Okay, okay. The Ides of April is actually April 13th, not April 15th, but it’s too goo an allusion to pass up.
Why beware today?
‘Cause it’s tax day in the U.S.!
Oooooooo! Pretty scary, eh, kids?
‘Couse it’s no where near as scary as in Europe or the more socialistic Anglophone countries, but it’s scary enough, okay!
Make sure you’ve sent in your taxes if you haven’t already!
Okay, okay. The Ides of April is actually April 13th, not April 15th, but it’s too goo an allusion to pass up.
Why beware today?
‘Cause it’s tax day in the U.S.!
Oooooooo! Pretty scary, eh, kids?
‘Couse it’s no where near as scary as in Europe or the more socialistic Anglophone countries, but it’s scary enough, okay!
Make sure you’ve sent in your taxes if you haven’t already!
Yes, it true! They are no good. It is bad very checker. They clear everything in this post blog. No green line squiggly. These sentence no verb.
Microsoft, it needs fix grammar checker or ditch. So articles say. I agree with it. I am violates multiple grammar rules herein. Last sentence two main verbs! Yet no squiggly line green still!
Microsoft Word grammar checker creation of Easter Bunny for mankind harm!
Bush is a microbrained insect who couldn’t care less about humanity and has a fondness for slime-molds.
It’s true!
The same goes for Cheney and Rumsfeld.
No! I haven’t been reading Daily Kos!
And I’m not talking about our nation’s esteemed leaders!
I’m talking about three new species of slime-mold beetles that have been named after our nation’s leaders.
And guess what: The gent who named them wasn’t trying to insult them but to honor them.
EXCERPT:
Wheeler, who is now head of entomology at the Natural History Museum in London, said that the choice to name beetles after President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was out of admiration for their principles, not because they look like the beetles.
I know others are more beatiful or moving, and I want to give them their due, but this picture has a special place in my heart. Used to have a postcard of it in my office at Catholic Answers for years (until we moved offices and it went missing).
Use this syntax to put your own favorite pictures of John Paul II in the combox:
<img src="http://xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx">
where the x’es represent the URL of the picture (make sure you don’t put http:// in twice).
It turns out that a neurologist hired by wife-killer Michael Schiavo to examine Terri, a doctor who approves of killing patients, had previously misdiagnosed a patient as being in a persistent vegetative state and declared that he would never again regain consciousness.
EXCERPTS:
”Sergeant Mack will never regain cognitive, sapient functioning,” Cranford said six months after Mack was shot while serving a search warrant on Dec. 13, 1979. ”He will never be aware of his condition nor resume any degree of meaningful voluntary conscious interaction with his family or friends.”
Based on Cranford’s unequivocal diagnosis of Mack, the officer’s relatives removed him from a respirator in August 1980 "because his family felt he should be allowed to die rather than exist in such a state," according to published reports.
But Mack did not die.
On Oct. 22, 1981, 18 months after Cranford declared Mack’s case hopeless, doctors at the advanced care facility where Mack was being treated noticed that he was awake.
(Cowboy hat tip to the reader who e-mailed!)
Canonist Edward Peters explains it all.
Last April, a year ago this month, I moved the blog to TypePad.
As of today, we’ve had half a million hits in the new TypePad location.
YEE-HAW!
These hits are page calls and include people going into the comboxes, but they do not include image or other file calls.
Our rate of hits has really picked up since those early days, and if things stay on track we should be at the million hit mark long before another year is up.
Thanks, everybody, for all your participation, which made this possible!
In case you ever wondered whether our society treats animals better than it does human beings, wonder no more:
You see, "force-feeding" humans via feeding tubes who never legally directed that they be deprived of food and water is a Bad Thing. In some cases, even when written directives are left that allow for "force-feeding," it is a Good Thing to deprive humans of feeding tubes anyway. But what happens if Flipper cannot swallow? Do we do the "humane" thing and deprive him of nutrition? Of course not! Dolphins require much better treatment than what we currently consider to be good enough for humans:
"In early March an estimated 80 rough-toothed dolphins stranded themselves in the shallows off Marathon in the Florida Keys.
"Rescue workers and volunteers worked nonstop to help as many as they could to return to deep water. Some dolphins made it. About two dozen died.
"For 26 that clung to life there was only one chance for survival — transfer to the Marine Mammal Conservancy rehabilitation facility on Key Largo, farther up the Keys from Marathon.
[…]
"In the pool [where the recuperating dolphins were kept], volunteers hold the dolphins and keep their blowholes out of the water so they can breathe.
"A veterinarian injects the mammals with vitamin E to help with muscle cramping. Unable to eat on their own, they are fitted with a feeding tube to get them the needed nutrition."
And so, roughly around the same period that Terri Schiavo was being dehydrated and starved to death by a Florida state judge’s fiat, the great state of Florida was inserting feeding tubes into dolphins.
God have pity on us.
(Nod to Meira Online for the link.)
Being the inveterate royal-watcher I am, when I stumbled across a recap of Prince Charles’ wedding to Mrs. Andrew Parker Bowles on "BBC America" I watched … with clenched teeth and appropriately timed snorts of disbelief. Apparently even CNN couldn’t help but notice the supreme irony of the occasion:
"A solemn ceremony has blessed the wedding of the heir to the British throne Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles, now the Duchess of Cornwall, at which the couple each pledged to be faithful to each other.
[…]
"The blessing ceremony, which had the feel of a wedding and was aired across the globe, conjured memories of the 1981 day when millions of television viewers watched Prince Charles marry Lady Diana Spencer at St. Paul’s Cathedral in what has become part of royal lore as a ‘fairy-tale’ wedding. "That storybook Charles-Diana wedding ceremony, which captivated the world, contrasted in sad irony with what followed — a tempestuous marriage and separation of Charles and the now-late Diana, Princess of Wales, that shocked and appalled all of England and royal-watchers everywhere.
[…]
"The [Anglican] archbishop’s [Rowan Williams of Canterbury] talk of ‘love and faithfulness’ contrasted with the adultery the pair, as well as the late Diana herself, displayed over the years.
"In the wedding blessing, the couple recited a line of repentance from the Book of Common Prayer, the inclusion of which is seen as an acknowledgment of their prior adultery."
Or a continuing state of adultery, unless the new Duchess of Cornwall has obtained an annulment of her first marriage to the Roman Catholic Andrew Parker Bowles. (If she has, then this marriage to Prince Charles means that there would be no ongoing state of adultery and the marriage would be presumably sacramental.)
