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POPSThe Necessity of An Educator It is not correct to say all religions are the same; they are not. However, it is truthful to say that all divinely inspired religions, and their Manifestations (Moses, Krishna, Zoroaster, Jesus Christ, Muhammad, etc.) receive Their inspiration from the same Source, the Ancient of Days. So why do we fight? Why is blood shed? Why is there terrorism? Why are there wars? Why is there such a disparity of wealth and poverty in this world, where we are all one, created by the same loving God? Why all this misery when we are brothers and sisters of the same human family where the artificial concept known as race doesn't matter a bit. We are one human race with a magnificent diversity of cultures, lifestyles, viewpoints and religions.
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POPSChristmas truce If soldiers facing-off in The Great War could spontaneously enact a Christmas truce, how difficult is it to establish peace in this world, really? How much longer the anguished cries from every continent? How long?
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POPSMeet Japan's First Western Geisha "Sayuki denies she's a flawless example of Japan's ancient flower and willow world. "Being a geisha takes a lifetime to perfect," she deflects, as she clacks along in lacquer sandals that she wears slightly too small to make her size-8 feet look more petite. Sayuki, who was born in Melbourne, Australia, became the first foreign woman in the notoriously closed profession's 400-year history to formally debut as a geisha two years ago, in late 2007. "I've only just begun," she says. "To many of my geisha sisters, I'm still a walking disaster." Read it all here: http://www.marieclaire.com/world-reports/news/japans-western-geisha Long article, but interesting.
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POPSThe "patron saint of Troublemakers" :) " Blessed Mary MacKillop, the Australian nun once excommunicated and now beatified, is on her way to canonization. Is she the patron saint of troublemakers? Excommunicated today, canonized tomorrow, says John Allen, puckishly. For me, the best part of her story is how the church itself understands that sometimes even the holiest among us are occasionally at loggerheads with church leadership. (Cf. St. Mother Theodore Guerin)".
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POPSHamas is once again very clear - it wants to destroy Israel.... It's a genocidal organization... In a long, defiant speech on Monday afternoon, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said that gaining control of the Gaza Strip was "just a step toward liberating all of Palestine." "This movement liberated the Gaza Strip with the help of the militant factions," said Haniyeh, referring to terrorist groups operating under the umbrella of Palestinian resistance. "Brothers and sisters, we will not be satisfied with Gaza," he declared. "Hamas looks toward the whole of Palestine."
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POPSVan Gogh's Letters This website is a treasure! One of the great Masters of Art is revealed in his letters. A couple excerpts below: "Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Wilhelmina van Gogh (19 September 1889) ... together with that copy after Delacroix. It is splendid weather outside - but for a long time - two months to be exact - I have not left my room; I don't know why. What I need is courage, and this often fails me. And it is also a fact that since... Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh (c. 10 December 1889) ... - and be sure that I think of you often, here where I spend my days more withdrawn into myself than now and then seems to me desirable. Yet I have decidedly no reason at all to complain, feeling stronger and healthier...
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POPSMedusa From ancient times, the Medusa was immortalized in numerous works of art, including: * Medusa on the breastplate of Alexander the Great, as depicted in the Alexander Mosaic from Pompeii's House of the Faun (c. 200 BC) * The "Rondanini Medusa", a Roman copy of the Gorgoneion on the aegis of Athena * Medusa (oil on canvas) by Leonardo da Vinci * Perseus with the Head of Medusa (bronze sculpture) by Benvenuto Cellini (1554) * Medusa (oil on canvas) by Caravaggio (1597). * Tête de Méduse, by Peter Paul Rubens (1618) * Perseus Turning Phineus and his Followers to Stone (oil on canvas) by Luca Giordano (early 1680s). * Perseus with the Head of Medusa (marble sculpture) by Antonio Canova (1801) * Medusa (oil on canvas) by Arnold Böcklin (c. 1878) * Perseus (bronze sculpture) by Salvador Dalí
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POPSWho Really Cares About Missing Persons? When a person goes missing there are so many victims. A whole family, a whole community and a whole country are subjected to the fears, anxieties, and worries about a person who is gone. Who really cares about a missing person? Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends, and many, many strangers who step up daily to help and support
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POPSFunny stereotype essay on our visiting German market
You know those dystopian films that speculate about what England would have been like if the Germans had won the war? Well, they’d have made it into a theme park. Winter Wonderland, in London’s Hyde Park, is precisely what occupied Britain would have felt like if the EU had turned out to be the Volksunion. They try to tell you it’s a traditional Bavarian winter market transported to London with fraternal greetings for our edification and jollity, but oh, ho, ho, ho, it’s not. It’s the Santa has landed. It’s Blitz Noel. From a distance, it all looks like a regular fair: the carousels and Ferris wheels and a V-2 launch pad, the flashing lights and the colours, the familiar screams, the perennial Chrimbo game of spot the paedo with his festive sack and gaffer tape. But it’s not what it seems. I don’t like it, sergeant. The shifty young gypsies working the rides are just too blonde. Too disciplined and polite. They don’t smirk or stick their hands up your girlfriend’s frock on the dodgems.
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POPSA Left-Handed Commencement Address: Ursula K. LeGuin at Mills College, 1983 More: I hope you live without the need to dominate, and without the need to be dominated. I hope you are never victims, but I hope you have no power over other people. And when you fail, and are defeated, and in pain, and in the dark, then I hope you will remember that darkness is your country, where you live, where no wars are fought and no wars are won, but where the future is. Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing — instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls.
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POPSAditya Khanna Family Read about Aditya Khanna family on Aditya Khanna official website. Aditya Khanna family is a true representation of a typical Indian family. Aditya Khanna family members include his grandfather, parents and four siblings.
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POPSReading List: Slave Hunter 'Can you recruit musicians for this Drop the Debt campaign?' And I was Perry's executive director, so the request came through me, and I just thought: 'Wow, this is a divine miracle!' So we pulled out Perry's Rolodex and contacted David Bowie and Bono and all these people, and they all came on board." It was one of the most successful campaigns in history: 27m signatures were obtained, and $300bn of debt was wiped out in a single stroke. For Cohen, though, it didn't stop there. The concept of "jubilee", the forgiving of debt and the freeing of slaves, has gone on to inform all aspects of his life ever since then.
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POPSPixie Press Worldwide - Celebrity Photo Book Pixie Press Worldwide - A stunning limited-edition art photography book shot by leading celebrity photographer John Russo that includes inspiring quotations and portraits of Hollywood’s most recognizable young male stars.
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POPSThe Story of the White poppy By the end of the war the guildswomen had learned first hand the extent to which war could profoundly affect and harm their lives. Many of them were the wives, mothers and sisters of men who had been killed. They embarked on an active campaign for peace. By 1933 they were searching for a symbol which could be worn by guildswomen who wanted to show publicly that they were against war and for nonviolence. Someone came up with the idea of a white poppy. Workers from the Co-operative Wholesale Society began making the poppies almost at once. Money from selling them, after the production costs had been paid for, was sent to help war-resisters and conscientious objectors in Europe. The wearing of a white poppy on Armistice Day became a focus for the peace movement, and the Peace Pledge Union took it up in 1936 as 'a definite pledge to peace that war must not happen again'.
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