The World Around You

I don’t make the news, I just note when it occurs. I have absolutely no commentary to go with this story,

BEIJING (Reuters) - Hundreds of Japanese tourists and local prostitutes held a three-day orgy at a luxury hotel in southern China, newspapers say, sparking outrage and prompting police to launch an investigation.

The five-star hotel where the orgy was reported to have been held earlier this month has been closed pending investigations, a spokeswoman for the Guangdong Provincial Public Security Bureau told Reuters.

“We are conducting an investigation into the case to find out whether media reports tally with reality,” she said. “We have suspended the business of Zhuhai International Convention Centre Hotel.”

The official People’s Daily newspaper said more than 400 Japanese tourists were serviced by some 500 prostitutes from the coastal cities of Zhuhai and Shenzhen during their stay from September 16 to 18.

Media reports of the orgy have provoked outrage — particularly on the Internet, where Chinese Web surfers accused the tourists of choosing the date for their high jinks to humiliate China and celebrate Japan’s wartime behaviour.

The Washington Whispers section of US News and World Report reports,

Have Lockheed Martin executives watched too many episodes of Bravo’s Queer Eye for the Straight Guy? When the defense giant was selected in July as one of three finalists to design and build a warship of the future, Navy program execs raised one minor quibble: The name Lockheed chose for the small, slick ship seemed a bit, well, queer. Lockheed chose Sea Blade to connote a swift, agile vessel on the ready to chase down bad guys in shallow coastal waters. That seemed to be perfectly in line with the Navy’s concept for a littoral, or coastal, combat ship. But Navy officials whined that Sea Blade sounded too much like the Washington Blade, the capital’s influential gay paper. The Navy claims it never asked Lockheed to change the name, but, lo and behold, Lockheed stopped calling it Sea Blade. “They’re so freaking homophobic,” laments an insider of the service. All that makes Chris Crain, executive editor of the Blade, wonder if he has some stealth Pentagon readers: “I’m surprised officials at the Defense Department are aware of the gay publications out there.”

There is still at least one area of American life where segregation is alive and well, in the practice of our faith. The Birmingham News puts the focus on one church that is attempting to bring people of all backgrounds together,

Every once in a while, a pastor starts up a new church with the stated goal of crossing cultural boundaries and bridging racial divides.

Frequently, those pastors find that declaring a new church’s diversity goal does not necessarily make any inroads against Sunday morning segregation - the tendency of people to worship at churches that are made up of their same ethnic and racial categories.

But there’s something different about the Rev. Joel Miller. For one, any church Miller starts will be biracial. Miller is black. His wife is white. They have three children.

The 38-year-old Miller last Sunday launched Providence Church, which meets Sundays at 10:30 a.m. in the auditorium of Homewood High School.

“I want to be a bridge,” Miller said.

The first service drew 140 people, including a Hispanic businessman, a black family from Liberia and many white professionals, he said. “It’s an eclectic group of people,” Miller said. It will be a “transcultural” church, he promised.

I heard a discussion on this topic on the Tavis Smiley show back in the spring (link here) with Rev. Curtiss Paul DeYoung and George Yancey, authors of United by Faith. It is a wall that continues to separate us and there must be effort on both sides to ensure that we do not continue to feel that isolating ourselves based on race is acceptable in any area of our lives.

NOTE: I also want to thank the Birmingham News for this positive story at a time when there is a lot of negativity in Alabama on so many fronts.

Without Edgerrin James, the Colts had to rely on the air attack and Peyton Manning showcased what he can do with a franchise record 6 TD passes. The Indianapolis Star reports,

Manning became the first NFL quarterback since Washington’s Mark Rypien in 1991 to throw six touchdown passes, one off the league record shared by five players. Manning completed 20-of-25 passes for 314 yards as the Colts splattered the New Orleans Saints 55-21.

The Colts’ point total was their largest since a 55-23 Halloween slaughter of Denver in 1988. It was the most points the Colts have scored in a road game.

“One of our goals was to come out and try to get something going early to get the crowd out of it, if we could,” said Manning, who did not play during the fourth quarter, ending his string of consecutive snaps under center at 1,633.

“Once we got the momentum,” Colts coach Tony Dungy offered, “it was like a shark in the water.”

The crowd of 70,020, the Saints’ 24th consecutive sellout, booed enthusiastically through much of the first half, but went eerily silent during the third quarter. Empty seats don’t make much noise.

The Colts acquitted themselves well on national television, as they moved to 4-0 on the season.

Cross-posted on Sportsblog.