Month: June 2005

MP3 (Etc.) Tests!

Ho-okay, folks!

Gotcha some files of last Thursday’s Catholic Answers Live to test and see what works best for y’all.

The first three are .mp3 files, and the last is a Windows Media (.wma) file. NOTE: We’re definitely planning on doing .mp3 for the show; the .wma file is just thrown in here to see what folks think of it.

Please use the combox to let us know which format you prefer (taking file size, audio quality, and other factors into account). Please also let us know if you find any of them simply unacceptable (and why).

To make referring to them easier, I’ve labelled them all "Link 1," "Link 2," etc., so you don’t have to remember the technical specs on each one, though I’ve printed those here too.

Thanks for your feedback!

Miracle@Vatican.va

Jpiicomp

The Diocese of Rome is collecting accounts of miracles attributed to the intercession of the late Pope John Paul II:

"The Vatican is urging Roman Catholics to contribute to the late Pope’s beatification by sending e-mails about miracles performed after his death.

"The website for the Diocese of Rome will soon start publishing the readers’ messages under several categories.

"John Paul II, who died in April, encouraged the use of the internet."

GET THE STORY.

How cool is that? Modern technology at the service of a cause of canonization. Near as I can tell, here is the web site of the Diocese of Rome.  (Note: Link updated.) The post title is, of course, just my attempt to be clever. It is not the address to which you should send reports of miracles.

John Paul II, pray for us.

Our Friend, The Virus

Not just any virus, of course, a very special little virus that goes by the abbreviation AAV-2.

What’s so special about it?

"Our results suggest that adeno-associated virus type 2, which infects the majority of the population but has no known ill effects, kills multiple types of cancer cells yet has no effect on healthy cells," said Craig Meyers, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the Penn State College of Medicine in Pennsylvania.

"We believe that AAV-2 recognizes that the cancer cells are abnormal and destroys them. This suggests that AAV-2 has great potential to be developed as an anti-cancer agent," Meyers said in a statement.

It wipes out HPV or Human Pappiloma Virus cells, HPV being a leading cause of cervical cancer.

The same thing happened with cervical, breast, prostate and squamous cell tumor cells.

GET THE STORY.

Politics In Our Genes?

In the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta Iolanthe, a British Grenadier Guardsman named Sgt. Willis spends a lot of time on sentry duty thinking about the oddities of the universe. During the course of the opera he sings a song in which he shares some of his musings with us and remarks on how tickled he is by the fact

That Nature always does contrive
That every boy and every gal
                   
That’s born into the world alive
               
Is either a little Liberal
                   
Or else a little Conservative!

Politics is in our genes, Sgt. Willis suggests. It’s inborn.

But that’s just Gilbert being silly, right?

Maybe not.

A new study published in the American Political Science Review argues that, while party affiliation is more determined by the environment in which we are raised, our basic political instincts–conservative or liberal–are influenced by our genes.

The study relies on comparing the view of identical twins raised together to fraternal twins raised together. The results of such a study are suggestive, but not the gold standard of such research. The study was based on comparing twins raised together, but I’d like to see the study controlled by comparison to twins raised apart. If you’ve got two identical twins raised together, there may be additional forces at play that steer the twins toward sharing common opinions on thing besides just their genes. To remove these potential factors from the equation, one would want to look at the views of identical (and fraternal) twins not reared together.

Still, the evidence at hand is worth following up with further study.

The article concludes:

The researchers are not optimistic about the future of bipartisan cooperation or national unity. Because men and women tend to seek mates with a similar ideology, they say, the two gene pools are becoming, if anything, more concentrated, not less.

Okay, so we get culture wars . . . until the Roe effect runs its course and the anti-baby folks breed themselves into cultural obscurity.

GET THE STORY.

Geeking-Out Vs. Vegging-Out

The NYT has some interesting analysis of how movies have changed in the last number of years, using the Star Wars franchise as an example.

EXCERPTS:

[V]ery little of the new film [Episode III] makes sense, taken as a freestanding narrative. What’s interesting about this is how little it matters. Millions of people are happily spending their money to watch a movie they don’t understand. What gives?

Modern English has given us two terms we need to explain this phenomenon: "geeking out" and "vegging out." To geek out on something means to immerse yourself in its details to an extent that is distinctly abnormal – and to have a good time doing it. To veg out, by contrast, means to enter a passive state and allow sounds and images to wash over you without troubling yourself too much about what it all means.

The first "Star Wars" movie 28 years ago was distinguished by healthy interplay between veg and geek scenes. In the climactic sequence, where rebel fighters attacked the Death Star, we repeatedly cut away from the dogfights and strafing runs – the purest kind of vegging-out material – to hushed command bunkers where people stood around pondering computer displays, geeking out on the strategic progress of the battle.

All such content – as well as the long, beautiful, uncluttered shots of desert, sky, jungle and mountain that filled the early episodes – was banished in the first of the prequels ("Episode I: The Phantom Menace," 1999). In the 16 years that separated it from the initial trilogy, a new universe of ancillary media had come into existence. These had made it possible to take the geek material offline so that the movies could consist of pure, uncut veg-out content, steeped in day-care-center ambience. These newer films don’t even pretend to tell the whole story; they are akin to PowerPoint presentations that summarize the main bullet points from a much more comprehensive body of work developed by and for a geek subculture.

The author then suggests that America may be in danger because it’s national culture is becoming dominated by a veg-out attitude that wants to enjoy life rather than digging into the geek-oriented details needed to sustain the good life.

GET THE STORY.

(CHT to the reader who e-mailed!)

New B16 Book!

Why did Joseph Ratzinger come up with the name "Benedict" so quickly when he was asked what name he wanted to be called by following his election to the papacy? If reports are accurate, he said "Benedict" quite fast.

Of course, he’d had time to think about it as he saw which way the votes were trending over the four ballots of this conclave, and that gave him at least a little time to prepare mentally.

But was there anything rumbling in his mind in the background that set the stage for his choice?–something that he had already been thinking about when the conclave began?

It seems so.

B16 has a new book coming out:

Pope Benedict XVI rails against Europe in his first book published since becoming pope, chastising a culture that he says excludes God from life and allows innocent lives – the unborn – to be taken from God through legalized abortion.

“The Europe of Benedict: In the crisis of cultures” was written when the pope was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican’s guardian of doctrine, and serves as a strong indication of issues that will be priorities in his pontificate.

GET THE STORY.

(CHT to the reader who e-mailed!)

Kremed

Kremes

Sacking is going on at Krispy Kreme, and it’s not just the doughnuts that are being bagged:

"Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc., on Tuesday said six officers have left the company under pressure from a board committee that is looking into accounting practices that are the subject of a federal probe.

[…]

"Krispy Kreme, a one-time Wall Street darling, has been hard-hit by probes into the way it accounted for franchise buybacks as well as by sagging sales of its signature doughnuts."

GET THE STORY.

We Can't Take The Risk Of Being Risk-Free

There’s a nice commentary piece over yonder at RealClearPolitics about the costs associated with trying to eliminate risk from life.

The author notes that Tony Blair recently grasped the nettle and brought it onboard by declaring:

"We cannot guarantee a risk-free life."

True enough! Life involves risk, and the attempt to utterly eliminate it causes more problems than it solves.

"Like what?" you ask.

The author of the piece turns his eyes homeward for examples, noting:

We in the United States are well aware of the dangers of being over-regulated. Businesses labor under unnecessary federal regulations, and litigious attorneys compel them to slap silly warnings on virtually every product.

That’s the summary, but the examples he provides are just the tip of the iceberg. America is suffering huge burdens as a result of the attempt to live (or impose on society) a risk-free life.

Blair, though, has the chutzpah to say something that few American politicians would be willing to voice:

"We also need a far more rational, balanced and intelligent debate as to how ‘risk’ is debated. Not every ‘scandal’ requires a regulatory response," he says, sensibly. Unfortunately, that approach hasn’t yet reached across the pond.

GET THE STORY.

We Can’t Take The Risk Of Being Risk-Free

There’s a nice commentary piece over yonder at RealClearPolitics about the costs associated with trying to eliminate risk from life.

The author notes that Tony Blair recently grasped the nettle and brought it onboard by declaring:

"We cannot guarantee a risk-free life."

True enough! Life involves risk, and the attempt to utterly eliminate it causes more problems than it solves.

"Like what?" you ask.

The author of the piece turns his eyes homeward for examples, noting:

We in the United States are well aware of the dangers of being over-regulated. Businesses labor under unnecessary federal regulations, and litigious attorneys compel them to slap silly warnings on virtually every product.

That’s the summary, but the examples he provides are just the tip of the iceberg. America is suffering huge burdens as a result of the attempt to live (or impose on society) a risk-free life.

Blair, though, has the chutzpah to say something that few American politicians would be willing to voice:

"We also need a far more rational, balanced and intelligent debate as to how ‘risk’ is debated. Not every ‘scandal’ requires a regulatory response," he says, sensibly. Unfortunately, that approach hasn’t yet reached across the pond.

GET THE STORY.