misguided criminals was to kill, without warning, as many innocents as possible (which is the common definition for the term, terrorist).
2. Intrinsic Aptitude (or lack thereof) was a suggestion by Lawrence Summers, the president of Harvard, on why women might be underrepresented in engineering and science. He was nearly fired for his speculation.
3. Thought Shower or Word Shower substituting for brainstorm so as not to offend those with brain disorders such as epilepsy.
4. Scum or ”la racaille” for French citizens of Moslem and North African descent inhabiting the projects ringing French Cities. France’s Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, used this most Politically inCorrect (and reprehensible) label to describe the young rioters (and by extension all the inhabitants of the Cites).
5. Out of the Mainstream when used to describe the ideology of any political opponent: At one time slavery was in the mainstream, thinking the sun orbited the earth was in the mainstream, having your blood sucked out by leeches was in the mainstream. What’s so great about being in the mainstream?
6. Deferred Success as a euphemism for the word fail. The Professional Association of Teachers in the UK considered a proposal to replace any notion of failure with deferred success in order to bolster students self-esteem.
7. Womyn for Women to distance the word from man. This in spite of the fact that the term man in the original Indo-European is gender neutral (as have been its successors for some 5,000 years).
8. C.E. for A.D.: Is the current year A.D. 2005 or 2005 C.E.? There is a movement to strip A.D. (Latin for Year of our Lord) from the year designation used in the West since the 5th century and replace it with the supposedly more neutral Common Era (though the zero reference year for the beginning of the Common Era remains the year of Christs birth).
9. ”God Rest Ye Merry Persons” for ”God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”: A Christmas, eh, Holiday, carol with 500 years of history is not enough to sway the Anglican Church at Cardiff Cathedral (Wales) from changing the original lyrics.
10. Banning the word Mate: the Department of Parliamentary Services in Canberra issued a general warning to its security staff banning the use of the word ’mate’ in any dealings they might have with both members of the Parliament and the public. What next? banning Down Under so as not to offend those living in the Up Over.
Holiday Bonus: Happy Holidays or Season’s Greetings for Christmas (which in some UK schools now label Wintervale. (In the word X-Mas, the Greek letter ’Chi’ represented by the Roman X actually stands for the first two letters of the name Christ.)
Last year the Top Politically Incorrect words were: Los Angeles Countys insistence of covering over with labels any computer networking protocols that mention master/slave jargon. Following closely were non-same sex marriage for marriage, and waitron for waiter or waitress.
The BBC tracked down Clem Curtis, singer for the 70’s group, The Foundations, creators of the singular hit, ”Build Me Up Buttercup.” Curtis laments his subsequent obscurity saying, ”I’m very disappointed that people like me who have had No.1 don’t get the recognition that they should do. What excites me is when you go to a show and see mothers and grandmothers… ”
Did you know that Americans spent $245.2 million on online dating in the first half of 2005?
Read about a lawsuit against Match.Com alleging that the company has manipulated the online dating experience in order to keep its members hooked.
The Vancouver Sun reports today that an avian flu, infected duck was found on a domestic water fowl farm in Chilliwack BC, Canada. Chilliwack, British Columbia is located about sixty miles East of Vancouver.
For the feature article click here.
Officials were quick to insist that the infected duck poses no public health risk. Considering the roaming distance of ducks I’m not so sure. All farms within a 5 km radius will be investigated. The farm’s owner lost 140,000 of the birds to a strain of the disease in 2004. Public Health Officials have yet to determine the viral strain the bird was infected with.
In a separate article, Ken Faulk, the ownder of the farm says that he will kill all of the birds if that is what it takes to halt the spread of the Avian flu as over 17,000,000 birds were destroyed across the Fraser Valley in 2004. I guess it’s a matter of penny wise vs pound foolish!
I attended Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary between 1988 and 1990. Adrian Rogers spoke at our school. I admired the man then and have appreciated his ministry over the years. News of his passing was widely carried by both church and secular presses alike today. The Wall Street Journal carried the AP article:
”MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The Rev. Adrian Rogers, a three-time president of the Southern Baptist Convention and leader of a conservative takeover of the faith, died early Tuesday in Memphis. He was 74 years of age.
His death was announced by Baptist Press News and by Rev. Rogers’s Love Worth Finding ministry. Officials of the Nashville-based Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee didn’t immediately return calls seeking comment.
Rev. Rogers was hospitalized earlier this month with pneumonia and cancer, his ministry’s Web site said.
Rev. Rogers was elected president in 1979 as part of the conservative takeover of the convention, the nation’s largest Protestant church. His election turned out to a be a watershed moment for the denomination, and the 16-million-member group shifted dramatically to the right politically and theologically. In the years that followed, conservative leaders pushed hard against abortion rights, homosexuality and women pastors.
Rev. Rogers also was elected president of the SBC in 1986 and 1987. He was pastor of the 28,000-member Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis for 32 years, retiring this past March.
”There’s no one in this country I respect more than Adrian Rogers,” Focus on the Family’s James Dobson said on Rogers’s last day as pastor. ”You draw me to Christ. When I’m with you, I feel closer to the Lord.”
Among those who attended Rev. Rogers’s final sermon were Sen. Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.) and Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (D., Tenn.).
During his career, Rev. Rogers conducted religious crusades in Taiwan, South Korea, Israel, Russia, Romania, and in Central and South America.
In 2003 he was inducted into the Hall of Fame by the National Religious Broadcasters.”
Copyright � 2005 Associated Press
Christianity Today offers a more comprehenesive article. You can access it here…
James Draper offers a moving eulogy, also at Baptist Press — Click Here
The United Church of Canada is Canada’s largest, protestant denomination. On November 4th the CBC carried a story about how ”A group of clergy members and their spouses has spent the last year trying to sign up at least 60 per cent of all United Church ministers in the province of Ontario.” The goal was for Ontario’s United Church ministers to join together in collective bargaining under the auspices of the Canadian Autoworkers Union.
If they vote to sign on with the Autoworkers what will they call their union?
The United Church of Canada is Canada’s largest, protestant denomination. On November 4th the CBC carried a story about how ”A group of clergy members and their spouses has spent the last year trying to sign up at least 60 per cent of all United Church ministers in the province of Ontario.” The goal was for Ontario’s United Church ministers to join together in collective bargaining under the auspices of the Canadian Autoworkers Union.
If they vote to sign on with the Autoworkers what will they call their union?
Genes or lifestyle? Nature or nurture? How likely is it that you’ll get sick? It’s becoming clear that the answer lies in a minute portion of human DNA–the .1% that makes you different from me.
Catherine Arnst writes in a recent Business Week article, ”On Oct. 27 the three-year old International HapMap Consortium published a comprehensive catalog of more than 1 million human genetic variations, grouped in blocks called haplotypes. The DNA sequences of any two individuals are 99.9% the same, but the range of variations in the remaining 0.1% is enormous. That 0.1% is responsible for a predisposition to asthma, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, schizophrenia, and many other ailments.”
Her article is entitled ”How Likely Are You To Get Sick?” Click on the title to read the story. Read about hap maps and the concerns of some ethicists.