The London Daily News is reporting that last year the Metropolitan Police spent over 10 million GBP (that’s over $15 million!) on translation services last year. Crikey!

The following is a list of the main languages the Met are having to translate:

• Urdu
• Slovak
• Russian
• Portuguese
• Czech
• Bulgarian
• Arabic (yay!)
• Farsi
• Kurdish
• Lithuanian
• Polish
• Punjab
• Romanian
• Gujurati

The article seems to take the view that this spending is a waste, but personally I think it’s a good sign that the Met are actually willing to assign this amount of money to these much needed translation services.

Miss Earth 2009 – The winner of MISS EARTH will serve as the Ambassador to environmental protection campaigns worldwide. Miss Earth 2009 on November 22, 2009 at Boracay Ecovillage Resort Convention Center, Boracay Island, Aklan, Philippines.Read More…

Pacquiao-Mayweather match must be made

I’m not sure, if this is true.

Facebook Application Farmville Faces Scam

Is there evidence for what is on the other of side of the ‘Big Hill’? An article in Newsweek (Nov 9 Edition) highlights a book called Life After Death: The Evidence. The book by Dinesh D’souza is provocative, in that it claims we can provide scientific evidence for skeptics who do not believe there is life after death.

Is there empirical evidence of life after death? Apparently so. Dr. Sam Parnia is currently working on a study that projects images onto the floor of likely NDE (near death experience) patients’ rooms. The study is hoping to prove whether or not individuals who experience an NDE are actually viewing their bodies or “compiling years of ER episodes”. The results are supposed to be published in 2010. The study works like this: those who claim to have an out-of-body experience, such as leaving their bodies and viewing themselves dead on the gurney, will be asked if they can identify random pictures projected on the floor of their emergency room. The images will be located where they cannot be viewed from the table they lay on. I think this is a clever study. It will at least keep down the number of fabrications.

But will this prove that there is an afterlife or resurrection? Perhaps. Will it stir saving faith? I doubt it. Paul preached quite passionately that there is life after death. He did this without the aid of modern science or even a Ouija Board. How could Paul be so sure? How can we?

Here is the thing: there could be a thousand studies that give perfect and ample empirical evidence that there is life after death. There could be eyewitness after eyewitness of resurrections, and many people still would not believe. “You really think that,” you might think. Yes, I really think that. I think even if some people actually saw someone rise from the dead, they would not believe that there is life after death.

But those aren’t my words, they are Jesus’. In Luke 16, Jesus tells the story of the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man who has found himself in Hades longs to return to Earth and tell his brothers to repent. The rich man says, “If someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.” Abraham replied to the rich man, “If they do not hear Moses and the prophets neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.”

Seeing, in this case, is not believing. So what does this mean for us as a follower of Jesus? It means we should not get sucked into the thinking that something besides faith will please God (Heb 11:6). We should not rejoice that modern science is providing ‘evidence’ of the afterlife because it will not cause people to believe. Belief–faith–is a gift from God (Eph 2:8-9).

If you read articles such as the one noted in Newsweek, and you are eager to know the evidence, perhaps you should ask yourself if you really believe. If you really believe, why are you anxious for evidence? It is likely you are actually anxious for belief.

Hold your breath if you like. But I’m not too concerned about Dr. Parnia’s 2010 experiment results. At least, my faith does not rest on it. I trust that beyond the ‘Big Hill’ (death) there is life. But, not because someone saw a picture on the floor of an emergency room while experiencing an NDE.

Remember this week that Jesus’ resurrection is the prime place in which we are to rest our faith. Even though it is Wednesday let your mind dwell on life after death. Remember that in the New Testament many saw Jesus risen from the dead….and still did not believe. Don’t think that a modern experiment will create something the very presence of Jesus did not. Place your trust in the one who said, “I am the resurrection.” (John11:25)

For His Glory,
Nathan

(All scripture taken from ESV)

Pacman a hit on US late-night show ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’

link

Manny Pacquiao at Jimmy Kimmel Live!

link

WATCH MANNY PACQUIAO AND MIGUEL COTTO VIDEOS

MANNY PACQUIAO VS MIGUEL COTTO LIVE – It’s a live battle between Pacquiao vs Cotto here… Read Full Story

Seminar for buyers at Keller-Williams Realty,  Dec. 5 at 10:00-11 am.  Learn how HUD homes can be a great investment for first time homebuyers and with only $100 down.

http://www.realestateshows.com/flyer.php?id=447067

Ikea, the Swedish home furniture chain, recently changed their typeface from a customized version of Futura to the more commonplace font Verdana. The change has caused an uproar in design circles. Complaints focus on the fact that the company, known for innovative and affordable design, has chosen a typeface invented by Microsoft for the computer screen. In his blog, Seen&Done, Jamie Latendresse laments “Why Verdana, Why Ikea, WHY?” In The New York Times, Ikea, surprised by the outrage, explained that the new font is more effective for use on the Internet and in different languages.

I’ve been trying to follow the news and read up on what’s going on, and I can’t help but think we are repeating the betrayal of Viet Nam–getting the vietnamese to buy into what we were selling, promising we’d be there, and then high tailing it out, or even more so, of the betrayal of the American Indians, to whom we sent so many intermediaries to sign treaties–peace in exchange for land–and then reneged and sold them a new treaty, and then reneged, and sold them a new one.

I am not a proponent of war. But I do firmly believe that if you do go to war you should go to win and get out. There should be 8 billion troops there, getting the job done, and coming home. What are we doing? Why would a village elder ever trust an american promise? I don’t purport to understand the situation in its entirety, but you listen to the supposed experts, and the way seems clear–we need more troops, we need a rebuilding plan-clear, hold, build, something like that, and we have to resolve the pakistan problem where the enemy is. Critics of the administration say the president should do what General McCrystal tells him to–listen to the boots on the ground. I believe the president should weigh his advice, but we should also accept that the president is the commander in chief of the armed forces, not general mccrystal. Having said that, I don’t know if they president is going to handle this right. I was very critical of dick cheney and donald rumsfeld for the way they ran the wars in iraq ans afganistan–they didn’t learn their lessons–and now I’m fearful that Obama is making the same mistakes.

WATCH MANNY PACQUIAO AND MIGUEL COTTO VIDEOS

MANNY PACQUIAO VS MIGUEL COTTO – REVIEWS – Watch this good fight between Miguel Cotto vs Paul Malignaggi… Read Full Story

WATCH MANNY PACQUIAO AND MIGUEL COTTO VIDEOS

MANNY PACQUIAO VS MIGUEL COTTO – FIRE POWER – Cotto is so excited in his fight against Cotto based from a released video, he will defeat Pacquiao to shut the mouth of his critics.

Joe Santiago meantioned that the news that had come out was favorable for their team in which Manny Pacquiao has the edge over Miguel Cotto. Santiago compared the situation on the previous bout of Cotto against carlos Quintana on where few had just recognized the success of the welterweight champion. Read Full Story

WATCH MANNY PACQUIAO AND MIGUEL COTTO VIDEOS

MANNY PACQUIAO VS MIGUEL COTTO – FIRE POWER – There is no need to panic, but Team Pacquiao need to leave Baguio…  An upcoming typhoon is approaching the country and it is possible that it will hit on Pacquiao’s training location in Baguio.

Team Pacquiao will leave the country this Saturday 24th of October to continue his training in the United States of America… Read Full Story

George H.W. Bush is the former president who once declared, “…I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.”

His remark was so out of line that several on the Right felt obligated to deny he made it.  (But believing what the Right says — without independent evidence in support of it — takes a remarkable  leap of faith these days; and, so far as I know, Bush himself has not denied he made the remark.)

Given his track record, it really shouldn’t surprise anyone that Bush seems to think Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann are on the same level as various Right wing pundits.  That is, he recently referred to Maddow and Olbermann as “sick puppies” — just as if the two were the liberal equivalent of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.

To be sure, Maddow and Olbermann are editorial journalists who not only report facts but also give their opinions about the facts they report.  Limbaugh and Beck would love to be considered on the same level as them, for it would increase their credibility.  But neither Limbaugh nor Beck take nearly the same care with the facts as do Maddow and Olbermann.  The two sides might be equally opinionated, but one side usually checks its facts much more honestly than the other.

When people like George Bush imply or state that there is an equivalence between Left and Right in this country, they are living in the past.  What they say might once have been true.  But with the rise of such cynics as Rush Limbaugh, and such cynical organizations as WorldNetDaily and FOX News, the current Right has become quantitatively less reliable as a source of fact than the current Left.

At least that’s how I see it.  Someday, the pendulum will swing again and it will be the Left who is the least trustworthy.  But for now, I believe anyone who thinks, like George Bush,  that Rachel Maddow is as unreliable as Glenn Beck has not been paying attention.  Certainly not been paying attention.