This video clip is addictive!!! I'll never watch ping pong in the same way again.

Many thanks to Maja for getting me hooked on this at a party on Saturday night.

OK -- I'm not normally a glutton for sad stories (Terminator 2 made me cry)... but I have to pass this along.

According to a story in the Globe and Mail on Saturday, all 20-40 bears in a research study on human/bear interaction in Kamatchatka were killed this spring - likely by the Russian mafia. For the past 7 years, Canadian researchers Charlie Russell and Maureen Enns, have been going to this remote location to test whether fear of humans and attacks is a learned behaviour amongst bears. Their research results and careful diaries/photos have shown that grizzly bears and humans can live together. They also started to develop ranger training programs in Russia to protect these animals from illegal poaching.

Which is why in May this year it looks like the mafia flew into their remote camp, shot all of the bears, dumped their bodies in a lake or in the remote forest, and nailed a baby grizzly bear's gall bladder to the wall of the cabin as a warning.

You want to help the environment??!?? Fight organized crime. Unroot corruption and ensure that laws are enforced.

Winnipeg is humming with activity this week and next, with up to 800 international delegates arriving for the Lutheran World Federation Assembly. The meeting, held every six years, is focused this time on the theme of "For the healing of the world."

The start of the assembly has been marred by visa controversies... 51 participants, including 38 delegates and 14 others (including 12 youth) had failed to receive visas for entry to Canada. Over half of those affected were from India, where 20 delegates and seven others had either been denied visas or were still awaiting the outcome of their visa applications. Other affected countries were Ethiopia (five delegates), Indonesia (three delegates), Madagascar (two delegates and one journalist), Cameroon (one delegate and two stewards), Bangladesh (one delegate and one steward), Democratic Republic of Congo (one delegate and one adviser), Senegal (two delegates), Liberia (one steward), Philippines (one steward), Rwanda ((one delegate), Sierra Leone (one delegate) and South Africa (one delegate).

It's quite shameful for the Canadian government, which is normally very open to international meetings.

I'm looking forward to seeing how things go... I'll be billetting a woman who is one or the organizers for a gathering of Lutherans Concerned/ North America, working to bring a vision for wholeness in gender identity, sexual orientation and eros-based justice to the Assembly. It will be interesting to get her perspective on the meeting and how things are going.

And, hopefully, I'll bump into some of the youth delegates who went to the Pre-Assembly Youth Conference (PAYC) in Guelph last week. The Web site has a lot of info about what adults told youth at the meeting, but very little about what the youth told the adults in terms of priorities for healing the world.

The news is now reporting that the US army likely killed the two sons of Saddam Hussein today.

Call me crazy, but I find it hard to get excited when anyone's sons are killed. No matter what someone has done, killing just makes me sad. Especially when the reports keep emphasizing the family connections. When I think of sons, I think of fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, cousins.... people who have loved each other... living bonds replaced by vast networks of pain and grief.

There's got to be a better way to resolve conflicts than killing.

Hehehehe.... Apparently, the Clinton Presidential Foundation in Little Rock, Arkansas, is raising money to build and maintain Clinton's presidential library and center. As part of their strategy, they are publishing a celebrity cookbook.

A far cry from George Bush senior's strategy of accepting large gifts of cash for his library from thankful wealthy Kuwaitis following Gulf War I.

Hmmmm.... I wonder if we'll ever have a Howard Dean presidential library bake sale?