Archive for August 31st, 2007

Comments Off

Mother Teresa’s Agony


2007
08.31

After Stephen sent me the link about the kung-fu stuff, I found a much more serious posting that intrigued me on his Faithmaps site… check it out for more details here.

For those who are terrified to click the link, here’s an excerpt:

Mother Teresa’s Agony


Mother Teresa

“Together they suggest a startling portrait in self-contradiction – that one of the great human icons of the past 100 years, whose remarkable deeds seemed inextricably connected to her closeness to God and who was routinely observed in silent and seemingly peaceful prayer by her associates as well as the television camera, was living out a very different spiritual reality privately, an arid landscape from which the deity had disappeared.

And in fact, that appears to be the case. A new, innocuously titled book, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (Doubleday), consisting primarily of correspondence between Teresa and her confessors and superiors over a period of 66 years, provides the spiritual counterpoint to a life known mostly through its works. The letters, many of them preserved against her wishes (she had requested that they be destroyed but was overruled by her church), reveal that for the last nearly half-century of her life she felt no presence of God whatsoever – or, as the book’s compiler and editor, the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, writes, “neither in her heart or in the eucharist””.

- a fascinating article on Mother Teresa

Comments Off

The Shaw Brothers present…


2007
08.31

this article from Yahoo!.

(thanks to Stephen Shields for pointing this one out to me… and if you want to know what the title of this entry refers to, click here…)

China kung fu monks seek apology for ninja affront

BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s Shaolin Temple, the cradle of Chinese kung fu, is demanding an apology from an Internet user who said its monks had once been beaten in unarmed combat by a Japanese ninja, Chinese media reported on Friday.

Shaolin Temple, in the northern province of Henan, became famous in the West as the training ground for Kwai Chang “Grasshopper” Caine in the 1970s “Kung Fu” TV series.

Ninjas — professional assassins trained in martial arts — date back to mediaeval Japan.

“The so-called defeat is purely fabricated, and we demand the Internet user to apologise to the whole nation for the wrongs he or she did,” the Beijing News said, citing a notice announced by a lawyer for the Shaolin monks.

Relations between Chinese and Japanese are sensitive at the best of times, with emotions still running high over Japan’s invasion and occupation of parts of China in the first half of the 20th Century.

The Internet user, calling themselves “Five Minutes Every Day”, said on an online forum last week that a Japanese ninja came to Shaolin, asked for a fight and many monks failed to beat him, the newspaper said.


Shaolin Monk Demonstration

“The facts that the monks could not defeat a Japanese ninja showed that they were named as kung fu masters in vain,” the Internet user was quoted as saying in the post.

The Shaolin temple “strongly condemned the horrible deeds” of the user, the newspaper said.

“It is not only extremely irresponsible behaviour with respect to the Shaolin temple and its monks, but also to the whole martial art and Chinese nation,” it quoted the monks as saying.

Comments Off

Dream Car


2007
08.31

I read an article on Slashdot that pointed me to this article on BBC, which led to me to this website… *swoons*



My dream car:  A Moller flying car

Of course, this guy may be a complete, total fraud. Countless folks have weighed in with the opinion that Moller may be a charlatan, but a few have pointed me towards the Terrafugia



The Terrafugia Flying Car

I’m happy with my car. But it can’t (literally) fly:-)