The daredevil stunt plane Scandinavian Catwalk performed this epic light show at Australia’s 2019 Avalon Airshow. The plane shoots a stream of fireworks and laser beams, perfectly timed to the music, all while performing flips and rolls in the sky.
ARTHUR: We have ridden the length and breadth of the land in search of knights who will join me in my court of Camelot. I must speak with your lord and master.
GUARD #1: What, ridden on a horse?
ARTHUR: Yes!
GUARD #1: You’re using coconuts!
ARTHUR: What?
GUARD #1: You’ve got two empty halves of coconut and you’re bangin’ ’em together.
ARTHUR: So?
TheRankings posted a great video infographic of the top 15 global brands as they have traded places between 2000-2018.
Spoilers: watch how Google and Apple rocket up and out.
As someone currently working in this space, Ed Sperling has some good observations about the difficulty auto makers are having adjusting to the rapid change occurring in their industry.
Russian: штурмовщина, IPA: [ʂtʊrmɐfˈɕːinə], last-minute rush, lit.storming
Shturmovshchina was a common Soviet work practice of frantic and overtime work at the end of a planning period in order to fulfill the planned production target. The practice usually gave rise to products of poor quality at the end of a planning cycle.
St John Vianne is the patron saint of parish priests. Considered a slow learner who struggled with academics, he even got lost when trying to get to his first assignment in the tiny town of Ars France (230 people at the time). Known as a great mystic, he spent long days in the confessional with people who would flock to him from all over Europe and the world. Almost 20,000 people a year would go to confession with him and many miraculous events are well documented by those that confessed with him.
The shrine of Ars has entrusted his incorrupt heart to the Knights of Columbus who are hosting him traveling the US. His heart will be arriving here in the Pacific Northwest the first week of March. Find the locations and dates here, but act fast because his relics will only be at some locations for mere hours:
https://www.kofc.org/en/events/vianney.html#/
Brief info about St John Vianne from wikipedia:
Around 1790, the anticlerical Terror phase of the French Revolution forced many priests to hide from the regime in order to carry out the sacraments. John Vianne’s parents were ardent Catholics and gave often to the local poor as well as raised John with the same faith despite the persecution. After the Catholic Church was re-established in France in 1802 by Napoleon Bonaparte,
John entered the seminary, but struggled academically. Considered too slow, he was returned to Abbé Balley. However, Balley persuaded the Vicar general that Vianney’s piety was great enough to compensate for his ignorance. The seminarian was ordained priest on 12 August 1815.
He was then appointed the priest of Ars, a town of 230 inhabitants. Vianne got lost trying to find the town and two young men tending flocks in the fields pointed him in the right direction. With Catherine Lassagne and Benedicta Lardet, he established La Providence, a home for girls.
As parish priest, Vianney realized that the Revolution’s aftermath had resulted in religious ignorance and indifference, due to the devastation wrought on the church in France. At the time, Sundays in rural areas were spent working in the fields, or dancing and drinking in taverns. Vianney spent time in the confessional and gave homilies extorting people to turn towards God.
Despite the tiny parish of just a few hundred souls, Vianney came to be known internationally, and people from distant places began travelling to consult him as early as 1827. By 1855, the number of pilgrims had reached 20,000 a year. During the last ten years of his life, he spent 16 to 18 hours a day in the confessional.
The hours he spent in the confessional were surrounded by mystical experiences for both he and his confessors. Numerous tales are told of his humility, holiness, and miraculous knowledge of people’s sins and the disposition of their souls.
The nonprofit Mental Health America recently ranked Oregon the worst in the country for mental illness rates and how little access to help for it we provide. That study says we have some of the worst rates for homelessness, high school graduations, and child abuse. All of which link to mental illnesses.
Sadly, it is not surprising when you see the masses of homeless camps, mentally ill, and drug addicted wandering the streets in downtown Portland. The famous movie ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest’ was filmed in Salem Oregon – which some said was one of the big nails in the coffins for state-sponsored mental health services.
Read some of the sad history of Oregon’s Mental Health services here:
http://www.mentalhealthportland.org/about-2/oregons-mental-health-history/
Other sources:
Near the end of his life, while exiled on the rock of St. Helena, Napoleon called Count Montholon to his side and asked him, “Can you tell me who Jesus Christ was?” Upon the Count declining to respond Napoleon countered,
I know men, and I tell you Jesus Christ was not a man.
Superficial minds see a resemblance between Christ and the founders of empires and the gods of other religions. That resemblance does not exist.
There is between Christianity and other religions the distance of infinity.
Alexander, Cæsar, Charlemagne and myself founded empires. But on what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon sheer force. Jesus Christ alone founded His empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men will die for Him. In every other existence but that of Christ how many imperfections!
From the first day to the last He is the same; majestic and simple; infinitely firm and infinitely gentle. He proposes to our faith a series of mysteries and commands with authority that we should believe them, giving no other reason than those tremendous words, ‘I am God.’
The Bible contains a complete series of acts and of historical men to explain time and eternity, such as no other religion has to offer.
If it is not the true religion, one is very excusable in being deceived; for everything in it is grand and worthy of God.
The more I consider the Gospel, the more I am assured that there is nothing there which is not beyond the march of events and above the human mind. Even the impious themselves have never dared to deny the sublimity of the Gospel, which inspires them with a sort of compulsory veneration.
What happiness that Book procures for those who believe it!