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Some churches move to hip-hop beat

The Rev. Timothy Holder, 51, is about the last person people would associate with the rough-and-tumble world of hip-hop.

The white, Harvard-educated Episcopalian priest is a mild-mannered, bespectacled fellow with a plump face, merry eyes and a genial Tennessean lilt that seems to melt like butter among the bodacious New York City accents that surround him.

He's also openly gay.

"When you look at me, you see a whole lot of hip-hop, right?" said Holder, his laugh tinkling with mirth. "God clearly has a sense of humor."

Holder is among the new leaders to emerge in the fast-growing, underground movement of holy hip-hop, a melding of religion, primarily Christianity, with the energy, lingo, dress and dance moves of the culture. The approach, created to attract young people and hip-hop fans, has produced a number of fledgling churches across the country, several traveling rap ministries, numerous Christian rap artists, a couple of awards shows and plenty of Wrath of God-like discussion.

Many traditional religious leaders seem hesitant to embrace the approach, while others reject it outright, because of hip-hop's fixation on sex, drugs and violence. Nevertheless, the movement is gaining traction as people such as Holder, whose street name is Poppa T, and a slew of hip-hop artists bring a message of God to a generation searching to embrace spirituality on its own terms.

"Hip-hop and religion is huge," said Bikari Kitwana, who is writing a book on the subject. "There is an entire generation that has grown up on hip-hop, so it just makes sense that that generation would express its spirituality in the culture that it has grown up in."

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Medieval Studies Professor Spends Summer Building Moat

Ronald Martin, assistant professor of Medieval Culture and Languages at the University of New Hampshire, recently embarked on a highly ambitious project: he plans to build a moat around his single-family home in the Durham suburbs.

And while many in the local community have tentatively embraced Martin’s eccentric project, some feel it may be the first outward sign of his growing mental instability.

“He keeps referring to me as his ‘faire maiden,’” remarked Martin’s 14-year-old daughter Cassandra. “I mean, dad has always been a geek, but lately he’s been nutty. I’m talkin’ Ray Combs nutty.”

Martin’s officemate and close friend Dr. Sharon Lucas echoes this deep concern for what appears to be a peculiar form of self-employment.

“Ron started talking about that goddamned moat back in April, but I thought it was a joke,” Lucas reflected. “Ever since he was accused of grade inflation last fall, it’s like a part of his soul is gone. He even started keeping a broad sword in the back seat of his ’96 Corolla—he said it was to ‘protect his chivalry.’ I really hope he doesn’t hurt anyone.”

Contacted by the Codependent Collegian, Martin expressed disdain at his detractors.

"I, Sir Ronald, by the permission of God, have come into these parts as an ambassador with a divine admonition to you, the servants of God," he intoned. "O, what a disgrace if such a despised and base race, which worships demons, should conquer a people which has the faith of omnipotent God and is made glorious with the name of Christ!"

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How to brew cheap wine

I’ve never done this before, and i’m totally inexperienced about brewing. I did a little bit of research online and found this was the easiest and cheapest way to brew wine, which seems like the easiest of all alcoholic drinks to make. Follow these directions at your own risk

Like the title says, this method of brewing is not expensive (cost me roughly $12. This will make me 2-3 gallons of wine. maybe more), but the returns aren’t for connoisseurs. This is for cheap-asses, college kids, and 15 yr olds who can’t buy anything themselves. If you do it right, it’s enjoyable, cheap, easy to do, and most importantly, alcoholic. Plus, it only takes a maximum of 2 weeks to fully ferment!!!

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Stop the War on Birth Control

Throughout the country, at both the federal and state levels, there has been a frontal assault on virtually all forms of reproductive health care, from abortion to birth control, from emergency contraception to sex education.

It's time to put a stop to the War on Birth Control, with a congressional resolution that declares, once and for all, that our government should protect access to contraception.

Americans of all political stripes know that birth control is the best way to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies. Urge your senators and representative to support this important measure today.

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'South Park' guys still upset

The creators of "South Park" lambasted Comedy Central Thursday for removing an episode that lampooned Scientology and Tom Cruise from the network's repeat schedule and for blanking out the image of Muhammad during another episode.

"So there are two things we can't do on Comedy Central: show Muhammad or Tom Cruise," Trey Parker said during the MTV Networks portion of the Television Critics Assn. summer press tour.

Parker and Matt Stone said they had no doubt that the "Trapped in the Closet" episode was yanked as a result of Cruise's starring this summer in "Mission: Impossible III," the movie from Paramount, Comedy Central's sister company.

However, a Comedy Central spokesman countered that all episodes get rotated in and out of the schedule on a regular basis and indicated that it was always the plan to restore the episode into the schedule. The episode will repeat Wednesday.

Stone added that the duo chose not to grant any media interviews at the height of the controversy several months ago.

"We didn't do any press because we were just going to get in a pissing war with Tom Cruise, and we didn't want to be in the same article as that guy," he said. "But we picked the wrong guy to parody because we're going to be asked about Tom for the next two years."

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911 isn't a dating service

A woman who called 911 to get an officer sent back to her home got a date all right -- a court date. The same sheriff's deputy arrested her on charges of misuse of the emergency dispatch system. Washington County Sheriff's Sgt. David Thompson told KGW-TV of Portland it all started with a noise complaint called in last month by neighbors of Lorna Jeanne Dudash. The deputy sent to check on the complaint knocked on her door, then left. Thompson said Dudash then called 911, asking that the "cutie pie" deputy return. "He's the cutest cop I've seen in a long time. I just want to know his name," Dudash told the dispatcher. "Heck, it doesn't come very often a good man comes to your doorstep." After listening to some more, followed by a bit of silence, the dispatcher asked again why Dudash needed the deputy to return. "Honey, I'm just going to be honest with you, OK? I just thought he was cute. I'm 45 years old and I'd just like to meet him again, but I don't know how to go about doing that without calling 911," she said. "I know this is absolutely not in any way, shape or form an emergency, but if you would give the officer my phone number and ask him to come back, would you mind?"

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Heat, wind feed California wildfires; body found

Nearly 4,000 firefighters worked in blistering heat Saturday to corral a huge complex of fires in rugged wilderness and keep them from threatening desert and mountain communities.

"This is a very dangerous situation," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said after flying over the blazes. "The weather conditions are such -- wind and a lot of heat -- it is a perfect condition for wildfires."

A body was found about a mile away from the home of a man reported missing after a fire swept through the movie Western community of Pioneertown, officials said.

The San Bernardino County's coroner was investigating the death, National Park Service spokeswoman Jan Lemons said. No other details were immediately available.

A family member last heard from Jerry Guthrie, 57, when he called Tuesday and said the fire was close and he was preparing to evacuate, authorities said. His house was not destroyed, despite being surrounded by charred desert.

Fire officials reported some progress on the fires, which covered more than 110 square miles in Southern California about 100 miles east of Los Angeles.

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This Is a Computer on Your Brain

A new brain-computer-interface technology could turn our brains into automatic image-identifying machines that operate faster than human consciousness.

Researchers at Columbia University are combining the processing power of the human brain with computer vision to develop a novel device that will allow people to search through images ten times faster than they can on their own.

Darpa, or the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is funding research into the system with hopes of making federal agents' jobs easier. The technology would allow hours of footage to be very quickly processed, so security officers could identify terrorists or other criminals caught on surveillance video much more efficiently.

The "cortically coupled computer vision system," known as C3 Vision, is the brainchild of professor Paul Sajda, director of the Laboratory for Intelligent Imaging and Neural Computing at Columbia University. He received a one-year, $758,000 grant from Darpa for the project in late 2005.

The system harnesses the brain's well-known ability to recognize an image much faster than the person can identify it.

"Our human visual system is the ultimate visual processor," says Sajda. "We are just trying to couple that with computer vision techniques to make searching through large volumes of imagery more efficient."

The brain emits a signal as soon as it sees something interesting, and that "aha" signal can be detected by an electroencephalogram, or EEG cap. While users sift through streaming images or video footage, the technology tags the images that elicit a signal, and ranks them in order of the strength of the neural signatures. Afterwards, the user can examine only the information that their brains identified as important, instead of wading through thousands of images.

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US patient in oxygen mask lights cigarette, ignites hospital fire

A patient wearing an oxygen mask tried to light a cigarette in his hospital room, sparking a fire that forced the evacuation of more than 100 patients, destroyed the room and melted medical equipment, officials said.

A nurse rescued the man from his burning bed shortly after the Thursday night blaze started. He suffered serious burns and was taken to the burn unit at another Dallas hospital. No one else was hurt, hospital officials said.

"He somehow got the strength to smoke a cigarette with a non-removable mask," Dallas Fire-Rescue Capt. Paul Martinez said. "I don't know how he did it, but he did it."

Firefighters extinguished the two-alarm fire after about 45 minutes, and the evacuated patients were returned to their rooms. Hospital sprinklers kept the blaze mostly in the hospital room, said fire Lieut. Joel Lavender.

Officials did not release the man's name and condition Friday, or why he was originally in the hospital, citing medical privacy laws.