My Vote for Pope

Bishop Claude Champagne should be pope some day. Currently Bishop Champagne is currently auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Halifax. His responses to Women in the church, Race relations in Canada, Evangelism and Age of member of the church were outstanding.
Bishop Champagne's stance on women in the Catholic Church is progressive, yet diplomatic. He stated that the church needed every help they could get, but understood that the climate had changed. Did not say that the current climate was anybody's fault. But did say that it needed to change in time when the church was ready.
A question was asked to Bishop Champagne about how immigrants keeping to their non-christian religions were causing Canada to not be such a great nation. Because of course Canada was built by Christians and that is what lead it to be great. Now this was a hard question but he was able to answer it by using the same ideas that the person asked with. The question was asked with a lot of religious references. The answer was based on religious references, papal documents and Mother Teresa. Talking about how the religion does not matter, that we should love everybody no matter what their faiths are. Most importantly he was able to state, through references, that they are doing nothing wrong. He was able to do all of that with out bluntly saying you are completely wrong and a racist.
Bishop Champagne's lecture was about evangelism and social justice, and how the Catholic Church should evangelize. Interesting topic as a non-Catholic some parts were hard to understand. He was asked the question what was his stance on Protestant Evangelism, convert at all costs mentality. He answered this in a way that made me feel catholic. We should help each other no matter what, people do not have to become christian to get help. If they received help they do not have to become christian. We should not judge our work by if we convert but show the love of God through our actions. This is a important point: our relief work, religious or not, should not have any strings attached; we should do it because we know it is the right thing to do. Your goal in christian relief work should be about 'saving' people, but about helping people.
Bishop Champagne showed his ability to speak with respect when people were wrong. Talk about issues at length from his heart. Showed great skill on how to communicate to people who are stuck in their own view on their level. He is a great speaker and thinker but he is also very down to earth, and that is why he should be Pope some day.

Nader Stealing Missouri From Obama

Well the third party did it again, costing the democrats electoral college votes. But not really, the third party did it all over the states, for and against the democrats. North Carolina and Indiana went for Obama, while Missouri went for McCain; mostly due to third party votes.
North Carolina should have gone to McCain if Barr did not steal 25,000 votes away from him. This creates a small lead over Obama, thus McCain should have won North Carolina. The difference in NC was only 14,000 votes, McCain should have had a lead of 11,000.

Indiana also should have gone for McCain, the difference was also less than what Barr was able to get. Barr received 29,000 votes, the difference between the two big ones was just under 29,000. Indiana should have been the next Florida; making us stay up till dawn wondering who had won it.
Now to Missouri where Obama lost by less than 4 thousand votes, Nader won 17,000. So by simple math Obama won. But that is not looking at the bigger realization, the third party is here to stay and will make very small impacts. They may be small but they can change the electoral college.

Fireworks In Dubai

Well it looks like Dubai knows how to through a party. A new hotel opened in Dubai and its opening party was massive, 20 million dollars. The opening was also for the giant Palm island in Dubai. The project cost over 1.5 billion dollars, so 20 million is not that much more. It was a major celebrity event. The links that are provided gives a background on what happened and many different views of the event.

There were reportedly over 100,000 different fireworks that went off, over less than ten minutes. So if we assume that it was 10 minutes long that would be over 10,000 a minute. Over 150 per second. These are huge amounts of fireworks, so much that the clear air that the fireworks started in was filled with smoke.
What about the environmental damages created by the fire works? Well the fireworks' smoke will most likely be able to be track for quite some distance. But compared to the negative affects of the Palm development it is near to nothing. They double the length of the shore line for Dubai, they created a whole new ecosystem on the shore. Not to mention that it is a tourist attraction, so people will be flying there from around the world. Yes they will create many more airborne contaminates then the fire works ever created.
What about the current financial crisis? This fireworks display was not purchased in the last few month; it was purchased before any of the stock markets began to fall. The whole project actually started during the last major downturn in the economy. These fire works only cost 20 million dollars, while a single resort on the palm cost 1.5 billion dollars. That does not even include the costs to build the Island. So this even was a drop in the bucket.
This is just the first of three palms being created in Dubai, and there is a map of the world as well. The next opening is going to be even larger, so that means more fireworks or something else crazy and new. Don't worry the palms are good planning; they have many initiatives that are good planning.

BBC News Video of Dubai Fireworks

CNN Pictures of Dubai Hotel Opening
CNN News Article about Dubai Fireworks

MSNBC Pictures of Dubai Hotel Opening

Youtube Video of the Event
8 Min Youtube Video - homemade