World Peace?

This particular view of Earth is strikingly beautiful. It seems to be completely at peace while in fact the area of the world that this photo covers includes some of the most war-torn places in the world. When I look at this beautiful image it is hard though to think past the superficial blue and white marble that we all love and realize that way down there on the surface there is tyranny, war, mass murder, starvation, disease, poverty, drought, etc... Instead I am taken back to when i was a young boy and dreamed of exploring the world and outer space. Back to when all I would see is the beauty and not the hurt. The next time that the world will truly be at peace is when the Lord comes back to call us home. Then we will all have the opportunity to look and enjoy, knowing that we can really find peace.

Name Calling

I used the Public Profiler to find where my surname was used the most and unsurprisingly the most common area was in the United States. After that I played around with area searches to find the most common forenames and surnames for a particular area. There is a dramatic difference between the most common names in Little Rock, Arkansas and Seward, Nebraska. For one thing most of the surnames in Seward seemed to be German or something like it. That seems to show some interesting correlation with who settled in which areas. Names can be helpful when considering settlement history.

Southeast Asia Drought

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0EEXWyhjM8

This vide clip shows how drought has affected areas in Southeast Asia, including Cambodia, Thailand, and the Philippines. It seemed especially to hit home since Professor Helmer is going to be doing mission work in Cambodia. This is what the people are going through where he is going to spread the gospel of Christ.

Bizarre Foods

After watching this show it really expresses the variety that is found throughout the world when it comes to diet. While I was visiting Spain I did try some of the cold ceviche soup. That is not very exotic compared to some of the things that Andrew Zimmern eats on his travels. I think the best explanation for the difference in culinary appetites throughout the world comes down to simply what is available. In Tanzania, eating meat is very rare since they are so valuable, so they use the animals to provide milk, blood and other products to eat. In India they use the spices and other natural ingredients that grow around them. In Hawaii the chefs are trying to come back to more local ingredients and styles of cooking. The vast variety of foods and the cultural ties that each has makes me sad that we Americans have resorted to the sameness of fast food. I think I would like to experience a little bit of culture every time I go to eat something.

Global Summit Meeting

The G-20 is a group consisting of the finance ministers and central bank governors of 19 countries and the European Union.
This picture is all the leaders gathered together for a photo shoot


These countries include



Argentina
Australia
Brazil
Canada
China
France
Germany
India
Indonesia
Italy
Japan
Mexico
Russia
Saudi Arabia
South Africa
South Korea
Turkey
United Kingdom
United States of America
and The European Union

Google Earth Image

This image is a view of the North Atlantic ocean from the perspective of the Europeans. This is the sort of mindset that they had when they were colonizing the Americas. Looking at the map it is

interesting to see that the first land mass that the venturing Europeans would have encountered is northern Canada and then what would becom New England. This echoes the settlement of the North American continent. If you look a bit further south you will see the African continent where the slave trade began. The sheer distance between the African continent and the North American Continent makes it seem unreal that the giant slave ships would risk the difficult passage across the Atlantic ocean. It is amazing what a new perspective can bring. Some of the hardships of the voyages are made more clear now that I look at the world from a different point of view.

So I went to see the movie Slumdog Millionaire the other weekend and I had to admit that the movie was pretty darn good. I was kept interested by the main story line as well as the shifting point of view. It was interesting to me to learn that this movie was not made in Hollywood, with well-known actors and actresses. It was made in Bollywood, the movie-producing capital of the world (aside from Hollywood). The stars were none other than children who actually lived in the Mumbai slums. I believe that probably had a great deal to do with why the movie was so real. The children knew exactly what life was like at its worst, and they knew how to survive.

The main character Jamal is seen stuggling to survive with his older brother and also to stay in contact with the "love of his life" Latika. In the midst of all the squalor of the slums and the poor, we see a movie about triumph, good vs. evil and love.

For us in the United States it was initially hard to get past the cultural differences that resulted from this being a foreign film. The director was British, but his movie and actors were all from India and had a better perspective than we do.

Hardly anywhere in America do we have the

extreme poverty that is seen in this movie. There are some areas where families are forced to go to drastic measures to keep everyone warm, fed and clothed, but for the most part America is indeed the land of prosperity.

Aside from being poor, in the movie we are given some glimpse of what it meant to be different. There is no freedom of religion in India and generally the majority rules. In one scene Jamal's mother is killed simply because she is Muslim. The sheer violence of this act and the fact that the Mumbai police did nothing to stop it, goes against every natural instinct that we have. We have been brought up in relative safety, with freedoms that we take for granted. Rioting and killing are not tolerated in our streets.

Throughout the movie, we are taken through flashbacks into Jamal's past. He was accused of cheating on the game show Who want's to be a millionaire? and was secretly arrested and tortured to reveal how he was cheating. The flashbacks are meant to show how Jamal knew the answers, when even rich, smart people did not. While I have to admit that these were very confusing at times, they did allow us to see a great variety of the land and culture of India. Jamal and his brother traveled throughout the country after their mother died and we got to see them as they went.

Eventually, the movie continues on with the drama that is Jamal's life and he finds his love and they live happily ever after...as far as we know. We who watched with bated breath are left with a sense of fulfillment and also a new understanding of what the life is like for someone born in the slums in Mumbai, India.