Sarah Glidden was recently interviewed by Comics Alliance on her graphic novel chronicling her trip to Israel. She was able to go and visit Israel for 10-days to reconnect to her Jewish national heritage. It's interesting hearing about what she learned.
The thing about Bible translations is that from time to time it is necessary to update them. The reasons include that as time goes on we understand more and more about Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. Also English, or whatever language you are reading changes. Dr. Mariottini has posted an inciteful article about the completed Revised NIV. I agree with him that we don't need to "help God out" by purposely inserting words for which we have not textual proof for inserting. When you compare translation to the original texts, I'm always amazed that some times they are right on in agreement and sometimes they are not. At times the KJV actually is better than the NIV and at other times, it is not. It's going to be interesting looking at the new NIV and seeing what is different.
Comics Alliance has just announced that Osamu Tezuka's notebooks will be published this year. Tezuka created Astro Boy and we can see his earliest ideas of how he did it. Extremely great historical stuff!
What does it mean that satirists like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are more relevant than "legitimate" journalists? It's a scary world when you can learn more about what's going on in an hour on Comedy Central than you can in 24 hours on FOX. Last Saturday there was an event on the mall in Washington DC: the Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. I love the title. Very apt for what is going on in America today!
Today's Fistbump goes to the Lambert brothers who run the YouTube channelTechNubian1. I love the following video. It uses pretty good animation to depict the story of how the AlmoravidMoors sent their female warriors lead by Nugaymath Turquia to beseige the Spanish castle called Valencia. When they sent a group of knights to rush Turquia's lines, she had her warriors cut them down with arrows. These ladies apparently were awesome archers. I've never heard of this before. Could be why Spaniards had a myth regarding black amazons led by a queen named Califia. There is a legend that when the Spaniards first came to California, they thought what they had found the home of the Amazons and named the land after the Queen. Thus Califia became "California". Grant it, not everyone thinks this is true, but I like the story anyway. Gee. I wonder why I was never taught about Turquia in school? Why wouldn't my school system want me to know about a group of powerful black women warrior who could take down the best knights? As Arsenio Hall used to say, "Makes you go, 'Hmmm'!". The Fistbump goes to these brothers for shining the light on a little explored piece of history!
Wow. Now this is an interesting debate. Christopher Hitchens debating a Muslim on the question of "Is Islam a Religion of Peace?"
