Poor Mojo's Newswire

Egyptian husbands will soon be legally allowed to have sex with their dead wives - for up to six hours after their death. The controversial new law is part of a raft of measures being introduced by the Islamist-dominated parliament. It will also see the minimum age of marriage lowered to 14and the ridding of women’s rights of getting education and employment. The subject of a husband having sex with his dead wife arose in May 2011 when Moroccan cleric Zamzami Abdul Bari said marriage remains valid even after death. He also said that women have the right to have sex with her dead husband, alarabiya.net reported. It seems the topic, which has sparked outrage, has now been picked up on by Egypt’s politicians. TV anchor Jaber al-Qarmouty slammed the notion of letting a husband have sex with his wife after her death under the so-called ‘Farewell Intercourse’ draft law. . . .

“Big Hy” — his handle among many loyal customers — would almost certainly be cast as Hollywood Enemy No. 1 but for a few details. He is actually Hyman Strachman, a 92-year-old, 5-foot-5 World War II veteran trying to stay busy after the death of his wife. And he has sent every one of his copied DVDs, almost 4,000 boxes of them to date, free to American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. With the United States military presence in those regions dwindling, Big Hy Strachman will live on in many soldiers’ hearts as one of the war’s more shadowy heroes. “It’s not the right thing to do, but I did it,” Mr. Strachman said, acknowledging that his actions violated copyright law. “If I were younger,” he added, “maybe I’d be spending time in the hoosegow.” Capt. Bryan Curran, who recently returned from Afghanistan, estimated that from 2008 to 2010, Mr. Strachman sent more than 2,000 DVDs to his outfits there. . . .

The visions children have in near-death situations often have a great deal to do with what they already believe. Culture to culture, these experiences involve bright light, celestial figures and a sense of watching your own body from above and sometimes all three. According to Kevin Nelson, a neuroscientist and the author of “The Spiritual Doorway in the Brain,” adults often have a sense of looking back over a life; young children, lacking that perspective, tend to report “castles and rainbows, often populated with pets, wizards, guardian angels, and like adults, they see relatives and religious figures, too.” It’s hard to convey to anyone who grew up without the idea of God just how fully the language, stories and “logic” of the Bible can dominate a young mind, even — perhaps especially — the mind of a toddler. To some degree, I speak from experience. When I was not quite 4 — about the same age as Colton Burpo — my own newly born-again parents sat me down to impart the good news about Jesus, the son of God, who was born in a manger surrounded by sheep and donkeys and ended up being nailed to a cross on a hill and dying there. On the third day, he rose from the grave (you could tell it was he from the nail holes), and he did all of this to pay for my sins. If I accepted him into my heart, I would be rewarded with everlasting life in heaven. Otherwise, I would burn eternally with the Devil in hell. So we needed, urgently, to pray. “Right now?” I said, or something like that. I remember not feeling 100 percent ready to ask this undead man, with his holey extremities, to dwell inside me. “Well, yes,” I recall my mother saying. “Unless you’d like to spend eternity in the lake of fire, crying out for a drink of water.” My father laid his hand on my shoulder. “We don’t want that, do we?” “Daddy and I would hear you from our mansion up in heaven,” my mother said. “But we wouldn’t be able to help.” . . .