New Year's Eve adult beverage for 2008

Slàinte mhòr agus a h-uile beannachd duibh!*

(Found under the Christmas tree - in honor of my Scottish ancestry of course)

Glenlivet 12 Year Old shows a perfectly balanced display of fruity and floral flavours. Oak is present but in the distance. This Classic Speyside conveys beautiful images of a fertile orchard, blossoming at springtime and laden with juicy ripe fruit at summertime. Nose and palate offer a warm experience of Speyside fresh and fragrant air. The single malt to choose for a relaxing moment, enjoyed on its own or with a fruit pudding (plum or apricot pie, Belgian waffle with stewed apples, marzipan biscuits).

Inverness Courier:

A party of Excise officers, led by Mr Mactavish of Braemar, has uncovered a hidden supply of illicit whisky. The amount of spirit seized is described as being of “unusual magnitude”. This is a rare success for the Excisemen in their prolonged battle against the infamous whisky smugglers of Glenlivet.

For many years now this isolated glen has been the centre of whisky smuggling in Scotland, with hundreds of illicit stills secretly operating in the bleak and rugged terrain. Aided and abetted by many resentful of the punitive tax on whisky, the smugglers transport their illegal cargo out of the glen in armed convoys, to the Scottish Lowlands and beyond.

So good is the quality of the Glenlivet whisky that it has become known as “the real stuff”, and for wealthy connoisseurs throughout the land there is no acceptable substitute. But for once, things have not gone the smugglers’ way.

It appears that for some weeks the resourceful Mr Mactavish has been shadowing one of the bands of smugglers as they have gone about their unlawful business. In the process, he has discovered where a large consignment of whisky is to be concealed on its first night in transit. It is a vital piece of information.

While the smugglers sleep soundly some distance away, Mactavish returns to the scene with an armed posse and, under cover of darkness, seizes 20 ankers [casks] of “pure Glenlivet”, worth a small fortune to the outlawed distillers.

Alerted in the nick of time, the smugglers themselves evade capture. Nevertheless, the operation is deemed a success and it is to be hoped that Mr Mactavish is rewarded for his courage and initiative with a dram or two of the prized booty. [22 January 1822 - source]

*Great health and every good blessing to you!

New Year's Eve Family Scrabble Game

All tiles used (house rules allow country names) - team play with girls beating the boys (this time around as my son insisted I point out) 328 to 317 - a nail-biter to the last word.

Happy New Year!

The useful idiocy of delusional 'realists'

[image courtesy of Joel Rosenberg]

Caroline Glick, Jerusalem Post:

Both Iran and its Hamas proxy in Gaza have been busy this Christmas week showing Christendom just what they think of it. But no one seems to have noticed.

On Tuesday, Hamas legislators marked the Christmas season by passing a Shari'a criminal code for the Palestinian Authority. Among other things, it legalizes crucifixion.

Hamas's endorsement of nailing enemies of Islam to crosses came at the same time it renewed its jihad. Here, too, Hamas wanted to make sure that Christians didn't feel neglected as its fighters launched missiles at Jewish day care centers and schools. So on Wednesday, Hamas lobbed a mortar shell at the Erez crossing point into Israel just as a group of Gazan Christians were standing on line waiting to travel to Bethlehem for Christmas.

While Hamas joyously renewed its jihad against Jews and Christians, its overlords in Iran also basked in jihadist triumphalism. The source of Teheran's sense of ascendancy this week was Britain's Channel 4 network's decision to request that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad give a special Christmas Day address to the British people. Ahmadinejad's speech was supposed to be a response to Queen Elizabeth II's traditional Christmas Day address to her subjects. That is, Channel 4 presented his message as a reasonable counterpoint to the Christmas greetings of the head of the Church of England.

Channel 4 justified its move by proclaiming that it was providing a public service. As a spokesman told The Jerusalem Post, "We're offering [Ahmadinejad] the chance to speak for himself, which people in the West don't often get the chance to see."

While that sounds reasonable, the fact is that Westerners see Ahmadinejad speaking for himself all the time. They saw him at the UN two years in a row as he called for the countries of the world to submit to Islam; claimed that Iran's nuclear weapons program is divinely inspired; and castigated Jews as subhuman menaces to humanity.

They saw him gather leading anti-Semites from all over the world at his Holocaust denial conference.

They heard him speak in his own words when he called for Israel to be "wiped off the map."

And of course, over the years Ahmadinejad has often communicated directly to the British people. For instance, in 2007 he received unlimited airtime on UK television as he paraded kidnapped British sailors and marines in front of television cameras; forced them to make videotaped "confessions" of their "crime" of entering Iranian territorial waters; and compelled them to grovel at his knee and thank him for "forgiving" them.

The British people listened to Ahmadinejad as he condemned Britain as a warmongering nation after its leaders had surrendered Basra to Iranian proxies. They heard him - speaking in his own voice - when he announced that in a gesture of Islamic mercy, he was freeing their humiliated sailors and marines in honor of Muhammad's birthday and Easter, and then called on all Britons to convert to Islam.

Yet as far as Channel 4 is concerned, Ahmadinejad is still an unknown quantity for most Britons. So they asked him to address the nation on Christmas. And not surprisingly, in his address, he attacked their way of life and co-opted their Jewish savior, Jesus, saying, "If Christ was on earth today, undoubtedly he would stand with the people in opposition to bullying, ill-tempered and expansionist powers."

He then reiterated his call for non-Muslims to convert to Islam saying, "The solution to today's problems can be found in a return to the call of the divine prophets."

THE FACT of the matter is that Channel 4 is right. There is a great deal of ignorance in the West about what the likes of Ahmadinejad and his colleagues in Iran, Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas stand for. But this isn't their fault. They tell us every day that they seek the destruction of the Jews and the domination of the West in the name of Islam. And every day they take actions that they believe advance their goals.

The reason that the West remains ignorant of the views and goals of the likes of Hamas and Iran is not that the latter have hidden their views and goals. It is because the leading political leaders and foreign policy practitioners in the West refuse to listen to them and deny the significance of their actions.

As far as the West's leaders are concerned, Iran and its allies are unimportant. They are not actors, but objects. As far as the West's leading foreign policy "experts" and decision-makers are concerned, the only true actors on the global stage are Western powers. They alone have the power to shape reality and the world. Oddly enough, this dominant political philosophy, which is based on denying the existence of non-Western actors on the world stage, is referred to as political "realism."

The rest.

Outside my window

Our kiwi vine (which finally produced fruit this summer after 6 years and is gradually taking over our deck) provides a good highway for our frequent visitor, who travels across our roof to a jump-off point to the nearest tree.

Eat (chocolate), drink (tea and wine) and be merry... and bright

ScienceDaily (Dec. 24, 2008) — All that chocolate might actually help finish the bumper Christmas crossword over the seasonal period. According to Oxford researchers working with colleagues in Norway, chocolate, wine and tea enhance cognitive performance.

The team from Oxford’s Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics and Norway examined the relation between cognitive performance and the intake of three common foodstuffs that contain flavonoids (chocolate, wine, and tea) in 2,031 older people (aged between 70 and 74).

Participants filled in information about their habitual food intake and underwent a battery of cognitive tests.Those who consumed chocolate, wine, or tea had significantly better mean test scores and lower prevalence of poor cognitive performance than those who did not. The team reported their findings in the Journal of Nutrition.

The role of micronutrients in age-related cognitive decline is being increasingly studied. Fruits and beverages such as tea, red wine, cocoa, and coffee are major dietary sources of polyphenols, micronutrients found in plant-derived foods. The largest subclass of dietary polyphenols is flavonoids, and it has been reported in the past that those who consume lots of flavonoids have a lower incidence of dementia.

The rest.

Ruach Tzahal - or "The Spirit of The IDF"

Before I entered the army I used to always throw around something I had heard from Israeli advocates. They like to say that Israel is one of the most humane armies in the world, despite what anti-Israel crowds may say. That crowd says that we kill innocents, that we beat the Palestinians, that we do everything possible to demean the humans living in Gaza, the West Bank, and within the borders of the State. I knew it wasn't true, so I followed the pro-Israel declaration of humanity.

However, I didn't really know what it meant for the IDF to be "humane." I knew that Israel gives free medical care to Palestinians with serious problems, including allowing women in to give birth in Israeli hospitals. I knew that we take religious Muslim laws seriously at checkpoints, especially in terms of male soldiers not touching female Muslims. I knew that we take the utmost care to protect the dignity of the Palestinians. I guess I didn't know how we got to that point, to the point of knowing how to be humane, what being humane meant.

I finally figured it out when we were taken into an auditorium on base recently to receive a lecture about "The Spirit of The IDF," or Ruach Tzahal in Hebrew. This was actually the second time that I was formally taught the ethical code of the IDF, the first being in Michve Alon. We took our seats in the large auditorium, and at the podium stood the Company Commander, the commander in charge of all the new recruits in my battalion. After we got situated he started.

The rest.

Related: Video: IDF humanitarian shipments to Gaza

Related: And the moonbats sailed on.

The fantasy life of a Popular Mechanics writer, circa 1950

Click to enlarge. [source]

Seeing (through) the half-full glass

It was a chance conversation on March 23 1985 ("in the afternoon, as I recall") that first started Josh Silver on his quest to make the world's poor see. A professor of physics at Oxford University, Silver was idly discussing optical lenses with a colleague, wondering whether they might be adjusted without the need for expensive specialist equipment, when the lightbulb of inspiration first flickered above his head.

What if it were possible, he thought, to make a pair of glasses which, instead of requiring an optician, could be "tuned" by the wearer to correct his or her own vision? Might it be possible to bring affordable spectacles to millions who would never otherwise have them?

More than two decades after posing that question, Silver now feels he has the answer. The British inventor has embarked on a quest that is breathtakingly ambitious, but which he insists is achievable - to offer glasses to a billion of the world's poorest people by 2020.
...
Silver has devised a pair of glasses which rely on the principle that the fatter a lens the more powerful it becomes. Inside the device's tough plastic lenses are two clear circular sacs filled with fluid, each of which is connected to a small syringe attached to either arm of the spectacles.

The wearer adjusts a dial on the syringe to add or reduce amount of fluid in the membrane, thus changing the power of the lens. When the wearer is happy with the strength of each lens the membrane is sealed by twisting a small screw, and the syringes removed. The principle is so simple, the team has discovered, that with very little guidance people are perfectly capable of creating glasses to their own prescription.

Read the rest here.

It's never too early to start planning for St. Valentine's Day

Or for celebrating the end of global warming in style:

The how-to's.

Soon to be seen on bicycle paths everywhere

Or not... $165 is the cost of trying to not look like a dweeb... Of course, you can always purposely choose to look like a homespun dweeb. (Someone wanna Photoshop Jack Layton in one of these?!)

"Now we turn to Professor Smith, who adheres to a Marxian paradigm...

...that regards capitalism as a moral outrage that is destined to collapse according to the implacable laws of history."

Wouldn't it be great if the MSM would preface the remarks of its "economic experts" with such an introduction? Why this won't happen:

Economists are everywhere in the media these days, arguing with each other and pronouncing on what precisely needs to be done to fix our economic problems. The majority say that the government needs to spend and inflate like crazy, while others say that this will not only fail to fix the problem but will prolong the downturn.

The opinions of economists are not random. They can be classified into schools of thought, and to schools within schools. It's too bad that the radio and television announcers can't just say this before the economist ever opens his mouth.

"Now we have a word from Professor Jones, who was trained according to the Keynesian tradition, and advocates Keynesian-style policies as dictated by a Keynesian model."

Or, "Now we turn to Professor Smith, who adheres to a Marxian paradigm that regards capitalism as a moral outrage that is destined to collapse according to the implacable laws of history."

Or, "Professor Walker is a Chicago-school economist who generally appreciates markets but believes in monetary intervention based on a positivist understanding of economic method."

But of course the economists themselves do not want to be so classified. They would rather be seen as objective scientists — and anyone who disagrees with them to be guilty of fallacy or to be inadequately familiar with empirical reality.

Read the rest here, and have some fun taking the "Are you an Austrian?" quiz. (For the record, I'm 85% Austrian - I think I'll order Faustino Ballvé's little book and brush up on my economic theory.) Anyone want to guess what school Stephen Harper would adhere most to?

Oh give me a home where the buffalo roam...

and the deer and the antelope plug'n play...

[source]

The promise of real star power in California

While it has seemed an impossible goal for nearly 100 years, scientists now believe that they are on brink of cracking one of the biggest problems in physics by harnessing the power of nuclear fusion, the reaction that burns at the heart of the sun.

In the spring, a team will begin attempts to ignite a tiny man-made star inside a laboratory and trigger a thermonuclear reaction.

Its goal is to generate temperatures of more than 100 million degrees Celsius and pressures billions of times higher than those found anywhere else on earth, from a speck of fuel little bigger than a pinhead. If successful, the experiment will mark the first step towards building a practical nuclear fusion power station and a source of almost limitless energy.

At a time when fossil fuel supplies are dwindling and fears about global warming are forcing governments to seek clean energy sources, fusion could provide the answer. Hydrogen, the fuel needed for fusion reactions, is among the most abundant in the universe. Building work on the £1.2 billion nuclear fusion experiment is due to be completed in spring.

Read the rest here.

A good question

Suppose you lived in the Toronto suburb of Don Mills and people from the suburb of Scarborough -- about 10 kilometres away -- were firing as many as 100 rockets a day into your yard, your kids' school, the strip mall down the street and your dentist's office.

A trip to the cleaners to pick up your shirts would be a life-risking act. Going to the grocery store would involve thinking through in your mind the location of all the shelter sites along the way, in case rockets started raining down on the road as you drove by.

Or perhaps you lived in Montreal's Outremont neighbourhood and your children had weekly emergency drills because people who hated you -- absolutely, blindly hated you and everyone from your community -- were launching missiles by the score into your cul-de-sac and the nearby playground, and they had been doing it for seven years.

A clip-and-save retort to lob at the smug “We are all Hezbollah now" crowd. (Not that it will make much difference. But a trip to Sderot might, as it did in this case, at least temper their views.)

Related: Tales from a rocket-protected playground

Geek apples

Here's how it was done.

Toyota Prius customer revives sluggish sales

As The Green Motorist notes, falling gas prices aren't good for the ecomotive sector:

[In November] Toyota...posted a significant loss with a decline of 33.9% seen. What is unusual is that one Toyota model posted a huge increase in sales and it was not the Prius. Instead, it was the Toyota Sequoia with its paltry 14/17 (city/highway) fuel efficiency rating. That’s right, gas falls to under $2 gallon in most places across the United States and people seem to have amnesia. Four dollar a gallon gas was not that long ago but the way the Sequoia sold in November (a 52% increase over October) you would think it happened decades ago.

Earl Stewart, owner of a Toyota dealership in Florida “sold 57 Priuses in November, down from 67 in October. He is discounting his Priuses by $1,200 on the base model and $2,000 on the most-expensive versions.” (Source: Automotive News)

All is not lost, however, as one savvy Prius owner came up with a new climate change-friendly marketing strategy for Toyota during the most recent storm:

When an ice storm knocked out power to much of New England, one Toyota Prius owner reached for his inverter and powered some of his home with the happy little hybrid. Smug FTW? Yes.

John Sweeney, of Harvard, Massachusetts, was among the many residents of Eastern Mass without power after a big ice storm hit on December 12th. Sweeney, an electrical engineer, saw his Prius as the answer. Using an inverter, he converted the DC power coming out of the car into AC power for his house. Though he couldn't run his entire house one his one car, they were able to get approximately 17 Kilowatt hours of energy. This was enough to power his refrigerator/freezer, television, lights, wood stove fan and accessories for a few days. Although anyone can use a regular DC power supply, like the battery found in a non-Hybrid car, but a hybrid is ideal.

Read the smug rest here.

"Isn't there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about???"

Merry Christmas everyone!

Queen Caroline

Gag...

Nobility cannot be bothered with the rules and customs of the little people:

If she were applying to be, say, an undersecretary of education in Barack Obama’s new administration, Caroline Kennedy would have to fill out a 63-item confidential questionnaire disclosing potentially embarrassing text messages and diary entries, the immigration status of her household staff, even copies of every résumé she used in the last 10 years.

If she were running for election to the Senate, Kennedy would have to file a 10-part, publicly available report disclosing her financial assets, credit card debts, mortgages, book deals and the sources of any payments greater than $5,000 in the last three years.

But Kennedy, who has asked Governor David Paterson to appoint her to succeed Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton — and who helped oversee the vetting process for Obama’s possible running mates — is declining to provide a variety of basic data, including companies she has a stake in and whether she has ever been charged with a crime.

Kennedy declined on Monday to reply to those and other questions posed by The New York Times about any potential ethical, legal and financial entanglements. Through a spokesman, she said she would not disclose that kind of information unless and until she becomes a senator.

Via Michelle Malkin

Ah, Obama's Washington... 'tis a silly place:

Stormwatch

With winds forecast to gust to 100 k, power outages are a real possibility. Candles shmandles - these are more fun. (And if you have little kids &/or boisterous pets, they won't burn the house down either.)

Update: the bridge may be closing by 11 p.m. too. As for me, I'm sipping the last of of three-year old bottle of Remy Martin in the crystal snifter hubby bought me a few Christmas's ago, and listening to some Christmas tunes on my new Mac... Let it snow!

Where's a martyr when you need one?

One can dream.

(Send the lamp to your favorite bailout-funding politician today.)

Fred on the economy

If Fred ever decides to move to Canada, Rick Mercer will have some serious competition...



h/t Tim at The Black Kettle - thanks for the laughs, Tim - maybe this is where the Onion got their inspiration for this (h/t Andrew Coyne):



In The Know: Should The Government Stop Dumping Money Into A Giant Hole?

No Virginia - and Linda - we’re not all Keynesians now

So says Joseph Ben-Ami (thanks to Hunter for the link):

With the showdown over who will ultimately hold the reins of power in Ottawa in at least temporary abeyance, people are now focusing their attention on what if any action the government should be taking in response to still developing global financial crisis. Almost everyone seems to agree that Canada needs an “economic stimulus package”. What should such a “package” consist of though, and how big should it be?

Given the way politicians and journalists are talking these days, Canadians can be forgiven for assuming that the only way to “stimulate” economic activity is for the government to “inject” money into the marketplace through increased public spending. This is not the only option available to policy-makers though, nor is it even considered by many economists to be the best option.

The subject is not as complicated as one might think.

Read the rest here. Given all the recent signs that the federal Conservatives seem to be gearing up to spend like drunken Lib/Dip sailors in an effort to save their political hides, I don't hold up much hope for "the self-styled fiscal conservatives in the federal Conservative Party to prove how committed they really are to the core principles they have professed to believe" - I think they'll be walking the plank on this one. Bah humbug.

Stimulus Canada: we're all Keynesians now, whether we like it or not

After reading this dismal news, the brilliant Terence Corcoran can be credited with saving the pumpkin patch from the damaging effects of a Category 5 hissy fit:

(click for full-size image)

I note that Corcoran's item is posted beside a link to the Post's "Junk Science" feature. I propose a new series: Junk Economics. Here's to this video going viral. I re-post it here for your convenience:

Keynesian Economics Is Wrong: Bigger Government Is Not Stimulus

Keynes: not dead enough

(image courtesy of Michelle Malkin)

And it would appear to be too late for an exorcist, as the "spirit of stimulus" takes over the will of what's left of the - nominally - free world. That's one possible explanation for this madness. Here's the video Terance Corcoran references in this linked article - maybe if enough copies of it land in PM Harper's and Flaherty's email, they might recall that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results:


[Thanks to Daniel J. Mitchell, Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute, for this gem.]

In this recent article, Mitchell adds a few salient points:

Unfortunately, no matter how the issue is analyzed, there is virtually no support for the notion that government spending creates jobs. Indeed, the more relevant consideration is the degree to which bigger government destroys jobs. Both the theoretical and empirical evidence argues against the notion that big government boosts job creation. Theory and evidence lead to three unavoidable conclusions:

• The theory of government-instigated job creation overlooks the loss of resources available to the productive sector of the economy. Frederic Bastiat, the great French economist (yes, there were admirable French economists, albeit all of them lived in the 1800s), is well known for many reasons, including his explanation of the “seen” and the “unseen.” If the government decides to build a “Bridge to Nowhere,” it is very easy to see the workers who are employed on that project. This is the “seen.” But what is less obvious is that the resources to build that bridge are taken from the private sector and thus are no longer available for other uses. This is the “unseen.”

• So-called stimulus packages have little bang for the buck. Even if one assumes that money floats down from Heaven and we don’t have to worry about the “unseen,” government is never an efficient way to achieve an objective. Based on the amount of money that is being discussed and the claims of how many jobs will be created, Harvard Professor Greg Mankiw filled in the blanks and calculated that each new job (assuming they actually materialize) will cost $280,000. But since money doesn’t come from Heaven, this calculation is only a partial measure of cost. In reality, the cost of each government job should reflect how that $280,000 would have been spent more productively in the private sector.

• Government workers are grossly overpaid. There are several reasons why it costs so much for the government to “create” a job, including the inherent inefficiency of the public sector. But the dominant factor is probably the excessive compensation packages for bureaucrats. According to Bureau of Economic Analysis data, the average employee for the federal government now earns gets paid nearly twice as much as workers in the productive sector of the economy.

Notwithstanding these points, it is quite likely that politicians in Washington will pass a boondoggle-filled “stimulus” bill. While there may be a few naïve folks who think a big increase in the burden of government somehow is a recipe for job creation, politicians have a self-interested motive to move in that direction because it increases their power and influence.

They win and taxpayers lose.

Et tu, "Conservative" Party of Canada? Some of us are smart enough to figure out that The Road to Serfdom isn't just another infrastructure project.

And now for something completely different: Our Lady of Guadalupe

One thing I really love about being Catholic is all the feast days - there are so many reasons to celebrate during the year. Today's feast day is one of my favorites, and a great break from all the obsessing over recessions, coalition coups, corporate bailouts, Iggy-trivia, ad nauseum.

Today the Church celebrates the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The story surrounding this holy image of our Blessed Mother is repeated below, having been reported here on December 9, the feast day of Saint Juan Diego.

On December 9, 1531, Juan Diego, a 57-year-old Aztec, was taking his daily route to Mass. Walking by Tepeyac Hill, he heard beautiful music, like choirs of angels singing. He stopped to listen. The music stopped, but he then heard the sweetest voice he’d ever heard beckoning him, “Juan, Juan Diego, Juanito!” There before him stood a most beautiful young woman, a Mexican girl who looked like an Aztec princess. She was dressed in an embroidered scarlet gown. Over her head and shoulders hung a deep jade-colored mantle covered with golden stars and she was standing on a maroon crescent, held above the ground by an angel.

“Dear little son, I love you,” she said. “I want you to know who I am. I am the ever-Virgin Mary, Mother of the true God who gives life.” She then requested that Juan go to the bishop and request that a chapel be built on the hill for the Mexican natives for whom she expressed a special love. Juan rushed to do as she asked, and was able to get in to see the bishop. He was, however, dismissed without an answer.

On his second attempt the bishop asked him to bring proof that he had indeed seen the Mother of God. Juan left excited, feeling sure that the Blessed Mother would give him this proof. The next morning, though, before Juan could go and meet with the Virgin, he found his only surviving relative, an uncle, seriously ill. Juan felt his first duty was to bring a priest to his dying uncle and so he decided to take another route so as not to see the Virgin and thus be delayed. But the Blessed Mother intercepted him on the path and assured him that his uncle would recover. She then instructed him to gather flowers that were growing on the hilltop in his tilma (shirt) and carry them to the bishop. The Madonna arranged the roses, tied the corners and asked him not to open his shirt until he reached the bishop.

When Juan stood before the bishop and untied his shirt, releasing the flowers, the bishop didn’t seem to notice them. Instead, staring at Juan’s shirt, he fell to his knees with tears streaming down his face. Perplexed, Juan looked down at his shirt and saw that the Virgin had given him a sign even more miraculous than roses growing on the side of a mountain in winter. She had left an image of herself on his tilma, looking exactly as he had seen her. And when Juan returned home, he found that his uncle’s health had been completely restored. The Madonna had appeared to his uncle, as well.

The chapel that the Virgin requested was quickly built. The image she left has been given the name of Our Lady of Guadalupe. In the following seven years after this apparition, eight million formerly pagan Aztecs were baptized and became Christians. Today an average of 1,500 pilgrims kneel daily before the miraculous tilma — which has sustained its perfect image for almost five hundred years — at the new Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.

[source]

And the image itself is packed with symbolism, as The Happy Catholic explains:

As with all good Catholic images there is abundant symbolism that was specifically designed to speak to the hearts of the people to whom she brought her message ... the Aztecs. I remember when our priest put out a flyer about this and I was just knocked out at how meaningful every single thing in the image is. I really like this explanation.

The miraculous image produced on the apron or tilma of Blessed Juan Diego is rich in symbolism. The aureole or luminous light surrounding the Lady is reminiscent of the "woman clothed with the sun" of Rev. 12:1. The light is also a sign of the power of God who has sanctified and blessed the one who appears. The rays of the sun would also be recognized by the native people as a symbol of their highest god, Huitzilopochtli. Thus, the lady comes forth hiding but not extinguishing the power of the sun. She is now going to announce the God who is greater than their sun god.

The Lady is standing upon the moon. Again, the symbolism is that of the woman of Rev. 12:1 who has the "moon under her feet". The moon for the Meso-Americans was the god of the night. By standing on the moon, she shows that she is more powerful than the god of darkness. However, in Christian iconography the crescent moon under the Madonna's feet is usually a symbol of her perpetual virginity, and sometimes it can refer to her Immaculate Conception or Assumption.

The eyes of Our lady of Guadalupe are looking down with humility and compassion. This was a sign to the native people that she was not a god since in their iconography the gods stare straight ahead with their eyes wide open. We can only imagine how tenderly her eyes looked upon Blessed Juan Diego when she said: " Do not be troubled or weighed down with grief -- Am I not here who am your Mother?"

The angel supporting the Lady testifies to her royalty. To the Meso-American Indians only kings, queens and other dignitaries would be carried on the shoulders of someone. The angel is transporting the Lady to the people as a sign that a new age has come.

The mantle of the Lady is blue-green or turquoise. To the native people, this was the color of the gods and of royalty. It was also the color of the natural forces of life and fecundity. In Christian art, blue is symbolic of eternity and immortality. In Judaism, it was the color of the robe of the high priest. The limbus or gold border of her mantle is another sign of nobility.

The stars on the Lady's mantle shows that she comes from heaven. She comes as the Queen of Heaven but with the eyes of a humble and loving mother. The stars also are a sign of the supernatural character of the image. The research of Fr. Mario Rojas Sanchez and Dr. Juan Homero Hernandez Illescas of Mexico (published in 1983) shows that the stars on the Lady's mantle in the image are exactly as the stars of the winter solstice appeared before dawn on the morning of December 12, 1531.

The color of the Madonna's dress is rose or pale-red. Some have interpreted this as the color of dawn symbolizing the beginning of a new era. Others point to the red as a sign of martyrdom for the faith and divine love.

The gold-encircled cross brooch under the neck of the Lady's robe is a symbol of sanctity.

The girdle or bow around her waist is a sign of her virginity, but it also has several other meanings. The bow appears as a four-petaled flower. To the native Indians this was the nahui ollin, the flower of the sun, a symbol of plenitude. The cross-shaped flower was also connected with the cross-sticks which produce fire. For them, this was the symbol of fecundity and new life. The high position of the bow and the slight swelling of the abdomen show that the Lady is "with child". According to Dr. Carlos Fernandez Del Castillo, a leading Mexican obstetrician, the Lady appears almost ready to give birth with the infant head down resting vertically. This would further solidify her identification with the woman of Rev. 12 who is about to give birth.

The link for the above excerpt is now dead. However, you can read about this apparition of Our Lady in more depth here.

Some more about conditions in Mexico at the time Our Lady appeared as well as a prayer for abortion victims can be read at Ave Maria.

The Curt Jester has some myth-busters about this apparition, which he hastens to assure us he does regard as a miraculous event. However, it is a good reminder that it is just too tempting sometimes to make a miraculous thing even better by embellishing ... tch, tch, tch.

The Advent Conspiracy

Find out more here.


... or how about a gift of 'five golden ducks'?

Another way to improve the world is this little book - it should be given out to all the knee-jerk "economic stimulus" cheerleaders that you know (including some corporate executives) - read the first chapter here. I wonder if PM Harper has read it?