CNN reports that 4% of the United States’ yield of hops burned in a fire. Hops, for those who aren’t aware, are used to flavor beer and ale.
::silence::
Only about 25% of the world’s crop is produced in the US, so only 1% of the world’s crop was lost in the fire. Nevertheless, flags are at half-staff at breweries across the country.
October 3, 2006 By Leave a Comment
no! not the beer!
October 3, 2006 By Leave a Comment
fmr rep. mark foley abused by priest? shut up.
I’m not one to say anything against those who were sexually abused by priests; however, Former Rep. Mark Foley is now (literally as I type) announcing that he was abused as a teenage by a clergyman.
After a quick bit of research, he is Catholic so I assume he is referring to a priest.
Maybe he was, but are you kidding me? That doesn’t justify anything. He’s a self-confessed drunk who gets excited by talking dirty to underaged boys. He’s trying to save face and transfer blame to someone else. Maybe he is just taking a cue from the Amish shooter who said he molested girls twenty years ago (when he was 10 or 11 years old).
The timing of all of this just brings too many questions into the picture. As someone who worked so hard for the sexual protection of youth, perhaps mentioning this would have been great then. He could have been a poster child for someone who was abused but didn’t let it get the best of him and now he’s doing good trying to make the world better. We’ll ignore that he was talking dirty to these kids while he was “fighting” for them.
He’s just as bad as the priests who did abuse youngsters.
He is a sad, sick man who is now lashing out because he can’t handle the stress that has rained down upon him after his actions have become public.
October 2, 2006 By Leave a Comment
swiss guards have a website
The Swiss Guards, the police force that provide for the security of the Vatican and the Pope, have a very informative website.
The Swiss Guard, inside Church circles at least, are most famous for the protection of Pope Clement VII on May 6, 1527. Of the 189 Swiss Guards, only 42 survived that day. The Spanish troops stormed Rome and the Swiss Guards protected the Pope, allowing him to escape via secret passage to Castel Sant’Angelo, which is now most known to be the Pope’s summer residence.
The website has some issues and some pages do not load correctly, but it is very interesting nevertheless.
October 2, 2006 By Leave a Comment
iTunes 7 isn’t up to par
I’m not a huge Mac fan. I can handle my own on the system and used it as my primary education system when I was earning my multimedia (graphics design, desktop publishing, web design, etc) major while in high school. I remember the Macintosh operating system before it was known as “Mac OS”, at least before version 7, as I remember upgrading to 7. The transition to Mac OS 8 was dandy as well. In short, I’m not a huge Mac fan, but I’m not anti-Apple.
I’m way behind in the iPod game. I don’t own one, or any other mobile digital music device, but I’ve never been huge on always having music with me. I didn’t know what podcasting was for quite some time since the name doesn’t tell you anything, unless you’re familar with the iPod and made the connection.
However, with discovering podcasts, the iPod is now very tempting. I have a whole set of NPR podcasts setup in iTunes as well as a few other favorites, including Paulist Father Dave Dwyer’s Busted Halo. This is great! I can hear the story of the day on NPR with news and commentary whether or not I’m able to catch the live broadcast.
The only thing that could make it better is if I could take it with me in a form a bit easier than my full laptop.
I digress. I’ve been using iTunes to some degree since v. 6, so I’m new to the ballgame. I had previously used MusicMatch before college and mostly Windows Media Player over the past few years. iTunes was a bit of a jump as much of my ripped music was in WMA format and iTunes has to convert those files to mp3 or AAC to be useful.
Nevertheless, I jumped over to the iTunes game and recently upgraded to 7.0 and the shortly-released-thereafter 7.0.1.
I can’t stand it now. It is slow and brings my laptop to a near halt. Sure, I could use more RAM but I figured 1 GB would be enough. Song playback is full of pops and crackles. When attempting to watch a downloaded TV episode on my roommate’s computer, we were unable to get through five minutes of it without it becoming jerky and unwatchable.
Did they put too much into iTunes without ensuring everything can play together? How did some things, like sound playback, get worse?
I expect a basic level of quality for software and iTunes 7 fall short.
Lastly, why can’t they put the iTunes store online as web-accessible? I’m online at a computer lab on campus, but would like to purchase a song to be downloaded when I get home. Shouldn’t I be able to login, purchase a song using my iTunes account and be able to download it when I open iTunes at home?
October 2, 2006 By Leave a Comment
papal secretary tells all!
The late Pope John Paul II’s personal secretary for over 40 years, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, now a Polish Archbishop, is preparing to release a book next year detailing his life next to one of the most impactful people of the 20th century.
The book, to be released next year in Italian, includes a chapter on “Those Two Bullets” referring to the attempt on the Pontiff’s life in 1981.
From the Washington Post‘s article:
In a chapter called “Those Two Bullets,” Dziwisz recalls his feelings when Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca shot the Pope while his open jeep was being driven through St Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981 at the start of his weekly general audience.
“I tried to hold him up (after he was hit by the second bullet) but it was as if he was letting himself go sweetly,” writes Dziwisz, who served Karol Wojtyla for nearly four decades from the time the future pontiff was a bishop in Poland.
“He had a grimace of pain but at the same time he was serene. I asked him ‘where?’ and he said: “In the stomach.”
Dziwisz, who wrote the book together with Italian author Gianfranco Svidercoschi, said the jeep rushed the Pope inside the Vatican walls to its clinic, where he was laid “on the floor” of the building’s atrium.
“It was only then that we realized the large amount of blood that was pouring out of the wound caused by the bullet that had pierced him,” he writes.
The Pope was taken to a part of the Vatican where aides believed there was an ambulance, but it was in another section of the small city-state and they had to wait for it to arrive.
He was then rushed to the Gemelli hospital several kilometers north of the Vatican but new glitches arose.
BROKEN SIREN, FADING POPE
“The siren did not work well and there was a lot of traffic. The driver was honking his horn non-stop. The Pope was losing his strength but he was still conscious.”
“He was murmuring ‘Why did they do it?’ He uttered words of forgiveness for whoever shot him. I heard him pray, invoking ‘Jesus, Mary my mother’.”
The Pope lost consciousness when the ambulance reached the Gemelli. In the confusion and shock, he was taken by mistake first to the 10th floor and then to the operating theater on the ninth floor. Workers forced open two doors to get there quicker.
“The doctors who carried out the surgery told me later that while they were operating they were convinced that the patient would not survive,” Dziwisz writes.
The book should bring new light to the thoughts of Pope John Paul II from someone, who of all people, would know the best. I hope there is an English translation released soon.
