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The Vank Cathedral was one of the first churches to be established in Isfahan by Armenian immigrants settled by Shah Abbas I after the Ottoman War of 1603-05.Church construction is believed to have begun in 1606, and completed with major alterations to design between 1655 and 1664 under the supervision of Archbishop David..Vank means “cathedral” in the Armenian language.. The cathedral consists of a domed sanctuary, much like a Persian mosque, but with the significant addition of a semi-octagonal apse and raised chancel usually seen in western churches. The cathedral’s exteriors are in relatively modern brickwork and are exceptionally plain...

Dear members of the long-inactive Traditional Anglican Ping List: It's been years since we (well, I) decided to let go of TEC and its antics and to tell the truth I've been much the better for ignoring it, but this e-mail today from Stand Firm in Faith's own Sarah Hey rocked me back a bit. Note that this "movement" she describes is not limited to TEC and CofE but reaches rather a bit further, apparently including Rome and others. See if Rudyard Kipling did not capture it accurately. And beware.

Fellow FReepers stranded in Europe, this thread is for you. Who are you, where are you, what do you see and hear? Maybe we can get together...

Main Entry: pri'mate Etymology: Middle English primat, from Old French, from Medieval Latin primat-, primas archbishop, from Latin, leader, from primus Date: 13th century 1 often capitalized : a bishop who has precedence in a province, group of provinces, or a nation2 archaic : one first in authority or rank : LEADER 3 [New Latin Primates, from Latin, plural of primat-, primas] : any of an order (Primates) of mammals comprising humans, apes, monkeys, and related forms (as lemurs and tarsiers) -pri'mate-ship \-*ship\ noun --pri-ma'tial \pr*-*m*-sh*l\ adjective "... How can we expect the gross violators of Biblical Truth to...

Earlier today the Washington State Senate passed SB 6846, which would, among other things, add a statewide tax up to 25 cents per month per cell phone to boost current 911 emergency communications services. According to the Office of Financial Management, the enhanced 911 tax would bring in nearly $79 million over 10 years. See the chart below.   Year                Enhanced             911 Tax 2010 2011 2,419,000 2012 6,562,000 2013 7,365,000 2014 8,192,000 2015 9,043,000 2016 9,920,000 2017 10,824,000 2018 11,754,000 2019 12,712,000 Total:              $ 78,791,000 SB 6846 passed 29 to 12. Click here to view the roll...

Nowruz 2569 (1389) will begin on: با شادباش نوروز - تحويل سال نوتحويل سال نو ۲۵۶۹ - ساعت ۹ و ۲ دقيقه و ۰۰ ثانيه بعد از ظهر شنبه اول فروردين ۱۳۸۹ در ايران Tehran: Saturday:      09:02:00 PM      March 20, 2010 New York: Saturday 01:32:00 PM March 20, 2010 Chicago: Saturday 12:32:00 PM March 20, 2010 Denver: Saturday 11:32:00 AM March 20, 2010 Los Angeles:      Saturday 10:32:00 AM March 20, 2010 London: Saturday 05:32:00 PM March 20, 2010 Paris: Saturday 06:32:00 PM March 20, 2010 Rome: Saturday 06:32:00 PM March 20, 2010 Berlin: Saturday 06:32:00 PM March 20, 2010 Athens:...

Cutline: A float called ‘Yes we can be ecologist’ depicting U.S. President Barack Obama, parades during the 126th edition of the Nice Carnival, Saturday, Feb. 13, 2010, in Nice, southern France. The carnival’s theme this year is ‘King of the Blue Planet.’Makes him look like a Disney superhero. And there is this What The Hell shot:And this: ...

In late December, I received a New Year's e-mail from a former Iranian diplomat. The contact surprised me. I had known the man when I lived in Tehran from 2004 to '07, but I hadn't heard from him in more than two years. ... ... "The current regime has broken the social bonds that tie it to the public and thus is eventually due to fall," Bill Beeman, a Persian-speaking professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota and former president of the Middle East section of the American Anthropological Assn., told me recently. "Iran is a hierarchical society. Folks...

Every year CityClub, a local non-profit that hosts political debates and forums, holds a luncheon to preview the legislative session with the the leadership from down in Olympia. Two years ago, Senate Majority Lisa Brown (D-Spokane), Minority Leader Mike Hewitt (R-Walla Walla), Speaker of the House Frank Chopp (D-Seattle) and the now-floppy-haired House Minority Leader Doug Ericksen (R-Ferndale), joked around about the 520 bridge, Seattle hatred, and the Sonics leaving for Oklahoma. This year's preview forum, however, was far less cordial. There's one agenda item dominating the short session which starts Monday--resolving the $2.6 billion budget deficit. And on how...

... For now, the words to the "Anglo-Catholic Fight Song" (sung to the tune of "The Church's One Foundation"): Our church is mighty spikey with smells and bells and chants And Palestrina masses that vex the Protestants. O happy ones and holy who fall upon their knees For solemn Benediction And mid-week Rosaries. Though with a scornful wonder men see our clergy, dressed In rich brocaded vestments as slowly they process; Yet saints their watch are keeping lest souls be set alight Not by the Holy Ghost, but by incense taking flight. Now we on earth have union with Lambeth,...

[Material cannot be posted; Mods, please delete if links are also impermissible. "Yes," says an 'expert.']

Considering the ease with which a suicide bomber could stroll into a Starbucks in any American city and kill a dozen people, you have to wonder at al Qaeda's obsession with targeting commercial airliners. If 19 terrorists (the number who carried out the 9/11 attacks) each blew himself up at one- or two-week intervals in a shopping mall or a movie theater, America likely would become a seething nation of paranoid shut-ins. That it hasn't happened tells you something: Al Qaeda doesn't have a ready supply of competent suicide bombers, domestic or imported, to carry off serious attacks. That it...

Physicist Howard Hayden, a staunch advocate of sound energy policy, sent me a copy of his letter to the EPA about global warming. The text is also appended below, with permission. As noted in my post Access to Energy, Hayden helped the late, great Petr Beckmann found the dissident physics journal Galilean Electrodynamics (brochures and further Beckmann info here; further dissident physics links). Hayden later began to publish his own pro-energy newsletter, The Energy Advocate, following in the footsteps of Beckmann's own journal Access to EnergyI love Hayden's email sign-off, "People will do anything to save the world ... except...

A scientific scandal is casting a shadow over a number of recent peer-reviewed climate papers. At least eight papers purporting to reconstruct the historical temperature record times may need to be revisited, with significant implications for contemporary climate studies, the basis of the IPCC's assessments. A number of these involve senior climatologists at the British climate research centre CRU at the University East Anglia. In every case, peer review failed to pick up the errors. At issue is the use of tree rings as a temperature proxy, or dendrochronology. Using statistical techniques, researchers take the ring data to create a...

A leaked email originating from Congressman Jay Inslee’s office may reveal a widespread astroturfing effort on behalf of Washington Democrats and liberal interest groups to pack town halls with “grassroots supporters” of government-run health care. In stark contrast to a spontaneous grassroots groundswell against President Obama and Congressional Democrats’s government-run health plan, it appears both overt and covert efforts are underway to orchestrate support for the President’s agenda from the highest-levels of the political Left.In the email which follows below the jump, Inslee’s official Congressional scheduler forwarded to State Democratic Chairman Dwight Pelz a list of upcoming town halls the...

VANCOUVER, Wash. — Plans for a wind farm on some state land in Skamania County are on hold because it's spotted owl habitat. The Department of Natural Resources is no longer considering leasing 2,560 acres to the SDS Lumber Co. for possible future expansion of the proposed Whistling Ridge Energy Project. ...

Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler would undoubtedly have regarded the Iranian demonstrations as not really serious. There was no attempt to seize power, neither tanks in the streets nor the storming of a presidential palace. The demonstrators confined themselves to civil disobedience. Only the authorities used violence and only demonstrators were killed. Indeed, the poster girl for the Iranian democratic resisters is a young woman bleeding from a fatal wound inflicted by a government sniper. Yet a revolution was assuredly being attempted — indeed, a more genuine revolution than would have been, say, the arrest of Iran's "supreme leader," the Ayatollah...

Before the Islamic Revolution dimmed the Iranian literary imagination in 1979, and before an expanding Islam swept Iran into its Arab empire in the seventh century, there existed the rich and colorful Iran recounted in Ferdowsi’s “Shahnameh,” or the Book of Kings. Nearly four centuries after the Arab conquest, the “Shahnameh” tells the story of pre-Islamic Iran—when Persian civilization was at its zenith. The epic proceeds through the reign of many monarchs, chronicling the at times legendary, at times mythological, and at times quasihistorical stories of each reign. Then, with the Arab conquest, the chronicle comes to an end. This...

In 2009, portability is the default state of affairs with computers, since laptops outsell desktop PCs. But in the 1960s, the typical computer was a room-filling mainframe; minicomputers, which were merely the size of a refrigerator, were the small computers of the day.Which didn’t mean that folks weren’t craving the concept of mobile computing even back then. I was just rummaging through Google’s invaluable archive of several decades of Computerworld, and came across a short item from March 1968 on carrying cases for the typewriter-like Teletype terminals that were then used to interface with mainframes and minis. Anderson Jacobson sold...

From the Seattle Times: Washington, DC - Congressman Dave Reichert (WA-08) released the following statement today after the U.S. House passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act: “Energy independence and our national security are critical issues for America. These issues transcend politics. The future of this country is on the line and we can spare no effort when it comes to  leading on these issues at a global level. “This bill is not perfect, but it is a vital step toward energy independence. America cannot maintain global leadership without innovation and new ideas, and we cannot lead if we...