We haven’t heard much from Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams lately, but he’s in the news today.   It’s good to hear that he’s still his usual arrogant self.  Check out today’s CBC headlines:

AbitibiBowater may take legal action over N.L. expropriation of assets
‘We wish you well’: Williams to AbitibiBowater

The provincial government passed legislation authorising theft [...]

One of Tajikistan’s leading Islamic politicians has publicly criticised the Ministry of Education for authorising  schoolbooks that, in his view, misinterpret and misrepresent the history of Islam and the prophet Muhammed.
Hoji Akbar Turajonzoda calls the textbook writers’ attitude to Islam “unprofessional, irrational, and sometimes insulting and offensive”.  He accuses education officials of deliberately using misleading [...]

Last April, Marc Lebuis of the excellent Quebec blog Point de Bascule filed a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission against Montreal Muslim imam Abou Hammaad Sulaiman Dameus Al-Hayiti. Imam al-Hayiti had written a book, published in Canada and available for download here (in French), containing nasty slurs against many groups in Canadian [...]

Conrad Rudolph, Professor of Art History, University of California at Riverside, has digitally re-constructed a lost 12th-century mural. Hugh of Saint-Victor (1096-1141) originally created “The Mystic Ark”, probably as a wall painting, but it was subsequently lost.  The mural is considered the most complex work of art from the medieval period.

That digital reconstruction of “The [...]

The collect for today, the Feast Day of St Ignatius (d. c. 107), Bishop of Antioch, Martyr (source):
Feed us, O Lord, with the living bread
and make us drink deep of the cup of salvation
that, following the teaching of thy bishop Ignatius,
and rejoicing in the faith
with which he embraced the death of a martyr,
we may be [...]