Missouri farmer's male calf born with two heads
A southwest Missouri cattleman has been delivering calves at his farm for a long time, but a calf born this week sure was different. This one had two heads. Scott Clift said he delivered the chocolate-colored male calf Wednesday morning at his farm near Aldrich, in Polk County. Clift said the calf had two fully-formed heads that appeared to be connected to its body just behind the skull.
Ronaldo walked off unhurt after he smash his £200,000 Ferrari 599 GTB off the walls of a tunnel,which connects traffic under the runways between Wilmslow and Hale.
It's time to cash in on Catholic guilt.
At least that's what some parishioners think is happening at St. Luke's Church in Whitestone, Queens, where detailed breakdowns of members' weekly donations have begun appearing in the weekly bulletin.
Catholics are cheap. That's the old news. Catholics are so cheap they contribute whatever they contributed when they were 20 years old without regard to the fact there were 20 years old -- 40 years ago. That's the new news.
Here is what I added to the comment box:
Let me comment on the article: Each parish also publishes a financial statement of where the money goes (i.e. expenses) which includes the salaries for the priests, religious orders, and staff who are neither. Only members of religious orders take vows of poverty. A diocesan priest has a modest salary. In a financial statement you see a big number being the sum total of all the sources of income. I think it is very helpful to see the breakdown of donations so that one gets an idea of what the gap is between the expenses of the parish and its income. If this parish has to close, how many of those dollar-a-week or five-dollars-a-week parishioners will be complaining to the bishop?
Citibank was defrauded by phony documents.
We're taught to be skeptical of phone numbers in documents and verify them by contacting the main published number of the firm. This is rather basic and reflects poorly on the controls the Citibank has put in place.
This is PR problem for Microsoft and perhaps a disaster if the MSM want to run with it. Reputation counts for a lot here.
On his first foreign trip as president, [President Obama] came within a syllable of calling Ottawa Iowa.
As he and Prime Minister Stephen Harper emerged for a news conference after their closed-door meetings, Obama began: "It is a great pleasure to be here in Io ... in Ottawa."
He kept on without breaking stride.
How long do you think will this relationship last?
A sacred, historic statue has been vandalized on the campus of a catholic high school in San Antonio as the statues of Saint Joseph and Baby Jesus were beheaded by vandals.
I wonder if the advocates of the common forms of alternative energy: wind, solar, and geothermal are sincere. Do they really believe that there's a chance that these will ever be a cost-effective replacement for even 50 percent of the energy usage of the United States are any part of the world? (ok, geothermal works for Iceland...)
In the case of wind, there are days when there is no wind, in the case of solar there are days when there is some or a total cloud cover.
The only way these technologies are even getting a tryout is the government subsidies. Would they ever reach a point where they could be competitive?
One day, it will all be nuclear power anyway. Let that day come soon.
Most Catholics, yes, most Catholics are responsible for there being legal abortion today in the United States. Not abstaining from voting, most Catholics voted for Clinton and most Catholic voted for Obama. Pro-life Catholics do not need to become Republican. The political agenda for pro-life Catholics is (a) vote for the the pro-life candidate and (b) urge everyone to vote pro-life. The sooner "Faithful Citizenship" is repudiated the better as its statement that "Catholics are not single issue voters" was the permission slip to vote for the murder of the unborn.
(Some full disclosure, I was part of the Catholic blogger outreach in the successful 2004 campaign to reelect President George Bush.)
The primary author Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship was Bishop Dimarzio
and you can see and hear him talk about a "hierarchy of values" immediately, then mentioning a dozen other issues, and then mentioning "life" as "most important" rather matter-of-factly at timestamp 00:50.
I don't doubt for an instant the sincerity and intelligence of Bishop Dimarzio. I believe his error was allowing language to make abortion merely seem to be only one of many moral issues of varying weight, and perhaps as a single issue, abortion carries the most weight.
He simply overestimated the ability of the average Catholic voter reading this to see nuance. He underestimated the rhetorical power of one clear unambiguous "Catholics are not single issue voters".
These six words were the tool in the hands of Obama's media outlets to hand out a bishops-endorsed permission slips to vote for Obama. It frankly cut us off at the knees from insisting that abortion was such a critical moral flaw of America that Catholic teaching required us to become single issue voters to deal with it. ("us" is not merely the Catholic bloggers and talk-show-callers, but serious Catholic opinion leaders like EWTN, Catholic Answers, and Priests for Life)
Reuters: Steve Martin anti-Catholic buffoon
Looking relaxed and dressed smartly in a jacket and tie, Martin was asked whether he had asked the Pope's permission to shoot a lengthy scene set in the Vatican.
"We didn't ask permission because we didn't shoot in the Vatican. But I think the Catholic Church has been kidded and joked about for years. They're just used to it," Martin said.
"I believe the Catholic Church is very smart not to go crazy about it. When a religion is kidded and they get very serious, I think it shows they're insecure," he added. "I think the Catholic Church will probably last longer than this film.".
This article is one to clip as an early exhibit of anti-Catholicism in the culture in 2009.
Realize that the goal here of the New York Times is not to report news on religion but to (1) make readers think the believers are strange, superstitious, goofy, and not to taken seriously or given access to the public square and (2) to makereaders who themselves are people of faith feel embarrassed, defensive, and marginalized.
The last few days a little editing war has been going on on Maciel's wikipedia page. A paragraph was added early on the morning of the Jan. 28, by an IP address from Hartford, CT. It was removed by someone using a registered account (so you can't trace where he's from), then restored by an IP address from the law firm of Wilmer Hale in Washington DC. As of right now, it's been removed again.
My Comment
As someone with 3400 edits on Wikipedia, let me explain what goes on on articles in the news such as 9/11, Terri Schiavo, and Sarah Palin. The editing becomes tendentious because it becomes impossible to have an objective distance from the material and, of course, advocates have the greatest interest in their contributions remaining in the article. The winners typically are the ones with the most idle time on their hands rather than the most objective point of view.
Obama is wrong to do this. He is acting on a socialist class-warfare impulse. This is the nose of the camel under the tent, this is the slippery slope.
From this point forward, you would change our argument to no longer be "we oppose this on principle" but "we quibble now on the details of this new salary cap"
If they can set salaries for some employees in the private sector that have some touch-points with the federal government, what is to stop them from imposing salary controls on any private sector employee -- we're all entangled in some way with the federal government.
Bill, what's needed now is not compromise with the imposition of stealth socialism with salary controls, with entitlement expansion, and government crowding out the private sector. What the country needs is a full and articulate defense of free market capitalism.
We have experienced a failure of crony capitalism with the bailouts of Freddie and Fannie, and government coercion to lend against traditional lending practices that have worked for centuries. The only alternative is not the creeping socialism of the Democratic Party but Reagan conservatism.
Added in my blog:
I will cheer Obama when he does the thing that is best for America. I want that agenda to succeed.
But when conservatives applaud class-warfare "screw the rich" policies, I am a skeptic.
On January 29, nearly 50 Catholic Democratic congressmen sent a letter to Pope Benedict XVI stating their concerns over Bishop Richard Williamson’s comments questioning the historical record on the Holocaust. The bishop belongs to the St. Pius X Society; he is one of four bishops who recently had his excommunication lifted by the pope. The congressmen implored the pope to denounce the bishop’s views.
Catholic League president Bill Donohue spoke to this issue today:
“The congressmen’s letter to the pope smacks of posturing and hypocrisy, and is factually wrong. They begin by saying ‘we are writing to express our deep concerns with your decision to reinstate Bishop Richard Williamson to communion with the Catholic Church….’ The fact is that the pope did not reinstate the bishop to communion with the Church—he merely lifted the excommunication of the four bishops in this group. In order for the bishops to be fully reinstated, they would have to express their fidelity to the teachings of the Church, as well as the norms of Vatican II. In other words, the letter is based on a false predicate.
“Facts aside, this kind of posturing is a disgrace: for American congressmen to lecture the pope about an event in which he was personally victimized, and about which he has long condemned, is nothing short of arrogant.
“The hypocrisy is mind-boggling. They beg the pope to ‘publicly state your unequivocal position on this matter so that it is clear where the Church stands….’ How ironic that most of these very same Catholics fail to speak with clarity about what the Church teaches on abortion. Of the 47 signatories, the majority have a 100 percent NARAL score (meaning they vote with the radical pro-abortion group on every issue). The leader of this group, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, never agrees with the Catholic Church on abortion—her NARAL score is 100 percent.
“One more thing: they addressed the pope not as a head of state but as a ‘spiritual leader.’ Didn’t they ever hear of respecting separation of church and state?”
And complete text of letter and list of signers on Rep. DeLauro's congressional web Site
Excellent response by the Catholic League. It is mind boggling hypocrisy for these CINO's to demand of the Pope an unequivocal position. The letter makes a pathetic presumption that by lifting the excommunication on Williamson, he gives credibility to Holocaust deniers. That's twisted logic from a Jack Chic comic.
It would be interesting for the signatories to have a retreat with a delegate of the Pope to reflect upon what is the "unequivocal" teaching of Christ's Church.
My own Congressman Joseph Crowley signed the letter.
Seeking Alpha:(Nintendo) Targeting Online Gaming for Middle Aged Players
An interesting article tracking that some of the first console videogame players (like 8-bit NES from 1985) are now entering middle age. When I was visiting MIT at age 15 in 1969 I saw the Spacewar! game.
Marketing types are smart about realizing that if you look at any age group -- people with different cultural experiences and tastes move through it each decade.
Some games are just going to mysteriously appeal to over 30's. Scores of marketers are trying to figure out how to match WII's broad age appeal.
Reuters: Lots of TV and Web harms kids' health
Spending a lot of time watching TV, playing video games and surfing the Web makes children more prone to a range of health problems including obesity and smoking, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
U.S. National Institutes of Health, Yale University and the California Pacific Medical Center experts analyzed 173 studies done since 1980 in one of the most comprehensive assessments to date on how exposure to media sources impacts the physical health of children and adolescents.
Felician is an independent co-educational Catholic/Franciscan College founded and sponsored by the Felician Sisters. The College offers programs in four Academic Divisions.
NY Post: HEY, THINGS ARE TOUGH ALL OVA; BROKE GALS SELL EGGS; Talk about golden eggs.
Droves of cash-strapped women are emptying their ovaries to fill their bank accounts.
Kimberly Bannat, a college student from New Jersey, was desperate for funds when she read a plea for young women's eggs to help infertile couples.
The 21-year-old nursing major at Felician College in Lodi went to an Upper East Side clinic in September and ended up making a cool $8,000. She had to go through two interviews, three rounds of medical tests and submit a photo - showing her blond hair and blue eyes - which prospective egg buyers could peruse.
Many countries prohibit this as being unethical -- a financial exploitation of the women involved. It's not really a "donation" but the sale of one's body parts.
More on this in an article in FIRST THINGS
