Hey kids, it’s Yucca Mountain Johnny!!

When my son was about five years old, someone gave him a stuffed frog. We soon noticed something was strange about this frog – it’s legs were sewn on backward. I joked that maybe he lived near Fernald . “What’s Fernald?” my son asked. And we had what is referred to as a ‘teachable moment’ when I told him about the infamous (around Southwest Ohio anyway) nuclear weapons plant that was shut down in 1989 after it was found to be polluting the environment.

So we named the frog “Fernaldo.” Now that my son’s a teenager, Fernaldo is packed away somewhere in the basement with the Pokemon cards and Beanie Babies. I hadn’t thought about Fernaldo in ages – until I read the recent news stories in the AP and Newsweek about Yucca Mountain Johnny, the cartoon character created by the US Department of Energy to help ‘educate’ schoolkids about the nuclear waste site in Nevada.

Johnny’s got his own Web site – the Yucca Mountain Youth Zone. There, kids can play games and solve puzzles and learn all about the Yucca Mountain radioactive waste dump. How fun! If you put your cursor over the headlamp on his helmet, it even lights up. Drag the cursor over his mouth, and it moves, but no sound comes out. (Insert your own punch line here.)

Apparently Johnny’s nothing new. According to Sourcewatch, he’s just the latest iteration in a decades-long public relations effort by the nuclear industry geared toward the kiddies.

I might just take Fernaldo out of storage today. He, too, may have a bright future ahead as a mascot for the Department of Energy. Especially if he glows in the dark.

The state of the world’s kids

So here are a few depressing statistics you’ll find in the June issue of DisciplesWorld:
Nearly 18 percent of children in the United States live in poverty. Worldwide, the statistic jumps to 50 percent — 1 billion kids in poverty.

More than 600 million children live without adequate shelter; 8.4 million work in child labor; and 2 million are being used in the commercial sex trade.

Then there are the 1 million kids living in detention, the 11 million who die each year before their fifth birthday, and the 16,000 who die from hunger-related causes every day.

And let’s not forget the 34 million children in sub-Sarahan Africa who have been orphaned by AIDS, a disease that is entirely preventable through education and simple precautions, and that is currently manageable in the U.S.

Now here are some statistics you won’t find in the magazine.

To date, according to the National Priorities Project (www.nationalpriorities.com), the U.S. has spent nearly $300 billion on its war in Iraq. That figure is based solely on Congressional appropriations. The Project further notes that the money spent on the Iraq war could instead have:

Fully funded global anti-hunger efforts for 11 years,

Insured 168,543,437 children for one year,

Ensured that every child in the world was given basic immunizations for 93 years, or

Fully funded worldwide AIDS programs for 28 years.

According to James Morris, executive director of the World Food Programme, with “even a small percentage of the commitment that the world has made to Iraq, you could feed every hungry child in the world.

Now, a new study by Columbia University economist Joseph E. Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001, and Harvard lecturer Linda Bilmes concludes that the total costs of the Iraq war could top the $2 trillion mark. This total, which is far above the government’s pre-war projections, takes into account the long-term healthcare costs for the 16,000 U.S. soldiers injured in Iraq so far.

As a mother, I cringe at the thought of babies dying from the slow, tortuous effects of gnawing hunger; of toddlers languishing from diseases that are entirely preventable; of small children working under conditions we wouldn’t sanction for our pets.

As a Christian, a follower of the Christ who warned, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me,” I am ashamed.

Next month, I will participate in Pentecost 2006: Building a Covenant for a New America. The event, sponsored by Sojourners magazine and hosted by National City Christian Church in Washington, D.C., invites participants to “three days of putting faith into action to build the movement to overcome poverty in the U.S., and throughout the world.”

I hope I’ll return with ideas for how we at the magazine, and you our readers, can work in concrete ways to improve life for our children, at home and around the world.

Olive branch or stick? You decide....

Several days after the lapdog mainstream media 'reported' what it was told to report about the letter from Iranian President Ahmadinejad's 18-page letter to President Bush, they're now spoon-feeding us bits and pieces of it.

Bush and his people have dismissed it as a bunch of philosophizing that didn't really even address the 'nucular' issue. But more recent stories say it was very much an appeal to Bush's own professed Christian beliefs (including Jesus and the prophets, which Islam acknowledges).

I wanted to see the whole thing so I went looking for it via Google. I found it on the Web site of Le Monde, a French newspaper. The Financial Times also excerpted it and put up a link to the full text of the letter. Maybe others have now as well.

Opus Dei vs. Opie?

I'm the first to admit that headline writing isn't my thing...but this one (for a Da Vinci Code-related story published in The New Zealand Herald) was obvious! Their headline: "Opus Dei, Ron Howard at odds over Da Vinci Code." Close folks, but no cigar. Interesting article though.

The best take (IMHO) on how to respond - if at all - to the Da Vinci Code comes from an interview with Brian McLaren in the most recent Sojourners weekly e-newletter (also accessible on the Sojo Web site for free, you have to register to read it).

McLaren opens with this: "I think a lot of people have read the book, not just as a popular page-turner but also as an experience in shared frustration with status-quo, male-dominated, power-oriented, cover-up-prone organized Christian religion. We need to ask ourselves why the vision of Jesus hinted at in Dan Brown's book is more interesting, attractive, and intriguing to these people than the standard vision of Jesus they hear about in church."

Amen bro.

The Lost Gospel of Judas

If you're not freaking out over the upcoming Da Vinci Code movie (and the book, which came out, like, 3 years ago) here is something far more interesting :The Lost Gospel of Judas.

You may have encountered the Gospel of Judas through the very unobjective lens of the early church father Irenaeus of Lyons, who blasted it in Against Heresies. There's a lot more to it than just the widely-reported fact that Jesus asks Judas to betray him in the Gospel of Judas. Here is another glimpse, along the lines of the Gospel of Thomas and other Nag Hammadi texts, into how diverse early Christianities were. You can buy the book at major retailers or online - it's a quick and interesting read and it's worth your time and money.

Tomorrow, I have an interview with Dr. Marvin Meyer, the Chapman University religion professor who co-authored the National Geographic book on the lost gospel and is one of its translators. Meyer was also featured in the National Geographic TV special recently. Look for the article in an upcoming issue of DisciplesWorld.

For more reading here's a Wikipedia link too.