Inhumane Conditions In The Slaughterhouse Since 1993?? They Told Us California Cows Were Happy Cows!!

With this week-end’s meat recall, 143 million pounds of beef, the largest recall in history, comes an even more disturbing possibility. A video has surfaced that shows inhumane conditions may have occurred since 1993. That’s 15 years!! Did the government do anything to safeguard that consumers eat healthy food? Did the greedy big business slaughterhouse have the least thought about the public school children who would eat tainted meat? Are California cows happy cows as the advertising slogan claims? You decide.

Check out Tad Cronn’s article and look at the video he posted.

I’m Still Dreaming; I’d Rather Be Singing

Would you rather be singing too?

Flickr Delivers Library Of Congress’ Historical Eye Candy

The United States Library of Congress pilot program launched on Flickr just two days ago has Web viewers entranced with its display of 3,115 images from the library’s extensive photo collection and clamoring for more.

Last night’s statistics from just one day on Flickr reveals the following:

• 392,000 views on the photostream;
• 650,000 views of photos;
• Adding in set and collection page views, there were about 1.1 million total views on their account;
• All 3,100+ photos have been viewed;
• 420 of the photos have comments;
• 1,200 of the photos have been favorited.

The Library has struck a chord with the people of the Internet. Matt Raymond, the author of the Library’s 9 month old blog and director of communications says, “The response to the Library’s pilot project with Flickr has been nothing short of astounding. You always hope for a positive reaction to something like this, but it has been utterly off the charts—from the Flickr community, from the blogosphere, from the news media—it is nothing short of amazing.”

And we all want more photos. The most frequently asked question on both the Flickr and the blog comments is asking when the library will upload even more photos. There are more than 1 million photos on the library’s Web site and some are easily viewable as sample images, but the great majority of these images can only be accessed through search words. If you want to see the images in say their Daguerreotype collection you have to type in specific search words, and there my friends is where the Library of Congress’ Web site went totally wrong and where the Flickr project went totally right, because if you don’t know what to search for or you just want to see what’s available, you are facing a computer screen full of daunting type and not one single beautiful image; no eye candy, no mesmerizing piece of history, no emotionally stirring art.

If you like history or photography, or better yet, like me you like both, you will be spending hours pouring over your LOC Flickr screen, so be forewarned, this may be a whole new addiction which might even spawn further interests you will just HAVE to research.

• A note on the high quality of these historical photographs: “The scans are not color corrected or adjusted to create an optimized view of the photographic scene, rather they represent the qualities of the images as they exist in the collection at the time they are scanned.”

• For an article about Pie Town, New Mexico and Russell Lee, the photographer who chronicled its homesteaders, visit this Smithsonian article.

Snow Proves Global Warming

What’s remarkable is not that it snowed in Baghdad last week — the first time since the 1940s — but the global warming prophets’ reactions to almost unheard-of snow in the desert. To the Al Gores of the world, SNOW in Baghdad PROVES global WARMING.

So, just so we understand what these people are talking about:

• If it’s hot — it’s global warming;
• If it’s cold — it’s global warming.

We have to get that through our thick heads. Regardless of the temperature, whether it’s hot or whether it’s cold, it’s global warming.

Now Al Gore even has a Nobel peace prize to PROVE that he knows what he’s talking about, so the rest of us who don’t and remain in disbelief should keep quiet just like our grandparents and great-grandparents kept quiet when Adolph Hitler received his own Nobel peace prize nomination in 1939.

No Nativity For Archbishop of Canterbury

The Archbishop of Canterbury says there was no virgin birth, no magi (only a legend), and no star, among other blabberings.  This is coming from a religious leader of the Christian faith, but since atheism keeps creeping into our churches, even an Archbishop no longer believes in the biblical nativity.  I found all the details on Tad Cronn’s blog, so head over there to read his editorial on the Archbishop’s heresy titled The Archbishop of Can’t Be: Atheism in the Church.

Thursday Thirteen #6 — My Interests

I am sharing with you 13 topics which interest me and are important to me. They are in no particular order, because most of these would all tie with each other. These are topics
you see and which will recur on my blog. To see more participants in this carnival or for
details on how to join, visit Thursday Thirteen.

1. Computers/Internet/Blogs/Technology/Science
These sort of overlap in many ways. I’m forward thinking and I’ve been using computers
since before my teen years, back in the days when people were saying it was a waste of
time, and it wouldn’t last. Wait, aren’t a lot of people still saying that? Well 30+
years later, I’m still interested. I remember asking for a calculator as a Christmas gift
when I was in Kindergarten. The people selling them were flabbergasted that a child would want one and thought no child would ever need one. This “pocket” calculator, the smallest on the market at the time, was about the size of a small paperback!

2. Fine Art
I was an art history minor and an art minor. I seriously considered switching it to my
major, and often wonder if I didn’t make a mistake. I draw, paint, photograph, make
ceramics and do a lot of new media paintings — that’s every stroke hand-painted by me, but instead of using paint, I use computers. Museums and galleries recognize new media, but the average person out there still claims the computer makes the paintings. Not so! This would be the equivalent of saying oil paint and brushes are the artists making the artwork. Computers do not make art. Paint and brushes do not make art. The people, the artists make art, regardless of which tools they use.

3. History/Biographies/Autobiographies
As much as I like the future, I also like the past. We can learn from our past and our
past can help us understand our present. I’m very much interested in people and their
lives which is why I like history and also what leads me to the next item.

4. Psychology/Sociology
I’m interested in people and what makes them tick. I’m also interested in science, so
psychology helps me understand the individual and sociology helps me understand the groups and societies we live in. In college my sociology professor had wanted me to switch majors to either sociology (he hoped) or psychology (which he admitted was related and thought I would like too). I ended up with an additional certificate in psychology, but I never switched majors to either psychology or sociology.

5. Cross-stitching/Crafts
My grandmother taught me how to cross-stitch and I spent numerous hours watching her even before she taught me how to do it. I find it very relaxing and as I like art and to create, cross-stitching and other crafts are just related to that.

6. Reading/Writing/Journalism/News/Books
These are all intertwined. As a professional journalist, writing and reading are just my
life. I just could not live without reading. I have to learn at all times and reading is
the best way for me to do that. I have been wanting to write since early childhood. I
have attempted not to write for a living, but life was just too miserable without a pen in
my hand or a keyboard at my fingertips. I’m a published journalist, but I would love to be a published author using either my journalistic skills to write non-fiction or even writing a
novel. I’m one of the crazy participants in National Novel Writing Month. Any publishers
out there interested in my writing voice?

7. Religion/God
I believe in God and shout it from the rooftops, but won’t attempt to convert atheists as
belief needs to come from inside your heart and soul. I worked for my parish for several
years and wanted to work there until retirement, but an evil man came into our midst,
getting rid of staff and clergy, swiftly putting a financially viable parish in the red,
and destroying the work of the last 40+ years. Some will turn away from God because of
him, but the destruction he brings is not of God. Destruction can never be of God.

8. Education
I love to learn, my husband and I have both taught, and since we have a son, education is very important to us. He went to private schools for several years and while that was fine, we found something better through an excellent public school system with an independent study program. Forget all the stereotypes of homeschooling and of public school. That’s not what it is. It’s more a combination of when people had private tutors teach their children, the one-room schools and parents nurturing their own children. The program is what it is thanks to our son’s wonderful teachers, especially the founder, Resa Steindel Brown. If you want a glimpse at what it’s all about, read her fantastic book, The Call to Brilliance: A True Story to Inspire Parents and Educators. You can also read about his science teacher in my blog posts here and here.

9. Family
Family and extended family is extremely important to me. It is where we receive and give love and support. Here on Earth, not counting God in Heaven, it is the one most important thing and it just doesn’t get more basic than that.

10. Movies/Plays
I don’t watch much TV, but I love a good movie or play. While it can’t replace a good
book, it’s still a story, whether real or fictional, and I love to be entertained. I
prefer comedies, especially for movies, because I don’t know about your life, but my life
is enough of a drama as it is. I just don’t need other people’s too, especially the made-
up ones. I really like adventures too, because this way I can escape to some fabulous
world and live vicariously. I would like science fiction, but most don’t meet my quality
standards unfortunately.

11. Hiking/Walking/Swimming
I enjoy being in nature and these are the most fun forms of exercise for me. These are not boring to me. I enjoy the scenery. Running would be too fast and strenuous to enjoy the
scenery. These are also quiet and since I despise noise, anything with bouncing balls,
whistling referees or echoing gymnasiums just would not work for me.

12. Cooking/Gourmet Food/Reading Cookbooks
Yes, I read cookbooks. I actually read cookbooks more than I eat or cook. As a teen my
mom would tell me that I read cookbooks instead of eating. I also love to cook when I
don’t have a full-time job. If I’m working, then cooking is no longer a pleasure and
something that I do for the family that I love. It becomes a chore and a race to put
anything on a plate in front of starving eyes in less than half an hour from the time I run
through the front door. But when I am not working, I will use all my knowledge from
reading all these cookbooks and all my creativity and use cooking as another art-form. I
also like real food. I am against eating engineered chemicals, dyes, artificial products.
I like wild salmon, trout and other fish, I like real butter on all my foods and especially
my popcorn. And you really don’t want me to get started on cloned meat, or cloned
anything, because I’m really against that!

13.Travel
I don’t travel enough. I would love to travel 365 days a year, but that’s simply not
possible. I put roots down with a family and a house. Once upon a time I contemplated
becoming a foreign correspondent, a travel writer and even a pilot or a stewardess, just so
that I could travel, but I will just have to be satisfied with having been to Germany,
France, Switzerland, Italy, England, Washington, Oregon, California, Hawaii, Arizona,
Nevada, Georgia, … Oops, that sounds like another Thursday Thirteen! 😉

Just click on Mister Linky to add your Thursday 13 link and see the other participants who linked here. And please don’t forget to post a comment. Thanks!

• Don’t know what NaBloPoMo and NaNoWriMo are? Read all about it here and here.

• Want to know why I’m participating in both? Click here.

Amazing Photo From Iraq, Amazing Photojournalism Blog

“Thanks and Praise: I photographed men and women, both Christians and Muslims, placing a cross atop the St. John’s Church in Baghdad. They had taken the cross from storage and a man washed it before carrying it up to the dome,” — Michael Yon

Michael Yon is making this photograph available to media outlets, such as print publications and cable and television news broadcasts, at no cost for a limited period of time. For more information, please contact his site here.

 

Praise the Lord, St. John’s church in Baghdad is not only reopened, but it did so with the help of Christians and Muslims working together!

Michael Yon, a freelance photojournalist reporting from Baghdad has brought the above photo to the Internet along with his online magazine using a WordPress blog documenting the war in Iraq. He is doing photojournalism at its best — the way it should be done — the way we are not seeing it done in the mass media today.

I hope you are interested in seeing real photos from the trenches and that you will jump to Michael’s site. With the photo above Michael sends a message from the Iraqis. They “asked me to convey a message of thanks to the American people. “Thank you, thank you,” the people were saying. One man said, “Thank you for peace.”

“Another man, a Muslim, said “All the people, all the people in Iraq, Muslim and Christian, is brother.” The men and women were holding bells, and for the first time in memory freedom rang over the ravaged land between two rivers.”

I must tell you this is the same message I heard from an American Navy nurse, our deacon’s daughter, who was stationed in Iraq. She too said the Iraqis were thankful that Americans were there and that we should not believe what is said in the liberal mass media.

Cheers to Michael for the photos. Cheers to the Christians and Muslims who worked together to reopen St. John’s Church in Baghdad. And Praise our Lord!

• Don’t know what NaBloPoMo and NaNoWriMo are? Read all about it here and here.

• Want to know why I’m participating in both? Click here.