Magic Statistics

Christians have been living in Palestine since the time of Christ, but they are now rapidly vanishing.  In 1948, some 400,000 Christians were in the area; in 2004, there were 80,000; today there are 60,000; in a few years, there may be none left.  They are leaving their homeland because, persecuted by both Muslims and Jews and ignored by Christians in the West, they have lost hope.

Professor Abe W. Ata, a 9th-generation Christian Palestinian, is especially baffled and distressed by the attitude of the American Religious Right.

Said Senator James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma): "God Appeared to Abraham and said: 'I am giving you this land', the West Bank. This is not a political battle at all. It is a contest over whether or not the word of God is true."

Inhofe must have got it wrong. Promises are being made to earthly Jerusalem that God did not make. The Holy Land was promised to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and their descendants, as stated in the Bible. These are the Palestinian Muslims, Christians, and Jews, who have been living in the land for thousands of years. The Bible never mentioned that God promised it solely to Jews. Anyone can be a Jew, but not anyone can be a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and their descendants. James Inhofe and followers are unable to tell the difference between Jew, Israelite, and Israel.

House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) was even more forthright: "I'm content to have Israel grab the entire West Bank … I happen to believe that the Palestinians should leave."

There is a phrase for this. Ethnic cleansing.

Palestinian Muslims receive moral, spiritual, and financial support from Saudi Arabia and other wealthy Arab nations, while Israel receives aid from the United States.  Palestinian Christians, however, are not even recognised by Western authorities, with the exception of the Pope.

To the West, all Palestinians are potential Islamists and suicide bombers.  Non-violent, persecuted Christians don’t rate.

via VirtueOnline.

Previous related posts:

• Palestinian Christian women wearing headscarves
• Palestinian Christians fleeing West Bank and Gaza
• Muslims attack Christian Arab village

Science Daily reports:

Humans have an uncanny ability to skim through text, instantly recognizing words by their shape–even though writing developed only about 6000 years ago–long after humans evolved. Thus, neuroscientists have hotly debated whether an area of the cortex called the Visual Word Form Area (VWFA) is truly a specific and necessary area for recognizing words.

A epilepsy patient’s recent brain surgery disrupted VWFA function.  Now the patient is unable to recognise whole words, but must read them letter by letter.  This appears to confirm that the VWFA serves the sole and specific function of word recognition.  MRI scans have shown that it is active only in reading; it is inactive in recognition of faces and objects.  The researchers found that “our patient presented a clear-cut reading impairment following surgery, while his performance remained flawless in object recognition and naming, face processing, and general language abilities”.

This raises a very interesting question: Why is there a piece of tissue in the brain dedicated to the task of word recognition when that skill has only been needed for the past 6000 years?

 via Faith-Science News at The American Scientific Affiliation.

I’ve been tagged for this meme by Joel at On The Other Foot.  The idea is to list a bunch of interesting (we hope) stuff about one’s hometown, and to list said stuff in groups of four.  Even though I only moved here in 1988, we’ll just say my hometown is Whitehorse.

Four unique things to see in Whitehorse

1. Log skyscraper.  Originally built in 1947 as rental housing, the ground floor is now a tourist trap souvenir shop, but the upper floors are still rented out.  The photo on the right, taken in 2001 from the back alley, is from an online photo album “Historical photos of Whitehorse” at Ernie Bourassa’s MSN Groups page.  (Ernie’s the mayor, and a fine one he is, too.)
2. S.S. Klondike, one of last of the hundreds of sternwheelers that used to travel the Yukon River between Whitehorse and Dawson.  In fact, I believe there are only two left, this one in Whitehorse and the S.S. Keno in Dawson. Both are now National Historic Sites run by Parks Canada.  The tours of S.S. Klondike are chock full of interesting info about the ship and its history.  Jim Teresco from upstate New York visited in 2001 and has posted a slew of photos taken near and on the boat.
3. MacBride Museum, a very informative and educational museum focusing on Yukon history.  Located downtown on First Avenue across the street from the Yukon River, it’s made of logs with a sod roof.  Here’s a good photo.
4. Miles Canyon, just south of downtown Whitehorse on the Yukon River.  Whitehorse got its name from the rapids that flowed through Miles Canyon which were said to resemble the manes of a wild herd of white horses.  Construction in 1957 of a hydroelectric dam tamed the rapids and created a wide spot in the river known as Schwatka Lake from which the city takes its drinking water.  Look at this photo of Whitehorse Rapids, Miles Canyon, taken in 1901.

Four famous people associated with Whitehorse
I tried to think of four famous people actually born in Whitehorse, but apparently there's only one (well, two if you count my daughter).

1. Pierre Berton, perhaps Canada's best-known writer of popular history, was born in Whitehorse in 1920.  His parents had moved north during the Klondike Gold Rush and stayed on afterward.  While a child in Whitehorse, his family lived beside Robert W. Service for a time.  He worked in the gold fields while a teenager and young man.  Then, inevitably, he moved to southern Ontario where he found fame and fortune, first as a non-fiction writer and journalist, then as a broadcaster.  (Later in life, he evolved into that strange and amorphous creature, the "television personality".)  Seriously, his achievement in making Canadian history popular and interesting was remarkable and praiseworthy.  He died in 2004.
2. Robert W. Service, "Bard of the North".  This fellow moved around a lot.  Born in 1874 in Preston, England, to Scottish parents, he moved to Canada at age 21 and made his way to the west coast.  He was hired by the Canadian Bank of Commerce and sent to Whitehorse, where he began writing the epic poems that made him famous, including "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee".  He later worked at the bank branch in Dawson.  Publication of his first poems in 1907 made him a rich man, so, of course, he left Yukon.  Traveling to Paris, he became a foreign correspondent for a Toronto newspaper.  During World War I, he worked as a driver for ambulances and supply delivery.  He married a Parisian and lived in Brittany for the rest of his life, except for World War II when he skeedaddled back to North America.

   About ten years ago, one of the two major roads leading into downtown Whitehorse from the Alaska Highway was re-named Robert Service Way.  The school in Dawson is also named after him.

3. Jack London, author of "The Call of the Wild", passed through Whitehorse on his way to and from Dawson during the Klondike Gold Rush.  He arrived in Dawson in 1897 and left the following year after being stricken with scurvy.  Inspired by the hardships he saw around him there, he later wrote one of his best short stories "To Build A Fire" about a hazard of life in the frozen North.

   At the time that Robert Service Way was being re-named, it was also proposed that the other road into Whitehorse be re-named Jack London Way.  Inevitably, however, someone found that Jack had written some derogatory comments about native aboriginals, so he was posthumously branded a racist and deemed unworthy of having a road named after him.  So, that road is still called by its original boring name, "Two Mile Hill".

4. Eric Nielsen, long-serving Yukon MP (1957-1987) and for years one of the most powerful people in Canadian politics.  He served as Deputy Prime Minister from 1984 to 1986 and had a reputation for stonewalling questions from the Opposition.  This earned him the nickname "Velcro lips".  To Americans, he is certainly much more famous for being the older brother of one of the great actors of our time.

Four Fun Facts about Whitehorse weather
As you read these, keep in mind that official weather records date back only to 1942.

1. Whitehorse has had measurable amounts of snowfall in all but one of the twelve months—July.
2. Whitehorse is the driest city in Canada, and also has the highest proportion of its precipitation in the form of snow (54%).
3. On the list of the cities with the most comfortable overall climate in Canada, Whitehorse ties for 12th spot.  Go figure!  I guess that goes to show just how lousy the weather is north of the 49th parallel.
4. The hottest temperature on record (since 1942) is 34.4C (93.9F) on 14 June 1969; the coldest is -52.2C (-62.0F) on 31 January 1947.

Four stores or products unique to Whitehorse
The first three are stores and the fourth is a local product.

1. Mac’s Fireweed.  Before you click on the link, try to guess what product(s) the store sells.
2. Café Zola Doré. This is the new retail outlet for Midnight Sun Coffee.  The previous store burned down last November.  I can’t find a website for the new café, but here’s a good photo of the old place.
3. Alpine Bakery.  It’s in all the Yukon tourist guidebooks, with good reason.  I’ve been buying my bread there since the day I arrived.  It’s amazingly good.
4. Yukon Gold Ale.  I know the guy on the label; the StatWife works alongside his wife at Whitehorse General Hospital.  Yukon Brewing Company started as a local micro-brewery, but its brew is so good that it’s not unique to Yukon anymore.  You can now buy their stuff in B.C., Alberta, and Northwest Territories as well.

Four important dates in Whitehorse history

1. 1898: Klondike Gold Rush starts, two years after the gold was found and the best claims staked.  Although the gold is up in the area of Dawson City (the “City” has since been officially dropped), Whitehorse's location is strategic for those crazy people pioneers after the gold.  Whitehorse is the farthest point from which one can sail down the Yukon River to Dawson, and it is also about one hundred miles due north of Skagway, Alaska.  Most of the gold enthusiasts sailed from Seattle to Skagway (or a town adjacent to Skagway called Dyea, now mostly abandoned), walked straight up the Chilkoot Pass, on to Whitehorse, and then sailed north to Dawson.  What fun!
2. 1900: The White Pass and Yukon Railroad between Whitehorse and Skagway is completed.
3. 1952: The territorial capital is moved from Dawson to Whitehorse.  Opening of the Alaska Highway to general traffic in 1947 made Whitehorse readily accessible by road from the south and it soon became the commercial centre of the territory.  Sternwheeler traffic had stopped, making Dawson very isolated.  Whitehorse grew to over 3000 residents while Dawson had less than a thousand, so the capital was moved.  (At the height of the Gold Rush, Dawson had over 30,000 residents, making it the largest city in North America west of Winnipeg and north of San Francisco.)
4. 1989: The StatDaughter is born at Whitehorse General Hospital.  Hallelujah!

I'll tag the first four people who leave a comment saying they'll volunteer.

UPDATE (22 Apr.): Andrew Stark has posted a great photo of another unique sight in Whitehorse—the world's largest weather vane.  Check it out: you have to see it to believe it!