text:
9-Year-Old Girl Miraculously Saves Dad's Life by Driving Him to Hospital
A nine-year-old girl in Panama City, Florida got an unexpected first driving lesson.
Esteria Smith recently took over the wheel of the car when her father, John, lost his vision after he picked her up from karate class.
Esteria jumped into action from the backseat, saying her dad was driving erratically. She started driving with one hand and somehow made it eight blocks to the hospital, saving his life in the process.
She said it was quite a scene:
He was fighting with me and I couldn't make the turns that I needed to do. He was pushing the accelerator and I was right here, [behind him in the backseat] reaching over him, driving with one hand. I hit a curve and we almost ran into the front of an ambulance!"
At that point, John had no more use of his motor skills and had no more memory. He eventually lost consciousness.
Esteria filled personnel in on what happened and doctors soon found John had a golf ball-sized tumor in his brain. He's due to begin treatment soon.
Watch John and Esteria talk about the unlikely incident below.


text:
ABA National Championship Tournament 2005
Day Three
The third and final day of the ABA National Championship held some interesting turns in weights and position. The weather changed drastically from day one. With windy conditions and cooler temperatures. Ultimate Bass was lucky to have a couple of our members participating in the event. George Perez weighed bass all three days and proudly displayed our logo on his shirts and hat. Steve Alexander and Casey Smith were also participating in the tournament and gave a good show.
As each angler weighed in we were adding their weights to the previous days total. Ben Clemens came to the scale and had 5 bass weighing in at 10.31lbs. giving him a three day total of 25.81 and putting him in the lead. The top five anglers from the previous day were straggling in to the scales and on day one they weighed in their bass. Michael Murphy was the first. In second place at the end of day two, he came to the scales with only one fish for 1.37 giving him a total of 19.99 and would put him in 15th at the end of the day. JD Ward who was in 3rd at the end of day two came in next with a good sack. His bass weighed in at 6.81lbs giving him a three day total of 25.22lbs and holding his third place win. Marty Strickland the day two leader looked like he was the only one that could pull it off. He had 20.21lbs going into day two and was on fish. Marty had to have a weight of 5.60lbs to tie the leader. He came to the scales with four bass for a weight of 5.42lbs. not enough to take the lead but enough to secure second place.
The ABA National Championship Awards Banquet and Ceremony was held at the Shreveport Expo Hall. Mary Ann Tines from the Shreveport Sports Authority was there to make sure that everything ran smoothly. There were drawings for a number of prizes to include Lowrance Electronics, Motorguide Trolling Motors, Airrus Rods and ABA Gift Cards. Mike Kelly won the V&M Hooked Up Program. Mike Kelly will be invited to join the V&M Pro Staff along with having his 2006 entries paid by V&M Baits and receiving $200 in V&M Baits of his choice.
I spoke with Ben Clemens who took the Angler of the Year Title as well as the National Champion Title. "I fished one spot on a ridge with my trolling motor anchored in some logs all three days and had 5 fish by 10 or 10:30am each day." He was impressed with the character of the other participants of the tournament. He said "there were 2 or 3 other boats that seen where I was fishing and could have beat me there on the second and third day and they didn't". He had great partners all three days and was most impressed with his CAST partner on day three. I asked him if he had any advice for the future Anglers of the Year and his response was "patients".
Today we seen far less bass coming across the stage. Many of the anglers weren't able to manage a weigh fish, and some went looking for that one big bass. Big Bass was worth $3,000 each day and the over all big bass of the tournament was worth $3000 with bonus money for having Angler's Advantage Insurance. Marty Strickland had big bass of the tournament and received a check for $3000.
Congratulations to the winners of the ABA National 2005 Championship. See you next year!
As an Amazon Associate Ultimate Bass earns from qualifying purchases.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Lobster's back.
First there was creamy lobster risotto. Now it's Lobster Fra Diavolo, a treasured Italian-American dish characterized by a spicy sauce for pasta or seafood. Fra Diavolo, was the king of pasta in the 1990's. (I know this because it was Jeff's favorite entree to order at a "nice" restaurant when we were dating.)
The last time Jeff ate lobster fra diavolo, Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" was a number one hit. Though Jeff will always love lobster fra diavolo, he doesn't feel similarly toward Whitney, so I decided not to invite her to our lobster dinner. I asked Frank, our oldest and dearest crooner, to come instead, because Italian food always tastes better with ol' blue eyes.
Lobster Fra Diavolo
Serves 2
Print recipe only here.
1 (1.25 pound) live lobster
2 teaspoons olive oil
2 shallots, diced
1 (14.5 ounce) can diced or crushed tomatoes, preferably San Marzano
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper flakes
2 teaspoons fresh oregano, chopped
1 tablespoon fresh Italian parsley, chopped
1 tablespoon fresh basil leaves, chopped
salt, to taste
1/4 pound spaghetti
Bring a large pot (big enough to submerge the lobster completely) of salted water to a boil. To kill the lobster, hold a butcher knife over its head, about an inch behind its eyes; puncture and slice forward in one motion. Plunge the lobster head first into the boiling water for 7-8 minutes. The shell should be bright red, though the meat will finish cooking in the risotto. Remove the lobster from the pot, rinse, and allow to cool.
To remove the meat, twist off the claws; crack them open with nut crackers, and extract the meat. Bend the lobster's body back from the tail until it cracks; remove it. Then push the tail meat out. Crack the lobster body open and break off the legs; use a skewer to push the meat out of the legs.
Meanwhile cook spaghetti in salted water for 10 minutes, or until al dente, fully cooked yet firm to the bite.
Add the lobster meat to the sauce and toss well. Heat through 1-2 minutes. Add the cooked pasta to the pan and toss well. Turn off heat. Stir in the fresh herbs and season with salt. Garnish with additional fresh herbs and serve immediately.
You might also like:
Grilled Lobster (there's a video!)
Individual Pesto Lasagnas
Penne with Fresh Ricotta and Baby Heirloom Tomatoes
Penne with Italian-American "Gravy," Meatballs, and Sausage
Click here for details.
Save This Page on Del.icio.us


text:
Morenci's Downtown Development Authority (DDA) has accumulated enough funds to offer grants to businesses interested in enhancing the appearance of downtown buildings.
Any business with the DDA boundary is eligible to apply for up to $250 to be used in exterior work.
Morenci Area Chamber of Commerce members voted Thursday to add an additional $250 to any grant given by the DDA.
The grants may be used only for the purchase of supplies and not for labor.
Projects could include painting, window and door replacement, sign replacement and awnings.


text:
- Email email@example.com
- Tel. 413-774-1600
- Fax 413-772-1118
- Office Dewey
PO Box 55
Deerfield, MA 01342
- Mon All Day
- Tues All Day
- Wed All Day
- Thur All Day
- Fri All Day
- Sat All Day
- Sun All Day
A team of professionals provides Deerfield students with comprehensive health care and counseling services at the Health Center, an accredited hospital facility. The medical services are staffed by a full-time physician and nurse practitioner and by registered nurses who are on duty 24/7. With a 10-bed inpatient facility and a busy outpatient clinic, the Health Center is well equipped to care for a majority of illnesses and injuries common to students. Our closest hospital is the Baystate Franklin Medical Center, a 93-bed community hospital with a medical staff of approximately 150 physicians, located five miles away in the town of Greenfield. Our tertiary care center and nearest Level 1 trauma center, the 650-bed Baystate Medical Center, is in Springfield, MA, 30 miles away.
Walk-in services at the Health Center are provided 24 hours per day by the nursing staff. Doctor's appointments can be scheduled Monday-Friday 8:00 am-5:30 pm.
The counseling services are located in the basement of the Health Center. Two doctorate-level counselors and a licensed clinical social worker provide individual counseling. Common themes in counseling include issues relating to social adjustment, emotional growth, and boarding school life.
A psychiatrist comes to the Health Center weekly to see students in the counseling office.
The Athletic Training Office is in the Athletic Center and is staffed by two full-time athletic trainers, who work with injured athletes. They coordinate a weekly Orthopedic/Sports Medicine Clinic staffed by an orthopedic surgeon from Greenfield.


text:
Authorities say an adult male Mexican gray wolf may be released soon in the Apache National Forest in east-central Arizona.
Arizona Game and Fish Department officials say the wolf is scheduled for a mid-January release adjacent to the Bluestem pack. It will replace the pack's alpha male found dead in July and determined to be illegally killed.
The release is contingent upon the Mexican Wolf Reintroduction Project's interagency field team's survey work to ensure no other male wolf has paired with the Bluestem pack's alpha female.
The Mexican gray wolf was added to the federal endangered species list in 1976 after it was nearly wiped out by government trapping and poisoning designed to help cattle ranchers.
The federal government began a reintroduction effort in 1998 in Arizona and New Mexico.


text: Offered is the large size platter in the Blue Belle pattern. The platter measures 13 1/4 inches wide. The platter is signed on the base, Pope Gosser USA. The platter is in near mint condition, having no chips, cracks, or stains. There is 1 small brown spot within the glazing. The gold trim is 100% complete.


text:
Created for: The Sims 4
Villa Peawa
Medium house for you simmies.
It has
- Living room
- kitchen and dining room
- 2Bedrooms
- 2Barthrooms
- Office
Thanks all artist TSR
I hope you love this house.
Short URL: https://www.thesimsresource.com/downloads/1357597
ItemID: 1357597
Filesize: 253 KB kB
I have Sims 4 Limited Edition.
This lot need Get to works, Luxury party stuff, Perfect patio stuff, Get together and latest patch.
Please do not re-upload and modify.
No CC
Credits: All artist TSR
Please report any offensive comments so we can remove them. Use of bad language, unsuitable links or flaming may result in deletion of your account.
This Creation requires what's listed below in order to work properly.
Note that those downloads are not required for the Creation to work!
We have detected that you are using an Ad-blocker plugin. This means our main source of income to cover bandwidth costs is blocked when you are using our free service. We would ask that you whitelist us and allow ads to show.
Anyone using an Ad-blocker plugin will be forced to wait 180 seconds instead of 10 on the "please wait" page.
VIP Membership
For as little as $4.00 per month you can become a VIP member. This lets you use our service free of all ads and unlocks access to our popular Download Basket and Quick Download features.
Not a Member yet?
Click here to Register now


text:
Samuel Partaix Skater Profile
Sponsors: Antiz Skateboards, Insight Clothing, Vans Europe, Eastpak, Nozbone Skateshop, Skate Pistols
Hometown: Tours, Stance: Goofy, Age: , Status: Pro
Last Update: Thursday, October 15, 2009 Submit an Update
In Stock Now With Immediate Shipping
Couldn't find any Samuel Partaix products, but check out some random products from our Shop. Yeah, Samuel Partaix probably shops here...
Samuel Partaix Comments
Other Skater Links
- Full Skater Database - 6000+ skater profiles.
- Skateboarders on Instagram - browse your favorite pros and ams on Instagram.
- Skate News and Videos - daily skate news and videos from around the web.
- Media Coverage - we log all major magazine coverage by skater and photographer.
- Skate Photographers - we log all major magazine coverage by skater and photographer.
- Contest Results - over a decade's worth of contest history.


text:
Oblikus Design Studio-Creachair Playing and Learning Chair
At Design Interviews
Interview with Oblikus Design Studio : Frank Scott: What is the main principle, idea and inspiration behind your design?. Oblikus Design Studio : Creachair is a design concept for a children's chair, which will also be their play buddy and help them develop creativity, imagination, motor and tactile skills, which are very important for cognitive and physical development of a child. .Frank Scott: What has been your main focus in designing this work? Especially what did you want to achieve?. Oblikus Design Studio : We were led by the idea to create a product that encourages children to express their emotions, experience many different tactile sensations, practice visual communication and participate with the design process from an early age. Creachairs are an open call for a playful collaboration and exchanging ideas between kids. .Frank Scott: What are your future plans for this award winning design?. Oblikus Design Studio : This project is currently a design concept with functional prototypes. The next step is making this idea happen. .Frank Scott: How long did it take you to design this particular concept?. Oblikus Design Studio : The project started in Belgrade in November 2013. .Frank Scott: Why did you design this particular concept? Was this design commissioned or did you decide to pursuit an inspiration?. Oblikus Design Studio : We were inspired by the fact that creative expression and tactile stimulation are very important for cognitive and physical development of a child. .Frank Scott: Is your design being produced or used by another company, or do you plan to sell or lease the production rights or do you intent to produce your work yourself?. Oblikus Design Studio : At the moment we are keeping all options open. .Frank Scott: What made you design this particular type of work?. Oblikus Design Studio : To inspire children to participate with the design process, to learn and have fun while creating characters on their own in endless combinations. To encourage them to exchange ideas within a group of kids, and be able to have a playful time with their parents, too. .Frank Scott: Who is the target customer for his design?. Oblikus Design Studio : Children of young age with their parents, friends and family, kindergardens, children libraries etc. .Frank Scott: What sets this design apart from other similar or resembling concepts?. Oblikus Design Studio : Playing and learning features of the chair. .Frank Scott: How did you come up with the name for this design? What does it mean?. Oblikus Design Studio : The name Creachair is a combination of the words creativity, creating, chair. .Frank Scott: What is the most unique aspect of your design?. Oblikus Design Studio : Every chair is assembled out of a seat, legs, eyes, teeth and leg covers, all of them in various shapes, colours and materials. Children can experience many different tactile sensations and ways to co-create a play buddy using velcro, zippers, buttons, clip buttons, laces… They can feel excited and content as they create new characters. .Frank Scott: What is the role of technology in this particular design?. Oblikus Design Studio : New advanced materials and textile making technologies that enchase tactile stimulation greatly affect the way children respond and interact with the design. .Frank Scott: Is your design influenced by data or analytical research in any way? What kind of research did you conduct for making this design?. Oblikus Design Studio : There are many researches on how creative expression and tactile stimulation are very important for cognitive and physical development of a child. The main aspect of our research was allowing kids to play with prototypes and carefully noticing their reaction and ways they interact. It helped us define the design of all the parts of the product. .Frank Scott: What are some of the challenges you faced during the design/realization of your concept?. Oblikus Design Studio : It was of great importance that the parts are constructed in such way that there is no wrong way of applying them. The eyes, teeth and leg covers can be attached and changed easily to allow the creative process flowing. .
Oblikus Design Studio-Creachair Playing and Learning Chair Images:
End of the article, click here to go back to previous page, or alternatively go back to Design Articles Magazine homepage.


text:
June 20, 2013
Contact: Sammy Parks
Phone Number: (713) 693-3329
Three Corpus Residents Sent To Prison In Drug Trafficking, Money Laundering Conspiracies
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas - Three men arrested in January for various drug trafficking and money laundering conspiracies have been ordered to federal prison, Drug Enforcement (DEA) Special Agent in Charge Javier Peña and United States Attorney Kenneth Magidson announced today. Ignacio Pena aka "Nacho," 44, Raul Leal Martinez aka "Indio" or "Wahoo," 36, and, David Pete Dominguez aka "Buda," 30, all of Corpus Christi, previously pleaded guilty in relation to the case. Four other defendants, Manuel Pena aka "Super," 48, Jose Guajardo aka "Garfield," 41, Rocky Bazaldua aka "Rock," 32, and Julieann Gutierrez, 25, also pleaded guilty and are scheduled for sentencing in September.
Today, U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack, who accepted the guilty pleas, handed Ignacio Pena a term of 168 months in prison, while Dominguez was ordered to prison for 120 months. Martinez was sentenced to serve an 85-month term last week. All were further ordered to serve five-year-terms of supervised release following completion of their prison terms.
The indictment charged all of the defendants with conspiring from June 1, 2008, to Jan. 8, 2013, to possess with intent to distribute more than 50 grams of methamphetamine. The investigation revealed that Manuel Pena, a member of and former leader in the Texas Syndicate prison gang, orchestrated various drug deals in the Corpus Christi area. Evidence proved that in May 2011 Manuel Pena made deals to provide cocaine and methamphetamine to Bazaldua and Dominguez. He admitted he acquired cocaine and agreed to sell methamphetamine to Guajardo. Pena also received methamphetamine from Martinez, a local home builder. Ignacio Pena, Manuel Pena's brother, helped receive and deliver various amounts of cocaine and methamphetamine to various drug dealers in Corpus Christi.
Martinez and Guajardo also pleaded guilty to conspiring to launder the proceeds of their drug sales through various financial transactions. As part of their plea agreements, Manuel Pena, Martinez and Guajardo also agreed to forfeit their interests in various properties around Corpus Christi.
Martinez was permitted to remain on bond and voluntarily surrender to a U.S. Bureau of Prisons facility to be determined in the near future. The remaining defendants have been and will remain in custody pending transfer to a U.S. Bureau of Prisons facility to be determined in the near future.This case was investigated through a joint effort by the Drug Enforcement Administration, Internal Revenue Service - Criminal Investigation, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Texas Department of Public Safety, the Nueces and Kleberg County Sheriff's Offices, and the Corpus Christi, Aransas Pass and Portland Police Departments. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Michael Hess.


text:
Even though they don't really believe it will be there to provide them benefits throughouttheir retirement, many baby boomers are looking to Social Security to provide a major part of post-retirement income and have failed to save or plan adequately for a jobless future.
The latest MFS Investing Sentiment Survey, released Monday, indicated that over a third of boomers expect that Social Security will be "a major source of income during retirement." However, only 25% believe that the system will be able to provide those benefits throughout their retirement, and 40% indicated that they were not at all confident that the money would be there.
So how do boomers plan to accommodate a lack of reliable benefits? Not, as you might expect, by saving more or by taking more risk in investments in the hope of a higher return, but by cutting back on spending, working part-time during retirement, and/or by postponing retirement.
Although most investors acknowledge the importance of savings and investments in paying for their retirement years, giving such funds top place among the means to fund retirement, boomers have not saved very much toward that goal. Among respondents with a median of eight years till retirement, only 12% had socked away $1 million or more in retirement accounts. The median savings level was far lower, at $314,000.
William Finnegan, senior managing director and head of Global Retail Marketing for MFS, said in a statement, "The survey findings point out a big disconnect between what investors say they plan to live on in retirement, and what they actually can count on for that income. Advisors have an opportunity to help their clients focus on solving for this critical shortfall before it's too late."
Among investors' worries about impediments to a comfortable retirement were significant increases (10% or more) in health care costs, a deep recession, or a substantial cut in Social Security benefits. Asked to reveal their plan to cope with the first of the three, 63% said they had adjusted their lifestyle to remain in good health, while 44% who said they had saved more for emergencies.
"While pursuing a healthy lifestyle is laudable, it is far from a risk-free strategy in terms of the health of your retirement," Finnegan added. "People can lose their jobs or suffer catastrophic health issues at any time, regardless of their lifestyle. "Unanticipated events like these can obviously put a damper on their ability to control when they retire and their ability to work in retirement, if that had been their plan. When dealing with these issues of financial shortfalls in retirement, it's simply not realistic to say, 'Oh, I plan to work longer,' or 'I plan to stay healthy.'"


text:
Note: if the class is overfilled, then you will be wait-listed. You will be contacted should this occur.
Black Hat Seattle Training 2005
Red Lion Hotel on Fifth Avenue • October 10-11, 2005
Course Length: 2 days
Cost: US $1800 by October 1, 2005 or US $2000 after October 1, 2005
All course materials, lunch and two coffee breaks will be provided. NOTE: A Certificate of Completion will be offered. You must provide your own laptop.
October 10-11
Invisible Network, Invisible Risk
Students should be familiar with installing software and device drivers on Windows or Linux, and have a basic working knowledge, at application/port level, of TCP/IP and networking in general.
The explosion of wireless networking has given rise to a parallel explosion of increased risk, due to the ease with which out of box deployments can be compromised, and the lack of expertise required to get them up and running in the first place. Recent studies have shown that despite being well known, the problem of open and insecure network deployments is on the increase, and even highly publicised 'war driving' efforts have done little to curb their growth.
This course will cover the best paractice procedures for deploying wireless networks securely, as well as the tools available for both auditing penetration testing. During the course, you will learn the history of the problems associated with wireless networking, the measures and counter measures taken along the way, and some of the more interesting phenomena surrounding the technology, such as war-driving and 'free' community network projects, like Consume in the UK and BAWUG in the USA.
We will also look at some of the less well known, but increasingly prevelant technologies, such as Bluetooth, Infra-red, RF and RFID which carry with them some suprising, unexpected and interesting risks.
Subjects covered:
Security and encryption:
Learning Objectives:
By the time you have completed this course, you will be confident that you can deploy a wireless network and/or check that your network is secure. You will also learn how to use completely insecure and untrusted networks without compromising your own security. Just thinkyou'll be able to attend DEFCON and *still* be able to remotely manage your office firewall over the free wireless network at the Alexis Park! :)
What to expect:
This course is a mixture of lecture and hands-on. Students will have the opportunity to see wireless auditing and hacking tools in use, as well as installing and trying them out for themselves, and there will be plenty of question and answer sessions throughout.
As well as the course notes and slides, students will leave with a CD containing all the tools and drivers used during the course.
Who Should Attend:
ISC2 CISSP/SCCP CPE Credits
Students are eligible to receive 16 Continuing Professional Education (CPE) credits upon completion of class. Black Hat will automatically forward your information to ISC2.
Cost: US $1800 by October 1, 2005 or US $2000 after October 1, 2005
All course materials, lunch and two coffee breaks will be provided. NOTE: A Certificate of Completion will be offered. You must provide your own laptop.
Adam Laurie is Chief Security Officer and Technical Director of The Bunker Secure Hosting Ltd., and has been involved in the compter industry since the Eighties. In the late Nineties, he and his brother, Ben Laurie, published the secure web server package 'Apache-SSL', which went on to become the leading secure web server software worldwide, and set the de-facto standard. This, in turn, led to a focus on computer security, and the founding of 'The Bunker', a hosting facility dedicated to highly secure hosting. Adam has been responsible, since it's inception, for the recruitment and training of all of the security and sysadmin staff at The Bunker, and continues to provide the framework for ongoing and future training. He is also a long time member of the DEFCON 'goon' staff, and was involved in the initial years of setting up the Black Hat conferences. In his spare time (what little of it there is), he likes to make small (usually round) holes in things, preferably from a great distance.


text:
Find Our Latest Video Reviews on YouTube!
If you want to stay on top of all of our video reviews of the latest tech, be sure to check out and subscribe to the Gear Live YouTube channel, hosted by Andru Edwards! It's free!
Tuesday April 27, 2010 2:43 pm
TiVo Wireless-N Network Adapter available now
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Accessories, USB, Home Entertainment, Internet, Wireless / WiFi
We're not sure what type of games TiVo thinks they are trying to play here, but the company has finally gotten around to getting their AN0100 802.11n wireless adapter to retail, and they've decided it best to charge more than just about any other wireless device of this kind on the market. That's right, the TiVo Wireless N Network Adapter can be yours for a shocking $89.99. yeah, you get better range and throughput than you would on the Wireless G model, but, man, that price has us seriously considering the costs of just running an ethernet cable across the house.
Read More | TiVo Wireless N Adapter
Latest Gear Live Videos
- Subscribe:
- YouTube
- iTunes High Definition
- iTunes Standard Version
© Gear Live Inc. {year} – User-posted content, unless source is quoted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Public Domain License. Gear Live graphics, logos, designs, page headers, button icons, videos, articles, blogs, forums, scripts and other service names are the trademarks of Gear Live Inc.


text:
University of Hawaii 2006 "Stars of Oceania" event to honor Pacific Islanders who have enriched Hawaii with their contributions
Proceeds from the event will go towards scholarships for UH Pacific Islands scholarsUniversity of Hawaiʻi
Pacific Business Center Program
Kristen Bonilla, (808) 956-5039
External Affairs & University Relations
HONOLULU — Ten individuals of Pacific Islands ancestry will be honored for their stellar contributions to the state of Hawaiʻi, their leadership in perpetuating traditional Pacific Islands culture and values, and their service to the community at "Stars of Oceania," an inaugural recognition dinner and scholarship fundraiser, on November 14 at the Hilton Hawaiian Village.
Four prestigious awards will be presented that evening. Honored with the Shining Stars award, which is given to individuals or organizations who are pioneers in their fields, are Kalo Mataele Soukop, producer and director of Kalo South Seas Village Revue for the past 35 years, and Tihati "Jack" and Cha Thompson, owners of Tihati Productions. Presented with the Rising Star award, which is given to a young community and professional leader who serves as a role model to Pacific Islands youth, is Lubuw Falanruw, a native of the Micronesian island of Yap and CEO and president of Digital Mediums, a Honolulu-based interactive software development company.
Four individuals have been selected to receive the Guiding Star award, which honors cultural leaders who perpetuate traditional Pacific Islands culture and values. They are Mau Piailug, a native Micronesian who was instrumental in resurrecting traditional navigation skills for the Hawaiian people; Tuione Pulotu, a master traditional canoe carver from Tonga; Pulefano Galeaʻi, a native of American Samoa and a powerful advocate for traditional values in community development; and Kupuna Auntie Malia Craver, a "Living Treasure of Hawaiʻi" honoree and cultural consultant noted for her peacemaking efforts and promotion of traditional healing practices.
The Stellar Navigator award, which honors individuals who represent the synthesis of the Pacific Islands and Hawaiʻi, will be presented to Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann, a Kalihi-raised Harvard University graduate and Fulbright Scholar who has served under four U.S. presidents, and Polynesian Voyaging Society President Nainoa Thompson, the first Hawaiian to practice the art of wayfinding on long distance ocean voyages since such voyaging ended in Hawaiʻi about 600 years ago.
UH Board of Regents Chair Kitty Lagareta and UH President David McClain are honorary co-chairs for the event. Al Harrington, popular entertainer and American Samoa native, will serve as Master of Ceremonies, and entertainment will be provided by Tihati Productions.
Funds raised from the event will be used to establish a scholarship for University of Hawaiʻi students who are from the Pacific Islands or are participating in work that benefits the Pacific Islands. Due to overwhelming response, the event is sold out, but donations to the scholarship fund for Pacific Islands students will continue to be accepted. For more information on making a donation, contact the Pacific Business Center Program at UH Mānoa at (808) 956-2495 or email email@example.com.
This inaugural UH event is sponsored by Pacific Magazine, Tihati Productions, Kalo South Seas Travel & Tour, Bank of Hawaiʻi, Pacific Islanders in Communications and Pacific American Foundation.
Brief bios of all the award honorees follow.
is the CEO/President of Kalo South Seas Travel, a special associate and relative to the Royal Family of the Kingdom of Tonga, and a civic leader for the Tongan and Hawaiian communities. In 1991, Soukop became the first woman and first Polynesian to be named to the Board of Directors of the Polynesian Cultural Center. She is also the founder and CEO of the Tongan Cultural Society.
- Lubuw Falanruw is a native of the Micronesian island of Yap and a graduate of UH Mānoa. He founded Digital Mediums at the age of 25, and has served more than 100 clients from Hawaiʻi and the Pacific since its establishment in 2000. The company was recognized as the second-fastest growing company in Hawaiʻi by Pacific Business News in 2004, and he has received many individual awards, including the 2003 Small Business Association Young Entrepreneur of the Year award.
- Mau Piailug, from the Micronesian island of Satawal in Yap State of the Federated States of Micronesia, was the first navigator of the Hokuleʻa. He guided it 2,300 miles to Tahiti in 1976, completing the first voyage on an ancestral Polynesian sea route without the use of navigation instruments in over 600 years. His success inspired a renaissance of voyaging, canoe building, non-instrument navigation and cultural pride for Hawaiians and Polynesians that has continued to spread across the Pacific.
- Tuione Pulotu is a master traditional canoe carver who has been honored as a "Living Treasure of Hawaiʻi" for his contributions in perpetuating the traditions, spirit and values of Hawaiʻi through Polynesian carving and craftsmanship. Born in Tonga, he came to Hawaiʻi over 40 years ago as a labor missionary to help build the second phase of the Church College of Hawaiʻi and the Polynesian Cultural Center. Many of the tiki and other carvings at the center are examples of his work, and he has built several canoes, including a 105-foot sailing canoe for King Taufaʻahau Tupou IV of Tonga, launched in 2000.
- Pulefano Galeaʻi is a world champion fire knife dancer who personifies the importance of family as the core of Pacific Islands culture and the basis of Pacific Islands identity. He is the cultural artistic director at the Polynesian Cultural Center, and encourages the use of traditional knowledge rooted in family values and cultural skills as models for community development and security. A native of American Samoa, he uses this cultural knowledge as the cornerstone of his efforts to promote these issues among Pacific Islands immigrants to Hawaiʻi, many of whom have little formal education.
- Kupuna Auntie Malia Craver has been honored as a "Living Treasure of Hawaiʻi" for her dedication to the Hawaiian culture and the spirit of aloha. A social work assistant with Queen Liliʻuokalani Children's Center for 30 years, she is a soft-spoken kupuna who often guides emotionally fractured families to reconciliation using the Hawaiian practice of hoʻoponopono. In 2000, she addressed the 53rd Annual U.N. Conference of Non-Government Organizations where she received a standing ovation.
- Muliufi Francis Hannemann is the sixth of seven children of Samoan immigrants Gustav and Faison Hannemann, and the 12th mayor of the City and County of Honolulu, the 13th largest municipality in the United States. Hannemann is the founder of the Pacific Century Fellows, modeled after the White House Fellows program, and volunteers with various non-profit organizations. Following an illustrious career in business, government, and politics, he took office on January 2, 2005, Honolulu's first native-born mayor in almost 40 years.
- Nainoa Thompson, navigator and crewmember of the Hokuleʻa, has for more than 25 years helped to inspire a revival of traditional arts associated with long-distance ocean voyaging in Hawaiʻi and throughout Polynesia. He developed a system of wayfinding, or non-instrument navigation, synthesizing traditional principles of ancient Pacific navigation and modern scientific knowledge. Thompson is president of the Polynesian Voyaging Society, a Kamehameha Schools trustee, and serves as special advisor on Hawaiian affairs to UH President David McClain. He is a graduate of Punahou School and UH Mānoa.


text:
The former boyfriend of Amanda Knox, Raffaele Sollecito, discusses being found guilty in the Meredith Kercher murder retrial.
Amanda Knox's ex-boyfriend said Friday that he was out of Italy when he got the stunning news that they had been re-convicted of her roommate's brutal murder and he immediately returned to surrender his passport.
But Raffaele Sollecito said that before he could get to a police station, officers swooped down on him in a border hotel in Italy, woke him up and took him in.
"As soon as I got the news there was a guilty verdict … I came right immediately back in Italy," Sollecito told NBC News in an exclusive interview.
Sollecito, 29, said he was so certain he and Knox would be acquitted of Meredith Kercher's murder that he had already planned a trip out of the country. When he got the news that he had been convicted again and sentenced to 25 years, he was floored.
"It was completely unexpected," he said.
"Psychologically, it's devastating," he said of the prospect of being sent back to prison, where he spent nearly four years before he and Knox had their original convictions reversed.
He said he is now clinging to the "hope" that the latest conviction will be tossed on appeal by Italy's highest court.
"I have to fight until the end," he said.
Knox, 26, an American citizen, was at home in Seattle when Thursday's guilty verdict and her sentence of 28 years and six months was announced. It does not appear Italy will seek her extradition before appeals are exhausted.
Andreas Solaro / AFP - Getty Images
Stephanie Kercher, sister of victim Meredith Kercher, and her brother Lyle hold a press conference in a hotel in central Florence Friday.
She said on Friday that she will "fight this until the very end -- It's not right and it's not fair."
On ABC's "Good Morning America," she was asked about Sollecito being found near the Italian border and said: "My initial thought after the verdict was, 'Oh my God, Raffaele' … I don't know what I would do if they imprisoned him. It's maddening."
While Knox did not attend the retrial, returning to the U.S. after an earlier conviction was reversed, Sollecito stayed in his homeland. After he was found guilty again, the court announced a travel ban for him.
The cabinet chief of the Udine police station, Giovanni Belmonte, told The Associated Press that officers went to a hotel in Venzone — a tiny town about 25 miles from the border with Slovenia and Austria — to look for Sollecito after a tip-off at 1 a.m. Friday (8 p.m. ET Thursday).
Asked whether he thought Sollecito was going on the lam, Belmonte said: "I don't know if he was planning to do so, but keep in mind the hotel is close to the border of Austria and Slovenia. Make your own conclusions."
Andrew Kelly / Reuters
Amanda Knox arrives at the set of ABC's "Good Morning America" in New York on Monday.
He said that he has not been in touch with Knox. Asked about her absence from the trial, he said, "It was her decision."
"I'm not fighting a battle for her," he added. "I'm fighting a battle for the truth."
Knox and her then-boyfriend Sollecito spent four years in prison after their initial conviction in the murder of Kercher in the university town of Perugia in 2007.
The 21-year-old British student was found dead in a pool of blood in the apartment she shared with Knox, her half-naked body covered in up to 40 knife wounds. With prosecutors arguing she was killed in a sex game, Knox and Sollecito were convicted and sentenced to 26 years.
Knox was also convicted of slander for falsely telling police she heard a Congolese bar owner kill Kercher — a claim that prosecutors say is evidence of her guilt but that she says was made out of fear during a high-pressure grilling.
In 2011, an appeals court reheard the case and acquitted Knox and Sollecito after independent experts said crucial DNA evidence had been contaminated by police. But in March, Italy's highest court dismissed that acquittal — slamming the lower court for "contradictions and inconsistencies" in its decision — and ordered a new trial.
Knox and Sollecito say that only one person is responsible for Kercher's death: small-time drug dealer Rudy Hermann Guede. The Ivory Coast-born man is serving 16 years for the slaying, but a court found that he did not commit the crime alone.
Now that the pair have been convicted again, Kercher's family is calling for Knox to be extradited from the U.S. to Italy.
An Italian court upheld the 26-year-old American's prior conviction, which found her guilty of the 2007 murder of her former roommate Meredith Kercher. She was sentenced to over 28 years in prison. Her ex-boyfriend, Raffaelle Sollecito, was also found guilty, and his passport was confiscated. NBC's Keith Miller reports.
The victim's brother, Lyle, said it would be "strange" if Knox was not handed over. "If somebody's found guilty and convicted of a murder, and if an extradition law exists between those two countries, then I don't see why they wouldn't," he told reporters.
"I imagine it would set a difficult precedent if a country such as the U.S. didn't choose to go along with laws that they themselves uphold when extraditing convicted criminals from other countries. It probably leaves them in a strange position not to."
Kercher's sister Stephanie said the family will only be able to move on at the end of the legal process. "You can't ever really get to a point where you just start to remember Meredith solely because it is following the case, coming over to Italy and everything associated with it," she said.
Appeals in the case could take a year or more, and legal experts say it's unlikely that Italy would seek to extradite Knox before those are over.
Some observers have questioned whether the American protection against double jeopardy — being retried and convicted of a crime after being acquitted — would give the U.S. an excuse to balk at extradition.
But Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz told NBC News that theory would not apply in this case and that the U.S., which seeks the extradition of more people than any country in the world, would be hard-pressed to deny an Italian request for Knox's return.
In a written statement issued soon after the verdict, Knox said that she was "frightened and saddened" by the court's decision.
"Having been found innocent before, I expected better from the Italian justice system," she said.
- Amanda Knox convicted of murder in Italian retrial
- New Amanda Knox trial: No DNA match to victim on knife, expert tells court
- Retrial of Amanda Knox and former Italian boyfriend enters final phase
This story was originally published on Fri Jan 31, 2014 8:24 AM EST


text:
Uprgrade Bikes and Lezyne sponsor Newcastleton Cross-Border Classic
If you want some free stuff and enjoy riding bikes, you should check out this bike event sponsored by Upgrade and Lezyne.
Upgrade Bikes and Lezyne sponsor the Newcatleton Cross-Border Classic Sportive Weekend.
Blog post HERE.
Registration and entry HERE.
Tourist and travel information HERE.


text:
Twitter's IPO is only a matter of time. At least that's the conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley these days, echoed in two recent stories in the media.
But I'm baffled by the air of inevitability that surrounds the company's march toward the public markets.
At the moment, a Twitter IPO seems more fantasy than reality. From Twitter's own unproved advertising business to the lackluster debut of Facebook and other social media superstars, I'd argue the odds against Twitter going public have only gotten steeper this past year.
"Twitter has a very long shadow to remove itself from before it can make a really decent IPO play," said Lee Simmons, editor of Hoover's, which tracks IPOs.
Last weekend, a New York Times profile of Twitter CEO Dick Costolo called an IPO the "most likely exit strategy." A Bloomberg profile Monday of Twitter Chief Financial Officer Ali Rowghani cast his main role as preparing for its "eventual initial public offering."
Understandably, no executive likes to stand up and say they're tidying things up to sell to the highest bidder. But, for my money, that's a much more likely outcome.
Here's why Twitter faces such a steep climb if it really wants to launch an IPO.
Its first hurdle will be the dim view that investors have of Web businesses based on advertising. Facebook, so far, is not the juggernaut once expected, casting doubts on the ability of many social networks to convince advertisers to spend large sums to reach their large base of users.
Next, Twitter faces plenty of competition for digital ad dollars. Google's search-driven business is proving to be durable, while Facebook, despite its stumbles, is still far larger than Twitter.
Still, it has gotten serious about the advertising business, including making changes that have angered some longtime users and developers.
But for all the attention these products have gotten, they are still in the embryonic stage.
Major brands and advertising agencies have experimented with campaigns on Twitter, said Jeremiah Owyang of Altimeter Group. But, he said, "I haven't heard any brand or agency say conclusively, 'This is where we need to be.' "
Let's give Twitter the benefit of the doubt. In recent leaks to the media, the company has indicated its ad products are performing better than expected, and that Twitter is on track to post $350 million in revenue this year, and possibly $1 billion in revenue in 2014, the year it supposedly aims to go public. Reports from eMarketer are a bit less bullish, forecasting revenue of $288 million this year and $807 million by 2014.
That rate of growth would be impressive. But even the extremely bullish projection of $1 billion in revenue by 2014 is well short of the $5 billion Facebook expects this year. And while we don't know much about Twitter's expenses, we do know Facebook's expenses, when it had roughly the same number of employees as Twitter does now: about $780 million.
It's not an apples-to-apples comparison, but it still seems like it will be a stretch for Twitter to be profitable by 2014.
Lise Buyer, founder of the Class V Group, an IPO advisory firm based in Palo Alto, says there are two factors investors will want to see.
"What will matter is that they have a rapidly growing model, and one that investors think is sustainable," Buyer said.
Now, if Twitter hits those revenue marks, it could make the case for fast growth. That's a big if, given the untested nature of its ad services. But sustainable? If the company is still not profitable at that point, it'll have to make a darn good case of how it'll get there.
"After what we saw this year, investors would be a little less willing to dive whole hog into a stock like this," Simmons said.
Is there a bullish case for Twitter's IPO chances? Sure. Let's start with the fact that two years is a long, long time in Silicon Valley and the stock markets. Maybe the economy will be booming. Maybe Facebook's shares will hit $100. Maybe a string of successful but smaller tech IPOs will make investors giddy.
Costolo and Twitter's current board are also seen as big pluses. The company, by some accounts, is poised to do well with mobile advertising. And as Buyer notes, some IPOs are driven by emotion, and you can expect there would be plenty of that for any Twitter public offering.
"I don't think the door is closed," Buyer said. "It's just a matter of doing everything they can to keep hope and dreams aligned with reality."
But I still say way too many things have to line up exactly right for a Twitter IPO in 2014. And inevitably, investors, who have poured $1.16 billion into the company, and employees will want some sort of exit.
Given all these challenges, it's more likely that Twitter will be acquired by one of the few companies that would have deep enough pockets: Apple, Google or Microsoft.
There's no question that getting acquired in Silicon Valley comes with the stench of defeat. But it shouldn't.
And in the case of Twitter, that sale will guarantee the service a long life. Even if someone else's name is on Twitter's door.
Contact Chris O'Brien at 415-298-0207 or email@example.com. Follow him at Twitter.com/obrien and read his blog posts at www.siliconbeat.com.
Twitter does not officially release its finances, but there have been leaks:
2012 revenue: $350 million
2014 revenue: $1 billion
But that compares with Facebook's current rate of $5 billion in revenue. And while it does not release expenses, Facebook's expenses were roughly $780 million when it had the same number of employees that Twitter has now, meaning it is likely unprofitable and would have to grow rapidly to become profitable.


text:
cringe away from (someone or something)(redirected from cringe away from me)
cringe away from (someone or something)
To move away from someone or something, usually out of fear. I cringed away from the snake and prayed that it wouldn't see me.
cringe away from someone or somethingand cringe from someone or something
to pull back or away from someone or something, as from fear. The child cringed away from the teacher. Why did you cringe away from the dentist's chair? The cat cringed from the fire. The child cringed from the huge dog.


text:
Webmasters use those sites for commenting and those comments build Dofollow backlinks. When you get maximum Dofollow backlinks from other sites then you will get better search results.Blog commenting is very good thing for new bloggers and affiliate marketers who are seeking for some extra traffic for money.This is not an easy task to find out the Dofollow websites for commenting.But i did it for you,So comment on these High PR blog commenting sites to build very strong backlinks for your website that can give you extra exposure in search results.These blog comments will obviously help you to build Dofollow backlinks and those Dofollow backlinks will help you to improve ranking in Search Engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and Yandex etc. As High PR blogs you will use for commenting , As your site will improve search results in Google, Bing and Yahoo etc. As you will get more traffic your revenue will increase day by day.S o you should must use those blogs for commenting.All the blogs that i am sharing with you have High PR and excellent Alexa Rank all over the world. So below sites that i am going to share will help you to get better search results for your site.
Blog Commenting Sites Page rank (8 & 7):
- PR 8: www.smh.com.au
- PR 8: www.theage.com.au
- PR 8: www.movabletype.org
- PR 7: www.meetup.com
- PR 7: www.canberratimes.com.au
Blog Commenting SitesPage rank (6 & 5):
- PR 6: www.dailyblogtips.com
- PR 6: www.weblogtoolscollection.com
- PR 6: www.socialtimes.com
- PR 6: www.problogger.net
- PR 6: www.searchenginejournal.com
- PR 6: www.weblogtoolscollection.com
- PR 6: www.blog.photography.si.edu
- PR 6: www.grokdotcom.com
- PR 6: www.interactiondesign.sva.edu
- PR 6: www.currybet.net
- PR 6: www.w3blog.dk
- PR 6: www.quicksprout.com
- PR 6: www.tripit.com
- PR 6: www.links.org.au
- PR 6: www.blogmofuse.com
- PR 6: www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk
- PR 5: www.bloggingtips.com
- PR 5: www.kikolani.com
- PR 5: www.comptalks.com
- PR 5: www.seobythesea.com
- PR 5: www.seo-hacker.com
- PR 5: www.newcritics.com
- PR 5: www.intenseblog.com
- PR 5: www.searchenginepeople.com
- PR 5: www.engineering.curiouscatblog.net
- PR 5: www.growmap.com
- PR 5: www.comluv.com
- PR 5: www.bluehatseo.com
- PR 5: www.blogussion.com
- PR 5: www.kongtechnology.com
- PR 5: www.midasoracle.com
- PR 5: www.midasoracle.com
If you like this post then don't forget to share this post on social media with your friends and family. You can use below social media buttons for sharing this post on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. If you have any question then feel free to post comment below of this we will try to reply you as soon as possible.
Source: High PR Dofollow Blog Commenting Sites List 2015
Source: High PR Dofollow Blog Commenting Sites List 2015


text:
academically and spiritually in the Catholic Tradition.
Welcome to Our Lady of Fatima School.
In 1949, the newly established parish of Our Lady of Fatima recognized the need to educate children within the Catholic faith. For over 60 years, the community of Our Lady of Fatima has continued that strong tradition of Catholic faith and values rooted in the tradition of service to those in need. I invite you to experience the family, faith and future of Our Lady of Fatima School and Parish. You will find a community rich in tradition whose center is the Eucharist. We are all bonded in the desire to teach the beliefs and traditions of our Catholic faith and to provide our students with a strong academic curriculum.
Visit us at any time. We are proud of our accomplishments and the success of our students and faculty and invite you to become a part of Our Lady of Fatima School and Parish.
Kathleen Kenney
Check Out Our ...
New Student Referral
Incentive Program
Discover Catholic Schools ...
Spreading the Good News of Catholic Education
Registrations are currently being accepted for Prek - 8th grade. For more information to register your child, please contact us at 302-328-2803.


text:
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
chelsea, april 2007, #4 - some likes
Robert Colescott at G.R. N'Namdi - one of his last paintings (he's still alive, but not able to work anymore), and one of very few abstracts. this was a treat for both those reasons, but also because i just saw what is probably his most famous painting only a few weeks ago.
also liked:
Joe Fyfe at Cynthia Broan - circus-y, they feel happy. i preferred the ones on white grounds.
Michael Rodriguez at Oliver Kamm - these are really cool paintings, with a danger feel. if i had better photos i would post one, but the cellphone camera just can't get the subtle colors and textures. orderly bubble systems on faint pastel grounds, kind of Matta, splattered along the bubble axis and structure with what first looks like paint, then drippy colored sand, then swiped felt... but is actually colored flocking.
Margo Victor at Venetia Kapernekas - went to this one specifically on the advice of brent, because he was so dead-on about wade guyton last year. it's a good show - though i definitely preferred the two videos, especially the short margo victor 2000, with the colored lights and muffled noise, and retro sci-fi tv signifiers.
Mitzi Pederson at Nicole Klagsbrun - nice installation, futura light + material luca buvoli feeling, totally unphotographable with my shity camera.
Per Enoksson at Derek Eller - some interesting works on big sheets of paper, nice mix of line with drawing, wash, and collage. fun. makes you want to break out the ball point pen and get to work. chris domenick in brooklyn had some interesting-ish ballpoint pen drawings also.
Tala Madani at Lombard Fried- saw the one that was on paintersnyc and was surprised at how small it was. this is the same gallery that had the good cao fei show last time.
Yutaka Sone at David Zwirner - i thought the wintery paintings were fun, but the show was hurt by the dead crappy paperweights. zwirner was an unexpected letdown.. wasn't into the other shows at all, not even with free food. rirkrit can be a snooze, sorry.
Posted by Martin at 4:30 AM
Labels: abstract painting, artists, chelsea, Derek Eller Gallery, G.R. N'Namdi Gallery, Joe Fyfe, Nicole Klagsbrun, Yuck Snooze So-What
1 comment:
- Anonymous said...
A Fyfe with evening light is imbilous indeed..
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)


text:
International Aura Awareness Day
"Every atom, every molecule, every group of atoms and molecules
however simple or complex, however large or small, tells the story of
itself, its pattern, its purpose, through the vibrations which emanate from
it. Colors are the perceptions of these vibrations by the human eye.
… Color seems to be a characteristic of the vibration of matter, and our
souls seem to reflect it in this three-dimensional world through atomic
patterns. We are patterns, and we project colors, which are there for
those who can see them."
–Edgar Cayce
I've been called a hippie more times than I can count. I'm ok with that. I believe in peace and love and saving the environment. And I'm sure celebrating this holiday will only solidify that. I have to admit, though, I can't see auras. I actually only vaguely knew what an aura was before doing my research today.
Held on the fourth Saturday of November, this year marks the 10th anniversary of International Aura Awareness Day. According to realityshifters.com, the purpose of this holiday is to both increase awareness of auras and take account of your own aura. "Since dark or damaged auras are early warning indicators of every kind of physical, emotional, and psychological problem, it is clear that you can improve your health by taking one day each year to examine your aura."
The Parapsychological Association defines the aura as: "a field of subtle, multicolored, luminous radiations said to surround living bodies as a halo or cocoon; the term is occasionally used to refer to the normal electromagnetic field forces surrounding the body."
Every living thing has an aura, with plants generally having a white light and humans and animals producing layers and patterns of frequencies interpreted as different colours. "These colours and the shape and form of the aura around the body can be used to diagnose health and describe a person's temperament, personality characteristics, and passions." (Victoria Anisman-Reiner, suite101.com)
Each colour has different indications/conditions, body parts/organs, afflictions, musical notes, and planet. To see an example of a colour chart and what colours mean what, click here.
There are different layers that represent different things (although this is interpreted differently by different schools of thought). "The outer layers carry information about a person's mood and well-being in the moment; middle layers portray your health, emotional patterns, relationships and your strengths and vulnerabilities; and at the most profound layers of the aura, your true self and your life purpose are revealed." (suite101.com)
As someone who understands practical science, facts and logic more than abstract ideas, I grasp onto certain areas about auras more than others. So, this is my take on auras, for those of you who are more like me… Our energy field is made up of billions of tiny particles of energy, which are changing all the time. When things are bad emotionally or mentally, this can manifest itself into problems in the physical body, through tension, disease and general ill health (ie. how stress can affect us physically). These bad emotional and physical problems affect our energy and the energy around us (think of how you feel next to someone who is depressed or stressed versus someone who is happy and calm). So by fixing ourselves from the inside, this can help in the healing process of physical problems.
Perhaps I'll be called a hippy even more, but I do believe in the healing power of mental and emotional thought, even if auras are a hard concept for me to grasp.
For more information:


text:
ALFRED, Maine (AP) — Prosecutors have shown jurors videos demonstrating that an insurance agent was familiar with paid sex acts involving his mistress, but a defense lawyer said it doesn't prove that the man promoted prostitution.
The jury in the trial of Mark Strong Sr. watched a 45-minute video Thursday showing a sexual encounter between Zumba fitness instructor Alexis Wright and a man who left $250 cash on her massage table.
Testimony indicated Strong watched the sexual encounters in Kennebunk through a live video call to his office 100 miles away in Thomaston.
Defense lawyer Daniel Lilley contends Strong committed no crime because he neither recruited clients nor profited from the operation.
"Observing a person in a criminal act is not a criminal act itself," Lilley told reporters Thursday outside the courthouse.
After a week of testimony, the lead investigator, Kennebunk police officer Audra Presby, testified briefly late Thursday afternoon, and she was due to return to the witness stand on Friday.
Strong, 57, of Thomaston, faces 13 counts that relate to promoting prostitution. A judge previously dismissed 46 counts of invasion of privacy over prostitution clients who were said to have been videotaped without their knowledge.
Prosecutors have more than 150 videos but showed jurors only a single 45-minute recording Thursday that depicted Wright chatting with an older man who arrived and immediately began undressing. After their sexual encounter, she used disposable wipes to clean up, escorted the man to the door and then spoke to another man, believed to be Strong, at the other end of a Skype chat.
Jurors showed little reaction as they watched the sexually explicit video on a large screen. One looked away during parts of it, one fiddled with an eyeglass case, another twiddled his thumbs and several stole glances at a clock.
Also Thursday, computer expert Frederick Williams told jurors how he recovered a ledger from Wright's computer that described entries for sexual encounters from Oct. 5, 2010 through Feb. 13, 2012, the day before police raided her office and studio in Kennebunk and her home in Wells.
One ledger entry showed a payment of $500 for a sexual encounter, Williams said.
Williams, a Saco police detective, was able to match videotaped sexual encounters recovered from Wright's computers and hard drives with Skype video snapshots of the same encounters on Strong's computer in his Thomaston office.
Other videos shown to jurors indicated Wright and Strong chatted via Skype before and after her sexual encounters, discussing scheduling and birth control, among other topics. Wright provided clients' license plate numbers to Strong, who also was a private investigator.
Before each of the encounters, Wright took a moment to ensure the video camera was hidden. "OK, here we go. I'm locking my screen," she told Strong on one video call.
The prostitution scandal attracted attention last fall after it was reported that Wright's ledgers indicated she made $150,000 over 18 months.
Strong contends he had an affair with 30-year-old Wright and helped finance her Pura Vida dance studio in Kennebunk but didn't promote prostitution. Prosecutors contended the videos proved he was familiar with the details of Wright's business. She will be tried separately later.


text:
Services on Demand
Related links
- Cited by Google
- Similars in Google
Acta Theologica
On-line version ISSN 2309-9089
Print version ISSN 1015-8758
Acta theol. vol.29 n.2 Bloemfontein Dec. 2009
The centuries-old dialogue between buddhism and christianity
M. Clasquin-Johnson
This article examines the pre-history of today's dialogue between Buddhists and Christians. Contrary to what one might think, pre-modern Europeans did have some understanding of Buddhism, however limited and distorted it might have been. Asians during the same period had a far better chance of understanding Christianity, because of the widespread presence of the Nestorian Church from Arabia to China. We do have evidence that interaction between Buddhists and Christians lead to some creative synthesis between the two.
Keywords: Buddhism, Christianity, Interreligious dialogue
Trefwoorde: Boeddhisme, Christendom, Interreligieuse dialoog
Early in January 2000, Peter Steinfels, a staff reporter at the New York Times, wrote that all too often, the only news about religion is that there is no news. Religious development, he says, occurs at a glacial pace, even when we look at things over the course of an entire millennium. Today's list of the most important religions looks much the same as that of a thousand years ago. True, some of the contenders have faded from the scene: Odin and Thor have few devotees today. Also, there have been plenty of internal struggles. But no new religions have arisen (Steinfels 2000).
One could argue that he is wrong. There is currently a revival of interest in the old Norse gods in the west, under the name Asatru. The Baha'i faith is clearly an interesting and important new candidate in the list of religions. One could also ask whether or not the Mormons, to name just one example, have not moved so far from normative Christianity as to constitute a new religion (not, of course that the Mormons would agree with such an evaluation). The list of religions has not been quite as static as Steinfels makes it out to be.
Still, there is something to his claim. Sooner or later, every scholar of religion tends to discover that the contemporary phenomenon he or she is studying has far more of a historic, or even a prehistoric, background than was thought at first. Is it still possible to make a truly original contribution to scientific knowledge about religion in the strongest sense of the term? Is there anything left to say about religion that has not been said by the philosophers of Greece, the prophets of Israel and the seers of India? Or are we merely writing footnotes to the glorious time when the main streams of religion were laid down? If so, let us attempt to write the best footnotes we can. And this particular footnote deals with just such a long prehistory to a contemporary phenomenon.
At first glance, it appears as if dialogue between Buddhists and Christians is a purely twentieth century development, with excellent prospects for the twenty-first. The Dalai Lama and the Pope walk together in Assisi; scholars meet and produce the excellent journal Buddhist-Christian Studies; Buddhist and Christian monks gather to compare their experiences of the monastic life. Catholic priests practise Zen meditation and Buddhist monks discover a dimension of social and environmental consciousness of which they had never been fully aware before. In a possibly apocryphal remark by the historian Arnold Toynbee, it is predicted that when historians of the far future look back at the twentieth century, they will see it not as the century of two world wars or of technological progress, but as the century when Buddhism and Christianity finally made contact. And all this happened within a single century, in fact mostly within the last fifty years or so!
It seems so obvious: before the beginning of the twentieth century - or at a stretch the middle of the nineteenth - these two civilisations and their dominant religions were separated by half a continent and an almost impenetrable Islamic barrier. How could they have known about each other, how could any communication or influence have seeped through from one to the other? Nevertheless, it is starting to become clear that there was a certain level of awareness of one another on both sides. Slowly, a picture emerges of a premodern Europe that did have a certain level of awareness, however distorted it might have been, of the existence of Buddhism; and of an Asia in which a form of Christianity directly competed for Asian adherents.
2. PRE-MODERN WESTERN kNOWLEDGE Of BUDDHISM
How much did our Late-Antiquity and Medieval ancestors know about Buddhism? More than one might think. Most of the evidence for this comes from texts, of course, but before we consider those, our attention is drawn to a more physical witness.
It is a small bronze Buddha statuette, made in a typical North Indian style that dates back to the fifth or sixth century CE. Where was it found? Around Constantinople? Could it have travelled as far as Rome? further?
In fact, it was excavated in the mid-fifties in a dig on Helgö Island, an island in the Malaren lake near Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. from the Scandinavian Iron Age (fifth to eighth centuries CE) to the Early Viking era, Helgö was an important trading post - just how important, we can see when we consider that this Indian artefact was found there (Holmqvist 1961; Magnusson 1979). Today it is housed in the Swedish National History Museum in Stockholm. Since then, a second statuette has been found elsewhere in Sweden, but unfortunately only the head has survived.
We would be going far beyond the evidence to think that there were Buddhists among the Vikings! It is possible, of course, that some aspect of the statuette's numinous quality was recognised by the Scandinavian owners, but we will probably never know. Still, the mere fact that Indian artefacts could travel this far does tell us something about the Europe of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. It was by no means the closed-off society we often think it was. And if artefacts could go on long journeys, so could ideas. Our ancestors knew more about the Buddhists than we used to think they did, a situation only recently uncovered by Buddhologists like Almond (1986, 1987) and Scott (1985a, 1985b).
The first encounter between Buddhism and the west occurred during the reign of Ashoka (272-236 BCE), the first emperor of almost all of India. Ashoka's grandfather Chandragupta, founder of the Mauryan dynasty, already had contacts with the Greeks when, in the year 204 BCE, he concluded a peace treaty with Seleucus I, one of Alexander the Great's self-appointed successors. By Ashoka's time, the Greeks were well known in India - they were called the yona in the Pali language (Sanskrit: yavana), that is, the Ionians. Greek-dominated areas surrounded India's north-western borders. They were not the first Greeks in the area - textual references indicate that there were Greek cities in or near the area even in the Buddha's time. In one sutta the Buddha refers to the fact that among the Greeks, a free man might be a slave the next day, and uses this fact to show the artificiality of caste differences. But it was only later, in the Ashokan era, that Greeks and Buddhists entered into dialogue.
Ashoka is famous for having had his laws and pronouncements inscribed on rocks and pillars. This has led to many of them being preserved. In these inscriptions he informs the world that he sent out Buddhist "missionaries" to the surrounding countries, including the Hellenistic areas in the Levant. But no Greek acknowledgement of these "missionary" efforts has ever been found. In fact, not a single Greek text from the Mediterranean area even mentions Buddhism or the Buddha by name.
Ashoka was more successful closer to home. In the city of kandahar, in Afghanistan, two short versions of Ashoka's edicts have been found: a bilingual one in Greek and Aramaic, and another only in Greek. This area, then known as Bactria, actually became a country that was Greek in culture and Buddhist in religion, and this combination was to play a key role in the expansion of Buddhism to central Asia and from there to China. But before long the Bactrians had lost contact with the Greeks in the west. first, there was a political schism in which the Bactrians declared themselves independent from the other Greeks, and shortly afterwards, the Parthians established a new Persian empire that created an unbridgeable gap between the two groups. Greek political power inside and north-west of India disappeared completely between 120 and 80 BCE. Buddhism would not be able to enter into discussion with the west from here. Bactria itself remained Buddhist for a long time afterwards, but the Greek cultural influence gradually faded away.
Only in the early Christian era do we see textual references to Buddhism. Around the year 202 CE, Clemens of Alexandria wrote in his Stromata ([s.a.]:1. XV) that among the Indians there were followers of "Boutta", who, he maintained, they had raised to the level of divinity because of his extraordinary level of holiness. Did Clement ever meet Buddhists himself? There is no direct evidence for this, but a hundred years earlier, Dio Christosom had mentioned that there were Indian and Bactrian communities in Alexandria (Scott 1985b:89). So it is possible.
The next reference to Buddhism only comes at the end of the Hellenistic era, around the beginning of the fifth century. St. Jerome wrote in his work Contra Jovianus ([s.a.]:1.42) that Indians believed in the virgin birth of the Buddha. And that really was all that the western world knew about Buddhism by the year 400. But, as the Buddha statuettes in Sweden show, there always were ways and means for goods and ideas to travel between one culture and another. But with the movement came new interpretations, resetting the exotic in terms of the familiar, and this set the scene for one of the strangest episodes in the entire history of religions: the enshrinement of the Buddha as a saint in the Christian church.
27 November is not an unusual day in the Catholic church's traditional calendar. About ten or twelve saints are associated with this day, from St. John Intercisus (circa 421 CE) to the Blessed Humilis of Bisignano (1600-1637 CE). But there are two saints honoured on this day that look very interesting to us: Saints Barlaam and Josaphat (The Orthodox churches associate these two with different days on the calendar).
Josapahat's story can be put briefly as follows: There was once an Indian king named Abenner who persecuted Christians. When a soothsayer predicted that the king's son would become a Christian himself, Abenner took steps to ensure that his son would grow up in the palace, secluded from the world. Despite this, the ascetic Barlaam entered the palace and converted Josaphat. The king continued to resist for a while, then accepted the inevitability of the situation and himself became, first a Christian and later on a hermit. Josaphat finally renounced his throne and went off into the desert in search of his old teacher Barlaam. He spent the rest of his life as a desert hermit (Thurston & Attwater 1956:432-433).1
This legend was quite popular in medieval Europe. We see the first signs of it in the tenth century, and by the thirteenth century Josaphat and Barlaam could be found on the official list of saints. It is not clear which pope placed them there, nor even whether it ever happened officially - sanctification was a far less structured process in the Middle Ages than it is today. More than sixty texts bearing different versions of the legend have come down to us, not only in Latin, but in a variety of medieval European languages, in Christian Arabic, and even in Amharic (Ethiopian).
The city of Palermo in Sicily had a church dedicated to Divo Josaphat. In 1571, the Doge of Venice made a gift of relics (a bone and some vertebrae) of St. Josaphat to the king of Portugal. These were taken to Antwerp by the Spaniards in 1672 and installed in the monastery of St. Salvator. We even find traces of the legend in literature: a sub-story from the legend was used by Shakespeare and incorporated in the Merchant of Venice (Almond 1987:391 ff). The story of this Indian saint would later return to the east when it was translated into a filipino language in the eighteenth century.
The veracity of the legend was being questioned as early as 1577, but only in the middle of the nineteenth century did the truth come out. Not only did the legend describe two saints who never existed, but the basis on which it rested was the biography of the Buddha. Today, neither church historians nor buddhologists seriously doubt this. It is not certain on which version of the Buddha's biography was used to construct the legend of Josaphat: it shows signs of being composed from several versions and may even have been based on a version no longer extant. But broadly speaking, the story is instantly recognisable. Even the name Josaphat is derived from the Indian word bodhisattva, a Buddha-in-training.2 Other elements were added from a variety of sources, some Christian in origin, others not. The "desert" element, for example, strikes one as quite un-Buddhist, since ancient India was covered in jungle and that is where Indian hermits withdrew to. Various sub-divisions of the text can be traced to tales from Indian literature, such as the Ramayana and Mahabharata, to stories from the Jain traditions, and possibly even from China. Only one of the sixteen sub-stories, the "Parable of the Sower" can be shown to have been taken from the New Testament.
What we have then, is a situation in which medieval Christians were influenced, perhaps deeply influenced, by the life of the Buddha, no matter how much this story was viewed through a Christian lens. This indicates that we need to be careful when we draw our tidy lines of division between the religions. Religious influences may arrive from the strangest points of origin: once present, they will be adapted to fit in with the dominant paradigm. The legend of Barlaam and Josaphat is the textual equivalent of the Helgö-statuette - taken by itself, it is a context-less piece of information, but taken in a wider sense it indicates that the Eurasian continent was not quite divided into a number of mutually exclusive camps. Perhaps the most elegant commentary on the entire matter was by Max Müller:
Whatever we may think of the sanctity of saints, let those who doubt the right of Buddha to a place among them read the story of his life as it is told in the Buddhist canon. If he lived the life which is there described, few saints have a better claim to the title than Buddha; and no-one in either the Greek or the Roman church need be ashamed of having paid to Buddha's memory the honour that was intended for St Josaphat ... (Almond 1987:406).
In the later Middle Ages, more accurate information about Buddhism started to reach the West. Marco Polo's story is well known, but he was not the first medieval European to reach the far East. The franciscan missionaries John of Plano Carpini and Benedict the Pole arrived at the Mongol court at karakorum in 1246, nearly 30 years before Polo. In 1253, another franciscan, John Rubruck also visited the court. All three wrote about their travels and so gave the West its first glimpse of Buddhism as it was in fact practised. Here we find the first descriptions of core Buddhist doctrines such as rebirth and karma. The next report comes from Hethum I, king of Lesser Armenia, who undertook a state visit to his liege lord, Mangu khan. He too briefly mentions a "god" worshipped by the Mongols, called Chakemonia, i.e. Shakyamuni (Almond 1986).
In 1275, Polo was therefore not the first westerner in East Asia, but he was the first to penetrate all the way into China - something even his father and uncle had not succeeded in during their previous journey. In his travelogue he does mention Buddhism as he encountered it in various provinces of the Mongol Empire. Il Milione did not seem to have much patience with doctrinal hair-splitting; like a good phenomenologist he describes the rituals he observed in temples dedicated to Chagamoni Burkhan3, and there is no evidence of him enquiring into the philosophical background to these rituals. However, during his travels homewards he did encounter and write down the Buddha's biography. Once his travelogue was published, therefore, after two thousand years of rumours, distorted legends and half-understood teachings, the West finally had a reasonably accurate version of the life of the Buddha. It had some impact: in 1446, 150 years after the book's publication, an unknown editor of a Venetian reprint inserted a comment remarking on the parallels between the stories of the Buddha and St Josaphat (Almond 1987:396).4
After Marco Polo there would be a variety of travellers and missionaries from Europe who would write home about Buddhist monks and temples (mostly of the Tibetan/Mongol Vajrayana tradition) But this is where we end this part of the story. In 1498 Vasco Da Gama discovered a sea route to India. from that moment onward, information about the Asia and its religions began to flow westwards on a regular basis, and by the middle of the nineteenth century, Europeans would have a reasonably clear image of Buddhism.
European Christians of late antiquity and the middle ages, as we have seen, did have access to information about Buddhism, but it was limited and distorted. It was much easier for Asian Buddhists to get to know a little about Christianity: one could simply ask the neighbours. There have been Christians in Asia since the beginning, and indeed, we know of more than twenty bishops active between kurdistan and the Caspian see by the year 225 CE (Moffett 1998:79).
Sadly, this has become a forgotten chapter in Christian history. Today, Christians, whether Orthodox, Catholic or Protestant, might at best be aware that there once was a community of "Nestorians" in Asia. But even that is not quite correct. The Persian church was already four centuries old when the Nestorian controversy erupted, and had long regarded itself as independent from either Rome or Constantinople. Even when the established church in the Persian capital Seleucia-Ctesiphon strongly endorsed Nestorius' position and made his view of the Trinity its doctrine, there always remained sizeable minorities that stayed true either to the Monophysite view or to Chalcedonian orthodoxy. Despite this, we will use the established term "Nestorian" to indicate the Persian church as a whole, especially in its later phases. Until recently the existence and history of this Persian branch of Christianity was known mainly to specialists, and it has only become available to the general reader with the appearance of works by Moffett (1998) and England (1996), from which most of the information in this section has been taken.
Most of this tale takes place in Persia. Christians were always a minority here, first under the Zoroastrian yoke of the Parthian and Sassanid Empires, and later under Islamic domination. But they were a sizeable minority: It has been estimated that by the end of the eighth century there were a million Christians in Persia alone. England (1996:2) estimates that for the first few centuries of Christianity's existence, there were more Christians in Persia than in the West. Moffett's (1998) estimates are more conservative, but still leave no doubt that the Persian Church was an organisation to be reckoned with. Life under the Zoroastrians was hard: There were periods of persecution in Persia that, according to some authors, exceeded those in the Roman Empire. During a period of forty years in the reign of Shah Shapur II (r 309-379) as many as 190 000 Christians were killed. Later persecutions would be shorter in duration, but just as cruel: in the year 448 CE, ten bishops and an unbelievable 153 000 lay Christians were executed in the city of kirkuk (Moffett 1998:136-145, 161). Despite such persecutions, Christianity persisted in Persia. It was only under Islamic rule, and more particularly under Mongol conquerors who had accepted Islam, that the Persian church finally disappeared from the scene, leaving only a few small remnants.
Despite its minority status, the Persian Church had a strong missionary outreach. The various indigenous churches in India have at least some historical influence from Persia, and there were Nestorian communities as far south as Yemen in the Arabian Peninsula. But we are more interested in the Nestorians' movement into the Asian interior.
This movement mainly followed the old Asian trade routes - the same routes taken by Buddhism in its movement from Central Asia to China. Persian missionaries crossed the steppes to do mission work among the Turkish and Mongol tribes living there. They reached Samarkand by the fifth century and the oases of Turfan and Dun-Huang shortly afterwards. from there, it was not far to China, and tradition has it that it was two Persian monks who smuggled silkworms out of China to the West in the year 551 CE (Moffett 1998:242).
In 796 CE, Patriarch Timothy I appointed bishops for Tibet. No known Tibetan texts confirm their presence there, but this was the period when Vajrayana Buddhism was first established in that country, so we can imagine that the theological struggle for the conversion of Tibetans must have been considerable. Artefacts, mostly crucifixes, have been found that indicate a Christian presence in Tibet by the tenth century. More speculatively speaking, perhaps the strict hierarchical composition of Tibetan Buddhism may have found some inspiration in the Nestorians' system of bishops and metropolitans.
In the year 635 a Persian missionary known to us only by his Chinese name Alopen (possibly a Chinese pronunciation of Abraham) arrived in the capital of China, the city of Chang'an. He proceeded to found a church in the city (we know of eleven Nestorian churches in China by the end of the seventh century), and to translate the New Testament into Chinese. The next great figure in the history of the Chinese church is Ching-Ching (Chinese for Adam). In 782 a Buddhist monk named Prajna reached Chang'an and was appointed as scripture translator. Unfortunately his knowledge of the Chinese language was insufficient to the task and it was only with the help of bishop Ching-Ching, Chinese-born but of Afghan ancestry, that Prajna managed to translate seven volumes of Buddhist sutras.
What makes this incident even more interesting is that while they were working on this task, by 804 there were two other great names in Buddhist history resident in the same monastery. Both were Japanese. The first was kobo Daishi (kukai), founder of the Shingon (Tantric) school of Japanese Buddhism. On his return to Japan he brought with him a number of Buddhist texts, quite possibly including those on which Ching-Ching en Prajna worked together. The other Japanese monk resident in the Ta-ts'in monastery at the time was Dengyo Daishi (Saicho), later to found the Japanese Tendai school of Buddhism. Such a concentration of religious founders can rarely have been together in all of religious history and as Moffett (1998:302) remarks, who can resist the temptation of speculating about the mutual influences between the Nestorian and the three Buddhists?
Was there ever a Nestorian church in Japan? Opinions differ. England accepts that certain Japanese place names and archaeological findings indicate a Christian presence in kyoto, then the Japanese capital city. Moffett is more sceptical. In korea excavations have shown a possible Nestorian presence, but it is unclear if the area in question was under korean or Chinese domination at the time.
By the end of the eighth century, Nestorian Christianity disappeared from China. One reason for this was the persecution of all religions of non-Chinese origin under the T'ang dynasty (it hit Buddhism just as hard, in fact only the Ch'an and Pure Land schools managed to go underground and survive). It would return only with the creation of a new dynasty (the Yuan) by the successors of Genghis khan.
There were many Nestorian Christians among the Turkic and Mongol tribes of Northern Central Asia. Some tribes, such as the Uighurs and keraits, were even predominantly Christian. Genghis khan's brother Tolui, to name just one example, was married to the kerait princess Sorkaktani, a known Christian. But she was not to be the Empress Helena of Asia, for of her three sons, Mongke the chief of the Mongols, Hulegu the conqueror of the Persians and kubilai the emperor of China, none converted to Christianity (Moffett (1998:400 ff, 505).5 Thus, there never was an Asian Constantine to establish Christianity firmly in the region.
The founding of the Yuan dynasty by the Mongol conquerors saw a second blossoming of Chinese Nestorian Christianity. Once again, Christian churches and Buddhist temples were in close proximity, although we do not again hear of co-operation between individuals from these two religions. But this time around the Nestorians were too closely allied to the Mongol overlords. Now the Chinese saw them, not as a religion of Persian origin as before, but as the religion (or one of them, at least) of the hated Mongol barbarians. This was also the period when franciscans started their own missionary expansion into China, and they regarded the Nestorians as the worst kind of heretics. The disagreements between these two groups of Christians could not have done much for the public image of Christianity in China. The fall of the Yuan dynasty in 1368 saw the final disappearance of Nestorian Christianity from China. The Catholic missionary attempts of the thirteenth century were also unsuccessful. When new missionaries arrived by sea two centuries later, they were met with a singular lack of recognition. On the steppes, Nestorianism would largely succumb to the Golden Horde of Tamburlaine, although small, isolated communities persisted into the start of the twentieth century (England 1996:87).
The situation in Persia was much the same. By 1551, a number of Nestorians reunited with Rome and have since been known as Chaldeans, while the original Nestorians were called Assyrians. The part of the Indian church most influenced by Nestorianism allied itself to Rome in 1559, and later split into an Easter Rite catholic church and another branch that allied itself to the monophysite patriarch of Antioch in 1653.
How far did Nestorian Christianity spread through Asia before it effectively disappeared? Once again, we find a difference of opinion, with England as the more liberal interpreter and Moffett the more conservative. Suffice it to say that there is contested evidence of a brief Nestorian presence in Burma, The Philippines and Indonesia.
Thus the Persian church, notwithstanding its eventual demise, was once a Pan-Asian organisation that existed side-by-side with Buddhism for centuries. We know of just a few concrete instances of interaction, but it was in Central Asia, right where the two religions co-existed the most and the longest, that Buddhists developed the concept of "Adhi-Buddha", an omnipresent but personal Buddha-hood that is difficult to reconcile with the purely Indian concept of "dharmakaya", also an omnipresent Buddhahood, but regarded as totally impersonal. The Adhi-Buddha concept is not accepted by many Buddhist schools. Yet it is the closest Buddhism has ever come to promulgating the Semitic concept of God. Can we see it as an idea borrowed from the Nestorians? We will probably never know. The only direct reference to Christianity in the vast Buddhist canon is in the Insadi-Sutra (c. 14th century), a late text of Turkic origin in which we find a prayer that Maitreya, the next Buddha, will appear soon and that his reign will extend over Byzantium and Baghdad, the political centres of Christianity and Islam. The text also mentions "Mother Mary" (klimkeit 1981:47).
On the Christian side, there is more explicit evidence of a transfer of ideas between Christians and Buddhists. In Alopen's Jesus Messiah Sutra we can find a number of references to the Buddha and Buddhist doctrines. Such references tend to the polemical - often, they attempt to show off the Nestorians as better Buddhists than the Buddhists themselves! Still, the appropriation of Buddhist terminology is striking. In another work by Alopen, the Discourse on Monotheism, the typically Mahayana Buddhist concept of Emptiness is used to show how God transcends all human categories:
The holy One of great wisdom [prajñā-pāramitā] is equal to pure emptiness [sūnyatā] itself and cannot be taken (a view thereof) (Scott 1985b:94, cf. 92-98; viz. klimkeit 1981:47-48).
Just as Western Christians adopted Greek philosophy as their fundamental hermeneutic framework, so do we see the Nestorians, at least in China using Buddhist philosophy to pour their religious insights into a culturally acceptable mould. If Nestorianism had not died out, there could now have been a second, very different kind of Christianity - one that remained true to the basic Christian mythology (which Alopen recounts in quite conventional terms) but which saw those myths not in terms of a Greek philosophical framework, but in terms of a Buddhist philosophy of emptiness. And this is just the kind of development we can see happening today as a result of the more recent attempts at dialogue between the two. In krüger's Sweeping whirlwinds (2003), for example, "Buddhism", not the distinct sectarian phenomenon, but the broad philosophical framework, is used as a hermeneutical key to unlock the history of Reformed Christianity in Pretoria.
There is yet another point of view that demands greater attention to be given to the old Asian church. It was never a church that could see itself as an alter ego of the state, not even during the Yuan dynasty. On the contrary, throughout Asia it was a humble institution, sometimes tolerated alongside others, at other times persecuted with those others. Always it needed to enter into dialogue with representatives of other religions and work out a modus vivendi along with them. In the modern secular world, we see the church more and more in the same position. Perhaps the Nestorian church, theological differences notwithstanding, is a better role model for Christianity than the traditional exclusivism of large sections of the western church. More research into the Persian church and its far-flung developments may give us new insights into the nature of Christianity and this religion's role in Third Millennium society.
We may now return to Steinfels and his declaration that not much has changed in the world of religion during the last thousand years. And in broad terms, he is right. Then as now, a few Buddhists and Christians are formally in dialogue, while the masses of both religions look on. And yet, for all that their numbers are few, the dialogue, then as now, holds the promise of great religious creativity. How will Christians and Buddhists a thousand years into the future regard our attempts at dialogue? I hope they will find us worthy of our predecessors, a millennium ago in medieval Europe and Central Asia.
ALMOND, P.A. 1986. The medieval West and Buddhism. Eastern Buddhist 19(2):85-101. [ Links ]
ALMOND, P.A.1987. The Buddha of Christendom: A review of the legend of Barlaam and Josaphat. Religious Studies 23:391-406. [ Links ]
BUDGE, E.A.W. 1976. Baralâm and Ywâsf. Amsterdam: APA-Philo Press. [ Links ]
CLEMENS OF ALEXANDRIA [s.a.]. Stromata. [Online.] Retrieved from: http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/002/0020292.htm [2008, 4 May] [ Links ].
ENGLAND, J.C. 1996. The hidden history of Christianity in Asia. Churches of the East before 1500. Delhi: ISPCK. [ Links ]
HIRSCH, J.C. 1986. Barlam and Josaphat. A Middle English life of Buddha. London: Oxford University Press. [ Links ]
HOLMQVIST, W. (ed.) 1961. Excavations at Helgö, Part I, Report for 1954-1956. Stockholm: kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien. [ Links ]
JEROME [s.a.]. Contra Jovianus. [Online.] Retrieved from: http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/206/2060168.htm [2008, 4 May] [ Links ].
KLIMKEIT H-J. 1981. Christians, Buddhists and Manichaeans in medieval central Asia. Buddhist-Christian Studies 1:46-50. [ Links ]
KRÜGER, J.S. 2003. Sweeping whirlwinds: A study of religious change: reformed religion and civil religion on the city of Pretoria (Tshwane)(1855-2000). Pretoria: Unisa Press. [ Links ]
MAGNUSSON, M. 1979. Viking. Hammer of the North. London: Orbis. [ Links ]
MOFFETT, S.H. 1998. A history of Christianity in Asia. Volume I: Beginnings to 1500. Maryknoll: Orbis. [ Links ]
SCOTT, D. 1985a. Ashokan missionary expansion of Buddhism among the Greeks (in N.W. India, Bactria and the Levant). Religion 15(2):131-142. [ Links ]
SCOTT, D. 1985b. Christian responses to Buddhism in pre-medieval times. Numen 32(1):88-100. [ Links ]
STEINFELS, P. 2000. Beliefs: The list of the world's major religions looks as it did at the dawn of the last millennium. New York Times, January 8, 2000. [Online.] Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2000/01/08/nyregion/beliefs-list-world-s-major-religions-looks-itdid-dawn-last-millennium.html [ Links ]
THURSTON H. & ATTWATER, D. 1956. Butler's lives of the Saints. IV. October, November, December. London: Burns & Oates. [ Links ]
Dr. Michel Clasquin-Johnson, Department of Religious Studies & Arabic, University of South Africa.
1 A more complete version appears in Almond (1987:392-393). Various versions and translations of the legend of Josaphat are known. We name but two: The complete text in Middle English, in Hirsch (1986), and a modern English translation of the Ethiopian version, in Budge (1976). No Afrikaans translation of the legend is known to exist.
2 The sequence of names as experts currently see it is Sanskrit bodhisattva, followed by Arabic Budhasaf, Georgian Iodasaph, Greek Ioasaph, and finally, medieval Latin Josaphat.
3 The term Burkhan is a Mongol word with a Siberian shamanistic heritage. It denotes not only a god, but also any depiction of a god, in that case of Shakyamuni Buddha (Almond 1986:95).
4 Marco Polo's book has remained in print, in one language or another, ever since its first appearance. It is currently freely downloadable in two parts at http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/10636 and http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/12410.
5 Centuries earlier, there had been a Christian empress, Sirin, in Persia, but despite his tolerance towards all religions, her husband Chosroes II never did abandon his own Zoroastrian beliefs.


text:
Dedicated to all game related Events and Contests. Check back often for new opportunities to win and compete for prizes!
Contest rules, terms, and conditions
Cheating in HoC
Use this control to limit the display of threads to those newer than the specified time frame.
Allows you to choose the data by which the thread list will be sorted.
Order threads in...
Note: when sorting by date, 'descending order' will show the newest results first.
Forum Rules


text:
Subscribe to TOETOE
Receive 20% Discount!
Sign up to get latest special offers and newsletter.
Why wear conventional socks when you can try a pair of toe socks from our essential range? Our socks allow your toes to spread out helping with movement and balance. With a variety of lengths and colours so why not jump in with both feet and order a pair today?
Items 1-12 of 17
Items 1-12 of 17


text:
John Clare
John Clare (13 July 1793 – 20 May 1864 / Northamptonshire / England)
» Click to list general statistics » OR, select a date :
To A Fallen Elm
Old Elm that murmured in our chimney top
The sweetest anthem autumn ever made
And into mellow whispering calms would drop
When showers fell on thy many coloured shade
read more >>
- Hits: Number of visitors who read the poem on the given date.
- Posts: Number of visitors who posted the poem to a friend (via e-mail) on the given date.
- Dates that have "0" hits may not be shown on the list.
- Dates, poems and poets that have "0" hits may not be shown on the list. Statistics are generated daily.