I'm Gina Smith

Excellent reporting in The Observer.

This blew me away today. From The Observer. Full story here, excerpt below.

When Tri Cayono and Yanti caught sight of each other, their reactions were hardly what one would expect from two people on their wedding day. In a receiving line with her parents, an aunt and four siblings, Yanti greeted her future husband with a handshake and the merest flicker of a smile as he arrived with relatives.

He gave a nod and quickly moved on to the next person in line. The affection level barely rose throughout the evening. Yanti and Tri did not kiss - not even after the Muslim cleric who officiated at the ceremony declared them husband and wife. They were disinclined to cuddle up, even when cajoled by the photographer.

The truth behind the frostiness is a sinister and sad indictment of the traditions that persist in many parts of Indonesia. Not only had Yanti, 22, a restaurant cook, and Tri, 24, a maize and sweet potato farmer, just met, they barely knew anything about each other. 'Er, what does he like to do in his spare time?' Yanti hurriedly asked a cousin when probed by The Observer the day before the nuptials.

Despite her protestations, it was clear that Yanti was uncomfortable with the process that had led to the ceremony in a specially erected bamboo and corrugated-iron-roofed 'marquee' outside her parents' mud-floor house.

A little over two months ago Tri announced that he wanted to marry a girl from central Java. 'I think they're cooler and more fun,' he told The Observer by way of explanation. The fact that he did not know any did not deter him. When a vague acquaintance, Fajar, said he had a cousin, Mursiyati, who might be appropriate, Tri accepted immediately.

Pressurised by her parents into accepting Tri's offer - the fact that he had a one-and-a-quarter-acre farm being too tempting a lure for Mursiyati's labourer father - Mursiyati agreed to the match. A month later Mursiyati met someone she liked, called off the wedding and married her new boyfriend instead.

Despite the setback Tri was still determined to marry a central Java woman and Fajar felt obligated to provide one. So early in June the family came up with Yanti, a cousin of Fajar. Again the fact that Tri had 10 times more land than Yanti's father proved the crucial factor.

'As soon as I heard her voice, saw her photo and learnt she was a cook, I knew that she was the woman for me,' Tri said, without much conviction. Yanti said she was 'happy and excited' at the prospect of marrying Tri, but her father, Saulusmin, was not. 'I mean they haven't even met - how can they get married?' he said. But like Yanti, Saulusmin did not dare to stand up to his wife, Gina. 'She would have got so angry with me if I'd objected it would not have been pleasant,' Saulusmin said. 'So I decided to let her have her way.'

Falun Gong

The Falun Gong, in case you've never heard of them, are a religious sect in China that is terribly persecuted. Reports of torture of women and children, mysterious nightime shootings, it is all in the news. Here in SF, in front of the Chinese Embassy, little old Chinese women meditate silently, with billboards above them whom they say are dead family and relatives.

They are there day after day, rain or not, just sitting quietly meditating.

This was missed in the media coverage of a so-called fake journalist embarrassing Bush. He should be up on this issue to begin with, and it might have been on the agenda. (Though it seems as if nothing was.)

It is of course up to China to decide whether it is a country that allows religious sects and factions -- whether it makes them legal or illegal. Their right. Not ours to force. But human rights is our hallmark as a country (or should be, since Guantanamo) and where is the U.N. in this. Below is the article that appeared in Reuters today, in full.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A heckler from the Falun Gong spiritual movement who disrupted a White House appearance by Chinese President Hu Jintao was charged on Friday with harassing, intimidating and threatening a foreign official.

The federal misdemeanor charges against Wang Wenyi -- a 47-year-old who said she had carried out an individual act of conscience -- are punishable by up to six months in jail.

Wang entered the White House grounds as a reporter before interrupting the highly scripted welcome ceremony for Hu hosted by President George W. Bush on Thursday.

"President Hu, your days are numbered. President Bush, make him stop persecuting Falun Gong," she yelled, referring to the spiritual meditation movement that is banned in China.

Bush personally apologized to Hu for the incident, said by officials to have been deeply resented by the Chinese authorities.

Outside the courthouse after being charged, Wang said she was a physician who had decided to speak out as "an individual act of conscience."

U.S. officials said Wang entered the White House grounds as a reporter with The Epoch Times, an English-language publication strongly supportive of the meditation movement that is banned in China.

Wang, in an interview on the CNN program "The Situation Room," said she had lived in the United States for nearly 20 years and was awaiting a naturalization ceremony to become a U.S. citizen.

She said she realized the charges might hurt her naturalization prospects but said it was worthwhile to call attention to what she called "unspeakable" human-rights abuses in China.

She said the news organization she had represented did not know that she would disrupt the event.

Wang did not speak during the court hearing, which lasted

about 30 minutes. But her court-appointed lawyer, David Bos, challenged the criminal charge on free-speech grounds.

"It's making the First Amendment rights of all Americans just evaporate," he said, calling Wang's remarks "relatively innocuous."

Angela George, from the U.S. attorney's office, said Wang had gone beyond political speech and that the verbal attack was personally directed at Hu.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson did not rule on the free-speech issue. She refused to dismiss the criminal complaint against Wang, saying it was too soon to make a decision about throwing out the case.

"It is not a crime, but an act of civil disobedience," she said, reading from a prepared statement.

The law at issue bars willfully harassing, intimidating, coercing or threatening a foreign official in the performance of their official duties

Come on, he actually walked on water?

I remember, at Woodward Academy many years ago, a religion professor told us that actually Moses had not parted the RED sea. That the original text said he parted a REED sea. A swamp in other words.

So I had to post this about Jesus actually walking on ice, not water, due to an error in translation. True or not? I won't get into it. But you need to know!

MIAMI (Reuters) - The New Testament says that Jesus walked on water, but a Florida university professor believes there could be a less miraculous explanation -- he walked on a floating piece of ice.

Professor Doron Nof also theorized in the early 1990s that Moses's parting of the Red Sea had solid science behind it.

Nof, a professor of oceanography at Florida State University, said on Tuesday that his study found an unusual combination of water and atmospheric conditions in what is now northern Israel could have led to ice formation on the Sea of Galilee.

Nof used records of the Mediterranean Sea's surface temperatures and statistical models to examine the dynamics of the Sea of Galilee, which Israelis know now as Lake Kinneret.

The study found that a period of cooler temperatures in the area between 1,500 and 2,600 years ago could have included the decades in which Jesus lived.

A drop in temperature below freezing could have caused ice thick enough to support a human to form on the surface of the freshwater lake near the western shore, Nof said. It might have been nearly impossible for distant observers to see a piece of floating ice surrounded by water.

Nof said he offered his study -- published in the April edition of the Journal of Paleolimnology -- as a "possible explanation" for Jesus' walk on water.

"If you ask me if I believe someone walked on water, no, I don't," Nof said. "Maybe somebody walked on the ice, I don't know. I believe that something natural was there that explains it."

"We leave to others the question of whether or not our research explains the biblical account."

When he offered his theory 14 years ago that wind and sea conditions could explain the parting of the Red Sea, Nof said he received some hate mail, even though he noted that the idea could support the biblical description of the event.

And as his theory of Jesus' walk on ice began to circulate, he had more hate mail in his e-mail inbox.

"They asked me if I'm going to try next to explain the resurrection," he said.

DISCLAIMER FROM GINA: I GRADUATED IN CHEMISTRY FROM FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY, THE ORIGIN OF THIS STORY.

Town outlaws swearing!

It would be too easy to use a bunch of swear words to introduce this story, so I won't. Come up with your own. But let me warn you. First, Amsterdam. Next, Alabama. Or Atlanta. Or Assinine, Wisconsin. You never know.

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The name of the Lord may no longer be taken in vain in the Dutch village of Staphorst.

Staphorst, in the so-called Dutch "bible belt" of eastern towns where religion holds sway, approved a ban on swearing by 13-4 council votes.

But the caveat that swearing is not banned when it is an expression of the constitutional freedom of speech may make it difficult to punish offenders.

"A ban on swearing can be seen as a signal," the council's proposal said, adding a change in moral values was needed to address the underlying problem.

Past swearing bans in bible-belt villages were declared in violation of the right to free expression in 1986. One other town has such a ban -- Reimerswaal, in the southwestern province of Zeeland.

The Dutch association against swearing, which runs national billboard campaigns to admonish the bad-mouthed Dutch, says the Bible outlaws swearing.

"Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain," it quotes Exodus 20:7.

Wi-Fi in church! (Better than snoring.)

LONDON (Reuters) - British telecoms operator BT Group Plc has wired up a church in Wales to allow the congregation to hook onto local high-speed Internet connections when they want a break from the sermon. Britain's largest fixed-line telecoms operator said on Tuesday it had installed a Wi-Fi wireless network access point, known as a hotspot, in Reverend Keith Kimber's St John's Rectory church in the city of Cardiff.

"The church has to move with the times and I wanted to make St John's a sanctuary for everyone, including business people with laptops and mobiles," Kimber said in a statement issued by BT. "I have no problem with people quietly sending an email or surfing the Internet in church, as long as they respect the church."

Wi-Fi -- a medium-range wireless network that is often rolled out in coffee shops and airport lounges -- allows users of laptop computers and other gadgets to access fast Internet connections without having to struggle with wires and mismatched phone plugs.

Buddhist Monks beat each other up -- screw Ahimsa!

I seem to be revealing too much of myself in a blog dedicated to deseminating odd and sometimes stupid news. But, what the heck.

In the last entry, I admitted to have been raised Catholic. (Sort of, because my mother was half a Muslim, and my true father turned out to be half a Jew.) But its the Buddhism that sings to me the most. A nondeist religion for one thing. That's nice.

And out here in SF, there is no shortage of places for southern girls like me to find great meditation sangha groups and silent retreats, whatever.

I like Buddhists for two main reasons. They don't have a personal god they treat like Santa, asking for things. (God, please help me get out my lease) But the main reason is Ahimsa -- an oath promising not to do any harm to any living creature. If we all could practice Ahimsa, what a different world this would be for my child and his.

Yah. So what's all this hooplah I'm hearing about in the newstory below about buddhist monks in fisticuffs?.By ahimsa reasoning, those monks are rightly defrocked. Maybe they should move to NYC and join a gang. Dang. Boys will be buddhists, I guess. Bummer, though.

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Five Thai Buddhist monks have been defrocked and fined after a brawl with monks from a nearby temple, police and newspapers said Tuesday.

The street fight was the culmination of years of antagonism between monks from the two temples who had often exchanged curses, insults and rude gestures as they collected alms on different sides of a road, the Manager newspaper said.

"When an ordinary person is given a middle-finger sign, he will be mad. So am I," it quoted one of the defrocked monks, Boonlert Boonpan, as saying after the brawl in the northeastern state of Nong Khai Monday.

Boonlert said he usually carried a knuckle-duster in his shoulder bag during the morning collection of alms on which Bhuddist monks depend, it said.

Boonlert and the four other monks, all aged between 15 and 28, were each fined 1,000 baht ($25) by police for public brawling and were defrocked by senior monks, Wut Pomraksa, head of Nong Khai police station, told Reuters.

But Boonlert was unrepentant.

"If senators can fight in parliament, why can't monks?" he said.

NOTE FROM GINA: Um, maybe it's because senators don't vow to the no-harm ahimsa rite? Yikes.

The Virgin Mary stain -- water leak, big lie or divine intervention?

According to the Reuters story below, crowds webt as city crews painted over the so-called Virgin Mary stain.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A stain under a highway bridge that had drawn hundreds of faithful who thought it resembled the Virgin Mary was painted over by a road crew on Friday after a vandal defaced the image.

Chicago police said they charged a 37-year-old man with damage to state property after he used black shoe polish to paint "big lie" on the yellow and white stain which had become the site of an impromptu shrine for the past three weeks.

Some wept as a coat of brown paint was rolled over the stain on a wall next to a sidewalk where candles, flowers, pictures and other mementos had been placed.

Engineers had said the stain was most likely caused by a water leak from the road above, mixed with salt that had been used on the highway during the winter. Police did not say what the man's motive might have been in defacing the image.

The end of the world as you know it.

One day closer to Doomsday! So claim followers of St. Malachy's 12th century prophesy, that this pope will be the second to last. Weird story below.

ROME (Reuters) - Pope Benedict's ascent to the papacy took a conclave of 115 cardinals, four rounds of voting and followed a lifetime of service to the Vatican.

But ask Internet doomsayers eyeing a 12th century Catholic prophecy and they'll tell you it was all stitched up more than eight centuries ago and that judgment day is nigh.

The prophecy -- widely dismissed by scholars as a hoax -- is attributed to St. Malachy, an Irish archbishop recognized by members of the Church for his ability to read the future.

Benedict, believers say, fits the description of the second-to-last pope listed under the prophecy before the Last Judgement, when the bible says God separates the wicked from the righteous at the end of time.

"The Old Testament states: 'believe his prophets and you will prosper' -- so believe it. We are close to the return of the Judge of the nations. Christ is coming," wrote one Internet post by the Rev. Pat Reynolds.

"Thank God for the witness of St. Malachy."

St. Malachy was said to have had a vision during a trip to Rome around 1139 of the remaining 112 Popes. The new pope would be number 111 on that list, and is described in a text attributed to St. Malachy as the "Glory of the Olive."

To connect Benedict, a pale, bookish German, to anything olive takes some imagination. But Malachy-watchers point to the choice of the name Benedict -- an allusion to the Order of Saint Benedict, a branch of which is known as the Olivetans.

"When (he) chose the name Benedict XVI, this was seen as fulfilling the prophecy for this pope," wrote one entry on www.wikipedia.org.

Benedict said that he chose the name partly in honor of Pope Benedict XV (1914-1922), calling him a "courageous prophet of peace." On Wednesday, Benedict dedicated his papacy to "the service of reconciliation and harmony between peoples."

A joke -- and an invitation to join Steve Wozniak's joke list.

This contributed to me by Steve Wozniak. If you've been reading my blog for awhile, you know I am writing his biography.

Any way, he has a joke list. If you are interested in joining his joke list, email me your real name and email address, and he will add to you.

The joke:

Just as a surgeon was finishing up an operation the patient wakes up, sits up and demands to know what is going on. "I'm about to close," the surgeon says. The patient grabs his hand and says, "Oh, no you're not! I'll close my own incision."

The doctor hands him the needle and says, "Suture self."

Says Don Cuppitt.

A God out there and values out there, if they existed, would be utterly useless and unintelligible to us. There is nothing to be gained by nostalgia for the old objectivism, which was in any case used only to justify arrogance, tyranny, and cruelty. People [forget] ... how utterly hateful the old pre-humanitarianism world was.