Final Resting Place and Tourist Destination

The grave site where Anna Nicole Smith will be buried at the Lakeview Memorial Gardens & Mausoleums in Nassau, Bahamas is shown on Thursday, March 1, 2007. An extravagant but private funeral is planned Friday for former Playboy Playmate and reality TV star, who will be buried beside her 20-year-old son in a custom-made gown in a ceremony that will bring together the three people battling for custody of her infant daughter. Patrik Simpson, a friend helping to organize the event, said that a memorial at this church is also planned with up to 300 guests, a singer and large amounts of flowers in Smith’s favorite pink.

Food for Thought

Moment of Zen

Leave him up there….

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — Renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, who wrote the best-selling book, “A Brief History of Time,” soon will experience a brief history with weightlessness.

Hawking, who uses a wheelchair and is almost completely paralyzed by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, plans to go on a weightless flight on April 26, officials at the flight operator said Thursday.

The flight, operated by Zero Gravity Corp., a Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based space tourism and entertainment company, will take off and return to a landing strip at the Kennedy Space Center.

“As someone who has studied gravity and black holes all of my life, I am excited to experience firsthand weightlessness and a zero-gravity environment,” Hawking said in a statement.

The modified Boeing 727 generally soars to 32,000 feet at a sharp angle and then plunges 8,000 feet so passengers can experience 25-second snippets of zero gravity during the descent. As the plane climbs, passengers experience 25 seconds of being pushed down hard, as they feel 1.8 times the normal pull of the Earth.

Zero Gravity CEO Peter Diamandis said assistants will be onboard to help Hawking.

“The key thing here is that weightless and personal spaceflight is something available to everyone, even someone like Professor Hawking,” Diamandis told The Associated Press. “This something that almost everyone can now experience.”

Zero Gravity will pick up the bill, which normally is $3,750. The company also plans to have two seats on the flight auctioned off by two charities.

The High School Hottie Bandits

ACWORTH, Ga. – Georgia authorities Wednesday were searching for two young women, possibly teenagers, who robbed a supermarket bank branch, laughing as they held up a teller with nothing but sunglasses to disguise their faces.

The two handed a Bank of America branch teller a note demanding cash, smiled as they waited and then walked out with stolen money Tuesday, police said.

It wasn’t clear if they had a weapon, police said.

New Edition of the Bible Says Evolution Is True

If you believe that we evolved from apes, that Genesis is great poetry, and that the Universe is billions of years old, can you still enjoy reading the Bible?

Bronx school teacher and book artist Ruth Rimm thinks she has an answer. Her latest book series, the “Lost Spiritual World,” is a lavishly illustrated, “postmodern” edition of the Bible for skeptics, seekers, and people of different faiths.

Parable of the Gorilla

“There may be a profound message behind the miracle stories, but the big bang and evolution implore us not to read things literally,” Rimm says. “Most Americans would rather discover the spiritual truths behind the religious metaphors, especially given how fundamentalism is impacting public life with a narrow view of religion.”

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Lost Spiritual World

Rimm’s edition of the Bible is anything but conventional, starting with an unusual design style. “The rectangular format of most books just doesn’t capture the majesty of the text,” says Rimm. Instead, she developed a wavy shape format, with exotic inks and computer generated artwork, to give readers “a more intimate experience of the mystical.”

The book is peppered with quotes by leading figures of other traditions, including the Dalai Lama and Rabbi Michael Lerner. Rimm even quotes self-help gurus such as Wayne Dyer and Tony Robbins, showing how their messages can be traced to ancient wisdom. The recent surge in atheism, as evidenced by bestselling books such as “The God Delusion,” miss the point of religion, says Rimm. “We all want to be a part of a spiritual community and to do good works. And science, for all its accomplishments, has yet to find a replacement.”

Miriam Therese Winter, a bestselling composer and professor of spirituality at Hartford Seminary, says Rimm’s work underscores how younger artists and writers are exploring the world’s religions “not as traditional believers, but as spiritual seekers. They are rediscovering the spiritual and mystical core common to all traditions.”

The first volume of the “Lost Spiritual World” series explores the complete Gospel of Mark using the Scholars Version, a bestselling translation by scholars from Harvard, Notre Dame, Vassar, and other major universities. Later volumes present the Torah, Bhagavad Gita, Buddhist sutras, and Sufi mysticism.

Rimm’s marketing is as edgy as her book’s design. Her publisher, Global Renaissance, is developing an irreverent series of YouTube videos showing Jesus returning as a gorilla and speaking in parables.

Storm over ‘Why I Hate Blacks’

See the actual article HERE.

San Francisco – Asian-American leaders are condemning a column titled “Why I Hate Blacks”, which was published in a weekly newspaper that calls itself “The Voice of Asian America”.

In the piece, which appeared in the February 23 edition of San Francisco-based AsianWeek, contributor Kenneth Eng lists reasons why he supports discrimination against blacks – including because “they are the only race that has been enslaved for 300 years”.

Leaders at the Asian American Justice Centre, Chinese for Affirmative Action, Coalition for Asian Pacific Americans and other groups are circulating a petition denouncing the column as “irresponsible journalism, blatantly racist, replete with stereotypes, and deeply hurtful to African Americans”.

“It certainly does not speak for the vast majority of Asian Americans,” Stewart Kwoh, who heads the Asian Pacific American Legal Centre in Los Angeles, said on Tuesday.

“This kind of inflammatory (column) really can hurt and damage relations with the broader African-American community.”

The petition calls on AsianWeek to cut ties with Eng, issue an apology, print an editorial refuting the column, and fire or demote the editors who published it.

Apology

AsianWeek, with a circulation of 48 505, issued a statement apologising for “any harm or hurt this has caused the African American community”.

The newspaper plans to hold a news conference with NAACP leaders in San Francisco on Wednesday to discuss how the Asian and black communities “can be different and yet get along and work together”, said Ted Fang, the paper’s editor-at-large.

“The newspaper is sorry that this got published, and I am personally sorry that this got published,” Fang told The Associated Press. “The views in that opinion piece do not in any way reflect the views of AsianWeek.”

The paper plans to review its policies to “understand how this happened and make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Fang said, calling the decision to publish Eng’s piece a “mistake”.

Kenneth Eng, who has described himself as an “Asian Supremacist,” has written several columns for AsianWeek since November, including pieces titled “Proof That Whites Inherently Hate Us” and “Why I Hate Asians”.

Sex workers report high job satisfaction

LEGAL prostitutes are just as happy as women in regular jobs, according to a survey that reports high job satisfaction in parts of the sex industry.

But illegal workers who sell sex on the streets had a much grimmer outlook, with half saying they had been raped or bashed in the past year.

The survey compared the mental and physical health of nearly 250 Queensland prostitutes aged 18 to 57 who worked in registered brothels, at home or on the street.

Legal workers reported similar job satisfaction to women in the general community, but streetworkers were far less happy in the job.

“The general picture is that those women whose families know about their work reported greater job satisfaction than those who kept their work secret,” said researcher Charlotte Seib.

Asked why they entered the industry, 82 per cent said they did it for the money and 52 per cent pointed to the flexible working hours.

“And 39 per cent said they had a particular goal in mind such as a new car, a house or a holiday,” said Ms Seib, from Queensland University of Technology.

One in four of the women surveyed had a Bachelor degree or higher, which is contrary to the popular stereotype that sex workers came from socially disadvantaged backgrounds.

More than 60 per cent were employed before joining the industry.

Legal workers were mentally on par with other women but streetworkers were far less psychologically stable.

Ms Seib said the reasons for this were complex but probably stemmed from higher rates of child abuse, illicit drug use and violence on the job.

About half said they had been raped or bashed by a client in the past year compared with 12 per cent of private workers and just 3 per cent of brothel workers.

This proved that legalisation of the industry had been effective for those working within legal boundaries but streetworkers were still at risk, Ms Seib said.

Principal was naked…

When police went into Nitschmann Middle School Tuesday to arrest Principal John Acerra for allegedly selling crystal methamphetamine, sources said they found him naked while sitting at his desk watching gay pornography.

A 28-year educator with the Bethlehem Area School District and principal since 2000, Acerra is in Lehigh County Prison under $200,000 bail.

Acerra, of 832 Chestnut St., Allentown, is charged with possession with intent to deliver, manufacture or create methamphetamine, delivery of a controlled or counterfeit substance and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Police said Acerra was found with a burned glass pipe and $200 in cash on his desk minutes after a confidential informant wearing a wire attempted to buy meth from Acerra on Tuesday night.

Hot for Teacher?

A small South Carolina town was rocked by accusations Wednesday that a 23-year-old middle school teacher used her classroom — and other locations — to have sex with at least five male students.

Police arrested Allenna Williams Ward after school officials recovered a note containing inappropriate messages, said Clinton Public Safety Director John Thomas.

Ward, who is married, allegedly had sexual encounters with the 14- and 15-year-old boys at various locations, including in the school, a motel, a park and behind a restaurant, from December to through February, according to arrest warrants.

Ward was placed on administrative leave with pay last Thursday, acting district Superintendent Laura Koskela said. A message left by the Associated Press for the school’s principal was not immediately returned Wednesday.

Ward was charged with criminal sexual conduct with a minor and six counts of lewd acts on a minor, according to arrest warrants. She is being held in jail awaiting a bail hearing, police said.

A phone message left at Ward’s home was not immediately returned Wednesday night.