Beyond Rivalry

Woman killed by husband's coffin (11 Nov.)

God's Facebook Wall (12 Nov.)

Apparent 6th severed foot found in British Columbia (12 Nov)

Two Dead in Argument Over 'Bama-LSU Game (10 Nov.)

The Essential 007: A Recap of all 22 Bond Movies (13 Nov.)

Unregulated Credit Default Swaps Led to Weakness (31 Oct.)

Exxon Mobil: Biggest profit in history (30 Oct.)

The age when children begin attempting to appear racially colour-blind (27 Oct)

The Quest for the Perfect Morning Routine: The first in a series on lifehacking, at Slate (12 Nov): "The advice here is not my own, but I have clicked on it."

When Alzheimer's Hits at 40 in the WSJ (14 Nov.)

and

"I don't remember a whole lot about that period; I appear to have bought a couple of truly depressing sweaters, the kind you only wear when all you really want is to curl up under the bed for several years..." (The Likeness, p. 47, Tana French)

(Photo: Recent Drinking: Ironstone Cabernet Franc 2004)

"Only about 5 percent of the nation's churches are racially integrated [20% or more of membership from non-majority race],  and half of them are in the process of becoming all-black or all-white, says Curtiss Paul DeYoung, co-author of United by Faith, a book that examines interracial churches in the United States.  DeYoung's numbers are backed by other scholars who've done similar research. They say integrated churches are rare because attending one is like tiptoeing through a racial minefield. Just like in society, racial tensions in the church can erupt over everything from sharing power to interracial dating."

"'I left after five years,' DeYoung says. 'I was worn out from the battles.'

"The men and women who remain and lead interracial churches often operate like presidential candidates. They say they live with the constant anxiety of knowing that an innocuous comment or gesture can easily mushroom into a crisis that threatens their support."

Most racially intergrated churches are led by white pastors; "a congregation typically becomes all-black if a black pastor is hired":

"'As long as the top person, the senior pastor, is white, power sort of resides with whites,' DeYoung says. 'But when that shifts, it does something psychologically to people. People usually leave.

"Black pastors who do gain the acceptance of interracial congregations still have to watch themselves. Some white parishioners, even progressive ones, get uneasy when a black pastor gets too fiery in the pulpit.

"'A black church sermon that could be understood as impassioned might be interpreted as angry and defensive by a white congregation,' [Theodore] Brelsford [author of We Are the Church Together] says. 'It could kick into fear of black men.'"

More at CNN: "Why many Americans prefer their Sundays segregated"

17 MAY is ... diving day, not dividing day ...

>>> 1 year since the aircraft carrier USS Oriskany was sunk in the Gulf of Mexico to become an artificial reef (2006). I don't remember hearing anything about this! This ship, built in the late 1940s and commissioned in Sept. 1950, was an Essex-class aircraft carrier of the United States Navy, named for the Revolutionary War Battle of Oriskany. Senator John McCain served on the ship during the Vietnam War. The ship was decommissioned in 1976, taken off the Naval Vessel Register in 1989, and sold for scrapping in 1994, but then repossessed by the Navy in 1997. In 2004, the Navy announced that the former aircraft carrier would become an artificial reef off the coast of Florida, the first former warship deliberately re-purposed as an artificial reef and sport diving attraction. The EPA, after testing, approved the sinking, and in March last year the ship was towed to Pensacola, FL; on 17 May, a Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal team detonated C-4 explosive charges of approximately 500 total pounds net explosive weight, spread strategically through the ship. Within 40 mins. of detonation, the ship settled in 210 feet of water in the Gulf of Mexico. Divers seem to love the ship-reef.

Sources: Naval Historical Center: US Navy Ships / USS Oriskany becomes the Largest Intentional Manmade Reef! (eyewitness account of sinking, with photos and video) / Dive Oriskany.com / Oriskany: One Year Below, at Pensacola News Journal, 13 May 2007 / Wikipedia /  

>>> 53 years since the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown vs. Board of Education decision (1954), which unanimously declared that a system of separate public schools for black and white students was inherently unequal. The suit was originally filed in U.S. District Court in 1951 by thirteen Topeka, Kansas, parents on behalf of their twenty children against the Board of Education of the City of Topeka, Kansas. The parents wanted the school district to reverse its policy of racial segregation. The named plaintiff was Oliver L. Brown, a welder for the Santa Fe railroad who was studying for the ministry, whose daughter Linda, in 3rd grade, had to walk six blocks to her school bus stop to ride to Monroe Elementary, her segregated black school one mile away, while Sumner Elementary, a white school, was only seven blocks from her house. (All the other Topeka plaintiff parents were female.)  By the time it became a Supreme Court case, there were about 200 plaintiffs from 4 states involved. The Brown decision did not result in the immediate desegregation of America's public schools or mandate desegregation of public accommodations that were privately owned (like restaurants); for that, we had to wait for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Sources: Brown v. Board.org / Smithsonian Institution: Separate is Not Equal / National Center for Public Policy Research: Brown v. Board of Education / Wikipedia /

>>>  105 years since the discovery of the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient mechanical analog computer, by Greek archaeologist Valerios Stais (1902). It was part of an ancient cargo ship wreck found in 1900 off Antikythera island, 138 ft down, and was at first thought to be a rock with a gear wheel embedded in it. Stais realised that the rock was actually a bronze mechanism, 13 in. high x 6.7 in. wide x 3.5 in. thick, inscribed with a text of over 2,000 characters and consisting of at least 30 precision, hand-cut bronze gears. It's thought to date from about 80 B.C.  A 1959 Scientific American article notes: "Nothing like this instrument is preserved elsewhere. Nothing comparable to it is known. from any ancient scientific text or literary allusion. On the contrary, from all that we know of science and technology in the Hellenistic Age we should have felt that such a device could not exist."  The Antikythera Mechanism Research Project website says: "It ... is the most sophisticated mechanism known from the ancient world. Nothing as complex is known for the next thousand years. The Antikythera Mechanism is now understood to be dedicated to astronomical phenomena and operates as a complex mechanical 'computer' which tracks the cycles of the Solar System.

Sources: World Mysteries: An Ancient Greek Computer? / The Antikythera Mechanism Research Project / The Antikythera Mechanism: Physical and Intellectual Salvage from the 1st Century B.C. / Wikipedia