Martyrs of the Lombards, Martyrs, (579)
St. Chad of Lichfield, Bishop, (672)
St. Charles the Good, Martyr, (1127)
John McCain, who I supported when he ran against George Bush, stated that American lives have been wasted in Iraq. He’s right, absolutely, dead, right.
Unfortunately, any gravitas he had back in-the-day is gone, and I no longer support him. He’s become a washed out shadow of what he was.
On the David Letterman show he said:
“[Americans] are very frustrated, and they have every right to be. We’ve wasted a lot of our most precious treasure, which is American lives, over there.”
…and, for a brief moment, the former John McCain was back.
I my estimation wasting is the burning and destruction of something precious for no purpose, or for a purpose of little value. We have wasted our nations youth and treasure on the adventures of a President and administration who are at best misguided, at worst deranged, and in actuality criminal.
Of course Mr. McCain has subsequently backpedaled because saying ‘wasted‘ is a sin (see: McCain says he misspoke in saying U.S. lives ‘wasted’ from CNN). Mr. Obama said the same thing and had his head handed to him as well.
We have to tout their sacrifice. That’s the only proper word. Sacrifice we feel so strongly about that we cut VA funding and place our permanently injured and handicapped sacrificial lambs in places like Walter Reed. To wit from Fox News: Top Army General Relieved of Command at Walter Reed Army Medical Center
WASHINGTON —” A top Army commander was relieved of his command at Walter Reed Army Medical Center on Thursday after senior officials said they lost trust and confidence in his leadership abilities to address injured soldier care at military medical facilities.
Army Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman leaves his post as two-star general of the North Atlantic Regional Medical Command and Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
In a brief announcement, the Army said service leaders had “lost trust and confidence” in Weightman’s leadership abilities “to address needed solutions for soldier outpatient care” at Walter Reed.
The change comes on the same day that an independent panel reviewing allegations of poor quality-of-life conditions at two military medical facilities treating soldiers injured in Iraq and Afghanistan plans to meet for the first time…
They are coming back severely handicapped, insane, or sick. We aren’t seeing it that much because those folks are all housed out of the public eye. When they do appear on the street, and they will be out, on the street, we’ll echo the words of Mrs. McGrath:
All foreign wars I do proclaim
Between Don John and the King of Spain
And by herrins I’ll make them rue the time
That they swept the legs from a child of mine.
The ending lyrics from Mrs. McGrath most recently performed by Bruce Springsteen in We Shall Overcome – The Seeger Sessions.
God help us.
Larry Baxter, a deacon, webminister, greeter, and backup drummer at Calvary Baptist Church in West Lafayette, IN. has a book review of The Blogging Church on his blog Step Up to the Call. Check it out Book Review – “The Blogging Church”.
He also has five other posts on blogging and ministry including 2 parts on Why Should a Christian Blog.
St. David of Wales, Bishop, (589)
St. Felix II, Bishop, (492)
St. Swithbert, Bishop, (713)
I’ve updated the Imieniny widget as follows:
- Added support for setting time offsets in the administrative interface.
- Added support for re-naming the widget title in the administrative interface.
- Cleaned up the code
Special thanks for the guidance from Kaf Oseo at guff szub. See WP plugin: My Widget – example WordPress widget.
The current version is alpha 0.3. The download is available from my Downloads page.
Saints Romanus and Lupicinius, Abbots, (460, 480)
St. Hilarus of Rome, Bishop, (468)
St. Oswald of Worcester, Bishop, (992)
As I mentioned in Blog updates, I had added a PHP script to my blog to list the current saints’ name day. I took that script and created a Word Press widget out of it.
As recommended by Automattic, I took their Google widget script, which is very well documented, and worked from there, adding Adam Brucki’s Imieniny PHP script to it.
I had already taken the script and updated it for UTF-8 compliance and tweaked the output.
I’ve now added a section to the script to adjust for server time differences. My server in on UTC so I had to adjust the time by -5 hours.
I am releasing the widget as an alpha 0.1 version. It works for me ‘as expected’ but there are no guarantees… It is being released as-is. If it breaks your stuff, delete the plug-in and move on.
Here are some of the things I’d like to do with it:
- Allow the end user to adjust the title
- Allow the end use to adjust the time differential
- Clean-up the code
For the most current download version please see my downloads page.
To install:
- Unpack
- FTP the imieniny.php file to your plug-ins directory
- Activate the plug-in
- Drag the Imieniny widget to the preferred locale on your sidebar (your theme must have widget support and Automattic’s Widgets must be installed.
Saints Julian, Cronin, and Besas, Martyrs, (250)
St. Thalelaeus, Hermit, (450)
St. Leander of Seville, Bishop, (596)
The hand of the Lord was upon me, and brought me forth in the spirit of the Lord: and set me down in the midst of a plain that was full of bones. And he led me about through them on every side: now they were very many upon the face of the plain, and they were exceeding dry. And he said to me: Son of man, dost thou think these bones shall live? And I answered: O Lord God, thou knowest. And he said to me: Prophesy concerning these bones; and say to them: Ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will send spirit into you, and you shall live.
“Spirit”… That is, soul, life, and breath.
And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to grow over you, and will cover you with skin: and I will give you spirit and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord. And I prophesied as he had commanded me: and as I prophesied there was a noise, and behold a commotion: and the bones came together, each one to its joint. And I saw, and behold the sinews, and the flesh came up upon them: and the skin was stretched out over them, but there was no spirit in them. And he said to me: Prophesy to the spirit, prophesy, O son of man, and say to the spirit: Thus saith the Lord God: Come, spirit, from the four winds, and blow upon these slain, and let them live again. And I prophesied as he had commanded me: and the spirit came into them, and they lived: and they stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.
And he said to me: Son of man: All these bones are the house of Israel: they say: Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost, and we are cut off. Therefore prophesy, and say to them: Thus saith the Lord God: Behold I will open your graves, and will bring you out of your sepulchres, O my people: and will bring you into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall have opened your sepulchres, and shall have brought you out of your graves, O my people: And shall have put my spirit in you, and you shall live, and I shall make you rest upon your own land: and you shall know that I the Lord have spoken, and done it, saith the Lord God:
In case you haven’t heard, James Cameron (director of “Titanic,” “Aliens,” and “The Terminator.”) has become a biblical scholar, archaeologist, and refuter of the Christian faith. He produced The Discovery Channel’s up-coming Lenten PR blast, “The Lost Tomb of Jesus.” The program argues that ten small caskets that were used to store bones, discovered in a suburb of Jerusalem in 1980, may have contained the bones of Jesus and his family.
The Discovery Channel’s paid researchers say the study of ancient DNA (yes, they actually have a cheek swab from Jesus, and I think they got a blood sample from the cross and/or the Shroud or Turin), the old-world language of Aramaic, archeology, and other evidence lends credible (public relations stunt) support to the fact that these remains belong to Jesus and his family, but also that Jesus and Mary Magdalene (also known as Mariamena) were married and had a child named Judah (all believed to be the remains found in the tomb).
A nay-sayer, an actual biblical scholar who was interviewed in the documentary, says the film’s hypothesis holds little weight, but Cameron says his evidence is based on sound statistics. Oh yes, add statistician to the list above, and maybe potential Nobel Prize winner.
Christian Newswire in Ten Reasons Why The Jesus Tomb Claim is Bogus states:
“Unfortunately, this is a story full of holes, conjectures and problems,” said Dr. Ben Witherington, author of What Have They Done With Jesus? and New Testament professor at Asbury Theological Seminary. “It will make good TV and involves a bad critical reading of history. Basically, this is old news with a new interpretation. We have known about this tomb since it was discovered in 1980. There are all sorts of reasons to see this as much ado about nothing much.”
Witherington and other leading biblical scholars and archaeologists say there are at least 10 reasons why the “Jesus Tomb” claim is completely bogus:
- There is no DNA evidence that this is the historical Jesus of Nazareth
- The statistical analysis is untrustworthy
- The name “Jesus” was a popular name in the first century, appearing in 98 other tombs and on 21 other ossuaries
- There is no historical evidence that Jesus was ever married or had a child
- The earliest followers of Jesus never called him “Jesus, son of Joseph”
- It is highly unlikely that Joseph, who died earlier in Galilee, was buried in Jerusalem, since the historical record connects him only to Nazareth or Bethlehem
- The Talipot tomb and ossuaries are such that they would have belonged to a rich family, which does not match the historical record for Jesus
- Fourth-century church historian Eusebius makes quite clear that the body of James, the brother of Jesus, was buried alone near the temple mount and that his tomb was visited in the early centuries, making very unlikely that the Talipot tomb was Jesus’ “family tomb”
- The two Mary ossuaries do not mention anyone from Migdal, but simply has the name Mary, one of the most common of all ancient Jewish female names
- By all ancient accounts, the tomb of Jesus was empty, making it highly unlikely that it was moved to another tomb, decayed for one year’s time, and then the bones put in an ossuary
“In light of all the incredible number of problems with the recent claim that Jesus’ grave has been found, the time-honored, multi-faceted evidence for the bodily resurrection of Jesus is more convincing than ever,” said Dr. Gary Habermas, an expert on the resurrection of Jesus and author of The Case for the Resurrection. “Even the early opponents of the Christian message acknowledged that Jesus’ tomb was empty. And the evidence for Jesus’ bodily resurrection appearances has never been refuted.”
As with the hoax over the bones of St. James, skepticism is in order on the part of the larger public.
People of faith are not fooled of course. We’ve come to expect such things and have vast experience of them over the past 2,000+ years. Faith trumps Hollywood directors who have been relegated to the backwaters of the Discovery Channel.
For those interested, Mr. Cameron will soon be raising funds by selling relics of Yeshua Ben Yosef at your local Discovery Channel Store. I may stop by the one in Crossgates Mall to pre-order my ‘Bones of Jesus’ play set.
For those interested (like the media should be…) here are a few folks who actually know what they are talking about (also from Christian Newswire):
Dr. Paul Maier, Bible scholar and author of more than 15 books including The Da Vinci Code —“ Fact or Fiction?, More Than a Skeleton and Josephus —“ The Essential Works. Professor of Ancient History, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Telephone: (269) 387-4816
Joe Zias, Thirty years professional experience in the field of Medical/Physical anthropology; Over 80 articles in peer reviewed medical and scientific journals; Science and Archeology Group at Hebrew University. Former senior curator of Archeology and Anthropology at the Israel Antiquities Authority for which he was responsible for the curation of the antiquities stored in the Israel Antiquities Authority, ranging from the Pre-historic periods up to the 18th Century AD. These objects, numbering over 75,000, included the Dead Sea Scrolls, pre-historic human skeletal remains as well as artifacts from the regions premier archaeological sites such as Jericho, Megiddo, and Gezer.
Telephone: 972-2-588-2811 Hebrew University (from United States first dial 011)
Dr. Amos Kloner, Officially oversaw the work at the tomb in 1980 and has published detailed findings on its contents. Professor, Department of Land of Israel Studies, Bar-Ilan University, Jerusalem, Israel
Telephone: 972-3-531-7283 (from United States first dial 011)
…and in conclusion:
Dem bones, dem bones gon-na walk a-roun’
Dem bones, dem bones gon-na walk a-roun’
Dem bones, dem bones gonna walk aroun’
Oh hear the word of the Lord
St. Nestor, Bishop and Martyr, (251)
St. Alexander of Alexandria, Bishop, (328)
St. Porphyry of Gaza, Bishop, (420)