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Deaf beauty queen was text-messaging when hit by train

Deaf beauty contest winner Tara McAvoy was walking along the railroad tracks from her Austin, Texas, text-messaging family and friends, when a train struck her and killed her.

The 18-year-old was going to represent the Lone Star State at the Miss Deaf America Pageant in Palm Desert, California, this July.

It was one of many pageants McAvoy had entered, "both in the hearing community and in the deaf community," said Claire Bugen, superintendent of the Texas School for the Deaf, on Wednesday. McAvoy was a 2005 graduate of the school, where she played sports and acted in theater.

"She was a beautiful, bright, young deaf woman," said Bugen.

The Austin Police Department received a 911 call from Union-Pacific, which owns the train, at 2:18 p.m. Monday, said Laura Albrecht, spokesperson for the Austin Police Department. (Watch as witnesses describe accident -- 1:33)

"Our understanding is that she text-messaged the family, and yes, the family members were going to pick her up," Albrecht added.

McAvoy was walking northbound along the railroad ties, with her back to the train as it approached, said Austin Police Department detective David Fugitt. "We have information that she was text-messaging family and friends" at the time, he added.

A horn sounded, but "they weren't able to get a response" from her, Fugitt said.

"At that point, they activated their emergency braking system, but they weren't able to stop in time."

A snowplow -- commonly referred to as "cattle-guards" for pushing items away from the tracks to avoid train damage -- was what struck McAvoy, who was estimated to be "no more than a foot" from the tracks, Fugitt said.

"The snowplow extends approximately 16 inches on each side from the train," he said, and was mounted to the front engine of the train.

McAvoy died at the scene from "multiple traumatic injuries," Fugitt said.

Fugitt said there were witnesses who had heard the horn sound and that the police department was actively seeking anyone who had seen the accident occur.

"She will be sorely missed," said Laura Loeb-Hill, director of the Miss Deaf Texas Pageant, in an e-mail Wednesday. "Tara represented Texas with dignity and pride."

Hey Dad!

This is not a joke. It's real.

Big Faith

Now who can argue with that? I think we're all indebted to Victory Tabernacle Holiness Church for stating what needed to be said. I am particularly glad that these lovely children are here today to see that sign. Not only was it authentic religious gibberish, it expressed the courage little seen in this day and age.

Also, I'm impressed that in their 'text' speak they have four N's but only two O's.

Thanks for the picture mexicanclaudio, but please try to keep your shadow off the sign next time.

How to Win a Religious Debate

William Tyndale (sometimes spelled Tindall or Tyndall) (c. 1494 – 1536) was a 16th-century Protestant reformer and scholar who, influenced by the work of Desiderius Erasmus and Martin Luther, translated the Bible into the Early Modern English of his day. Tyndale was the first English translation to draw directly from Hebrew and Greek texts, and the first to take advantage of the new medium of print, which allowed for its wide distribution. In 1535, Tyndale was arrested on the orders of King Henry VIII, jailed in the castle of Vilvoorde outside Brussels for over a year, tried for heresy and burned at the stake. He was strangled before his body was burnt.

He's the guy who wrote the English Bible.

Much of Tyndale's work eventually found its way into the King James Version (or "Authorised Version") of the Bible, published in 1611, which, as the work of 54 independent scholars revising the existing English versions, drew significantly on Tyndale's translations.

In translating the Bible, Tyndale introduced new words into the English language, and many were subsequently used in the King James Bible:

• Jehovah (from a transliterated Hebrew construction in the Old Testament; composed from the Tetragrammaton YHWH.
• Passover (as the name for the Jewish holiday, Pesach or Pesah),
• Atonement (= at + onement), which goes beyond mere "reconciliation" to mean "to unite" or "to cover", which springs from the Hebrew kippur, the Old Testament version of kippur being the covering of doorposts with blood, or "Day of Atonement".
• scapegoat (the goat that bears the sins and iniquities of the people in Leviticus, Chapter 16)

He also coined such familiar phrases as:

• let there be light
• the powers that be
• my brother's keeper
• the salt of the earth
• a law unto themselves
• filthy lucre
• it came to pass
• gave up the ghost
• the signs of the times
• the spirit is willing
• live and move and have our being
• fight the good fight

That's right - he was the Quentin Tarantino of the English Bible. "Let there be light" was his "Royal with Cheese."

Some of the new words and phrases introduced by Tyndale did not sit well with the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, using words like 'Overseer' rather than 'Bishop' and 'Elder' rather than 'Priest', and (very controversially), 'congregation' rather than 'Church' and 'love' rather than 'charity'. Tyndale contended (citing Erasmus) that the Greek New Testament did not support the traditional Roman Catholic readings.

Contention from Roman Catholics came from real or perceived errors in translation. Thomas More commented that searching for errors in the Tyndale Bible was similar to searching for water in the sea, and charged Tyndale's translation of Obedience of a Christian Man with having about a thousand falsely translated errors. Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall of London declared that there were upwards of 2,000 errors in Tyndale's Bible. Tunstall in 1523 had denied Tyndale the permission required under the Constitutions of Oxford (1409), that were still in force, to translate the Bible into English.

In response to allegations of inaccuracies in his translation in the New Testament, Tyndale wrote that he never intentionally altered or misrepresented any of the Bible in his translation, and would never do so.

While translating, Tyndale followed Erasmus' (1522) Greek edition of the New Testament. In his Preface to his 1534 New Testament ("WT unto the Reader") he not only goes into some detail about the Greek tenses but also points out that there is often a Hebrew idiom underlying the Greek. The Tyndale Society adduces much further evidence to show that his translations were made directly from the original Hebrew and Greek sources he had at his disposal. For example, the Prolegomena in Mombert's William Tyndale's Five Books of Moses show that Tyndale's Pentateuch is a translation of the Hebrew original.

Meaning, his is the closest to the original text from all the other authors... except that he added some much needed flair.

Be sure to break this article out for your next Jehovah's Witnesses - they really like to tell you that the Bible is directly from God's lips to the page. You tell 'em, nope - Bill Tyndale's.

Texts From Last Night

http://www.textsfromlastnight.com/

(902): and then I told her I was too drunk. She started to cry, and told me this always happens to her and that she thinks shes ugly. I pretended I was asleep and then she farted.

(703): it wasn't lemon gatorade

(440): wait.. the condom broke. ehh whatever i think im already 2 months pregnant

(207): It took him longer to undo my bra than he lasted..

(847): i took some ambien and I TRIPPED out...i went into my mom's room to say goodnight and i don't remember anything...she said that i got really pissed at her because we were living in the Keebler elf tree and she was visiting other trees, then i started laughing hysterically and she goes "whats so funny?" and i go "there are 7 people sitting on my knees" and she goes "doesn't that hurt?" and i said "no we're sitting in a bowl" and then i capped it off and said "join the crazy train bro" and passed out.

(323): You got in a fight last night?
(818): Yeah! Some dude in the bathroom...he was standing there and I notice he's got the same shirt as me on so I'm like...dude you should have called me, we look like idiots...he didn't say anything...so i got pissed and hit him...completely decimated and my hand was all bloody and covered with glass afterward...weird dude, never saw him again that night or since.
(323): Um...Did this guy happen to look almost exactly like you?