Daily Breakfast 476 - Pope Goes Hi-Tech
On today’s Daily Breakfast: Praying for the world; can new media overcome political differences, financial greed and ideological division? How Pope Benedict goes Hi-Tech during World Youth Day 2008.
FatherRoderick.com and Twitter.com/FatherRoderick; blogging about health and Catholic New Media; Sleep research; How to use Stumble Upon, Technorati, Mahalo, Del.icio.us and Digg.
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Fr. is so hard to find an itunes subscribe button on the sqpn site… so hard. should this supose to be easy and 3 click tops? technology is great but not when it gets in the way of the real content.
It is hard to implement standard subscription buttons in our current website theme. Most SQPN podcasters do include links to iTunes in their shownotes though.
Most people listen to our shows via the website, that’s why we have included the players with each show.
Here is the first couple of paragraphs of an excellent story from inside Myanmar published in March 2008 after the big Buddhist monk protests there last fall. Myanmar is just east of India and just west of Thailand, Laos & China with southern & western Myramar directly on the Indian Ocean(check the map in the story). The insight by the Catholic missionary interviewed is quite informative and interesting:
*INSIDE MYANMAR: An Overview Of A Troubled Land*
By TERESA MALCOLM Bangkok, Thailand - March 21, 2008
(Teresa Malcolm, NCR special sections editor, visited Thailand in January, where she interviewed a Canadian-born Catholic missioner for a firsthand account of life inside Myanmar, a place hard for foreign journalists to access since a government crackdown on Buddhist monk-led demonstrations last fall. Malcolm, who previously lived in Thailand as a Peace Corps volunteer, reports on the missioner’s observations and describes his work in Bangkok.)
“Where thousands of Buddhist monks and nuns walked the streets for alms, now a visitor to Yangon, Myanmar, saw not 50 altogether, and barbed wire surrounded the great Shwedagon Pagoda. Monks who once extended friendly invitations to their temple now shied away from a foreigner on the street, making no eye contact. And a shocked people were struggling to survive, drawing on a deep reservoir of faith that has sustained them for more than 45 years under a brutal military dictatorship.
Such were the impressions of Br. Matthew Peters, a Catholic missioner who has traveled to Myanmar — formerly Burma — and worked with refugees in Thailand for more than 15 years. He spoke with NCR in late January, just days after he had returned to his home base in Bangkok from a two-week visit around Myanmar, his second since the country’s military regime brutally crushed demonstrations led by Buddhist monks in September.”
INSIDE MYANMAR CONTINUES(with photos) HERE:
http://ncronline3.org/drupal/?q=node/444
What is with the devil’s horns on the bishop of Rome in the iPhone photo?
Devil’s horns? Oh, you mean the white shirt of the security guard that stands behind the Pope!
I can understand the frustration faced by most of us concerning the escalation of oil prices, but let’s be careful about blaming it on “obscene profits”. Averaged over the past quarter-century the oil business has not been profitable.
In 1986 the oil business collapsed in response to the world-wide collapse of the price of oil. Portions of the oil business experience 80% unemployment. Towns in West Texas (a major oil production center) were devastated. Many people migrated out, but those who stayed faced high rates of divorce, domestic violence, substance abuse and suicide. 5 of my friends succeeded in their suicides - I do not know how many failed because many registered as merely an unexpected trip to the hospital.
This economic depression continued for 19 years - 2005. We lost 1,000,000 jobs and an unknown number of souls. And we are not yet fully recovered.
Pray for us, and pray that we might become fully restored to a functional capacity. We can’t increase our oil production - and thereby decrease the price of oil - without adequate personnel and prosperity.
Another thought provoking episode. Thanks FR!
Here’s a link to an old Billy Joel video that’s worth a revisit from time to time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtUNPyo3anQ
Steve, thanks for adding that information. I didn’t know that about the American oil industry. I was actually referring to recent news from the British/Dutch oil company Shell. They announced that they made a profit of 21.2 billion euro last year.
Apparently there are major global differences between the various oil companies!
as an fyi — read entry for may 8th.
http://www.splendoroftruth.com/curtjester/
Common Craft is my favorite place to find simple introductions to web-based applications.
http://www.commoncraft.com/
Steve,
I hadn’t heard how tough it had been in west Texas. Tragic times for those that were directly affected.
I was living in Ventura, California in the late 1980s and early 1990s and did witness fist hand the struggles witn a Ventura oil company that was active in the offshore oil industry. Prior to to the oil collapse, the offshore oil companies claimed they had the largest fleet of helicopters outside of the Soviet government and U.S. government. While in Ventura I heard many stories on how tough the oil crash was for those directly affected. It sounds like it was even worse in West Texas. The diversity of the California economy undoubtedly helped the oil casualties in Ventura. Even so, Ventura lives were affected by the crash.
I guess it’s my turn now. I’m a commercial real estate appraiser in Columbus, Ohio that had a great year last year, but am now being affected by current economic conditions that are causing me to tap into savings.
Steve, if we are fortunate to meet sometime, I would be interested in learning more about west Texas. I’d also be interested in your impressions on the oil refinery challenges that seem to be squeezing both ends of the supply chain. Catholic Insider probably isn’t the appropriate venue to discuss the oil industry in depth though.
I am hoping to make it to Atlanta for the big fiesta. Perhaps we could grab a cup of coffee there if you are making the trip.
The good long term news for west Texas is the growing India economy and growing China economy are rapidly buying up oil with no end in sight. Hopefully that benefits the west Texas residents and neighborhoods and not just the major global distributors.
Cordially,
Jim
That picture of Pope Benedict XVI put a big smile on my face. I love it! Viva il Papa!!!
Thank you so much for talking a little about Myanmar in this podcast. This is an immeasurable tragedy on the scale of the 2004 Tsunami. I received an e-mail from an aid organization which was already working in Myanmar before the Cyclone and the latest news from their workers in the field was grim: “In the town of Latputa… only 400 of the town’s 4,000 residents survived. In just this one region alone, 50,000 people are missing and presumed dead.” Please let’s all pray for all of the victims and their loved ones.
Michael C.
Thank-you for forwarding the article. Since the Myanmar/Burmese leaders aren’t yet interested in help from the U.S., let’s hope the Chinese and other neighbors step up.
You are welcome Jim. Unfortuately the unnecessary situation in Myanmar by their military dictatorship of not letting foreign humanitarian relief workers into Myanmar(Burma) if continued will mean that this disaster could be worse than the massive Tsunami in the area with hundreds of thousands of innocent people put at a high risk for starvation, disease & death. The UK,USA and other countries are standing by with massive amounts of humanitarian aid via ships, planes and relief workers. Here is just a couple of up to date news/links on the emergency there:
*BURMA DEATH TOLL WORSE THAN TSUNAMI*
By NICK PARKER
Chief Foreign Correspondent at Mae Sot on the Burmese border
and JAMES CLENCH - Published: 09 May 2008
THE death toll in cyclone-ravaged Burma could hit 500,000 – more than TWICE the total killed by the Boxing Day Tsunami.
Last night’s warning came as it emerged that 17 Britons, including ex-pats and backpackers, were still missing.
The UN World Food Programme said on Friday it would resume aid flights, despite the military government’s seizure of deliveries at Yangon airport.
“The World Food Programme has decided to send in two relief flights as planned tomorrow, while discussions continue with the government of Myanmar on the distribution of the food that was flown in today, and not released to WFP”, said Nancy E. Roman, WFP’s communications and public policy director.
The UN food agency had previously said it would suspend aid flights over the seizure today.
The shipments of 38 tonnes of high-energy biscuits, enough to feed 95,000 people, were intended to be loaded on trucks and sent to the inundated Irrawaddy delta where most of the estimated 1.5 million victims of Cyclone Nargis need food, water and shelter.
Sources said 200,000 people were already dead or dying.
But the figure could rise to HALF A MILLION through disease and hunger if the nation’s hardline army rulers continue to block aid for the devastated lowlands of the Irrawaddy Delta…
Story Continues with pictures & video:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1143691.ece
__________________________________________________________
*CATHOLIC RELIEF AGENCY IN MYANMAR FACES TRAVEL RESTRICTIONS*
By ncrdu1 - 05/09/2008 By UCA News
BANGKOK — A Catholic relief agency already working in Myanmar when Cyclone Nargis struck May 3 is grappling with travel restrictions as it tries to assess the situation and help survivors in the Irrawaddy River delta region.
Malteser International, formally the Order of Malta Worldwide Relief, has been working in Myanmar since 2001 on several humanitarian projects including health care and safe drinking water.
“We would be able to do noticeably much more in terms of aid if our team could travel to the affected region in the Irrawaddy delta area. But the Myanmar government does not allow our international aid workers to go there,” Malteser head Ingo Radtke told UCA News on May 8 via e-mail from Germany.
In addition, the organization’s international staff are also prohibited from traveling to the project areas where they were working before the cyclone hit. A Malteser spokesperson says local staff have to inform the authorities before traveling outside of Yangon.
The organization had hoped restrictions would ease, facilitating relief efforts. Instead, travel permits that had been issued to international staff were withdrawn.
“The situation here is really dramatic,” Birke Herzbruch, Malteser project coordinator in Myanmar said in a May 5 report from Yangon to her headquarters in Germany, which UCA News obtained on May 7. Yangon and the Irrawaddy delta are the two worst-hit areas…
Continues with Catholic & other Relief links at bottom of story:
http://ncronline3.org/drupal/?q=node/962
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Listening to the last podcast, i recently found a new web-browser that helps with the social networking pages like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, youtube, photobucket, Picasa, Piczo, Blogger, Blogsome, Livejournal, Typepad, wordpress.com, Xanga, or your own blog, Del.icio.us, Magnolia, Gmail and Yahoo, however many other social network webpages can be added.. it also detects if a webpage have a RSS feed. Well this program is Flock.
For more info go to http://www.flock.com
I recommended that you try it. The engine from Flock is the same as Mozilla Firefox, so if you use Firefox, flock wil be easy to use.
Hope this help.
Funny, I plugged the Flock eco-browser in my podcast last week too. It’s indeed a great browser. I love it too.
I think the photo needs an update. After all the Vatican announced today to buy Palm, Inc. the maker of the Treo smart phone: http://gizmodo.com/389418/vatican-buys-palm-for-800-million
Obviously this is fake, but still funny (and a nice Photoshop job).