Topic of the day: Progressive Insurance lives up to its name

Kudo to Progressive for being brave enough to go against conservatism in the States by making a commercial that feature a gay couple (not explicitly stated but a lot of people think so):


It's sad that so many businesses either pretend gay people do not exist or bow down to the extremely conservative/religious groups. I would sing more praises for them if the marketing guy at Progressive admit that's a gay couple (instead, he said they are modelled after Joey and Chandler from Friends but Friends expert like me know they are not) Besides, I really find that Progressive ad lady very annoying (my buddy agreed with me too)

Topic of the day: Tai Chi or Christian?

Christians are not allowed to practice Tai Chi, according to this church. In fact, they have banned the Tai Chi class that used to take place at their church. My understanding of Tai Chi is quite limited but I thought it is more related to Taoism, the philosophy, rather than the religion with the same name. I had never worshipped any Tao deity while practicing Tai Chi! (Maybe that's why I was no good!?) Shaolin Kung Fu probably has more influenced from Budhism than Tai Chi from Taoism (the religion) Still, it's perfectly normal for non-Budhist to practice Shaolin Kung Fu. Once again it shows how ignorant and close minded these people could be.

Topic of the day: Earthquake at Haiti

It is sickening that someone try to blame the disaster on the local people! Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson claimed the Haitians had made a pact with the Devil to drive out the French who occupied the country in 1791 and thus cursed. The earthquake was the result of the curse. This article gives more details on what happened back then and why Robertson's claim actually made his Christian god looks bad.

This is actually the third pieces of negative news related to Christian I read this week. It has been reported that World Vision, a highly regarded Christian charitable organization, discriminates against non-Christian job applicants but it receives $250 million grant from US government and thus different from other religious entities like churches. Finally, Vatican criticized the blockbuster hit movie Avatar for promoting human's love of the nature. To be honest, it really doesn't make much sense. Even for those believe in the Christian God, shouldn't they also love the nature, which is supposedly their God's creation?

Book of the day: The Dead Sea Scroll Deception

While I visit ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) in Toronto earlier this month, the main attraction was the Dead Sea Scroll exhibition. It was indeed intriguing to read about text written two millenniums ago. Of course we only skimmed through the exhibit (and managed to look at each of the scrolls in display) because the kids lost patience quickly. The first thing I did when I'm back home is to find some books about it. And I figured it would be more interesting to read the conspiracy theory about it than the official version. And indeed, this book was a good read. The official theory is that the community that created the Dead Sea scroll was a peaceful group that was isolated from the mainstream of Jewish society. However, the authors of this book argued (based on other scholars' research) that this community was very connected to the mainstream and they were armed to oppose the Roman, which ruled that region at that time. In addition, what they documented was the early history of the Christian community and the church. The most important point was what Jesus preached was not much different from the Jewish tradition. It was his disciples who broke away from the tradition and started a whole new religion in the name of Jesus. While I wasn't completed convinced by the way they came up with this conclusion, I totally believe this is a possibility. (Just like any religion. The founder is very unlikely to come up with everything. Indeed, the founder might not have realized s/he has started a new religion!)

Anyway, the authors did mention a noble intention of writing this book: they wanted to show that the Judaism, Christianity and Islam have more in common than we thought. Hopefully people will get this point and learn to coexist peacefully in the middle east. Sadly, the book was written in 1991 and there was no improvement after almost 20 years.