15 Jan 2007
Fire official: Cell phone apparently sets man ablaze

Must've been a hot call...

A cell phone apparently ignited in a man's pocket and started a fire that burned his hotel room and caused severe burns over half his body, fire department officials said.

(link) [CNN.com]

23:09 /Humor | 0 comments | permanent link

A Church’s Challenge: Holding On to Its Young

It's rare to read a piece in the MSM that so perfectly captures the contradictions of Christianity:

They can have cellphones and video games, but are told not to watch television. They can date, but preferably only other Pentecostals and then sometimes only with a chaperon. Dancing is taboo, but they can gyrate in religious ecstasy. Horror movies are bad, yet preachers regale them with gruesome visions of the apocalypse.

And the church that is the focus of this piece - how does it attract it's teenagers?

He [Pastor Danilo Florian] gave them instruments. He paid for music lessons. And he lavished gifts that few of them had ever known, growing up in fractured families and on dangerous streets: Attention. Praise. Expectations.

That's pretty much a recipe for attracting teens to anything - but I daresay it smacks of bribery, and sooner or later the kids will figure it out. And leave. And the church will wonder why.

Here's a hint, gleaned from my experience with my kids - you can lure a kid to almost anything with enough glitz and flash, but if you really want to engage them as they grow there'd better be some meat on them bones. If the theology made a bit more sense, if the rules were comprehensible, if there wasn't such an atmosphere of "us versus them" maybe they'd stay. But the church can't budge on those points, because, well, the "Good Book" pretty much lays it down in black and white.

But maybe there's an opportunity here for another religious movement...

Pentecostalism is winning converts across the world, but young people are falling away from the faith.

(link) [New York Times]

23:08 /Asatru | 4 comments | permanent link

Broken Thermometer Causes 100 to Respond to Mercury Spill

Oh, my. This has to go under 'Humor', but there's a bitter quality to this laugh. Sometimes I think that Western Civilization will meet it's ultimate doom by scaring itself to death...

It was quite a New Year's Eve at the home of Richard Berger in Carmel - in Putnam County. Someone in the house broke a rectal thermometer and the family called 911 around 10:30 to report the small mercury spill.

(link) [WSYR-TV]

via Overlawyered

06:35 /Humor | 1 comment | permanent link