Wednesday, July 26, 2006
That Music You Hear is The Twilight Zone Theme Song
DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) -- Irish archaeologists Tuesday heralded the discovery of an ancient book of psalms by a construction worker while driving the shovel of his backhoe into a bog.
The approximately 20-page book has been dated to the years 800-1000. Trinity College manuscripts expert Bernard Meehan said it was the first discovery of an Irish early medieval document in two centuries.
"This is really a miracle find," said Pat Wallace, director of the National Museum of Ireland, which has the book stored in refrigeration. Researchers will conduct years of painstaking analysis before putting the book on public display.
"There's two sets of odds that make this discovery really way out," Wallace said. "First of all, it's unlikely that something this fragile could survive buried in a bog at all, and then for it to be unearthed and spotted before it was destroyed is incalculably more amazing."
He said an engineer was digging up bogland last week to create commercial potting soil somewhere in Ireland's midlands when "just beyond the bucket of his bulldozer, he spotted something." Wallace would not specify where the book was found because a team of archaeologists is still exploring the site.
"The owner of the bog has had dealings with us in past and is very much in favor of archaeological discovery and reporting it," Wallace said.
Crucially, he said, the bog owner covered up the book with damp soil. Had it been left exposed overnight, he said, "it could have dried out and just vanished, blown away."
The book was found open to a page describing, in Latin script, Psalm 83, in which God hears complaints of other nations' attempts to wipe out the name of Israel.
The approximately 20-page book has been dated to the years 800-1000. Trinity College manuscripts expert Bernard Meehan said it was the first discovery of an Irish early medieval document in two centuries.
"This is really a miracle find," said Pat Wallace, director of the National Museum of Ireland, which has the book stored in refrigeration. Researchers will conduct years of painstaking analysis before putting the book on public display.
"There's two sets of odds that make this discovery really way out," Wallace said. "First of all, it's unlikely that something this fragile could survive buried in a bog at all, and then for it to be unearthed and spotted before it was destroyed is incalculably more amazing."
He said an engineer was digging up bogland last week to create commercial potting soil somewhere in Ireland's midlands when "just beyond the bucket of his bulldozer, he spotted something." Wallace would not specify where the book was found because a team of archaeologists is still exploring the site.
"The owner of the bog has had dealings with us in past and is very much in favor of archaeological discovery and reporting it," Wallace said.
Crucially, he said, the bog owner covered up the book with damp soil. Had it been left exposed overnight, he said, "it could have dried out and just vanished, blown away."
The book was found open to a page describing, in Latin script, Psalm 83, in which God hears complaints of other nations' attempts to wipe out the name of Israel.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
I Still Love CNN
A great CNN headline:
- A Hezbollah rocket attack on Nazareth, revered as birthplace of Jesus, kills two people, Israeli army says
Uh, last I checked, Jesus was not born in Nazareth. But just a minor detail.
Saturday, July 15, 2006
I Did Not Know This
WASHINGTON (AP) - Roads and bridges built by U.S. taxpayers are starting to be sold off, and so far foreign-owned companies are doing the buying.
On a single day in June, an Australian-Spanish partnership paid $3.8 billion to lease the Indiana Toll Road. An Australian company bought a 99-year lease on Virginia's Pocahontas Parkway, and Texas officials decided to let a Spanish-American partnership build and run a toll road from Austin to Seguin for 50 years.Few people know that the tolls from the U.S. side of the tunnel between Detroit and Windsor, Canada, go to a subsidiary of an Australian company - which also owns a bridge in Alabama.
Some experts welcome the trend. Robert Poole, transportation director for the conservative think tank Reason Foundation, said private investors can raise more money than politicians to build new roads because these kind of owners are willing to raise tolls. "They depoliticize the tolling decision,'' Poole said. Besides, he said, foreign companies have purchased infrastructure in Europe for years; only now are U.S. companies beginning to get into the business of buying roads and bridges.
On a single day in June, an Australian-Spanish partnership paid $3.8 billion to lease the Indiana Toll Road. An Australian company bought a 99-year lease on Virginia's Pocahontas Parkway, and Texas officials decided to let a Spanish-American partnership build and run a toll road from Austin to Seguin for 50 years.Few people know that the tolls from the U.S. side of the tunnel between Detroit and Windsor, Canada, go to a subsidiary of an Australian company - which also owns a bridge in Alabama.
Some experts welcome the trend. Robert Poole, transportation director for the conservative think tank Reason Foundation, said private investors can raise more money than politicians to build new roads because these kind of owners are willing to raise tolls. "They depoliticize the tolling decision,'' Poole said. Besides, he said, foreign companies have purchased infrastructure in Europe for years; only now are U.S. companies beginning to get into the business of buying roads and bridges.
Thursday, July 13, 2006
War In Israel
Has anyone noticed that there's been zero outrage over Israel's incursions into Gaza and Lebanon? What's up? Could it be everyone's tired of Iran's attitude and wants them knocked down a few pegs? Or, could it be that Israel's neighbors (Saudis, Egypt, etc.) have given them the green light to take out the neighborhood's undesireables?
Yes Folks, They've Finally Arrived...Soccer Helmets
There's a Massachusetts law working its way through the state legislature that doesn't just mandate the use of helmets, it actually originally sought to outlaw heading the ball from youth leagues to colleges and universities. We are quickly becoming a nation of metrosexuals.
Quote (or Poem) of the Day
Vice is a creature of such frightful mien,
That to be loathed, needs but to be seen.
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
-- Alexandar Pope
That to be loathed, needs but to be seen.
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
-- Alexandar Pope
Somebody Likes the Reds
From FOX Sports:
6. How, um, wild will the NL Wild-Card chase get?This one's a mess. Right now, seven teams...or almost half the league...are within three games of the Wild-Card lead in the NL. That's a crowded fray to say the least. The Dodgers, Reds, Rockies, Giants, Brewers, Astros and Diamondbacks all have shots at the final NL playoff berth, so you can bet it'll be a frenzied stretch drive in the senior circuit.
Our take: We'll put our money on the potent bats and decidedly easier schedule of the Reds. Cincinnati will also get Paul Wilson, Brandon Claussen and Grant Balfour back in the second half, so they'll have pitching options.
6. How, um, wild will the NL Wild-Card chase get?This one's a mess. Right now, seven teams...or almost half the league...are within three games of the Wild-Card lead in the NL. That's a crowded fray to say the least. The Dodgers, Reds, Rockies, Giants, Brewers, Astros and Diamondbacks all have shots at the final NL playoff berth, so you can bet it'll be a frenzied stretch drive in the senior circuit.
Our take: We'll put our money on the potent bats and decidedly easier schedule of the Reds. Cincinnati will also get Paul Wilson, Brandon Claussen and Grant Balfour back in the second half, so they'll have pitching options.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
"Her Concern Is For the Children"
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Supermodel Christie Brinkley and her fourth husband, Peter Cooke, have separated, her publicist said Tuesday.
"Yes, it's true. The couple has separated," publicist Elliot Mintz said in a statement.
Cooke and Brinkley married in 1996 and have a daughter.
Brinkley, 52, was previously married to Frenchman Jean-Francois Allaux, singer Billy Joel and developer Richard Taubman.
She and Joel have a daughter, and she and Taubman have a son.
"Her immediate concern is for her children, and she's hoping during this obviously difficult time that people will be kind enough to respect her privacy," Mintz said.
"Yes, it's true. The couple has separated," publicist Elliot Mintz said in a statement.
Cooke and Brinkley married in 1996 and have a daughter.
Brinkley, 52, was previously married to Frenchman Jean-Francois Allaux, singer Billy Joel and developer Richard Taubman.
She and Joel have a daughter, and she and Taubman have a son.
"Her immediate concern is for her children, and she's hoping during this obviously difficult time that people will be kind enough to respect her privacy," Mintz said.
Saturday, July 08, 2006
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
The Brights vs. The Dims
Christianity Today interviews Robert P. George, McCormick professor of jurisprudence and director of the James Madison program in American ideals and institutions at Princeton University.
Before we can talk about becoming a counterculture, we have to understand the culture. What's your reading of our culture right now?
I've argued in my book The Clash of Orthodoxies that the contemporary moment is marked by profound cultural division. We have a clash of two worldviews. On the one side are those who maintain traditional Judeo-Christian principles, such as the principle of the sanctity of human life, the principle that marriage is the union of a man and a woman, the principle that sex is integral to marriage but that sex ought not to be engaged in outside of marriage, and so forth.
On the other side of the cultural divide are people who have abandoned those principles in favor of some alternative ideology. Often it celebrates personal autonomy and freedom from traditional moral constraints, mixed with certain utilitarian elements. Sometimes it manifests itself in radical forms of feminism or quasi-pantheistic forms of environmentalism.
This division runs between elite and popular opinion. If I may borrow a concept from William F. Buckley Jr., consider what the results would be if we were to ask 800 members of the Princeton faculty about their views on abortion or homosexuality or other issues of that sort, and then make the same inquiry of the first 800 people in the Trenton, New Jersey, phone book.
Interestingly, the Princeton faculty and people of Trenton are probably going to vote largely alike—for Democratic candidates—albeit for different reasons. But when it comes to morally charged political issues, you're going to get answers from the 800 people consulted in the Trenton phone book that would be similar to those answers that would be given by 800 people from north-central West Virginia (where I grew up) or from Kansas or New Mexico. Their answers would be very different from those that would be given by the Princeton faculty or the editorial boards of The New York Times or The Washington Post. That's what I call a clash of orthodoxies.
Why do you call it that?
It's a clash of two faiths. The folks on the elite side of the divide often try to depict this as a clash between religious believers—people who, they suppose, do not honor reason as having a role in moral decision making—and "reasonable people," that is, people like themselves who allegedly act purely on the basis of reason and do not rely on or appeal to faith. But I think the reality is that in the elite sector of the culture, people hold the views they do as a matter of faith every bit as much, perhaps even more, than do people in the broader culture.
For example?
The belief that autonomy is such a high value that it trumps the sanctity of human life. For example, secularist elites widely believe that we ought to create human embryos by cloning or other means to be destroyed in biomedical research. Implicit in that belief is the proposition that the human embryo is either not a human being or not a human being with value. Now, the belief that the human embryo is something other than a human being in the earliest stages of his or her development flies in the face of reason. It can only be defended by appeal to some sort of faith that allegedly justifies ignoring the established facts of science. Of course, there are people who acknowledge that human embryos are human beings, but maintain that not all human beings are "persons." Human beings at early developmental stages—embryos, fetuses, and even infants—are not yet persons and can, therefore, rightly be killed to benefit others.
When these arguments are advanced by people like Princeton University philosopher Peter Singer, they lead to such radical conclusions as the endorsement of infanticide on a massive scale to produce transplantable organs. Singer is logically consistent. He is true to his faith. But most liberals are not willing to go there and haven't seen (or refuse to face up to) the implications of their view.
In most cases, support for the destruction of human life by abortion or for embryonic research is not carefully researched. Such views are held as a matter of faith. They're the convictions of "our kind of people," the convictions of people who consider themselves to be sophisticated and bright.
Daniel Dennett, a philosopher, even has a name for people who share the secularist orthodoxy. He calls them, and he includes himself in this, the Brights. And the implication of that is the others are the Dumbs or the Stupids.
The Dims.
That's a better word, the Dims.
Before we can talk about becoming a counterculture, we have to understand the culture. What's your reading of our culture right now?
I've argued in my book The Clash of Orthodoxies that the contemporary moment is marked by profound cultural division. We have a clash of two worldviews. On the one side are those who maintain traditional Judeo-Christian principles, such as the principle of the sanctity of human life, the principle that marriage is the union of a man and a woman, the principle that sex is integral to marriage but that sex ought not to be engaged in outside of marriage, and so forth.
On the other side of the cultural divide are people who have abandoned those principles in favor of some alternative ideology. Often it celebrates personal autonomy and freedom from traditional moral constraints, mixed with certain utilitarian elements. Sometimes it manifests itself in radical forms of feminism or quasi-pantheistic forms of environmentalism.
This division runs between elite and popular opinion. If I may borrow a concept from William F. Buckley Jr., consider what the results would be if we were to ask 800 members of the Princeton faculty about their views on abortion or homosexuality or other issues of that sort, and then make the same inquiry of the first 800 people in the Trenton, New Jersey, phone book.
Interestingly, the Princeton faculty and people of Trenton are probably going to vote largely alike—for Democratic candidates—albeit for different reasons. But when it comes to morally charged political issues, you're going to get answers from the 800 people consulted in the Trenton phone book that would be similar to those answers that would be given by 800 people from north-central West Virginia (where I grew up) or from Kansas or New Mexico. Their answers would be very different from those that would be given by the Princeton faculty or the editorial boards of The New York Times or The Washington Post. That's what I call a clash of orthodoxies.
Why do you call it that?
It's a clash of two faiths. The folks on the elite side of the divide often try to depict this as a clash between religious believers—people who, they suppose, do not honor reason as having a role in moral decision making—and "reasonable people," that is, people like themselves who allegedly act purely on the basis of reason and do not rely on or appeal to faith. But I think the reality is that in the elite sector of the culture, people hold the views they do as a matter of faith every bit as much, perhaps even more, than do people in the broader culture.
For example?
The belief that autonomy is such a high value that it trumps the sanctity of human life. For example, secularist elites widely believe that we ought to create human embryos by cloning or other means to be destroyed in biomedical research. Implicit in that belief is the proposition that the human embryo is either not a human being or not a human being with value. Now, the belief that the human embryo is something other than a human being in the earliest stages of his or her development flies in the face of reason. It can only be defended by appeal to some sort of faith that allegedly justifies ignoring the established facts of science. Of course, there are people who acknowledge that human embryos are human beings, but maintain that not all human beings are "persons." Human beings at early developmental stages—embryos, fetuses, and even infants—are not yet persons and can, therefore, rightly be killed to benefit others.
When these arguments are advanced by people like Princeton University philosopher Peter Singer, they lead to such radical conclusions as the endorsement of infanticide on a massive scale to produce transplantable organs. Singer is logically consistent. He is true to his faith. But most liberals are not willing to go there and haven't seen (or refuse to face up to) the implications of their view.
In most cases, support for the destruction of human life by abortion or for embryonic research is not carefully researched. Such views are held as a matter of faith. They're the convictions of "our kind of people," the convictions of people who consider themselves to be sophisticated and bright.
Daniel Dennett, a philosopher, even has a name for people who share the secularist orthodoxy. He calls them, and he includes himself in this, the Brights. And the implication of that is the others are the Dumbs or the Stupids.
The Dims.
That's a better word, the Dims.
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Friday, June 30, 2006
Finally!!!
Today the Reds designated for assignment LHP Chris Hammond and recalled from Louisville LHP Brian Shackelford. Hammond went 1-1, 6.91 in 29 relief apps for the Reds.
David Weathers is next.
David Weathers is next.
The Hip Hop Culture is Just Plain Stupid
NEW YORK (AP) -- Lil' Kim says she'll be celebrating Independence Day early this year.
The rapper, who was sentenced in September to a year and a day in prison for lying about a shootout outside a hip-hop radio station, is being released Monday, the day before July Fourth.
...The case stemmed from a gun battle that erupted outside WQHT-FM, known as Hot 97, when Lil' Kim's entourage crossed paths with a rival rap group, Capone-N-Noreaga, whose song "Bang, Bang" contains an insult to her from rival Foxy Brown. One man was hurt in the shootout that followed.
The rapper, who was sentenced in September to a year and a day in prison for lying about a shootout outside a hip-hop radio station, is being released Monday, the day before July Fourth.
...The case stemmed from a gun battle that erupted outside WQHT-FM, known as Hot 97, when Lil' Kim's entourage crossed paths with a rival rap group, Capone-N-Noreaga, whose song "Bang, Bang" contains an insult to her from rival Foxy Brown. One man was hurt in the shootout that followed.
The Frozen Generation
Interesting article in Mother Jones about the roughly 400,000 human embryos that are sitting in a frozen limbo around the country. Here's a few paragraphs about how adults ineract with the...dare I say...babies:
...the impact of the embryo is also taking place on a more subtle and personal level. The glut’s very existence illuminates how the newest reproductive technologies are complicating questions about life; issues that many people thought they had resolved are being revived and reconsidered, in a different emotional context. As with ultrasound technology—which permits parents to visualize a fetus in utero—ivf allows many patients to form an emotional attachment to a form of human life that is very early, it’s true, but still life, and still human. People bond with photos of three-day-old, eight-cell embryos. They ardently wish for them to grow into children. The experience can be transforming: “I was like, ‘I created these things, I feel a sense of responsibility for them,’” is how one ivf patient put it. Describing herself as staunchly pro-choice, this patient found that she could not rest until she located a person—actually, two people—willing to bring her excess embryos to term. The presence of embryos for whom (for which?) they feel a certain undefined moral responsibility presents tens of thousands of Americans with a dilemma for which nothing—nothing—has prepared them.
...For virtually all patients, [one doctor] found, the disposition decision was torturous, the end result unpredictable. “Nothing feels right,” he reported patients telling him. “They literally don’t know what the right, the good, the moral thing is.” In the fluid process of making a decision—any decision—some try to talk themselves into a clinical detachment. “Little lives, that’s how I thought about them,” said one woman. “But you have to switch gears and think, ‘They’re not lives, they’re cells. They’re science.’ That’s kind of what I had to switch to.” Others were not able to make that switch, thinking of their embryos as almost sentient. “My husband talked about donating them to research, but there is some concern that this would not be a peaceful way to go,” said one woman. Another said, “You start saying to yourself, ‘Every one of these is potentially a life.’”
...the impact of the embryo is also taking place on a more subtle and personal level. The glut’s very existence illuminates how the newest reproductive technologies are complicating questions about life; issues that many people thought they had resolved are being revived and reconsidered, in a different emotional context. As with ultrasound technology—which permits parents to visualize a fetus in utero—ivf allows many patients to form an emotional attachment to a form of human life that is very early, it’s true, but still life, and still human. People bond with photos of three-day-old, eight-cell embryos. They ardently wish for them to grow into children. The experience can be transforming: “I was like, ‘I created these things, I feel a sense of responsibility for them,’” is how one ivf patient put it. Describing herself as staunchly pro-choice, this patient found that she could not rest until she located a person—actually, two people—willing to bring her excess embryos to term. The presence of embryos for whom (for which?) they feel a certain undefined moral responsibility presents tens of thousands of Americans with a dilemma for which nothing—nothing—has prepared them.
...For virtually all patients, [one doctor] found, the disposition decision was torturous, the end result unpredictable. “Nothing feels right,” he reported patients telling him. “They literally don’t know what the right, the good, the moral thing is.” In the fluid process of making a decision—any decision—some try to talk themselves into a clinical detachment. “Little lives, that’s how I thought about them,” said one woman. “But you have to switch gears and think, ‘They’re not lives, they’re cells. They’re science.’ That’s kind of what I had to switch to.” Others were not able to make that switch, thinking of their embryos as almost sentient. “My husband talked about donating them to research, but there is some concern that this would not be a peaceful way to go,” said one woman. Another said, “You start saying to yourself, ‘Every one of these is potentially a life.’”
The Feast of the First Martyrs
Today, many Christians celebrate the feast of the first martyrs of the Church of Rome. To learn more about the early Roman church, martyrdom and the Eucharist, read Mike Aquilina's article The Martyr's Cup. Good stuff.
Wait a Minute...All of Those Commercials Tell Me New Toys Will Make Me Happy
Your next raise might buy you a more lavish vacation, a better car, or a few extra bedrooms, but it's not likely to buy you much happiness.
Measuring the quality of people's daily lives via surveys, the results of a study published in the June 30 issue of journal Science reveals that income plays a rather insignificant role in day-to-day happiness.
Although most people imagine that if they had more money they could do more fun things and perhaps be happier, the reality seems to be that those with higher incomes tend to be tenser, and spend less time on simple leisurely activities.
Measuring the quality of people's daily lives via surveys, the results of a study published in the June 30 issue of journal Science reveals that income plays a rather insignificant role in day-to-day happiness.
Although most people imagine that if they had more money they could do more fun things and perhaps be happier, the reality seems to be that those with higher incomes tend to be tenser, and spend less time on simple leisurely activities.
Thursday, June 29, 2006
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