Yummy!

Recently at mass, after the "Alleluia" a small child cried out "Yay!" in a loud voice. A couple of weeks later, the priest said "Take this, all of you, and eat it: this is my body which will be given up for you" and a child (might have been the same one) called out "Yummy!" Now I'm all for reverence, but this kid had a point. Why is it so quiet at mass?Ever go to a sporting event? Hockey, soccer, football, tennis? What would you think if the entire audience just stared blankly? Never cheered, chanted their team's chant, participated in any way?...

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Memorial Day Tribute

'nuff sa...

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I <3 Camping

I just got back form a beginner backpacking trip with the Boy Scouts. It was fun. First off, we got to carry a heavy pack up a hill. There were many toads and millipedes. I think they liked it because they had many mosquitoes to eat. We didn't eat mosquitoes, though. We ate apples and crackers and cheese. Then we slept, amid the noises of the night...

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Money Can't Buy Me Love

I saw this article in Science Daily that makes some shocking claimsIf you think having loads of money, fetching looks, or the admiration of many will improve your life — think again. A new study by three University of Rochester researchers demonstrates that progress on these fronts can actually make a person less happy.This is "striking and paradoxical" (at least according to the article). It continuesThe findings in this study support Self-Determination Theory... The theory holds that well-being depends in large part on meeting one's basic psychological...

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One More Into the Breach

Since everyone is analyzing the president's speech at ND, I figured I might as well. I have an advantage over other bloggers of having access to a symbolic logic analyzer.It was developed over the past years, using an algorithm developed by Muller Holk of the Division of Logic of the Encyclopedia Foundation on Terminus. It is capable of digesting a speech and producing a summary of its actual symbolic content. I started with the original transcript of the speech given here, and after a few milliseconds of computing time I got the following (cross...

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The Notre Dame Debacle

As I write this, commencement is under way, and who knows what the fallout will be. I was thinking about this last night, however, because of a discussion by some friends on the arrests taking place. The debate was who was wronger; ND for arresting priests peacefully protesting on their property, or protesters protesting on ND property. I thought I would share my thoughts.The protesters are engaging in acts of civil disobedience. Is civil disobedience justified? I think it is when we are being forced by an unjust law. Rosa Parks refusing to move...

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Still Crazy After All These Years

In January of 1610 Galileo discovered his eponymous moons of Jupiter and confirmed empirically that Ptolemy was wrong. Nearly 400 years later I read an article by Dr. Stephen Hawking that caused me to complain so vociferously my friends urged me to start a blog (presumably so they could just ignore my RSS feed instead of me personally). I'd like to comment on the article, then the incident. The Article Dr. Hawking, for those of you who have been living in a black hole, is one of the worlds' most famous cosmologists. He is a theoretical physicist...

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Metablog

This is the obligatory first blog post about blogging. Why blog? Because sometimes there is stuff in the head that's better when you get it out. No, not that stuff...thoughts. I hope I am able to put them on "paper" in a meaningful fashion.As of this post I know nothing about blogging, other than having read a few over the last bit of my life. I suspect I will learn as I ...

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