The Week in 17: Bend it like Obama

Et tu, Beckham? And what's all this about you being the Barackobamun of Footie?

  Dow closes above 10,000- Ten thousand-seventeen, that is.. Now what's all this then?: CAIRO (Reuters) – Archaeologists have unearthed the site of a pharaonic-era sacred lake in a temple to the Egyptian goddess Mut in the ruins of ancient Tanis, the Culture Ministry said on Thursday.

Weren't we just talking about Egyptian lakes?

UPDATE: Battle of the cosmic triggers? From CNN:

Nevada continued to be the worst-hit state with one filing for every 23 households. But even tranquil Vermont, where the foreclosure crisis has barely brushed the housing market, saw foreclosure filings jump nearly 170% compared with the third quarter of 2008. Still, that resulted in just one filing for every 5,023 households in the state -- the best record in the country.

The untold story here is the role of the "Prosperity Gospel" in driving the overall economic crisis.

UPDATE II: Here's a man-bites-dog story if ever there was one, from the Sept. 17 issue of Queens Tribune- a Republican candidate is also a practicing Heathen (Nordic paganism). I like the big bonus Q next to the scantily-clad maiden.

Bonus lousy research tidbit:

Theodism relies upon an interlocking ring of honor, wisdom and generosity to motivate the individual members to achieve a spiritual evolution. "Any earthly life that a man doesn't die out of as a better and worthier man than he was born into it is seen, in these terms, as a wasted life, ultimately bound for Hel [sic] after death," Halloran wrote on his Web site.

Uh, not sic- Hel is the Norse goddess/realm of death, idiot. AKA Hela in the Thorniverse. 

UPDATE: Since snark is ecumenical here on the Secret Sun, let me point out that the Sedona sweat lodge deaths (aka the Route 17 tragedy) were on the compound of a New Age prosperity huckster. 

 Hey, here's an idea- how about not pretending you can drop in on someone else's religion for a weekend, particularly when the stated goal of the "retreat" is antithetical to said tradition? 

UPDATE: Six year old boy trapped in runaway (and deflating) air balloon. Let's all hope/pray/wish for his safe return. 

UPDATE: Oh, no.

The boy was not inside the helium aircraft when it landed, CNN affiliate KMGH reported. A sibling saw the boy get into the craft Thursday morning. Officials were concerned that the boy may have fallen out of it, an undersheriff said.

Margie Martinez of the Weld County Sheriff's Office said a sibling saw Falcon Heene climb into the basket before the balloon took off from his parents' Fort Collins, Colorado home.

UPDATE: Hopeful news-

"At this point, we are thinking that he did not fall out of the balloon and is somewhere on the ground," Larimer County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Eloise Campanella said. "The basket itself was not breached. It does not look like he fell out of it, but again, this is all conjecture."

FOUND! It turns out to have been a hollow flight after all. Now the media can start attacking the family for having unconventional beliefs. Note also that young Falcon lives right off of US 287. 

  UPDATE: A jury in Australia finds five men guilty of conspiring to commit terrorist attacks after a trial of more than 170 days.

 

UPDATE: There you have it.