Jewish Reggae

Sounds a little strange, huh? Jewish reggae? Well, it's actually really cool, and I'm getting into it a lot. Matisyahu's a Hasidic Jew, which are the really devout Jews, and His lyrics can be appreciated by anyone in the Judeo-Christian realm, I'd say, though I can't understand a lot of them because he sings so fast sometimes.

Still, it's cool and you should check it out. Here's his site: Matisyahu The best song is "King Without a Crown" on the "Live at Stubb's" Album, which is totally different than the older album. He's going to be here in Atlanta on the 16th but unfortunately the tickets have long since sold out.

New Email Charges

Let's hope that the Senate Commerce Committee can pull it off and ban internet marketers from finding a guaranteed spot in your email inbox. If you use AOL or Yahoo email, you are likely to soon see a wave of internet advertisements, because the two are going to be "selling spots in your inbox". They will charge a fraction of a cent per message to junkmailing companies, and the message will be guaranteed to go to your inbox, while other spam mail still is filtered to the junk box.

While AOL is posing the solution as a way to make sure legitimate e-mailers get through and to avoid identity theft schemes, the company also stands to make millions a year from the arrangement. read the whole article

If you use AOL or Yahoo mail, you should go ahead and switch to Hotmail or Google, probably google, because it most likely won't be long until Hotmail is also selling "in-box seats".

In other news, "a 'Half Penny' was worth one Half (1/2) of a Penny. So two farthings also make up half a penny. The last half penny for circulation was dated 1967." If you want to learn about halfpence, sixpence, farthings, and tanners, go here.

The Caricatures of Doom

Many of you are aware by now that in Denmark, and then later in other countries, a cartoon that caricatured the prophet Mohammed was published in several newspapers. I haven't seen this cartoon firsthand, but I have seen overwhelming amounts of headlines during the aftermath. Several Muslims and Muslim groups have been responding to the offense, often violently.

It even got to the point where American embassies are seeing violent protests, even though no papers in America have even published the cartoon!
Anger that has been directed at European targets in recent days began to shift toward the U.S. on Monday, though American papers haven't published the offending cartoons. read this article

What is perhaps the most shocking to me of all of this is how unified so many Muslims seem to be about their feelings regarding this. It was an offense to them, an offense of catastrophic proportions. They have been responding with such violence that many have been killed already, and most people's reaction to this is probably one of understanding - that a deeply religious group has been offended on a deeply religious level.

So why is it that you see caricatures of Jesus all the time, an no one reacts violently to that? On Southpark, Jesus is portrayed in a comical way, and on the movie Dogma, He was "buddy Jesus". Several other types of media have portrayed Him in a sense that is comical and often disrespectful. Yet if Christians were to rise up and violently protest against these kind of portrayals of Jesus, they would be considered crazy or "dangerous religious fanatics".

I have to respect something about these Muslims: they take their religion very seriously. It is rooted deeply in their hearts, and they have great respect for Mohammed. In fact, most Muslims I know, though they do not believe in Jesus as savior, would never draw up a caricature of Him, because they still hold some sort of respect for Him. They must view Christians as some of the most faithless, insincere people when we do not protest the daily mockings and inaccurate caricature/portrayals of Christ, but rather some claiming to bear the name of "Christian" will even laugh along with T.V. shows and other media that ridicule Him.