flickering pictures

So the posting here has been a little slow for the last week or so — mainly because the rest of my life has been anything but. I’ve got reams of work to plow through and don’t even really have time to be posting right now, but this story was exactly the kind of […]

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Islamic literature is full of references to “jinn” — spirit beings, both good and evil, that can move objects, cause misfortune or even possess people. Tom A. Peter at the fledgling Global Post has put together an interesting (if slightly fluffy) piece on a Jordanian exorcist who runs a hopping business casting Regan MacNeil-type […]

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The Vatican has rejected yet another potential U.S. ambassador — Caroline Kennedy this time — because even though she’s Catholic, she isn’t anti-abortion. And as if to drive home the point, the Vatican chose Easter to express its outrage at Washington’s “calculated insult to the Holy See.”
Washington’s previous nominee, a former lawyer for Reagan […]

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The always fascinating Cool Things in Random Places hosts an article on the Karni Mata Temple in Rajastan, India, based in turn on a feature in National Geographic. Devotees flock from all over to worship and feed the temple’s 20,000 rats, paying their respects to Mother Karni, a 15th-century mystic.
From the official Karni Mata […]

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Knowing that this story combines three of my favourite things — beer, Eastern philosophy and neat-o whatnot — a buddy of mine sent me some info about this most postworthy endeavour.

Lloyd Alter at Treehugger reports:

Fifty years ago the Heineken Beer company looked at reshaping its beer bottle to be useful as a building block. It […]

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After more than a year, a Nebraska state senator’s lawsuit against God has finally worked its way through the courts and been dismissed — not because it’s silly, but because the legal paperwork omitted the defendant’s home address, in violation of state law.
From CNN:

State Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha sued God [last year], seeking a […]

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Titled “Feel the Force: How to Train in the Jedi Way,” the one-day non-credit £23 course will take place in November at Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland and aims to teach “communication skills and personal development.”
From the university’s press release:

“Feel the Force: How to Train in the Jedi Way, teaches the real-life psychological techniques […]

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In the winter of 1914, German and British soldiers spent Christmas Eve in the trenches, wading through mud, supplies and the corpses of their fallen friends. Their main activity was dodging the bullets from the enemy bunkers that were sometimes just 60 yards away.
To raise their sinking morale, both armies’ governments sent their troops […]

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A profile of a Phra Kru Ba Neua Chai, a monk who rides his horse around the Thai-Myanmar countryside fighting drugs. The former law student also happens to be a professional muay thai boxer covered in tattoos, who lost just three fights in his 15-year career. From Malaysia’s Star:

At 29, he told his […]

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Saddened by both rioting Tibetans and the resulting Chinese crackdown, the Dalai Lama has threatened to “resign” as Tibet’s political leader if his followers don’t abandon violence as an avenue of protest.
From the BBC:

“If they choose violence as the means to achieve their political ends then the Dalai Lama cannot lead that movement,” says secretary […]

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