Month: June 2007

  • pope SUNDAY GOOD NEWS

    I don’t usually follow Pope news but this week he surprised me with a set of Ten Commandments for driving, part of a larger document for the Vatican’s Office for Migrants and Itinerant People called “Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of the Road.” In it, people are urged to pray behind the wheel, refrain from road rage, to drive with a moral sense, and to help accident victims. Noting that 1.2 million people die each year on the roads, it’s intended for bishops conferences around the world urging them to set up chapels along highways and have “periodic celebration of liturgies” at major road hubs, truck stops and restaurants. You can imagine what David Letterman type folks will do with this, but actually it gives me a warm spot in my heart to think of his Popeness taking the time to swing his weight in a way that may or may not keep that next jerk from tailgating me. Here are those 10:
    1 – You shall not kill.
    2 – The road shall be for you a means of communion between people and not of mortal harm.
    3 – Courtesy, uprightness and prudence will help you deal with unforeseen events.
    4 – Be charitable and help your neighbour in need, especially victims of accidents.
    5 – Cars shall not be for you an expression of power and domination, and an occasion of sin.
    6 – Charitably convince the young and not so young not to drive when they are not in a fitting condition to do so.
    7 – Support the families of accident victims.
    8 – Bring guilty motorists and their victims together, at the appropriate time, so that they can undergo the liberating experience of forgiveness.
    9 – On the road, protect the more vulnerable party.
    10 – Feel responsible towards others.
    To see the whole document click here.

    Deep Thought: It’s funny how two simple words, “I promise,” will stall people for a while.
    Today I am grateful for: Rain in proportion
    Guess the Movie: “Blast off: one-eight-oh. Two hundred: Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. Two ten: U.S. Government certified. Two twenty: lunar trajectory, junk of the month club, sirloin steak. Two thirty: Grade A poison. Absolute dynamite. Eighty-nine percent pure junk. Best I’ve ever seen. If the rest is like this, you’ll be dealing on this load for two years.”  Answer:  The French Connection, 1971.  Winner:  misyapa
    Michael Moore’s ‘Sicko’ Leaves Top Democrats Ill at Ease
    by Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar
    WASHINGTON – With the release of Michael Moore’s “Sicko,” a movie once again is adding sizzle to an issue that’s a high priority for liberal politicians – this time comprehensive health insurance for all. But unlike Al Gore’s film on global warming, which helped rally support on an equally controversial problem, “Sicko” is creating an awkward situation for the leading Democratic presidential candidates. (Rest of article here.)

  • iran TUESDAY POLITICS

    Sorry, I couldn’t bring myself to put a photo of Joe Lieberman up, he gets on my last nerve so bad. But this morning the headline flashed by on my cable news station that he’s urging an Iran air strike so I had to do a little checking this out online.  So Joe L. said on Face the Nation Sunday we should attack Iran because they’re training insurgents to come back into Iraq and attack US soldiers. Senator Harry Reid fired back as follows:

    REID: I believe our efforts should be diplomatic in nature. The Iraq Study Group said that. And General Petraeus has said the war in Iraq cannot be won militarily. It can only be won politically, economically, and diplomatically.
    So I would think rather than talking about military action against Iran, we should do what the Iraq Study Group said. Have a regional conference where we sit down and the president himself is personally involved with the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and yes, Iran. That’s where our efforts have to be.
    Right now, quite frankly, we’re so overextended — we don’t have the ability — we can send a few airplanes around the world, but as you know, our ground troops are overworked in Iraq.
    So, I know Joe feels strongly about that part of the world. I do too. But the invasion of [Iran] is only going to destabilize that part of the world more. We don’t have the resources now to be involved in the situation in Lebanon, and we should be. We have, because of the Iraq invasion, totally ignored the Palestinian-Israeli situation. And with Iran, we don’t have — the Iranians are thumbing their noses at us. They know we’re overextended. And the president is very stubborn. He is not willing to sit down and meet with their leaders.
    I know Joe means well, but I don’t agree with him.

    ”I know Joe means well…”!?#* Really? Having just outhawked Bush, I would beg to differ. Are these people totally insane or what? Maybe I better get my old No War In Iraq sign out from the back of my closet and dust it off and change the “q” to an “n”. Everybody who dies over there are just letters and numbers anyway, aren’t they? And it’s time to take off for my 9:00 am dentist appointment to get my permanent crown.

    Deep Thought: “The first thing was, I learned to forgive myself. Then I told myself, “Go ahead and do whatever you want, it’s okay by me.”
    Today I am grateful for: Raccoons
    Guess the Movie: “There’s no living with a killing. There’s no goin’ back from one. Right or wrong, it’s a brand… a brand sticks. There’s no goin’ back. Now you run on home to your mother and tell her… tell her everything’s alright. And there aren’t any more guns in the valley.”  Answer:  Shane, 1953.  Winner:  soobee72.
    Alzheimer’s cases around the world to quadruple by 2050 (Rest of article here.)

  • table SUNDAY GOOD NEWS

    Stand back Steve Jobs.   Microsoft just unveiled Surface, a coffee-table shaped computer that reacts to touch. For a mere $10,000 or so, the first ones will be appearing in casinos and resort hotels and T-Mobile USA stores but in a few years those of you who can afford plasma TVs can have them too. It’s a Windows Vista PC tucked inside a shiny black table base, topped with a 30-inch touchscreen in a clear acrylic frame. Five cameras that can sense nearby objects are mounted beneath the screen. Users can interact with the machine by touching or dragging their fingertips and objects such as paintbrushes across the screen, or by setting real-world items tagged with special bar-code labels on top of it. At the moment, it can do things like paint, mess with photos, order things to buy, share photos, listen to music, etc. but they’ll be cranking out software in the months to come. I remember reading this Ray Bradbury science fiction story years ago about a family in the future that had a wall of their living room that was like a three-dimensional world (the jungle I think). At first they watched it like TV. By the end of the story they had managed to step inside. We’ve all seen how fast YouTube and iPods and now Google Street Level maps (oh haven’t heard of that? it’s where in certain cities you can type in an address and actually see people on the street or through their front windows) have romped into our world. Can accidentally falling headfirst into our coffee table be next?

    Deep Thought: “You might think that the favorite plant of the porcupine is the cactus, but it’s thinking like that that has almost ruined this country.”
    Today I am grateful for: Quiet
    Guess the Movie: Back home everyone said I didn’t have any talent. They might be saying the same thing over here but it sounds better in French.   Answer:  An American in Paris, 1951.  Winner:  thenarrator.
    Why Cindy Sheehan ‘Retired’
    Angered by Democrats, The US Peace Movement’s Most Visible Leader Withdrew From The Public Eye On The Day Her Son Would Have Turned 28.
    by Laura Flanders (Rest of article here.)