Magic Statistics

The Government of Nunavut has offered $95,000 toward restoring the old Cambridge Bay Roman Catholic church destroyed by arson last April, but the hamlet is divided over how much reconstruction should take place.  The funds would pay for firming up the remaining walls, but some want the church completely rebuilt.

The Kitikmeot Heritage Society has been promised $95,000 to preserve the ruins of the old stone church, built in 1953 out of rocks, clay and seal oil. One of the oldest buildings in Cambridge Bay, it was across the bay at the original community settlement.

Heritage Society president Kim Crockatt said the money from Culture, Language, Elders and Youth could pay to stabilize the walls.

"It might actually be interesting. Like if you go out and look at it, it's quite an interesting-looking site with just the walls up," she said. "I mean you can really see the work that went into building it and it might make a nice picnic site for visitors."

But some people in Cambridge Bay want the work to go further.
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Bruce Peterson had his wedding pictures taken outside the church 13 years ago. While he says the heritage society's idea is a start, he would like the building restored to its former glory.

Full restoration would cost more than the promised funding, however.  Another concern is that a fully rebuilt church would be a target for vandals.

The issue will be brought before the hamlet council.

Previous related post: Historic church torched in Cambridge Bay

Canon Andrew White of St George's, Baghdad, is showing the Alpha course to Muslims and westerners who are interested in learning more about Christianity.  Canon White says several Muslims have accepted Christ as a result.

White is the parish priest at St George’s Church, Baghdad, and leads services in a makeshift chapel in the grounds of one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces.

In the past year people have been killed at the entrance to St George’s, which has now been barricaded by concrete. A number of the lay leaders have been murdered.

White offers 10-week Alpha courses to both Muslims and westerners living in the city. He emphasises that the aim of the courses is not to convert nonbelievers, though eight out 20 Iraqis who attended the course have become Christians. He recently conducted a baptism in Saddam’s former private swimming pool.

The threat of violence does not deter Canon White.  The Easter service was held with bombs falling and birds singing in the background.

“Between the birds and the bombs, it was a wonderful service. This is the best parish I have had in my life.”

The Alpha course, developed by Rev Nicky Gumbel of Holy Trinity Brompton, presents the basics of the Christian faith in an accessible and straightforward manner.  Although Alpha officially says it does not directly seek conversions, it is commonly and successfully used as a means of evangelism.  It is presented in Christian churches of all denominations around the world.  Its popularity is such that a backlash has set in: some clergy criticise Alpha for superficiality and encouraging an individualistic approach to church life.

via Christianity Today Weblog.

Scientists have seen a firey ball of gas five thousand million times the size of our solar system zooming through a galaxy cluster millions of light years from Earth at speeds approaching 1000 kilometres per second.

Thanks to data from ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray satellite, a team of international scientists found a comet-like ball of gas over a thousand million times the mass of the sun hurling through a distant galaxy cluster over 750 kilometres per second.

This colossal 'ball of fire' is by far the largest object of this kind ever identified.

The gas ball is about three million light years across, or about five thousand million times the size of our solar system. It appears from our perspective as a circular X-ray glow with a comet-like tail nearly half the size of the moon.

Here's the caption for the image at right.

This X-ray image shows a comet-like blob of gas about 5 million light-years long hurling through a distant galaxy cluster at nearly 1 000 kilometres per second. The 'comet' is confined to the orange regions in this image. The head is the lower right, with reddish areas. The tail fans outward because there is less pressure to confine it. The colour red refers to regions of lower entropy, a thermodynamical measure of disorder. The orange regions have higher entropy.

The gas ball, believed to be about one hundred million degrees in temperature, is held together by gravitational forces of dark matter.

via Faith-Science News.

A British youth has been jailed for stealing a bicycle because he was late for his court appearance on burglary charges.

A judge at Reading Crown Court heard that James Robin, 18, was late for an appearance before magistrates on burglary charges when he stopped a 16-year-old boy riding a BMX bike along a footpath and threatened to stab him and throw him off a bridge unless he gave him the cycle and a mobile phone.

The news story doesn’t say if he used the phone to call the judge and say he was on his way.

For two counts of robbery, he was sentenced to 39 months at a young offenders’ facility.

The two brothers taken into custody in the police raid on an east London residence ten days ago have been released without charge, and the Metropolitan Police have apologised for the hurt caused.

One brother, Mohammed Abdul Kahar, was shot in the police raid on his family's home in Forest Gate, east London.

His younger brother, Abul Koyair, was also arrested in the raid involving 250 police, but neither were charged.

Mr Kahar had earlier told how he thought the house was being robbed and that he would be killed by armed men.

He said suing the police "is not even in our heads at the moment", adding he was more interested in an apology.

No evidence of suspected chemical weapons was found, but the police maintain they acted on credible information and that a "fast armed response" was necessary and appropriate.  Mr Kahar says he has "no idea" where the police got their information.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission is investigating.

Next time around, police may want to wear this innovative new protective gear, found at [UK] Spectator.

According to the Old Testament, Edom was one of the most persistent enemies of Israel and Judah.  The Edomites repeatedly fought against King David and later kings of Judah.  The biblical timeline indicates that King David reigned over Israel in the tenth century BC.

Skeptical historians have challenged the Bible's accuracy, maintaining that both Israel and Edom were primitive pastoral societies until centuries after the reputed reign of David.  In their view, Edom did not become a functioning state with sufficient internal organisation to threaten neighbours before the eighth century BC.

A new discovery lends support to the biblical version of events.

An international team of archaeologists has recorded radiocarbon dates that they say show the tribes of Edom may have indeed come together in a cohesive society as early as the 12th century B.C., certainly by the 10th. The evidence was found in the ruins of a large copper-processing center and fortress at Khirbat en-Nahas, in the lowlands of what was Edom and is now part of Jordan.

Thomas E. Levy, a leader of the excavations, said in an interview last week that the findings there and at abandoned mines elsewhere in the region demonstrated that the Edomites had developed a complex state much earlier than previously thought.

Dr. Levy, an archaeologist at the University of California, San Diego, said the research had yielded not only the first high-precision dates in the region, but also such telling artifacts as scarabs, ceramics, metal arrowheads, hammers, grinding stones and slag heaps. Radiocarbon analysis of charred wood, grain and fruit in several sediment layers revealed two major phases of copper processing, first in the 12th and 11th centuries, later in the 10th and 9th.
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"Only a complex society such as a paramount chiefdom or primitive kingdom would have the organizational know-how to produce copper metal on such an industrial scale," Dr. Levy concluded.

The skeptics claim these new findings prove nothing.  (No surprise there.)

Dr Levy and his partner, Mohammad Najjar, director of excavations and surveys at the Department of Antiquities of Jordan, have written an article based on their findings for publication in Biblical Archaeology Review.

via Faith-Science News.

The collect for today, the Feast Day of Saint Barnabas the Apostle, from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer:

O Lord God Almighty, who didst endue thy holy Apostle Barnabas with singular gifts of the Holy Ghost; Leave us not, we beseech thee, destitute of thy manifold gifts, nor yet of grace to use them alway to thy honour and glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

For the Epistle: Acts 11:22-30
The Gospel: St John 15:12-16