Olympics?

I really am not sure what to say about this post. Go look for yourself.

Vatican to America: evolution has proof, fundamentalism is dangerous

Comparing the evolution vs. ID debate to the heliocentrism vs. geocentrism debate that condemned one of the Western world's greatest scientific minds (Galileo Galileii) to life imprisonment, Cardinal Paul Poupard, speaking for the Vatican, said

The permanent lesson that the Galileo case represents pushes us to keep alive the dialogue between the various disciplines, and in particular between theology and the natural sciences, if we want to prevent similar episodes from repeating themselves in the future. ...

We know where scientific reason can end up by itself: the atomic bomb and the possibility of cloning human beings are fruit of a reason that wants to free itself from every ethical or religious link.

But we also know the dangers of a religion that severs its links with reason and becomes prey to fundamentalism.

The faithful have the obligation to listen to that which secular modern science has to offer, just as we ask that knowledge of the faith be taken in consideration as an expert voice in humanity. ...

A hypothesis asks whether something is true or false. (Evolution) is more than a hypothesis because there is proof.

(NYTimes)

Wow.
Just, wow.

Riot payments

If Bush keeps being an asshole to the world, he's going to start having to pay other countries for their riot police when he visits them.

Someone Keeps Stealing My Letters

From a random blog, check out this fridge magnet interactive Flash... space. There's a few alphabets worth of letters, and you and everyone else who's on it at the same time get to fight over them. One person kept writing FUCK, and I was trying to draw an ASCII cat. :)

Age

An entry on someone else's blog about his aging father made me think of my Nga Boo (grandmother).

A sad and beautiful story. My grandmother is in the same situation. She is 92 years old, though each time you ask her she adds a year to what she replied the time before. Some days I can have great conversations with her, while other days the best she can manage is "my mind... I ... it's... words..." A testimony to the fact that she knows she's slipping, and it pains and frustrates her. She takes comfort in my achievements, though she sometimes can't remember them longer than a sentence later. She used to be so vibrant and sharp, and I know that she would hate to see herself this way. It hurts me too. I sometimes comfort myself with the thought that the wonderful proud woman she used to be is already dead, and so there is no reason to mourn over the husk that is slowly withering behind. And other times I try asking her questions, prompting her to discuss things and just *think* a little, hold on just a little bit longer before slipping away.

Ninth night of French Muslim riots

Ninth night of French Muslim riots



This has been getting very little press in the US media, and less in the blogosphere. For nine straight nights, oppressed Muslim minorities, the equivalent of blacks in America, have been rioting in Parisian suburbs and throughout the French countryside. This is nation-wide civil unrest. Something this bad is usually the last precursor to anarchy and revolution.

And nobody has been killed. More than 8 major cities in a country the size of Pennsylvania are nightly in a state of anarchy, and not a single person has died.

( This all started the night of October 26. )