Chávez’s Legacy Gains Religious Glow in Venezuela

Jack Chang:

Holding a Bible in her arms at the start of Holy Week, seamstress Maria Munoz waited patiently to visit the tomb of the man she considers another savior of humanity.

The 64-year-old said she had already turned her humble one-bedroom house into a shrine devoted to the late President Hugo Chavez, complete with busts, photos and coffee mugs bearing his image. Now, she said, her brother-in-law was looking for a larger house to display six boxes’ worth of Chavez relics that her family has collected throughout his political career.

“He saved us from so many politicians who came before him,” Munoz said as tears welled in her eyes. “He saved us from everything.”

Contemporary communists worship their leaders very much as they did in the Soviet era.

Gustav III of Sweden

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I like old-school portrait paintings, and here’s one I haven’t seen until today. Unlike most such pictures I have posted in my diary, this one is by a Swedish artist. His name is Alexander Roslin (1718–1793) and the object in this painting is King Gustav III of Sweden (1746-1792) wearing his coronation robes.

The New Building of the Scania and Blekinge Court of Appeal

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I think I have posted at least one picture of this building before. I know for sure that I, on 14 December 2012, posted a picture of the old building of the Scania and Blekinge Court of Appeal. Seen above is the court’s new building. I have spent the day there, listening to testimonies as one of five judges.

I like the architecture, but on sunny spring days as today, I regret spending time too much time indoors.

Shooting Range

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There’s not been much blogging for me lately. I have spent my days doing other things, such as pistol shooting. I snapped this picture during practice yesterday.

Inside Communist North Korea

From the Daily Mirror:

A child of around 10 sits dying of starvation by the side of the road while just yards away soldiers load enough rice on to trucks to feed families for weeks.

As the young boy slumps on the grimy kerb in his filthy, oversized army jacket, locals stroll past zombie-style without even glancing in his direction or displaying an ounce of pity for his wretched plight.

Nearby his friends scavenge in disease-ridden rubbish tips for scraps of what might pass for food in a land where people are so poor they are forced to eat tree bark or even corpses, according to those on the inside.

And not far away, prisoners are herded from their harsh labour camps to frantically dig out crops from frozen ground while trigger-happy troops hover over them waiting for the one wrong move that could end with death.

This is the real North Korea. The one its warmongering leader Kim Jong-un does not want the outside world to see.

Converting to Atheism

Andrew Sullivan quotes Susan Jacoby’s explanation to atheism. I disagree with her because my experience is the exact opposite. The older I get, the more appealing the very idea of religion gets. The atheists seem obsessed by objective reality and what they describe as delusion of religion. I’m not saying that there’s any proof of a God, but there are plenty of things to suggest that a life without religion only results in meaninglessness. After all, the entire human existence is without meaning unless we decide to “delude” ourselves.

Margaret Thatcher’s Religion

The Iron Lady on Christian generosity:

It was never hard to see the influence of Methodism, born as a reaction to the complacency and privilege of 18th-century Anglicanism, on Mrs Thatcher. She believed in thrift and hard work, and liked the advice of John Wesley, Methodism’s founder, to earn, save and only then give as much as possible. The acts of generosity listed in the New Testament, from the Good Samaritan’s to that of the woman who anointed Christ’s feet, were possible only because the donors had money, she noted.

Thatcher’s funeral at St Paul’s Cathedral in London is scheduled for later today.

Swede Briefing British MPs on Peril of Daycare Admits He Has No Academic Degree

From the Guardian:

A Swedish childcare “expert” who was called to brief MPs last month on the dangers of subsidised daycare has been attacked as “unscientific” and “unqualified” by the author of the main study on which he drew.

Jonas Himmelstrand, the keynote speaker at a House of Commons event organised by the campaign group Mothers at Home Matter, linked near-universal pre-school daycare in his country to an alarming decline in adolescents’ mental health and educational achievement, as well as to rising youth suicides.

The first rule of successful lying is to never lie about facts that can be checked.

Westboro Baptist Church Picketed Funeral of Boston Terror Victim

Laura Clawson of Daily Kos writes:

The attention-seeking scum of Westboro Baptist Church, true to form, threatened that they’d be picketing at the funeral of Boston Marathon bombing victim Krystle Campbell this morning. In response, Teamsters from Boston’s Local 25 laid plans to form a human shield.

Hate met with love. Excellent!

The Brutal Logic of Fundamentalism

Morgan Guyton:

If you’re not willing to consider whether Paul’s take on gender hierarchy and homosexuality might both occur within a set of assumptions about gender that are not permanently part of God’s plan for humanity, then you need to go along with Doug Wilson and say that slavery is OK as long as it occurs in a biblical way because Paul has to be right about that also.

Cultural context is key when reading ancient texts.

Image of Enceladus

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This face-on colour view of Enceladus—a satellite of Saturn—was taken by the international Cassini spacecraft on 31 January 2011, from a distance of 81 000 kilometres, and processed by amateur astronomer Gordan Ugarković.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI and Gordan Ugarković