Mormons and Muslims
The battle between my Muslim upbringing and my male hormones was resolved by Lisa’s Mormon values. One evening, when Lisa and I were sitting close to each other in my basement, she sighed and said she had to do something. She took out a piece of paper and a pencil and drew a stick figure. “That’s me,” she said. And then she carefully traced a circle over the body, leaving her neck and face, her hands and arms up to the shoulder and her legs from the knee down, outside the lines. “Inside is out of bounds” she told me.
washingtonpost.com

Focus on shared values, rabbi tells interfaith dinner
“The secret of the chaplain corps was not talking about theology first, not talking about the hardest issues first. Instead, we rolled up our sleeves and talked about shared concerns [first] – [soldiers] in pain, those in fear, those suffering from doubt or loneliness,” Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff told the the 21st annual Neighbourhood Interfaith Dinner, held recently at Yorkminster Park Baptist Church.
“Only after we had built relationships [with each other] did we talk about faith issues. Otherwise, we agreed to disagree on theology and agreed to agree on the needs of humanity.”
cjnews.com

How Faith and Community Dominate Foreign Policy
Two weeks ago, the French president-elect admitted he is a “practicing Christian” and was strongly criticized for breaching the post-revolution consensus on the laicization of the state. Last month Boris Yeltsin became the first Russian head of state to be buried with Russian Orthodox rights in 133 years. The election of a new president in Turkey caused a political crisis because the governing party’s candidate–presently the foreign minister–is viewed by the opposition and military elites as being too Islamist.
embassymag.ca

Romney’s Mormon Question
What does the Constitution mean when it says there should be no religion test for office?
time.com

The Awful Truth About Letting Go
On a day when students should have been wrapping up final projects and papers, studying for exams, and thinking about finding some boxes to begin packing up their cluttered dorm rooms, they were instead fleeing campus, searching for lost friends, and tearfully calling home.
beliefnet.com

The War of Art
Ask nine out of ten people what the purpose of art is, and they will say, “to express yourself.”
americanthinker.com

“Criminalizing even the vilest hateful thoughts—as opposed to willful criminal acts—is inconsistent with a free society.” – Representative Ron Paul (R-TX)
“History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster.” – Douglas MacArthur
“The hate crimes legislation is about human rights and about the right of everyone in America to live free from persecution and free from violence. The vote in Congress… made it clear that hate is not an American value and will protect countless Americans.” – DNC Chairman, Howard Dean

Remains a wish, like, say, I wish upon a star…

Commitment to acheiving Peace remains an elusive quality in our world…

In this, the season for celebrating “the Prince of Peace”, this predominently Christian nation is responsible for the “collateral damage” to thousands of Iraqi women and children, in a war to bring the blessings of Democracy to “the Iraqi People”. I do not believe that Jesus had that in mind when he was preaching peace in Palestine 2,000 years ago.

We are mired in a stuggle between tribal factions that has it’s roots in a thousand years of history, and in the “war on terror” which is, at it’s core, a conflict of religious beliefs and fundamental values.

Since about half of U.S. citizens voted to keep the current administration in power,and both candidates were in favor of supporting the ongoing war effort, it is apparent to me that here in the good old U.S.A, at least, no consensus of Peace exists, no good will towards man (not to mention women, children and babies in their cribs, especially if their skin is brown, and they are poor). No brotherly love.

Christian love and compassion apparently does not extend to the body politic of this age. Maybe we will need to wait for the Second Coming to see what Jesus has to say about this… maybe then we will see the real Shock and Awe.

d

We have a physically objective world, and then after a while we learn to measure in this world, and we gain experience with this world, through our senses. That is the objective world, and then we pass in to the mathematical world. In the mathematical world there are mathematical entities – “x”, “y”, numbers, and things of that kind. And we bring this mathematical world into isomorphism, or equality in structure with the objective world, so we can manipulate the mathematics and tell what the objective world is going to do; or, as Dirac – a great theoretical physicist – said, to calculate numbers which can be compared with experience, and such is the meaning of all mathematics.

The theoretical physicist, or the mathematical physicist, or the physicist, in the more elementary sense, is merely an artist and he’s attempting to depict the external world in terms of these formulations of which I speak, and the question is, if the theory is real. Take Newton, Newton did this; he was a great painter and he painted the field of mechanics for us in certain equational form. Now, the interesting thing is, and the powerful thing is that if you manipulate these equations, they behave in an analogy with the physical world so that by examining these equations, you can tell what the physical world is doing or should do.

Now, suppose it doesn’t do it? Why then you have a case where the theory in question has broken down. And when I spoke of Einstein, I was speaking of certain slight deficiencies in Newton’s world. Newton did it first, then along came Einstein and Einstein noticed certain discrepancies in the world described by Newton, so he tried a new formulation, generated a new formulation for the theory of relativity, and his theory also is subject to criticism as time goes on.

Point Source = John Vincent Atanasoff

Viewing Point — The place where you are, your eye level.

Viewing Angle — The place where you are, your eye level and the angle from your point of view.

Viewing Height — The place where you are, at your eye level and height or elevation.

Horizon Line — That place where the land and the sky meet.

Picture Plane — A make believe paper or canvas between you and what you are illustrating.

Vanishing Point — The single point on the horizon where all the lines on the ground level seem to be coming together.

Single Point Perspective — A single vanishing point on the horizon line.

Double Point Perspective — Two separate vanishing points on the horizon line.

Triple Point Perspective — Two vanishing points on the horizon and one in the sky or on the ground.

Light Reference — The point where your light source comes from for example the sun or a lamp.

Shadow Vanishing Point — A point directly under your light reference and on the horizon line or on the ground.

Foreshortening — To shorten the lines of (an object) in a drawing or other representation so as to produce an illusion of projection or extension in space.