Joshie.com

"TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's best-selling newspaper has launched a competition to find the best cartoon about the Holocaust in retaliation for the publication in many European countries of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad."

Anyone want to take bets on when you'll see Jews rioting in the streets? Personally I think it'd be almost comical if that happened... which it never would. Why would I say it'd never happen? Because Jews are not animals like these people are. Jews go through proper civilized channels rather than burning down buildings. Jews don't blow up buses or crash planes in to buildings.

I guess this is how civilized Iranians behave: "Iranian protesters hurled petrol bombs and stones at the Danish Embassy in Tehran for a second successive day on Tuesday and Tehran announced it had cut all trade ties with Denmark."

I was reading the news today when I saw this...

"At the heart of the protest: 12 caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad first published in Denmark's Jyllands-Posten in September and reprinted in European media in the past week. One depicted the prophet wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse. The paper said it had asked cartoonists to draw the pictures because the media was practicing self-censorship when it came to Muslim issues."

Now ask yourself what a normal response is to being offended by a cartoon for a second before you read on.

"Thousands of Syrians enraged by caricatures of Islam's revered prophet torched the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus on Saturday"

"With their Damascus embassies up in flames, the foreign ministries advised their citizens to leave Syria without delay."

I don't think I really have to say anything about this. I guess if you are Muslim then normal rules of society just don't apply to you. Next they'll be giving out free backpacks and bus tickets with mosque memberships.

It is Purim time and I can't help but think of friends that have served in the army in Israel. It is very important work that the IDF soldiers do. No matter if you have issues with the Israeli government or not you hopefully don't feel anything bad for the individuals serving in the IDF. They do their best to protect everyone. Some of them die trying to just maintain peace. There is a custom during Purim that you will give a gift consisting of at least two 'portions' to another person. Even a poor person is required to fulfill this mitzvah. If one is unable to do so directly, he may exchange his own food for that of his friend; both of whom would thus fulfill their obligations. The mitzvah can not be fulfilled with money, clothing, and the like, but only with foods or beverages that are edible without further cooking or preparation. If at all possible, these 'portions' should be sent by messengers, rather than to be delivered personally. The mitzvah of Mishloach Manot and the giving of gifts to the poor, during the days of Purim, are prescribed in order to recall the brotherly love which Mordechai and Esther awoke in all Jews. When there is inner unity among Jews, even the wrongdoers among us becomes righteous. This year I'm using PizzaIDF to give soup for 5 soldiers and a Mischloach Manot package to 1 soldier to be fulfilled with my mitzvah with 1 soldier by the soup / manot. Have you fulfilled your mitzvah this year? Consider at least sending food to soldiers in Israel. It's not expensive at all.

A story on Netscape.com wrote...

Read 2 Kings 20:20 and 2 Chronicles 32:30 in the Old Testament and you'll find a reference to a tunnel that was built in 700 B.C. by order of King Hezekiah to protect Jerusalem's water supply against an Assyrian siege. Long considered an engineering feat for that day and age, the serpentine tunnel ran 1,750 feet long and moved water from the Gihon spring across the entire city of ancient Jerusalem to the pool of Siloam.

Fast forward to modern-day Jerusalem. The Siloam Tunnel in that city matches the biblical description of King Hezekiah's tunnel. But is it really the same one? That question has stumped scholars for years, many of whom insisted the Siloam Tunnel was built centuries later than the Bible suggested in Kings and Chronicles. The only clue that survived for more than 2,700 years is an inscription discovered in 1880 on a tunnel wall that supported the link to King Hezekiah, although it did not name him specifically, reports The Associated Press.

Now geologists from the Cave Research Center at Hebrew University in Jerusalem think they have solved the mystery. By using radiocarbon testing to analyze the age of stalactite samples from the ceiling of the Siloam Tunnel and plant material recovered from its plaster floor, the biblical record and the tunnel's age have been confirmed, the researchers wrote in the journal Nature. The Siloam Tunnel is the one built by King Hezekiah.

This is also significant because it is the first time that a well-identified biblical structure has been subjected to extensive radiocarbon dating.

Even with all our modern-day technology and scientific knowledge, very little testing of biblical structures has been done to prove or disprove their age or authenticity. Why? The experts told AP such testing is difficult because it's often hard to identify such structures, they may be poorly preserved, or they may be restricted for various political or religious reasons.

The Siloam Tunnel is different. It's long been a tourist attraction. Anyone can wander in it and see the pick marks the original builders made in the walls to adjust their course so the tunnel would meet with a second team of workers who were heading toward them from the opposite end of the city. AP notes that those pick marks tell us how difficult it was to connect the two ends of the tunnel. "The tunnel is extraordinary, but these guys didn't know where they were going a lot of the time," Hershel Shanks, an expert on the history of Jerusalem who writes for the Biblical Archaeology Review, told AP. Still, he added, "It's nice to have scientific confirmation for what the vast majority of biblical scholars and archaeologists believe."