8:44 Desmond de Leau entered the world, he really wanted to be born in our house and not the hospital.

As is now on all blogs and newspapers:

Abuna Pauolos, in Italy for a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI this week, told the news agency, "Soon the world will be able to admire the Ark of the Covenant described in the Bible as the container of the tablets of the law that God delivered to Moses and the center of searches and studies for centuries."
The announcement is expected to be made at 2 p.m. Italian time from the Hotel Aldrovandi in Rome. Pauolos will reportedly be accompanied by Prince Aklile Berhan Makonnen Haile Sellassie and Duke Amedeo D’Acosta.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ark_Of_The_Covenant (where you can read a theory how it ended in Ethiopia)
• http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=102119
• http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009/06/indiana_jones_call_your_office_1.php?utm_source=sbhomepage&utm_medium=link&utm_content=channellink
• http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends?q=ark+of+the+covenant+revealed&date=2009-6-26&sa=X

Of course it is not revealed. But if it ever floats up (if the artifact even still exists) then it will have a high impact on current religions, that’s what it makes so interesting.

According to pope Ratzinger, who had a long career as an internationally noted academic, serving as a professor at various German universities (Rabobank CEO Bert Heemskerk studied under him).

Christianity must always remember that it is the religion of the "Logos." It is faith in the "Creator Spiritus," in the Creator Spirit, from which proceeds everything that exists. Today, this should be precisely its philosophical strength, in so far as the problem is whether the world comes from the irrational, and reason is not, therefore, other than a "sub-product," on occasion even harmful of its development or whether the world comes from reason, and is, as a consequence, its criterion and goal. The Christian faith inclines toward this second thesis, thus having, from the purely philosophical point of view, really good cards to play, despite the fact that many today consider only the first thesis as the only modern and rational one par excellence. However, a reason that springs from the irrational, and that is, in the final analysis, itself irrational, does not constitute a solution for our problems. Only creative reason, which in the crucified God is manifested as love, can really show us the way. In the so necessary dialogue between secularists and Catholics, we Christians must be very careful to remain faithful to this fundamental line: to live a faith that comes from the "Logos," from creative reason, and that, because of this, is also open to all that is truly rational.^[20]

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logos

The impact now, is that there is apparently an object, the ark, which also speaks to people ergo speaks the word of God through an object.

It means that it directly goes in competition with the key concept of Christianity because… if there is, next to Jesus, also an object which acts as a telephone line to God … who knows what the next message though "persons who can hear it" will be.

The amount of Dead Michael Jackson jokes must have reached the tens of thousands by now, about everyone website and forum is swamping with them.

1. Madonna has paid her respects to the Jackson family – and asked how much they want for the kids……

2. Confirmation has just come in that Michael Jackson died of food poisoning – apparantly he ate some 1 year old nuts…..

3. Michael is the only person I know who was born a black man and died a white woman.

4. Apparently Michael Jackson died picking his nose. Doctors said they couldn’t blame it on the sunshine or the moonlight. They blamed it on the boogie.

5. Q: Why did Michael Jackson die at 3:15?
A: “It’s when the big hand touches the little hand”

6. Q: How will they ensure that Michael gets a thorough body search autopsy?
A: Hire a Catholic priest to do it.

7. Michael Jackson has had to cancel a few dates for the summer. Timmy aged 6 and jonny aged 9 are said to be devastated.

8. The coroner is unsure what to put as the cause of Michael Jackson’s death. He doesn’t know whether to blame it on the sunshine, the moonlight, the good times, or the boogie

9. apparently Michael Jackson may have died from food poisoning… he was found with 12yr old nuts in his mouth

10.

When Farah Fawcett got to heaven, and went through the pearly gates, she was greeted by God.

“Wow!” exclaimed the Holy Ghost. “We really enjoyed your work here. Especially Charlie’s Angels! I still have a poster in my office of you with that red bikini!”

Farah is a little taken aback. “Thank you, Lord…”

Jehovah goes on, “Well, I have a special reward for you. I’m prepared to grant you one wish. Have anything in mind?”

Not one to act selfish and change God’s opinion of her, Farah thinks for a second and decides upon a wish. “I’d like for all the children of the world to be safe and sound forever.”

“Done!” exclaims the Heavenly Father. He snaps, and Michael Jackson appears next to Farah.

For the past 10 years there are a few programs which are my essentials. One of them is Xara Xtreme, with which I make all my graphics. Today I received and e-mail that version 5 was out! wow. cool!

There’s more than 100 improvements including:

• Significantly enhanced website and web graphics creation
• A new Object Gallery that gives powerful and flexible control over layers and pages
• An integrated spell checker and many other text enhancements
• A new intelligent image scaling feature and many other photo improvements

The new content aware scaling is amazing, look at the photograph at the right,
the middle photo shows what normally would happen when you try to stretch a photo,
now look at the bottom picture what content aware scaling achieves…. its like magic!

I cant say enough times that Xara is many times better than photoshop, it makes photos up to 100 times smaller (!!) e.g. where a photo in Photoshop is 300mb it is 3mb in Xara. It is faster than any other drawing program, it can export and import from any format, it retains every editing done ever one a photo, it includes the easiest and most perfect panorama maker, a webdesign tool that just lets you "draw the webpage" in any freeform way you can think of and then just save it as fully compliant webpage and ofcourse it can use any photoshop plugin around.

I only need to pay $29 (and $4 for sending me the cd package) so… click… upgrade… done!

Only today I discovered the mapping of ancient starmaps on Google Sky (in Google Earth), how amazing! For all those tens of thousands of years our forefathers had only this to orientate themselves (before GPS ). Stunning how this is mapped.

One of these days I’m going to learn all of this, its amazing that this is no longer part of our school curriculum.

This is a Legendary day…

Since today I reached the milestone of having killed 1000 opponents (!) in the game of RISK in the multiplayer online RISK version ATTACK (an app which you can play on facebook)

Look me up and challenge me

Back to the stone ages

Human sacrifice was practiced by many ancient cultures. People would be ritually killed in a manner that was supposed to please or appease a god or spirit. While not widely known, human sacrifices for religious reasons still exist today in a number of nations.

Some occasions for human sacrifice found in multiple cultures on multiple continents include:

• Human sacrifice to accompany the dedication of a new temple or bridge.
• Sacrifice of people upon the death of a king, high priest or great leader; the sacrificed were supposed to serve or accompany the deceased leader in the next life.
• Human sacrifice in times of natural disaster. Droughts, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc. were seen as a sign of anger or displeasure by deities, and sacrifices were supposed to lessen the divine ire.

Some of the best known ancient human sacrifices were those practiced by various Pre-Columbian civilizations of Mesoamerica. The Aztec were particularly noted for practicing this on an unusually large scale; a human sacrifice would be made every day to aid the sun in rising, the dedication of the great temple at Tenochtitlán was reportedly marked with the sacrificing of thousands, and there are multiple accounts of captured Conquistadores being sacrificed during the wars of the Spanish conquest of Mexico.

In Scandinavia, the old Scandinavian religion contained human sacrifice, and both the Norse sagas and German historians relate of this, see e.g. Temple at Uppsala and Blót.

There is evidence to suggest Pre-Hellenic Minoan cultures practised human sacrifice. Sacrificed corpses were found at a number of sites in the citadel of Knossos in Crete. The north house at Knossos contained the bones of children who appeared to have been butchered. It is possible they may have been for human consumption as was the tradition with sacrificial offerings made in Pre-Hellenic Civilization. [1] The myth of Theseus and the Minotaur (set in the labyrinth at Knossos) provides evidence that human sacrifice was commonplace. In the myth, we are told that Athens sent seven young men and seven young women to Crete as human sacrifices to the Minotaur. This ties up well with the archaeological evidence that most sacrifices were of young adults or children.

Human sacrifice still happens today as an underground practice in some traditional religions, for example in muti killings. Human sacrifice is no longer officially condoned in any country, and these cases are regarded as murder.

During the stone ages the pre-Egyptian nilotes believed in eating humans including family to obtain special skills (cannibalism as can still be seen around the world). This was surplaced slowly by the cult of Osiris which "virtually killed a God to obtain the special skill of immortality. 3000 years later the Jews dropped this kind of sacrifice of Gods and humans when they left Egypt and wrote the Tora (old testament), unfortunately, 1400 years later, a new religion started adoring a human (who had been to Egypt) and believing again in sacrifice: it is needed to kill a God to obtain special skills.

Unfortunately, this belief we had all through the stone ages: that we need to sacrifice to obtain something is heard every day. "drink my blood, eat my flesh".

Virtual cannibalism lives unto this day in our society and has a profound influence on how we think. As long as we believe that spilling of blood is good then we will never reach paradise. Then we are not even "back to middle ages, but back to the stone age".

p.s. Mahalia Jackson still is awesome!