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Modern Noah
and his big boat
GOD ’ S W ORL D N E W S • Vo l. 2 , No. 5 • Feb ru ar y 2 0 1 3
COWBOY
Dusty’s got your back
(See p. 22)
5_Trak_V2_Cover.indd 1
1/15/13 7:45 PM
Challenge
College is more than classes and
credits—it’s the time to be a leader. At
BJU we believe leadership is more about
who you are than what you know and
what you can do. Through intentional
experiences, we help you sharpen your
leadership skills and challenge you
to develop self-discipline, integrity,
dependability and compassion for
others—Christlike characteristics of a
true leader. To learn how BJU can help
you be a more effective leader, visit us
at go.bju.edu/challenge.
2 T R A K F E B R U A R Y
5_Trak_V2_ReplyAll.indd 2
For graduation rates, the median debt of students who completed the program and other important info visit on.bju.edu/rates. (13965) 11/12
POTENTIAL
2013
1/13/13 10:43 PM
ReplyAll
Harmless yoga?
For graduation rates, the median debt of students who completed the program and other important info visit on.bju.edu/rates. (13965) 11/12
Inside a California elementary
school, a gym class breathes deeply. They
stretch and pose. Outside the classroom,
parents protest. What’s all the fuss about?
This year, the Encinitas Union
School District began teaching yoga to
5,000 elementary-school students.
Some parents objected because
they believe the classes do more
than provide an exercise outlet.
They equate practicing yoga
with teaching Eastern religion.
Mary Eady refused to let
her son take part in the yoga classes after
she observed students doing a “sun salutation” in which children folded over in a bow,
then swept their arms toward the sky.
Eady believes students are learning to
worship the sun. She says this violates her
belief that God alone should be worshipped.
“They’re not just teaching physical
poses,” said Eady in an interview. “They’re
teaching children how to meditate and how
to look within for peace and comfort.”
Dean Broyles, President of the National
Center for Law and Policy, is the parents’
attorney. He may file a lawsuit if the school
district doesn’t stop teaching yoga.
In response, the school system has
changed some of the names of the poses and
positions in order to play down the spiritual
elements of yoga.
But for Broyles and the parents, that’s
not enough. The program is being funded by
a $533,000 grant from the Jois Foundation.
The National Center for Law and Policy
contends that the Jois Foundation is a religious organization.
“The stated goal of the Jois Foundation is to promote the ‘gospel’ of Ashtanga,
a deeply religious [Hindu] form of yoga,
worldwide,” says The National Center for
Law and Policy.
The Encinitas school system
says the program is simply part of a
“wellness” curriculum that includes
nutrition and a school garden.
So does it really matter if
schools use yoga? Administrators say
kids behave better since beginning the yoga
program. If yoga creates good results and
offers good exercise, what’s the harm?
The words of one principal in an Encinitas school may provide an answer. She says,
“I have teachers who say that before a test
now students do yoga to calm themselves
so that they’re transferring [yoga] into the
classroom, into their lives.”
For students participating in the program, yoga, which is a practice of Hindu
religion, is becoming a part of their lives,
and many probably don’t even recognize it
as Hinduism. Are they being indoctrinated
in a religious belief—one that tells them
to look inward for peace? Where are these
kids who learn yoga in school more likely to
turn when they face a problem—to God or to
their “inner divinity”?
Some Christians believe that yoga can
be used for good. Programs like Holy Yoga,
Scripture Yoga, and Yoga for Christians
claim to use yoga to help people focus on
Christ. Some change the position names and
include praise music in the classes. But do
these minor exterior changes convert yoga
into a Christian practice?
It may be instructive to look at what
Hindus say about yoga. A former managing editor of Hinduism Today, Sannyasin
Arumugaswami, says that Hindu sages
developed yoga based on Hindu scriptures.
“Yoga opens up new and more refined states
of mind, and to understand them one needs
to believe in and understand the Hindu
way of looking at God,” he said. “A Christian
trying to adapt these practices will likely
disrupt their own Christian beliefs.”
Christians need to be discerning, especially concerning religious practices. The
poses in yoga have spiritual significance
and pay homage to or even worship pagan
deities. Christians must heed the scriptural command to “Be careful, or you will
be enticed to turn away and worship other
gods and bow down to them” (Deuteronomy
11:16).—J.P.
Do you think public schools should use yoga in their
curriculum? What are some possible good alternatives
to practicing yoga for Christians? Send your response to
[email protected].
“The earth is the L’s and the fullness thereof; the world and those who dwell therein.” —   :
EDITOR Kim Stegall
COVER AND P.3 PHOTOS: AP / ISTOCK
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2013
1/13/13 10:43 PM
Sidetraks
Ahoy, mates!
Israeli politics may just go to the pirates. That’s what the
Israeli Pirate Party hoped when they entered the country’s late-January parliamentary election. The pirates’
leader is Ohad Shem-Tov, who arrived at parliament to
register his motley band wearing a headscarf and a
hooked hand. At his side was a blackbearded swashbuckler brandishing a skull and calling himself Noam Kuzarrr
in an exaggerated pirate accent. The party’s plank—er,
platform—includes a treasure trove of personal freedoms,
including the rights to plagiarize and to sail the high seas.
The party also seeks to reform democracy with three central bodies: a dozen captains on “the command bridge,”
120 sailors on “the deck” and the entire pirate nation
aboard “the ship.” Shem-Tov insists, “This party is serious, even if we use a little humor and do it with a smile.”
Times two
Hair-raising
On December 31, 2012, Aimee Bratten
and Ashlee Dilts gave birth just two
hours apart at the same Akron, Ohio,
hospital. Both mothers had boy
babies. The same doctor delivered
both children. The boys, named
Donavyn Scott Bratten and Aiden Lee
Alan Dilts, were due about a week
apart. But what made their nearly
duplicate stories especially intriguing
is that Aimee and Ashlee are identical
twins. The new mothers were surprised at the double births. Matching
moms and babies are doing fine.
For Middle Eastern men whose whiskers won’t cut it in
a mustache-conscious world, a handful of plastic surgeons have the answer. Turkey-based plastic surgeon
Selahattin Tulunay offers a procedure that lifts hair
from other parts of the head and grafts them above
the upper lip to create a wispy, respect-generating
’stache. According to Tulanay, his grafted mustaches
help whiskerless Arab men participate evenly in a society that judges men partly on the quality of their soup
strainers. “For some men who look young and junior,
they think [a mustache] is a must to look senior …
more professional and wise,” he told CNN. “They think
it is prestigious.” (Left, in a Turkish parade, a fake. Just
in case you wondered.)
PHOTOS: AP / ILLUSTRATION: KRIEG BARRIE FOR WORLD
Chemical reaction
School officials triggered a lockdown at a Florida
high school in December after a student brought
an amount of mercury into the building for a
chemistry project. According to the Pinellas
County Sheriff ’s office, a teacher assigned students to bring to class one of the materials found
on the Periodic Table of Elements. The offending
item containing mercury? A thermometer.
5_Trak_V2_Sidetraks.indd 4
2013
1/13/13 10:38 PM
1: Grave problem
Construction workers spent
years building around a single tomb site in the city of Taiyuan,
China, because developers were unable convince the deceased
person’s relatives to sell the land surrounding the gravesite.
Construction left the burial mound standing almost 33 feet high in
the middle of the reinforcement-bar-and-cement foundation. The
family finally settled for 800 Yuan ($128).
1
2: By any other name
Iceland is giving
15-year-old Blaer Bjarkardottir the cold shoulder. Why? Because
her name, which means “light breeze” in Icelandic, isn’t on the
official list of names approved by the government. Iceland isn’t the
only country with strict laws about baby names—Germany and
Denmark have similar rules. The government believes the list will
protect children from embarrassment over strange or inappropriate names. For now, Blaer is identified legally only as “girl.”
3: Mole holes
It’s dirty work, but someone’s gotta
do it. The saying fits well of one of France’s oddest occupations:
“molecatcher to the king.” Jerome Dormion loyally stalks the
underground mammals at the famous Versailles palace near Paris
lest the pests take over the grounds of Europe’s finest residence.
Dormion smiles, “The king might be gone, but the palace still has
moles, loads of them. Which is good, as it keeps me in work!”
4: Vulture vandals
If you’re headed to the
Everglades any time soon, you might want to pick up an “anti-vulture” kit at the park entrance. It seems that migrating vultures
have a nasty habit of swiping sunroof seals, windshield wipers, and
anything else made of rubber or vinyl from visitors’ cars.
Employees at Everglades National Park noticed the vulture shenanigans slowed down after they distributed tarps and bungee
cords to park visitors.
2
5: Lotto trouble
PHOTOS: AP / ISTOCK
Some folks will go to any level
to make a buck. A 76-year-old man in Amsterdam, Netherlands,
climbed into an underground waste paper container looking for a
lottery ticket. The man feared he’d thrown the ticket away with
other pieces of paper. Happily, passersby heard the elderly man
calling for help and notified the police. He was rescued without
injury. But the lottery ticket was not found.
6: Late date
6
A Scranton,
Penn., newspaper received a U.S. Postal
Service delivery this January—63 years late.
A tube containing a 1950 Pennsylvania
Railroad calendar along with a holiday
greeting dated December 1949 arrived a little off-schedule at The Times-Tribune
offices. The USPS explained that lost mail
is sometimes found during office renovations. Whew! That’s some time between
remodels!
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3
2013
1/13/13 10:39 PM
JOHAN’S
Ark
COPY 2
Tall as a seven-story building and longer than
football field, a gigantic floating structure hulks
over the Dutch landscape.
6 T R A K J A N U A R Y
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2013
1/13/13 10:31 PM
NewsTrak
Johan Huibers’
craft attracts
boatloads of
attention.
It’s rather a shock to see such a big
wooden vessel moored in the waters off
Dordrecht in the Netherlands. The greybrown curiosity is easily visible from a
nearby highway.
What has become known as Johan’s
Ark was 20 years in the making. In 1992,
Huiber had a nightmare about flooding
in the Netherlands, a somewhat com-
Did these cows not get the message on double occupancy?
mon occurrence. When he awoke, he
seized upon the idea of building an ark
like Noah’s.
“We want to tell people about God,”
Huibers told a French global news organization. “We wanted to build something that can help explain the Bible in
real terms.”
Huibers built his first ark in 2004.
Half the size of Noah’s famous boat, it
attracted many tourists. Money from
the first ark helped finance his real
dream—a life-sized Noah’s ark.
In 2008, Huibers started building his
second ark and completed it in
December 2012. A Bible-believing
Christian, Huibers followed exactly the
2013
1/16/13 9:14 AM
Noah’s Flood Found?
Oceanographer Robert Ballard is
world-famous for finding shipwrecks. Most notably, he discovered
the wreckage of Titanic on the floor
of the Atlantic Ocean in 1985. Now
he thinks he may have found evidence of something even bigger
than Titanic: the biblical flood.
Ballard and his team have uncovered an ancient shoreline 400 feet
below the surface of the Black Sea.
Using underwater robots, the team
members are mapping the landscape. They’ve discovered the
remains of houses made of mud and
wood. They’ve also found polished
stone tools and pieces of ceramic.
Ballard doesn’t think the remnants of the civilization he’s found
prove that Noah lived in that location. But he believes that the area
was hit by a huge flood about 7000
years ago.
What makes him think so? Today,
the Black Sea is filled with saltwater. But his team discovered freshwater shells on the ancient
shoreline dating from the time of
the biblical flood.
The evidence has led Ballard to
believe that melting glaciers caused
oceans to rise, which in turn caused
disastrous floods. His scenario is that
around 5000 B.C. the Mediterranean
Sea rose and seawater flooded the
Black Sea. He estimates such a
flood’s force at 200 times that of the
water rushing over Niagara Falls. He
believes about 58,000 square miles
of land (about the size of Illinois)
went under and stayed under.
As far as Ballard is concerned,
this proves only that a major flood
occurred in that location and that
people lived there when it
happened.
Now what?
Ballard doesn’t think his team ever
actually will find Noah’s ark. (It
almost certainly would have rotted
away after 7000 years.)
What if the ark were found?
Would scientists be forced to admit
that the Bible is true?
Mankind’s history tells us that
even if the ark were found, for
most people, it would change
nothing.
The Bible is replete with stories
of eyewitnesses to Christ and his
miracles, yet “they still would not
believe” (John 12:37). Nothing but
the grace of God changes hearts
and minds.
PHOTOS: NASA / AP
Ballard believes the Black Sea (shown here by NASA satellite) had
a shoreline 400 feet below its current one, possibly indicating a
massive deluge thousands of years ago.
instructions God gave Noah in Genesis
6-9 to build his ark.
The result is a 427-foot-long, 95-footwide ark that is 75 feet tall. Inside, the
ship’s main hold is divided into many
stalls. The stalls are filled with realisticlooking animals. Another section of the
ark contains a petting zoo with live animals including ponies, sheep, and rabbits. Below, hatches open into huge
food-storage spaces.
The ark also contains a restaurant,
conference rooms, and a movie theater.
On each level there are displays from the
life of Noah and Middle Eastern history,
as well as interactive games.
Huibers’ extraordinary craft is seaworthy, and he is considering where to
take it next. Wherever that is, he hopes it
will make people consider their purpose
on Earth, and ask eternal questions. —J.P.
2013
1/13/13 10:34 PM
Code breaker
Lucas Mason-Brown isn’t a cryptologist. He isn’t a seminary student interested in early American Puritan theology.
He isn’t even a Rhode Island history buff,
although he does hail from New England.
Mason-Brown is a serious math fanatic.
So when he heard about a strange-looking code filling the margins of a 17th-century book in Brown University’s library, he
figured his math prowess might be just the
thing for unearthing something revelatory
about the author.
The “Essay”
A note accompanying the
book “An Essay Concerning the Reconciling of Differences among Christians” suggested the code was written by none other
than Roger Williams, co-founder of Rhode
Island and hometown hero in Providence.
The undecipherable Williams Code was
well ensconced in Providence-area lore
and had long held the attention of Brown University researchers.
In 2011, after scholars
failed to decode Williams’
notes, Brown University
opened the challenge to
students. Math major
Mason-Brown signed on
to the project. He spent
his winter break getting a
jumpstart.
First, he tried frequency
analysis—looking at the
frequency of letters or
groups of letters. That gave
him a “foothold,” he says.
He got his first big break
when he learned that Williams had been trained in
shorthand when working
for the courts in London. Williams used that
training to create his own
shorthand. Once MasonBrown discovered this
important fact, he was
able to figure out Williams’ system.
The colonial minister’s
Mason-Brown
code uses 28 symbols
that stand for a combination of English letters or sounds.
But—along with Williams’ messy
handwriting—Mason-Brown ran into
another huge problem. Williams didn’t
always stick to his symbols. He often improvised.
Still Mason-Brown had enough information to begin translating small portions
of the notes. He and other students figured
out that the 234-page book contained
three different sections of notes.
Two sections are notes on other books,
a medical book and a geography book. But
the third is 20 pages of Williams’ original
thoughts on infant baptism.
“To have a major new source, a major
new document, from Roger Williams is a
big deal,” says former Brown University
Library Director Edward Widmer.
Mason-Brown has no plans to become a
professional code-breaker. But he says he
did enjoy collaborating with students and
professors in other disciplines to solve a
longstanding mystery.—J.P./K.S.
2013
1/13/13 10:35 PM
BusinessTrak
All in a day’s work
A Thai coffee harvester shows his day’s collection of beans.
Americans Ryan and Asleigh
Nelson sit overlooking a
herd of elephants outside a
luxury resort in Thailand.
They are there to enjoy the view and
to sample a rare brand of coffee made from
the dung of elephants at the Golden
Triangle Elephant Foundation. Yes, really.
The exotic brew is called Black Ivory
Coffee, and it sells for about $50 per serving or $500 per pound, making it among
the world’s priciest.
But don’t try to order this coffee at your
local Starbucks. For now the elephant coffee is available only at a few luxury hotels
in remote corners of the world—northern
Thailand, the Maldives and Abu Dhabi.
By now you probably have lots of questions. Here’s what happens: Thai elephants eat coffee beans. One day later,
harvesters pluck the beans from the dung
of the giant pachyderms. The beans are
then roasted, ground, and made into a
shockingly expensive cup of joe.
Evidently, a reaction inside the elephant’s stomach creates what Black
Ivory’s founder calls the coffee’s unique
taste. “When an elephant eats coffee, its
stomach acid breaks down the protein
found in coffee, which is a key factor in
bitterness,” said Blake Dinkin, who has
A tourist tests the brew..
spent $300,000 developing the coffee.
After a thorough washing, the coffee cher“You end up with a cup that’s very smooth
ries are processed to extract the beans,
without the bitterness of regular coffee.”
which are taken to a gourmet roaster in
An elephant’s gastrointestinal system
Bangkok.
takes 15-30 hours to digest food. The
The verdict on how the strange coffee
beans stew away with the bananas, sugar
tastes may still be out for the Nelsons, who
cane, palm fronds, tree bark, and gastric
describe it as “something different . . .
juices in the elephant’s stomach, infusing
something wild” and “very interesting,
an earthy-fruity flavor, says Dinkin.
Dinkin has a background in kopi luwak, very novel.”
As for the elephants, they’re making 8
a coffee-processing method involving the
percent of Black Ivory Coffee’s sales—
excrement of the weasel-like civet.
just for doing what comes naturally.
“My theory is that a natural fermenta-
5_Trak_V2_Business.indd 10
PHOTOS: AP
tion process takes place in the elephant’s
gut,” said Dinkin. “That fermentation
imparts flavors you wouldn’t get from
other coffees.”
Dinkin was at first worried about
whether his experiment would harm the
elephants. But tests revealed that the
behemoths got no buzz whatsoever from
the caffeine jolt. Dinkin worked with a
Canadian-based veterinarian, who ran
blood tests on zoo elephants to ensure the
elephants would not be harmed.
What makes Black Ivory so expensive?
Well, it takes about 72 pounds of raw coffee cherries to produce just two pounds of
Black Ivory coffee.
The majority of the beans get chewed
up, broken, or lost in tall grass after being
excreted.
And Dinkin’s process is labor-intensive. He uses pure Arabica beans handpicked by hill-tribe women from a small
mountain estate. Workers collect the
dung, break it open and pick out the coffee.
2013
1/13/13 10:46 PM
Juicy idea
With many Americans trying to
make more healthy food choices in the
new year, PepsiCo Inc. is out to capitalize on the trend. Choosing fewer sugary foods and drinks is a good start to
healthy eating, and incorporating more
veggies usually tops many people’s resolution list.
Veggies and fruit in disguise
Now a new juice blend from
Tropicana is becoming available at stores around the country.
Called Farmstand, the nutrient-packed drink is being marketed as a way for moms to slip some vegetables into their kids’
diets.
After the Campbell’s Soup Company scored with their V-8
V-Fusion line of veggies-in-disguise beverages, Tropicana
decided to jump into the camouflaged vegetable juice business.
Tropicana is hoping Farmstand juices will catch consumers’
attention because it will be sold in the refrigerated section of the
grocery store—unlike V-8’s product, which is shelf-stable
because of its pasteurization process.
“Chilled is very important,” asserts Tropicana’s chief market-
PHOTOS: AP / BRANDYOURSELF
Online clean-up
Have you ever Googled
yourself? If not, you ought
to check out what comes up
when someone types your
name into a search engine. If
you share a name with someone else in the world, you
might be surprised
what “you” have
been up to.
Prospective
employers often
used search engines
and social networking sites to prescreen potential
hires. And when
unprofessional, illegal, or
inappropriate material pops
up, employers simply hit the
delete button.
With this in mind, Syracuse
University began providing its
graduates with online tools to
help them put their best Web
foot forward.
After initially supplying
BrandYourself accounts only
to graduating seniors last
spring, Syracuse struck a deal
with the company to offer
accounts to all of its undergraduate and graduate students and alumni for free.
About 25,000 people have
taken advantage of the service.
ing officer Memo Maqulvar,
adding that refrigeration
“signals high quality, it signals premium, it signals
freshness.”
It took about eight
months of testing to find the
right blend of juice to mask
much of the vegetable taste.
And Tropicana officials
admit that the juice is “a little bit of a different experience.” Tropicana tried
cucumbers, zucchini, and tomatoes. But the vegetables that
worked best with fruit were carrots, sweet potatoes, and beets.
An 8-ounce serving contains 120 calories and 28 grams of
sugar—about the same as a glass of regular orange juice.
The initial Farmstand flavors will highlight the fruit content.
Pomegranate-blueberry, strawberry-banana, and peach-mango
juices are the first to hit store shelves.
Farmstand’s juice bottles show images of delicious fruits out
front, with the sneaky vegetables hiding behind the label.
Tropicana will spend almost $30 million advertising the new
juice this spring. The message to moms is this: “Turn Your Kids
into Veggie Lovers.”
Rochester University and
Johns Hopkins also offer the
online tool to their students.
The service is free and sends
Googlers directly to a positive,
professional image complete
with photo, degree specifics,
and credentials.
Services like the one
offered at these schools are
becoming popular
because of studies indicating
that many employers Google
work applicants, and—here’s
the scary part—don’t click past
the first page of results.
“The first item on our ‘five
things to do before you graduate’ list is ‘clean up your online
5_Trak_V2_Business.indd 11
profile,’” says Lisa Severy, a
career development expert.
“We call it the grandma test —
if you don’t want her to see it,
you probably don’t want an
employer to, either.”
The tool doesn’t get rid of
damaging information, but it
does put the best material
front and center.
BrandYourself works by
analyzing a user’s online profile. Once the program determines where positive
information about a user
appears in a Google search, it
suggests ways to boost that
ranking—that is, move the
good stuff up on the list.
“It’s becoming more and
more important for students
to be aware of and able to
manage their online presence,” advises Mike Cahill,
Syracuse’s career services
director, “to be able to have
strong, positive things come
up on the Internet when
someone seeks them out.”
2013
1/13/13 10:46 PM
Behindtheheadline
Cocoa loco
Bitter or sweet, dark or white, studded with bacon or
sprinkled with gold flecks, candy connoisseurs the world over
eat chocolate every way imaginable. And it is big business.
To chocolate producers in Venezuela trying to survive under a teetering socialist
government, it’s very serious business.
Government regulations and takeovers worry even the largest producer,
Chocolates El Rey.
Sugary Beginnings
From the time that the Aztec warrior
Montezuma introduced a spicy-sweet
chocolate drink to Spanish explorer
All in the Process
Not all chocolate is created equal. The
best flavors and textures require exact
scientific know-how and finely tuned
artisanal skills.
The product we know as chocolate
5_Trak_V2_BTH.indd 12
AP / ARIANA CUBILLOS / OPPOSITE PAGE: THE STAR TRIBUNE, RICHARD TSONG-TAATA
rii
This cacao pod from the forest-shaded plantations of Venezuela will be transformed into
some of the world’s finest chocolate.
El Rey has been exporting chocolate
to the U.S. since 1995. Now, with the
nation’s number one chocolate-gifting
holiday right around the corner, all
eyes—and taste buds—are craving the
delectable confection.
Hernán Cortés in the 16th century, people have been crazy for chocolate. A
study by the International Cocoa
Organization reveals that U.S. consumers
gobble about 20 percent of the world’s
chocolate—for a grand total of over
eleven pounds of chocolate per person
per year.
The chocolate industry earns about
$83 billion per year. During Valentine’s
week alone, U.S. retailers sell $345 million—58 million pounds—of chocolate!
2013
1/13/13 10:42 PM
chocolates contain about 50%, and white
chocolate only about 35% (cocoa butter
only). Some mass-produced chocolate
uses as little as 7% cocoa and includes
vegetable oils (instead of cocoa butter)
and artificial flavorings that attempt to
hide low-quality beans and inferior fermentation or roasting processes.
After blending the chocolate, manufacturers place the chocolate liquid into a
container that grinds and heats it.
Hydraulic presses extract remaining
cocoa butter from the liquid. The process,
called “conching,” produces particles
smaller than the human tongue can feel.
The longer the conching, the smoother
the chocolate. The finest chocolates are
conched for up to 72 hours. Lesser quality
chocolates are conched for as little as
four to six hours.
Chocolate makers may re-add cocoa
butter to control texture, melting tem-
Even though the beans
are now dry, much work
lies ahead to turn them
into creamy chocolate.
comes from dried and partly fermented
seeds of the cacao tree. This small evergreen is native to South America and
grows best in countries near the equator,
making El Rey perfectly situated for
chocolate production.
There are three main varieties of
cacao bean used for making chocolate:
forastero, trinitario, and criollo. Of these,
chocolate connoisseurs prize criollo
beans for their complex taste and rarity.
Beaten and Broken
Processing chocolate requires a great
deal of labor. First, ripe cacao (or cocoa)
pods are harvested by hand—usually by
beating the brightly colored pods off the
trees with a stick or cutting them off with
a machete. Harvesters break the pods
open and remove the seeds and white
pulp. Each pod contains 30-40 seeds, and
it takes about 400 seeds to make a pound
of chocolate. They allow the seedy mush
to ferment, producing acids and bacterias
that give each chocolate a unique taste.
Dried and Shipped
Cocoa producers like El Rey prefer to
place fermented beans in the sun to dry.
Weather permitting, the drying takes five
Left: Even as Venezuela’s premier chocolate maker,
Chocolates El Rey has won international acclaim, it has
also had to cope with a host of obstacles brought on
by President Hugo Chavez’s government. El Rey used
to go through just four bureaucratic steps to export a
shipment. Now the list of requirements has grown to
more than 50. Here a worker spreads out cacao seeds on
a concrete patio for sun-drying in Cano Rico, Venezuela.
to seven days, then harvesters ship them
to manufacturing plants where workers
remove debris from the dried beans and
roast and grade them according to
quality.
Machines remove the bean
shells and extract the cocoa
nibs, which are ground and
liquefied to make pure liquid
chocolate called chocolate
liquor. The liquor can then be
separated into two parts,
cocoa butter and cocoa solids.
Candy makers can use simple chocolate liquor for certain sweets. But if they need
blocks of chocolate, the liquor
WHAT CHOCOLATE IS REALLY FOR. At the campfire by the
must go through further
snowtubing hill in Burnsville, Minn., Zachary Asher, 8,
processing.
keeps warm by drinking some hot chocolate.
Secret Recipes
In order to make different types of
chocolate, manufacturers blend chocolate liquor with differing amounts of
cocoa butter. These blends make up the
three basic types of chocolate:
DARK CHOCOLATE = cocoa liquor,
cocoa butter, sugar, vanilla
MILK CHOCOLATE = cocoa liquor,
cocoa butter, sugar, vanilla, milk
WHITE CHOCOLATE = cocoa butter,
sugar, vanilla, milk
Chocolate makers devise special formulas for their signature confections.
Fine dark chocolates usually contain at
least 70% cocoa butter and solids; milk
perature, and taste of the product. The
kneading action of the machine regulates
the size and type of crystals in the chocolate and creates a smoother consistency.
Before it becomes a solid block, chocolate must be tempered. This involves
intervals of heating, cooling, and reheating to help the cocoa butter reach its
most stable form. After tempering, the
chocolate is poured into molds that run
over vibrating tables and through cooling
tunnels. The tables and tunnels further
smooth and stabilize the chocolate.
At tunnels’ end, a block of chocolate
pops from the mold. Mmmmmm. Just in
time for Valentine’s Day.—Kim Stegall with
material from Explore!, used by permission.
2013
1/13/13 10:42 PM
WE ARE
We are a campus of Christians where we can be ourselves while becoming
who God wants us to be. We are students who are ambitious, inquisitive, and
loving. We are a faculty committed to rigorous academics and evangelical
faith. We are a community dedicated to engaging Christ’s kingdom and all
it has to offer through scholarship, discipleship, and service.
LEARN MORE AT WWW.WHEATON.EDU
2013
1/13/13 10:43 PM
BigIdeas
Choosing to sing
45 years ago a teenager named Joni dove
into shallow water, breaking her neck.
The accident left her a quadriplegic and
led to her conversion. Since that day, she
has spent her time encouraging people
who suffer physically and spiritually. This
is part of Joni Eareckson Tada’s recent
interview with Marvin Olasky in which she
shares her spirit-filled outlook on life.
AP / PHOTOILLUSTRATION NAT BELZ
Does depression still ensnare you at times? Are you
happy?
I make myself be happy. I make myself
sing because I have to. The alternative is
too frightening. My girlfriends will tell
you, in the morning when I wake up, I
know they’ll be coming into my bedroom
to give me a bed bath, do my toileting
routines, pull up my pants, put me in the
wheelchair, feed me breakfast, and push
me out the front door. I lie there thinking
(gagging noise), “Oh God, I cannot face
this. I’m so tired of this routine. My hip
is killing me. I’m so weary. I don’t know
how I’m going to make it to lunchtime. I
have no energy for this day. God, I can’t
do quadriplegia. But I can do all things
through You as You strengthen me. So
God, I have no smile for these girlfriends
of mine who are going to come in here
with a happy face. Can I please borrow
Your smile? I need it, desperately. I need
You.”
Our weakness, God’s strength.
I hate the prospect of having to face
the day with paralysis. I choose the Holy
Spirit’s help because I don’t want to go
down that grim, dark path to depression
any more. That’s the biblical way to wake
up in the morning, the only way to wake
up in the morning. No wonder the Apostle
Paul said, “Boast in your afflictions.” Don’t
be ashamed of them. Don’t think you have
to hide them and gussy yourself up before
5_Trak_V2_BigIdeas.indd 15
God in the morning so that He’ll be
happy with you and see that you’re really
believing in Him. ... Admit you can’t do
this thing called life. Then cast yourself
at the mercy of God and let Him show up
through your weakness because that’s
what He promises—2 Corinthians 12:9.
Who are the handicapped?
Maybe the really handicapped people
are the ones who wake up in the morning,
hit the alarm, take a quick shower, scarf
down breakfast, give God a speedy tip of a
hat of a quiet time, and then zoom out the
door on automatic cruise control. Like,
“I accepted you as my Savior, Jesus, way
back when. I put my sins on the counter
in exchange for an asbestos-lined soul. I
got this Christian thing figured out. I’ll
check in with You now and then, but I can
pretty much do it on my own.” God says if
you live this way He’s against you—James
4:6, He’s against the proud, those who’ve
got it all figured out, but He gives grace to
the humble.
The humble are... People who wake up
in the morning knowing they can’t do this
thing called life without the divine help
of the Savior. That makes my disability
such an advantage. I’m so blessed to have
it force me into the arms of Christ every
morning, because I know my human
inclination is not to go to the cross every
morning. It’s to turn my head on the pillow and pull the covers up and not face
the day.
What you’re saying about hard mercy makes a lot of
sense to Christians—but what about non-Christians
who ask you to put together a good God with terrible occurrences? How do you talk with them about
God’s sovereignty in your personal situation?
Always with what the Bible calls
reasonable sweetness, savoring my conversation with salt. I get into an elevator
with a bunch of people who see the lady
in the wheelchair, smiling and humming
“Amazing Grace.” They can connect the
dots: lady in wheelchair singing “Amaz-
15 T R A K
“Why doesn’t God just eradicate suffering all
together? If He were to eradicate suffering,
He’d have to eradicate sin in which suffering
has its roots. And if He were to eradicate sin,
He’d have to eradicate sinners.”
ing Grace.” It’s a compelling support
for the gospel. If people want to get into
discussion with me about the sovereignty
of God, I will tell them front and center
that God doesn’t like spinal cord injury.
He takes no pleasure in multiple sclerosis or children born with spina bifida.
John Piper talks about how God looks at
suffering through two lenses. He looks at
the isolated incident of suffering through
a narrow lens and loathes it. His heart
loathes it when you go through a divorce.
His heart aches when you give birth to
that child with multiple disabilities. He
hates the isolated lens of suffering. But He
delights in the wide-angle lens. He sees
the mosaic. He sees how it all fits together
into this incredible pattern for not only
our good, but the good of all those around
us and for His glory. I’m grateful that
God is sovereign. His fingers hold back a
deluge of evil in this world. I’m grateful
that He only allows to slip through His
sovereign fingers that which He’s convinced will help our souls and fit us better
for eternity.
FEBRUA RY 2013
1/13/13 10:48 PM
DesignTrak
New balance
Is it a radical Segway, a souped-up
scooter, or a motorized unicycle?
The short answer is that the RYNO is all
of the above. The long answer involves
the RYNO’s being a bike for people who
have always harbored a secret desire to
ride a real, grown-up motorcycle but are
just a bit worried about the whole safety
issue.
RYNO Motors calls its sleek, futuristic-looking contraption a self-balancing,
one-wheeled, multi-use electric scooter.
The RYNO (an acronym for “Ride Your
New Opportunity”) allows a rider to go
almost anywhere a pedestrian can go
because of the bike’s relatively small
size and excellent maneuverability.
Not intended to replace motorcycles,
the RYNO is meant for slower, shorter
urban jaunts. As for portability, users
can transport and park the 125-pound
RYNO almost anywhere they can place
a bicycle.
And it looks super cool.
Complete with turn signals and
brake lights, the head-turning RYNO
attempts to solve “the short distance
commuting challenges of
individuals, government,
and industrial customers”
but still deliver “an excitMax speed: 20 mph
ing and enjoyable riding
Max range: 30 miles on level
experience” according to
ground (less on hilly terrain)
RYNO’s Facebook page.
Battery type: slide-out lithium ion
RYNO Motors founder
Recharge time: 1 ½ hours
Chris Hoffman is a
Tire: 25” outer diameter
Portland, Oregon-based
Seat height: 32”
high-tech machinery and
Cost: approximately $4500
product designer.
The RYNO concept
5_Trak_V2_Design.indd 16
PHOTOS: AP / MURATA MANUFACTURING CO.
RYNO’s specs
2013
1/13/13 10:47 PM
Slick, huh?
Made for frightful weather
Strains of “Let It Snow! Let It
Snow!” may be ringing in the
ears of Texas snowplow drivers currently experimenting
with simulator technology
that allows them to “practice” navigating the slippery
white stuff.
The North Texas Tollway
Authority has been holding training classes to help
snowplow drivers in their
mostly flurry-free state get
used to handling icy winter
conditions if and when they
happen.
At lease nine other states
also make use of the sophisticated L-3 DPA snowplow
simulators. The machines
are customizable to city or
suburban settings as well as
day or night conditions.
The simulator works
much like a video game.
It recreates the feeling of
driving on snow and ice and
allows operators to practice
snow removal no matter
what the weather outside.
Each snowplow simulator
has three 3D video screens—
each one somewhat obscured
by frost, a steering wheel,
came from a discussion Hoffman had with
his thirteen-year-old daughter. She asked
whether he could build a single-wheeled
motorcycle like the one she’d seen in a
video game. At first, Hoffman couldn’t
brake and accelerator pedals,
and a switch for the plow
blade.
Drivers traverse a curvy
virtual road specially devised
to make them slip-slide
around. They must drive the
Red letters let drivers
know when they’ve
made contact.
icy roads while avoiding simulated deer and pedestrians.
If drivers make impact with
imagine what the machine would look like.
Then she drew it for him—and the RYNO
was born.
Hoffman describes his invention as “a
personal transportation product that’s in
5_Trak_V2_Design.indd 17
an obstacle, the windshield
cracks and displays the word
“COLLISION.”
Simulator training has
proven effective in many
real-world situations. So
while they may hate going
out in the storm, simulatortrained crews can be ready
for anything.
between the cracks of urban transportation.” Production on the RYNO begins
this year with a number of prototype bikes
already creating a buzz in various cities
around the country.—Kim Stegall
2013
1/13/13 10:47 PM
SHORT NEWS OF THE HUMAN RACE
Invasion or protection?
Drug deals
Students and parents at two Texas schools are facing some interesting
questions: Does new microchip technology violate their civil and religious rights?
And how much control should someone give over to a government entity?
For 15-year-old Andrea Hernandez and her family, the answer is clear. They
believe that the chips embedded in students’ identification cards not only invade
student privacy but they also represent a sacrilege to the Hernandez’s Christian
faith.
The Northside Independent
School District in San Antonio,
Texas, has been experimenting
with tracking microchips since
classes began in August. The
chips are embedded in student
ID badges at two schools. The
“locator” chips use radiofrequency identification (RFID)
transmitters to track the exact
location of the 4,200 students on
its campuses—including in the
locker rooms and restrooms.
For some people, that’s a
problem. A Virginia-based civil
rights group, The Rutherford
Institute, and the American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU) have
protested the move by schools to
keep track of their students.
The chips that Andrea is protesting have been used
“successfully” for years—in China.
The schools say the decision
to use the so-called Smart ID’s
was made with efficiency and safety in mind. The chips allow for accurate counts
of students in case of a lockdown or locating students during an emergency.
However, most agree that the main benefit of the microchips was financial: The
chips represent a potential $1.7 million in funds. The school receives financial aid
for every student who is in school. The chips “prove” a student was in attendance.
As for Andrea Hernandez, John Jay High School offered to remove the microchip but still required her to wear her ID badge. That wasn’t good enough for the
Hernandez family. They said that wearing the badge was like submitting to a false
god because the card itself made it seem like she agreed with the system.
A January ruling by U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia said that the school’s
removal of the RFID chip eliminated Hernandez’s grounds for legal religious
objection and that Hernandez would be required to wear the chipless badge.
Do you think embedded microchips could violate a person’s conscience or privacy
rights? What would you do if you found yourself in a situation in which you believed
your religious convictions were under attack? Send your response to TRAKeditor@
gwnews.com..
Feds vs. states over new laws
18 T R A K
5_Trak_V2_PostsB.indd 18
The law of the United States declares that
marijuana is illegal. That includes the possession, use, or sale of the drug. But some people
do not agree with the law. They think that
individual citizens or states should decide what
do about marijuana.
In the November elections voters in Colorado and Washington legalized the possession
of small amounts of marijuana. That means
that state law now conflicts with federal law.
President Barack Obama says that the U.S.
government will not pursue individuals who
use marijuana. But the Justice Department
must decide whether to prosecute states and
businesses that allow marijuana trafficking.
In Washington the new law allows people
over age 21 to possess one ounce or less of
marijuana but prohibits them from selling it.
Colorado lawmakers must discuss regulations
about growing marijuana. Both states must
figure out how to keep underage users from getting the drug.
Elsewhere, legislators are deciding how to
handle a drug-legalization trend since the measures passed in Colorado and Washington may
pave the way for similar laws in their states.
It should be no surprise that laws change. In
a democratically based government, laws often
evolve as public opinions about morality shift.
Once, the majority of Americans believed
that using marijuana and other “recreational”
drugs was not acceptable.
Now citizens—Christians and non-Christians alike—find themselves polarized regarding drug legalization. Some believe that marijuana use can be allowed—or to let states decide
for themselves. After all, legalizing makes the
substance open to regulation and taxation. Decriminalizing means police can focus on more
urgent crime.
Others resist legalization efforts because
they believe absolute truth—not shifting morals—should shape a nation’s legal code. P.20 .>
AP / SHIUTTERSTOCK
Posts
FEBRUA RY 2013
1/13/13 10:55 PM
Hard to believe, but there it is . . . all spread out.
ACQUITTED
An Egyptian court found former
culture minister Farouq Hosni
not guilty of failing to report 
million of his wealth. Hosni was
culture minister for most of
former Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarak’s  year-rule.
Dozens of former politicians
and officials faced corruption
trials following the  ouster
of Mubarek.
CRASHED
PHOTOS: AP / SHUTTERSTOCK / NAT BELZ
Six Russian citizens were killed
and two seriously injured in a
sledding accident at Mount
Cermis in northern Italy. The
group was riding a snowmobile
and a sled which veered off a
closed ski slope, slamming into
a barrier and becoming airborne before crashing into a
ravine. The incident took place
the night before the Tour di Ski
World Championships, some
events of which were held on
the same slope.
on paper at least—the world’s
happiest people. Panama and
Paraguay topped the list.
Singapore, a wealthy and welldeveloped country, reported
the least positive emotions.
CODED
Curators at Bletchley Park,
Great Britain’s National Codes
and Cipher Centre, are trying to
decode a message found in the
chimney of a house in Surrey,
England. A tiny red cylinder on
the leg bone of a carrier pigeon
skeleton held a slip of paper on
which is written what is
thought to be a World War II
message. Historians believe it
came from Nazi-occupied
France during the  D-Day
invasion.
PEDDLED
Former vice-president Al Gore
sold his  percent stake in
Current TV, a left-leaning cable
news network, to Al-Jazeera,
the Qatar-owned global Arab
media network. Staffers at
Current wasted no time pointing out the irony of the biggest
Clean-Green-Energy proponent
selling out to Big Oil.
POSTED
Israel recently launched a digital library of , Dead Sea
Scroll fragments in a partnership with Google. Parts of
POLLED
A recent Gallup Inc. poll of
nearly , people in 
countries says seven of the
world’s  countries with the
most upbeat attitudes are in
Latin America, making them—
Tungurahua keeps on chugging.
Genesis and Deuteronomy
(including the Ten Commandments) are available for
Internet users to view.
CHALLENGED
A data protection group in
Germany is threatening to
penalize Facebook if the social
networking company doesn’t
bend its “no-fake-names policy” in the country. The group
contends that requiring real
names breaks German law
designed to protect free online
speech. Facebook says the
demand is “without merit.”
BLASTED
Following warnings of
increased volcanic
activity, people living
near the Tungurahua
volcano in central
Ecuador were evacuated in December. For
several weeks the volcano repeatedly shot
lava, blasted hot rock
and gas, and sent ashes
in a giant plume over
the area. The intermittent explosions were
accompanied by loud
bangs and shock
waves.
2013
1/13/13 10:55 PM
Remote readers
“A-B-C-D.” Rhythmic chants of the English alphabet seem unlikely sounds in this
small Ethiopian village where children sleep
alongside cows in mud huts.
“B-i-r-d” writes one precocious child with
his finger. The learning is due to a gift of 20 tablet computers to the village by a group called
One Laptop Per Child.
The Ethiopia tablet donation is part of an
experiment being conducted by researchers at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. When
researchers dropped off boxed tablets in Wenchi, Ethiopia, they were amazed at how quickly
the children tore into the packages and began
learning on their own. “The kids have already
learned more than they would have in one year
of kindergarten,” said Matt Keller, who runs
the Ethiopia project.
Eight-year-old Kelbesa Negusse was the
first to turn on his Motorola Xoom tablet. He
tapped and swiped at the screen and listened
to words like “awesome” said in response to his
efforts. He quickly figured out how to enable
What price
beauty?
Twenty-four-year-old Surasit Areesamarn is on his third nose. Not content
with his original Thai version, he had cosmetic surgery several years ago to change
it to what he calls a “Western” one. Now
he’s decided to get a Korean nose, which is
flatter at the top and more pointed toward
the end, he explains.
“It’s like changing shoes,” Areesamarn
says. “You want the fashionable model.”
Other young professionals sitting
nearby in a Bangkok café laughingly point
out that most of their friends no longer
have their original faces.
It’s no laughing matter for 25-yearold Ratphila Chairungkit, who has spent
1/5 of her life being carved up by elective
cosmetic surgeries.
Most of Chairungkit’s two eye-widen-
the Xoom’s camera, which researchers had
disabled in order to save memory.
Wenchi’s children love using the computers. “I think if you gave them food and water
they would never leave the computer room,”
said Teka Kumula, who charges the tablets at a
nearby solar station.
The project promotes reading to learn,
not just learning to read. If that happens, says
Keller, “We will have proven you can actually reach these kids and change the way that
they ... look at the world.” The hope is that the
project will prove that technology can change
lives—especially in remote or poor areas.
ing surgeries, two nose jobs, lip shaping,
chin enlargement, skin whitening procedures and Botox-like injections were done
at unlicensed, illegal clinics.
Chairungkit hoped to look like Jennifer Lopez. But bumpy eyelids, a droopy
chin, and a swollen nose made her look
“like a witch,” she says. Since then she’s
endured painful and expensive corrective
surgeries and is content with her face—
even if it looks nothing like the pop star.
Thailand swarms with cheap but risky
pseudo-clinics partly because of low prices and partly because of how Thai society
defines beauty. Thais generally look down
on ethnic facial features associated with
the lower classes. Chairungkit’s attitude
reflects this. “I used to look like a factory
worker,” she says. “With a better face, you
have better chances in life.”
Sadly, not all of Thailand’s cosmetic
surgery victims survive. Recently a
woman died from a botched injection.
Her death focused attention on the illegal
beauty industry and caused a government
crackdown in which authorities arrested
20 T R A K
(Cont. from p. 19)
Whether we agree or
disagree with the new
legislation, Christians
have a different source
for evaluating laws.
In 1 Corinthians 10,
Paul encourages his
readers with this truth:
“Everything is permissible, but not everything
is beneficial.” Paul is
affirming that no action
can take grace away
from those who are in
Christ; however, he also
asserts that even in the
freedom of a secure
salvation, some actions,
activities, or objects
have no merit.
According to U.S. law,
drug use is becoming
permissible. But is there
anything worthwhile
to be gained if you take
part? The answer is,
clearly, “No.”
Ratphila
Chairungkit
admits having undergone several
cosmetic surgeries by unlicensed
“doctors.”
nearly 40 illegal practitioners. But as
many as 200 are still in business.
Black market rates for cosmetic procedures are $30 for Botox and $50 for filler
injections, a popular method for elevating
the nose bridge. In licensed Bangkok clinics, injections range from $150-$400.
The chief adviser to the Public Health
Minister in Bangkok, laments, “When
people go to illegal clinics like this, it is
very easy to get an infection—and sometimes it is easy to die.”
FEBRUA RY 2013
1/13/13 10:56 PM
Gin Walker, a New
Orleans partier,
celebrated a doomsday
that never came.
Doom buster
Another Doomsday has come and
gone. December 21, 2012, was a source
of wide speculation since it became
known that a 5125-year cycle carved into
an ancient Mayan stone calendar ended
that day.
There have been Doomsday prophets
since early Roman times. Since then,
scholars have tried making predictions
about the end of the world from the book
of Daniel. Con-men and cult leaders
manipulate catastrophes, planetary
alignments, economic conditions, and
people’s own fears to rally followers. Sci-
entists and environmentalists presume
that human action could destroy all of
humanity.
However, as 12/21 approached, the
idea of doomsday became more comic
than cosmic. It was a favorite punch line
as people wondered whether “always
open” 7/11 stores and Waffle Houses
would be closed on December 22.
Crowds of people gathered for the
non-event. At the ruins of the ancient
Mayan city of Chichen Itza, about 20,000
tourists chanted and danced around
pyramids and ceremonial fires.
Some waited for the end of the world.
Others declared a time of new beginnings. But exactly what was beginning
was unclear. “We are in a frequency of
love,” claimed artist Ivan Gutierrez between long blasts on a conch shell.
Most local residents of Mayan descent found the event perplexing. They
don’t understand the fascination with
the calendar. But the influx of foreigners
did bring financial opportunity. Vendors
eager to sell ceramic handcrafts and
wooden masks called out to passersby,
“Buy something before the world ends!”
As far as the end of the world goes, no
one knows the precise day or hour (Matthew 24:36). But some things are certain: God is in control until the last day.
And He doesn’t need a stone calendar to
figure out when that is.
Grasping for a gun solution
In December President
Barack Obama announced
the formation of a task
force headed by Vice
President Joe Biden to
address gun violence
in the aftermath of the
Dec.14 school shooting in
Newtown, Connecticut.
The president called
the shooting “a wake-up
call” and asked Congress
to reinstate the assault
weapons ban, a Clinton
administration-era law
that expired in 2004.
Biden met with guncontrol advocates and law
enforcement officials and
discussed background
checks for all gun buyers,
banning high-capacity
ammunition magazines,
and federal funding of gun
violence research.
The National Rifle Association in its first comments since the shooting
promised to offer “meaningful contributions to
help make sure this never
happens again.”
Vice President Biden
meets with sportsmen and other gun
owners.
2013
1/13/13 10:56 PM
SportsTrak
Dusty Tuckness in the
air and on the job
Politics best left off the field?
Well, maybe, perhaps, unless . . .
SPORTS COLUMNISTS KNOW
SPORTS. By the time a select few
receive license to splash commentary across sports pages or
even onto television broadcasts,
they typically have covered thousands of games, matches, and
scrimmages—and covered them
straight. They’ve paid their dues.
Whitlock
But some sports journalists
figure that their expertise on
fields of play transfers to the similarly adversarial arena of politics.
Sportswriter Jason Whitlock
has made a career out of that calculation, earning multiple media
platforms via his knowledge of
athletics only to fill his column
inches with thoughts on all things
political.
He was at it again in early December in an interview with CNN
contributor Roland Martin. During
the interview Whitlock defended
the practice of sports journalists’
wading into political waters:
“Sports gets so much attention,
and so many people tune out
the real world, that I try to take
advantage of the opportunities
to talk about the real world when
sports lends itself to that, and try
to open people’s eyes.”
Sports journalists using their
platform for political comment is
not new. But the latitude their
media outlets afford them may
be increasing. When ESPN golf
analyst Paul Azinger criticized
Barack Obama in September
2011 for playing too much golf
and not creating enough jobs,
ESPN reprimanded Azinger and
advised him “that political commentary is best left to those in
that field.”
Indeed, the official ESPN
employee policy states that
“correspondents, producers,
editors, writers, public-facing
talent and those involved in
news assignments and coverage must avoid being publicly
identified with various sides of
political issues.”
But ESPN selectively enforces
that policy.
Much of the public consternation over such political commentary from sports journalists has
to do with the historical function
of sports in American society.
They have long provided relief
from graver concerns. American
soldiers fighting in Iraq and
Afghanistan relied on sports for a
bit of normalcy amid the trauma
of war. But that opportunity for
reprieve may be fading.
—Mark Bergin, adapted for Trak
Saving cowboys
When today’s best bull
riders bust outta the
chute astride raging
Mexican fighting bulls, they’re probably hoping that it’s Dusty
Tuckness who has their backs. The 25-year-old Tuckness has
been offering the best in cowboy protection for almost 13 years
years now. And he has once again earned the highest honor in
his profession, Bullfighter of the Year.
Tuckness won the honor, his third consecutive, during the
National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas. “It’s very humbling,” Tuckness said in an interview. “I just give all the glory to God.”
Members of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association
vote on the award, so Tuckness’ recognition is proof that those
he works with appreciate his extraordinary efforts on their
behalf.
Tuckness grew up in a rodeo family. His father Timber was
a bullfighter, and Dusty first entered the ring as a rodeo clown
when he was 11 years old.
An American bullfighter, a.k.a. rodeo clown, is part protector-part entertainer. His jobs are to keep riders alive and to
“conquer the beast” with fancy moves and fakes—while making
it look like amusement.
Tuckness works 160-170 rodeos per year. When he’s not
bullfighting, Tuckness trains like an athlete or studies videos of
past fights. He understands that when you’re face-to-face with a
1,200-pound bull, being fit and focused is vital for survival.
In an early round at this year’s finals, Tuckness dove across
the back of a bull to free a trapped rider caught between the
animal and the arena fence. Another time a bull’s horn hooked
his shirt. In one of the final rounds, a charging bull knocked him
briefly unconscious.
Tuckness seems to take his heroism in stride. “We definitely
had some action,” Tuckness admited after the finals, adding,
“but that’s why we’re in the arena.”
Asked about all of the hoopla surrounding his awards, Tuckness says, “I just try to focus on my main job, which is saving
cowboys.”—Kim Stegall
22 T R A K N O V E M B E R
5_Trak_V2_Sports.indd 22
2012
1/13/13 11:00 PM
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23 T R A K N O V E M B E R
2012
E X C E L L E N C E - D R I V E N | C H R I S T- C E N T E R E D | P E O P L E - F O C U S E D | F U T U R E - D I R E C T E D
5_Trak_V2_Sports.indd 23
1/13/13 11:01 PM
Playlist
MOVIES & TV BOOKS MUSIC
Booked Karen Swallow Prior • Booked skillfully combines memoir
and love of books. Prior, an English professor at Liberty University,
chooses particular books as lenses through which to make sense of
her life and the world. She is a gifted writer able to portray details
of her life—her love of animals, her desire to be one of the cool
kids, her awkward bookishness—and attach them to universal
themes. She’s also a fine teacher, discussing with wit and Christian discernment
books as varied as Madame Bovary, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Charlotte’s Web, and
Gulliver’s Travels. Readers will come away with a greater appreciation for
particular books and a better understanding of the role that good books can play in
spiritual and character formation.
MOVIES
Prequels and Sequels
For film fans, another year of going
back to established franchises
Here, along with a couple of films that will be of
particular interest to Christians, are the movies
that will likely make headlines and draw crowds
over the next 12 months.
March 8: Oz the Great and Powerful • The first of a number of Oz-based films we’ll see over the next few
years, odds are director Sam Raimi will make this
one the most fun. The prequel recounts the origins of the great wizard’s journey to Oz and early
buzz suggests it’s a winner for families.
April: Mary Mother of Christ • Though an official release
date has yet to be set for the Joel Osteen–produced biblical epic, Lionsgate is already pitching it
as a prequel to Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the
Christ. Fifteen-year-old Odeya Rush stars as Mary,
with Julia Ormond playing her cousin Elizabeth
and Ben Kingsley as Herod. Hugh Bonneville will
reportedly be filling the role of Satan.
May 3: Iron Man 3 / Nov. 3: Thor: The Dark World
Given that they’re both part of the
Avengers-industrial complex, there’s
no point pretending these are separate entities. Robert Downey Jr.
will be sardonic; Chris Hemsworth
will be dashing, and between them
they will dominate the box office
from early summer to late fall.
Rush
5_Trak_V2_Playlist.indd 24
Fever Season Jeanette Keith • In 1878, Memphis suffered through a
yellow fever epidemic that killed 5,000 residents and sickened 12,000
more in less than a month. Doctors, misunderstanding how the disease
spread, blamed poor sanitation rather than mosquitoes breeding in the
city’s many water cisterns. Thousands, including city leaders, pastors,
doctors, and businessmen, fled the city. Keith tells the story of the
epidemic through the stories of individual doctors, nurses, journalists,
pastors, priests, and ordinary people who stayed to care for the sick, often at the
cost of their own lives. Although Keith occasionally gets sidetracked by detours on
race and gender, her meticulous research brings to life heroic characters and shows
how Americans of an earlier age dealt with unimaginable suffering.
Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of
Sleep David K. Randall • We all sleep, but we know little about what
makes a restful sleep and what happens when we don’t get enough
of it. Randall is an entertaining guide through many aspects of sleep
research. Galvanized by an injury sustained while sleepwalking, he
visited a sleep clinic to diagnose his troubles. When that revealed
no major anomalies, he began the research that resulted in this
book. He covers the bizarre—murders committed while sleeping—and the useful:
Could knowledge of circadian rhythms help bettors make money on Monday Night
football? Readers have to browse through a fair bit of evolutionary speculation, but
there’s plenty of good stuff: historical and cultural differences in sleep patterns, the
role of the lowly light bulb, sleep and war, the family bed, and dreams.
Fierce Compassion Kristin & Kathryn Wong • Donaldina Cameron for 40
years headed a mission in San Francisco that rescued Chinese
children and women sold into slavery. She was 25 in 1895 when she
left the comforts of her large Scottish family to become assistant to
the superintendent of the mission house where rescued ones found
refuge. She went on dangerous rescue missions, nursed the sick and
opium-addicted, and brought her growing family of rescued women
to safety after the 1906 earthquake, an outbreak of bubonic fever,
and the Spanish influenza epidemic. She battled Chinese criminal gangs,
corrupt civic authorities, and racism. The Wongs provide an inspiring account of
Cameron’s life and adventures, showing how her Christian faith motivated her to
fight successfully the battle against sex trafficking a century ago. —Susan Olasky
24 T R A K
FEBRUA RY 2013
1/13/13 10:30 PM
MOVIE
Cirque du Soleil
Worlds Away
Cirque du Soleil is many things,
artsy, dreamlike, over the top, and at
times rather bizarre. If you’ve seen one
of their traveling or resident Las Vegas
shows, you can picture it exactly—the
breathtaking stunts, the fantastical
costumes, the exotic music.
Now it’s all on display in the feature-length film, Cirque du Soleil
Worlds Away.
This dazzling 3D journey was
directed and produced by Andrew
Adamson (The Chronicles of Narnia:
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)
along with executive producer James
Cameron (Titanic and Avatar). With
stunning visuals and eccentric music,
Adamson and Cameron wordlessly tell
the story of Mia, a young woman who
falls in love with a handsome aerialist
and must search for him through seven
Cirque worlds.
These worlds, encapsulated in massive circus tents in a misty desert
wasteland, are a compilation of various
Cirque shows including “O,” “KÀ” and
“Mystère,” among others. Each world is
May 17: Star Trek Into Darkness • J.J. Abrams’ first
reboot of the Star Trek brand was the most
fun to be had at the movies in the summer
of 2009. Abrams took his time making the
follow-up, so one can hope it will live up to
its predecessor’s popcorn standard.
June 7: Much Ado About
Nothing • As if he didn’t
have enough fans as
The Avengers
writer/director, Joss
Whedon may
be going for a
more literary
crowd with his
modern retelling of
c
—Megan Basham
on the Lone Ranger’s sidekick, Tonto.
Shakespeare’s classic comedy. (Yes, Joss
Whedon does Shakespeare!) If it’s even
half as entertaining as much of his other
work, it should be well worth a look.
June 21: Monsters University • Another prequel,
but a Pixar sequel. Let’s hope Mike (Billy
Crystal) and Sully uphold the studio’s reputation for quality with their antics in
higher education.
July 3: The Lone Ranger • Disney caught lightning in a bottle when Johnny Depp agreed
to play Captain Jack Sparrow in the family-friendly Pirates of the Caribbean films.
No doubt Disney is hoping lightning will
strike twice and audiences will be equally
charmed by Depp’s sure-to-be unique take
5_Trak_V2_Playlist.indd 25
It’s not unpleasant, though, and
other than one scene things stay clean
in this PG film. But this is not a show
for young children; the outlandish costumes and edgy acts can appear almost
nightmarish at times, particularly on
the big screen. This film, with its marvelous visuals and complex routines, is
well-suited for older Cirque fans and
those who have always wanted to see a
Cirque show, offering all the excitement and beauty of a live Cirque du
Soleil show for a fraction of the cost.
more peculiar than the last. There are
elaborate synchronized swimming
sequences, a flying ship, a pivoting elevated stage, a trampoline number set to
Elvis music, and a psychedelic Beatles
routine.
Visually entrancing as it is, the film
is too long and its plot too simple to
keep the audience interested for 90
minutes. The 3D filming beautifully
captures the raw theatricality of
Cirque, but a 60-minute reel would
have done the job without burdening
the audience with gaudy detail.
Nov. 22: Hunger Games: Catching Fire • Perhaps
the one sure-fire blockbuster not to boast a
superhero, teenage archer Katniss
(Jennifer Lawrence) returns to the arena
where her enemies in the Capitol will try
to take their revenge.
c
Dec. 13: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug •
Who cares if most critics judged An
Unexpected Journey bloated at nearly
three hours? Tolkien lovers, who can never
get enough Middle Earth, will continue to
turn out, hopefully for an improved second outing. The smart ones will have
learned to avoid the 3-D option.
—Megan Basham
2013
1/13/13 10:30 PM
Shabby replacement
Students at Biola
University (shown here)
tried to turn off their
devices for a week.
It’s a common scene on metro
buses sidewalks, campuses,
and even churches . . . :
people pass each other without a glance,
eyes fixed on their smartphone screens,
thumbs tapping away.
During Sunday services, fingers flick
across iPads and iPhones rather than
thumbing through Bible pages. Birthday
wishes stream down Facebook timelines;
debates heat up in condensed text messages; conflicts resolve over emails.
But even with increased connectivity,
some find digital relationships a shabby
replacement for face-to-face interaction.
At Biola University in Southern California,
students tried to turn off their electronic
devices for a week in mid-November to
consider the effects technology has on
their human relationships and relationships with God.
Biola junior Jeremy Hamann, 20,
happened to visit Disneyland with three
friends that week. Leaving his iPhone at
home made him slightly anxious at first.
But once he and his friends adjusted to
not having their cell phones vibrating in
their pockets, Hamann said “it was seri-
ously one of the most genuine times I’ve
ever spent with people in that large stretch
of time.”
Biola professor David Bourgeois, who
teaches information systems, said the barriers technology imposes are something
students rarely think about, especially
because social networking is such a part of
their everyday lives.
“I noticed that walking around campus,
people don’t talk to each other as much
anymore, because they’re always on their
cell phones,” he said. “We’re losing the
depth of relationship that comes from
spending lots of time together. Even time
in silence together can build relationships.”
Entrepreneurs also see an opportunity
to market the void left by digital relationships. Alex Capecelatro, 24, created a site
called At the Pool that helps people get
away from the screen and meet others
face-to-face. He came up with the idea
after moving to a new town where he didn’t
know anyone. He tried searching Facebook
and even joined dating websites to find
new friends, but failed.
“I started wondering, why is it so hard to
meet people?” he said. That’s when he saw
the need for a site that would bring people
together in real life.
5_Trak_V2_Tech.indd 26
PHOTOS: AP / P.27: AP-WILFREDO LEE
Tech&Culture
Within four months of At The Pool’s
launch, more than 10,000 people signed
up all across the United States and 50
countries. More than 85 percent of users
are under 35 years old, and more than half
are under 25.
Capecelatro said the swift and positive
response shows today’s digital generation
is ready for some change in the way social
media takes the “social” out of the equation: “At the end of the day, we are social
people, and the web has often served as a
barrier that has prevented us from feeling
like we need to connect. We always see
people on their cell phones, not connecting
with the people two feet away because they
have this scapegoat.”
But it’s not just human relationships that
lag due to technology. Christians need to
understand how it affects their relationships with God as well, Bourgeois said.
As a digitally savvy professor who uses
technology six to seven hours each day,
Bourgeois said he also was guilty of bringing his iPad to church and peeking into
his email inbox or Facebook page. He now
leaves his iPad at home and brings his old
Bible instead.
Students often tell him that technology
helps them spiritually because it makes
it easier to study and share the Bible. But
Bourgeois disagrees. Real spiritual growth
takes place when you’re not being spoonfed, he said: “Studying the Bible shouldn’t
be easy. It should be something you work
through, think about, and pray about.”
Bourgeois got worried when he saw his
own children preferring to text friends
about problems, because “texting is easier.”
Just like with friendships, Christians are
getting lazier in building a focused relationship with God: “It’s becoming kind of this
lazy relationship ethos, where whatever is
easiest, whatever is simplest, that’s what
you want to do.”
The more pervasive technology becomes
today, the more disciplined Christians
need to be in devoting time to God, and
respecting their neighbors enough to put
away their phones. Set aside 30, or even
10, minutes a day to turn everything off to
spend time with God, Bourgeois suggested.
“You’re then saying, ‘This is important to
me, Lord. You’re my priority.’ Taking effort
to be with the Lord is something that is being lost today.” Thoughts? [email protected]
2013
1/13/13 10:57 PM
Mosquito
mutants
Imagine being outdoors on a warm summer night. Did you
think about swatting
insects?
For folks in Key West, Florida,
those flying pests may soon be
genetically modified
mosquitos.
A proposed experiment by
Florida mosquito control officials and British company
Oxitec is seeking to reduce the
risk of dangerous dengue fever
in Key West by releasing hundreds of thousands of the airborne mutants into the
Florida skies.
Dengue fever, which is
spread by Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, manifests itself with a
high fever, a rash, and other
flu-like symptoms. U.S. health
officials had thought the virus
eradicated in the country until
93 cases showed up in Florida
in 2009-2010. There is no vaccine for the fever, which is not
deadly but can increase susceptibility to another form of
fever that is.
The Florida experiment
involves the release of non-
Patti Sprague, left, and Jason Garcia, both field inspectors with the Florida Keys
Mosquito Control District, inspect a backyard pond at a home in Key West, Fla.
biting male mosquitoes that
have been genetically modified to pass along a birth defect
to any offspring. The defect
kills the offspring before they
can reproduce. The plan is
that after several generations,
the defective males will have
essentially killed off the Aedes
aegypti population.
If the experiment works,
the dengue fever problem will
have been solved at relatively
little cost and without the use
of pesticides.
Yet some residents of the
Florida tourist town worry
about the potential threat to
During President Barack Obama’s first
term, his administration pleased constituents anxious about air quality by setting
strict pollution rules, including some that
contributed to the closure of more than
100 coal-fired power plants. During his
reelection campaign, Obama postponed
some environmental decisions that were
controversial and expensive.
With a second term secured, however,
Obama and his EPA have less incentive to
postpone environmental rules that may
burden U.S. industry for decades to come.
Since the EPA has labeled greenhouse
the Keys’ ecosystem; others
are concerned about a possible
danger to humans. Several
concerned citizens have collected signatures, written blog
posts, and started websites
decrying the science and ethics behind the mosquito
research.
Oxitec’s claims that its
technology works are backed
up by scientific journal and
peer reviews as well as experiments elsewhere. But that’s no
assurance for Mila de Mier, a
Key West resident, who has
collected more than 118,000
signatures on an online peti-
Green burden
gases like carbon dioxide “pollutants,” the
agency has authority under the Clean Air
Act to regulate their emissions not just
from power plants and cars, but from
churches, hospitals, farms, and schools.
When fully implemented in coming years,
tion against the mosquito
experiment. “There are more
questions than answers and
we need more testing to be
done,” states de Mier’s
petition.
“The public resistance and
the need to reach some agreement between mosquito control and the public, I see that
as a very significant issue,”
says Phil Lounibos of the
Florida Medical Entomology
Laboratory.
For now, public outcry
against the genetically modified insects, right or wrong,
may be insurmountable.
these regulations could cost up to $400
billion annually.
The EPA also may soon decide on regulations that would reduce sulfur emissions
from gasoline by two-thirds, protect fish in
power plant cooling reservoirs, and
require farmers to develop plans to prevent oil and gas spills. Under Obama, the
EPA has proclaimed three dozen major
energy regulations (though some were initiated under George W. Bush). Many of
those rules will cost the economy more
than $100 million a year. No surprise if the
next four years are equally burdensome..
2013
1/16/13 9:15 AM
AP PHOTO/MARCIO JOSE SANCHEZ / SHUTTERSTOCK
feature HD
video cameras,
multiple noisereduction microphones, and WiFi
capabilities that
give remote employees a physical presence in
the workplace.
Of course, as
with any new
technology, there
Senior software engineer, Josh Faust, seen on screen, navigates
his company’s office using a Beam remote presence system, as
are downsides.
fellow engineer Stephanie Lee, at right, works on a project at
The robots can
Suitable Technologies in Palo Alto, Calif.
be difficult to
navigate—they
get stuck if they
wander into
areas with poor
Internet connectivity, and stairs
are a disaster.
And the technology can’t entirely replace faceOn Monday mornings New York
to-face interactions and casual
City web designer Marissa Fox
camaraderie of being right there in
checks in on a co-worker’s
the office.
“I don’t think face-to-face is
client presentation, chats with colgoing away,” observes Pamela Hinds,
leagues in the break room, and attends
co-director of Stanford University’s
staff meetings much like when she lived
Center on Work, Technology, & Organiin Manhattan.
zation. “But the question is, how much
But she doesn’t live in New York. She
face-to-face can be replaced by this
lives in Bradenton, Florida, with her
technology?”
family of five.
Already workers living remotely and
The technology making this twophysicians seeing patients in faraway
places-at-once dream possible is a
hospitals are using RPDs. And analysts
mobile video-conferencing device from
predict the machines have other uses:
Suitable Technologies, a Californiaoverseas factory inspections, museum
based company. Called the Beam
tours, family member visits, and so on.
Remote Presence Device (RPD), the
The Beam RPD costs around
robot-like machine features a face$16,000, so the machines aren’t cheap.
sized (17”) screen and a human-sized
But some feel that compared to long
(5’2”) frame so it allows for more
commutes, overseas trips, or crossinformal, bonding types of interaction
country moves, the technology may pay
between people separated by distance.
for itself.
“This gives you that casual interSoftware engineer Josh Faust works
action that you’re used to at work,”
for Suitable Technologies. He “Beams”
engineer Dallas Goecker says, speaking
to his office in California from his home
on a Beam. “I’m sitting in my desk area
in Hawaii.
with everybody else. I’m part of their
Sure, he can’t actually play a comconversations and their socializing.”
pany game of Ping-Pong or eat the
Thanks to computers, instant messagcatered lunches, but he can show up
ing, and video-conferencing, employees
in the room and join the conversation.
are increasingly able to work remotely.
What’s more, he feels part of the team.
Telepresence robots like the Beam
Robo-worker
ARE YOU CULTURALLY
LITERATE? OKAY, THEN . . .
What’s a
“cup of joe”?
The folksy term “cup of joe”
refers to the ubiquitous brown beverage
Americans swill by the bucketful—an
average of 3.1 cups per day per person.
But the origins of the term are about
as clear as a cup of Turkish espresso.
One common account stems from a
World War I story. A certain Josephus
Daniels ordered a ban on alcohol’s being
served on board Navy ships. This deprivation supposedly led to an spike in coffee consumption. The men dubbed their
drinks “cups of joe” in mock tribute to
the man who’d denied them their spirits.
The tale is interesting but unlikely
since the term isn’t recorded anywhere
until 16 years after Daniels’ order.
Another theory asserts that the word
“joe” is slang for an ordinary guy, as in
“Joe Blow,” “Joe College,” and “average
joe.” By this line of thought, a “cup of joe”
would be brew for the common man.
The third—and most likely—etymology is that “joe” comes from the words
“java” and/or “jamoke,” both words for
coffee drinks.
That idea is supported by a citation in
a 1931 manual: “Jamoke. Java. Joe.
Coffee. Derived from the words Java and
Mocha, where originally the best coffee
came from.”
2013
1/13/13 10:57 PM
Murphy High School teacher Leland Howard attempts to
salvage items where his algebra classroom once stood in
a temporary building at the school. Residents of Mobile,
Alabama, worked to clean up and assess the damage from a
Christmas Day tornado that caused $10 million damage to
the historic high school. With only a handful of injuries and
no deaths reported statewide from the violent storms, the
head of the state’s emergency response said it was difficult to
fathom how the toll wasn’t worse. Murphy H.S. student were
temporarily relocated to a nearby middle school for the start
of second semester.
5_Trak_V2_Halls.indd 29
PHOTOS: PASO ROBLES HIGH SCHOOLA
AP PHOTOS / G. M. ANDREWS
Hallsoflearning
2013
1/13/13 10:48 PM
LastWords
‘This evil is not new,
it’s just never been
so close.’
MIKE MANCINI,
college pastor at
Walnut Hill
Community Church
near the Sandy Hook
Elementary School at
which 27 people were
killed following a
shooting rampage, to
World Magazine.
‘People want cheap sushi,
and this is what happens.’
New York wholesaler ROBERT
DeMASCO on a new study by the
organization Oceana that found 39
percent of seafood sold in grocery
stores or restaurants was mislabled. Out of 16 sushi bars in the
study, all peddled mislabeled fish.
‘Priorities change when you struggle to pay
rent and buy food.’
London-based Spanish fashion designer CRISTINA
VALLS, who plans to do holiday shopping for her family in the United Kingdom, after they’ve lost jobs in
Spain.
‘. . . if the stereotype
helps others feel
better about their
loss, I guess our
identity has
helped us do
our Christian
duty, as we
say in the
South.’
‘24 tons’
MARK WILSON, secretary
of the Alabama Historic
Association, joking about the
insulting “Catholics vs.
Cousins” T-shirt that sold out
before Alabama trounced
Notre Dame in the BCS championship football game..
30 T R A K
5_Trak_V2_LastWords.indd 30
AP / WALNUT HILL WEBSITE
The weight of IVORY ELEPHANT
TUSKS that Malaysian customs
officials on Dec. 10 found hidden
inside two shipping containers that
appeared to be filled with mahogany
boards. It was reportedly the largest
seizure of illegal tusks in history. In
some markets ivory is selling for
more than $1,000 per pound. “It’s
extremely depressing,” elephant
researcher Iain Douglas-Hamilton
told The New York Times.
FEBRUA RY 2013
1/13/13 10:58 PM
‘We don’t think the
timing of the visit is
helpful, and they
[Google] are well
aware of our views.’
State Department spokeswoman
Victoria Nuland, asked about Google
chief ERIC SCHMIDT’s trip to North
Korea. Schmidt says the trip was a
private trip, although, as this picture
shows, he traveled to Pyongyang with
former New Mexico Gov. Bill
Richardson, left, and Google Ideas
think tank director, Jared Cohen.
‘If they DO
CREDIT
mint the coin, I’m going to
open an “Everything’s a
Trillion Dollars” store right
next to the Treasury
and just hope.’
Tweeter POURMECOFFEE on the
tongue-in-cheek proposal that to solve
the government’s debt crisis, they simply create a $1 trillion-dollar coin..
5_Trak_V2_LastWords.indd 31
31 T R A K
FEBRUA RY 2013
1/13/13 10:58 PM
Major
Majors
on the
SPREAD AD
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32 T R A K
TREK_LIGONIER_RBC_AD_R1.indd
2
5_Trak_V2_LastWords.indd
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FEBRUA RY 2013
12/19/12 10:59
4:03 PM
PM
1/13/13

Sample - WORLD News Group

Transcription

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