Tonight's Arnold Schwarzenegger opera [language warning]:
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Friday, April 29, 2011
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Please place your tray tables in their full, upright position for takeoff
Tonight's flight attendant rap:
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Taking the scenic route
Tonight's speed-flying video - Fisher Towers, in Moab, UT [hat tip to Tom O. for the link]:
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Monday, April 25, 2011
Sunday, April 24, 2011
I arise today
On this Easter Sunday, I wish for all my readers the salvation that comes from the saving grace of Our Risen Lord, Jesus Christ. Wishing you all a happy and blessed Easter!
Tonight's musical interlude - Lisa Kelly sings Christ in Me, a rendition of the Lorica of St. Patrick:
Tonight's musical interlude - Lisa Kelly sings Christ in Me, a rendition of the Lorica of St. Patrick:
Saturday, April 23, 2011
:Friday, April 22, 2011
Musical interlude
Tonight's Good Friday musical interlude - an excerpt from J.S. Bach's St. Matthew Passion, performed by the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Soloists, conducted by Ton Koopman:
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Doing a little jig
Tonight's flash mob - doing a little Irish jig this past St. Patrick's day in Sydney, Australia:
Monday, April 18, 2011
Dinner at the Double Dog Diner
Tonight's hungry doggies - according to the video's description, this was shot in one take, no cuts or editing:
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Juggling helicopters
Tonight's rotor-robotic video - Quadrocopter Ball Juggling, at a research lab in Zurich, Switzerland. The 'copters and the balls are computer-controlled and tracked by an overhead motion capture video system:
Here's an overview of the project:
Here's an overview of the project:
Friday, April 15, 2011
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Monday, April 11, 2011
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Friday, April 8, 2011
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Will you marry me?
Tonight's radio marriage proposal - Vancouver air traffic controller makes an on-air marriage proposal to his girlfriend on an Air Canada flight:
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Monday, April 4, 2011
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Four myths about the Crusades
Today's myth-debunking:
In 2001, former president Bill Clinton delivered a speech at Georgetown University in which he discussed the West’s response to the recent terrorist attacks of September 11. The speech contained a short but significant reference to the crusades. Mr. Clinton observed that “when the Christian soldiers took Jerusalem [in 1099], they . . . proceeded to kill every woman and child who was Muslim on the Temple Mount.” He cited the “contemporaneous descriptions of the event” as describing “soldiers walking on the Temple Mount . . . with blood running up to their knees.” This story, Mr. Clinton said emphatically, was “still being told today in the Middle East and we are still paying for it.”Read the whole thing here.
This view of the crusades is not unusual. It pervades textbooks as well as popular literature. One otherwise generally reliable Western civilization textbook claims that “the Crusades fused three characteristic medieval impulses: piety, pugnacity, and greed. All three were essential.”1 The film Kingdom of Heaven (2005) depicts crusaders as boorish bigots, the best of whom were torn between remorse for their excesses and lust to continue them. Even the historical supplements for role-playing games—drawing on supposedly more reliable sources—contain statements such as “The soldiers of the First Crusade appeared basically without warning, storming into the Holy Land with the avowed—literally—task of slaughtering unbelievers”;2 “The Crusades were an early sort of imperialism”;3 and “Confrontation with Islam gave birth to a period of religious fanaticism that spawned the terrible Inquisition and the religious wars that ravaged Europe during the Elizabethan era.”4 The most famous semipopular historian of the crusades, Sir Steven Runciman, ended his three volumes of magnificent prose with the judgment that the crusades were “nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of God, which is the sin against the Holy Ghost.”5
The verdict seems unanimous. From presidential speeches to role-playing games, the crusades are depicted as a deplorably violent episode in which thuggish Westerners trundled off, unprovoked, to murder and pillage peace-loving, sophisticated Muslims, laying down patterns of outrageous oppression that would be repeated throughout subsequent history. In many corners of the Western world today, this view is too commonplace and apparently obvious even to be challenged.
But unanimity is not a guarantee of accuracy. What everyone “knows” about the crusades may not, in fact, be true. From the many popular notions about the crusades, let us pick four and see if they bear close examination. ...