Google Search: I rarely finish at the top on Google searches but today I found one. I am THE leading expert on the following: chad johnson halloween outfit

I bet you didn't know that 38 high profile muslims responded favorably to the Popes call to dialog -- you know -- the one that offended so many Muslims

Find out more (see also The Regensburg Effect: The Open Letter from 38 Muslims to the Pope) - From the first

Now take this in. In a moment of increasing worldwide violence and tension, Pope Benedict XVI issued a call, echoing his predecessor John-Paul II, for a real dialogue between religions at the highest level of reason. And authoritative spiritual leaders of the Islamic umma responded favourably to this, and declared, in a fine, noble, and open spirit: “Let the dialogue begin!” This is news of very great significance. It should have been the top headline in every newspaper in the world.

But our media -- West and East -- report this, when at all, as some kind of sidebar on the terror war; as if the Muslim leaders had merely accepted an “apology” from the Pope for having hurt some Muslims’ feelings.

and the second

The authors of the letter welcome and appreciate without reservation the clarifications made by Benedict XVI after the wave of protests that issued from the Muslim world a few days after the lecture in Regensburg, and in particular the speech that the pope addressed to ambassadors from Muslim countries on September 25, and also the reference made by cardinal secretary of state Tarcisio Bertone, in a note issued on September 16, to the conciliar document “Nostra Aetate.”

And not only that. They condemn with very strong words the assassination that took place in Somalia, in Muslim Mogadishu, of sister Leonella Sgorbati, thereby linking this to the protests that were at their peak at the time
...
The authors of the letter appreciate Benedict XVI’s desire for dialogue and take very seriously his theses. “Applaud” pope's “efforts to oppose the dominance of positivism and materialism in human life,” while contest him on other points, adding their reasons for their opposition.

-- source Mark Shea

A couple of topics I want to post on in the near future
Sacramental marriage (its obvious graces)
Tempering of the flesh by doing without -- Either you are in control or your appetites are in control and when you are not in control you are less able to serve the Lord.

So the Cincinnati Bengals have the ball 1st and goal at the 1 yard line. I have Chad Johnson (WR) and Rudi Johnson (RB). Chances are they are going to hand the ball off to Rudi a few times until he gets in the end zone.

What happens?

1 yd touchdown pass to Houshmandzadeh (who has become the goto receiver over Johnson -- what happened to Top 5 fantasy lock at WR Chad Johnson?).

(tears his hair out) ...

During my conversion relics was a stumbing block. Since converting I have scanned thousands of thread headings regarding Catholicism (more specifically apologetics) and only TWICE has the topic of relics come up.

Today I saw it come up the second of those two times and I posted the following link in response.

My struggles with incorrupt saints and relics

This kept staring at me on the AP headlines all day: U.S. population passes 300 million mark

Earlier today it had a picture of a Los Angeles traffic jam cleverly implying that people are a huge burden and if they would just NOT exist life would be so much better.

2258 "Human life is sacred because from its beginning it involves the creative action of God and it remains for ever in a special relationship with the Creator, who is its sole end. God alone is the Lord of life from its beginning until its end: no one can under any circumstance claim for himself the right directly to destroy an innocent human being."[56]

Found this on a forum with the colors ... I got sick of looking for it every time I had a piece. It stripped the prize amounts. I will fill that in later

Here are the rare game pieces of McDonald's Monopoly Game 2006:

Mediterranean Avenue - Win 50
Vermont Avenue - Win 500
Virginia Avenue - Win 1,000
Tennessee Avenue - Win 1,500
Kentucky Avenue - Win 5,000
Ventnor Avenue - Win 10,000
Pennsylvania Avenue - Win 50,000
Boardwalk - Win 1,000,000 (50,000 per year for 20 years)
Short Line - Win 5,000,000 (250,000 per year for 20 years)

Lord of all pots and pans and things ...
Make me a saint by getting meals and washing up the plates!

-- Brother Lawrence

Always loved VeggieTales

‘VeggieTales’ creator follows a new fork in road to success from HMS

“I was miserable,” he said flatly. “It was affecting everything — affecting my marriage, my family. And that was in my good days. I realized God hadn’t called me to become the next Walt Disney and build a giant entertainment company. He called me just to tell his stories,” he said.

“Great success has a way of expanding your ambition: ‘I can do so much more than this! I can build a theme park and a TV network!’ I wanted it all and I wanted it immediately. I was really out of control,” Mr. Vischer said.

“But this is America — more is always better!”

One of the keys to his personal turnaround came when he read about the life of Mother Teresa.

“She fed the poor one at a time. She didn’t try to franchise her system for feeding the hungry. She didn’t try to become the Ray Kroc of world hunger. At first, that didn’t make sense to me. That’s not very efficient. Read some business books! Be more efficient! But then I realized she was doing what God called her to do, and that’s all that matters.”

THE Pope is taking steps to revive the ancient tradition of the Latin Tridentine Mass in Catholic churches worldwide, according to sources in Rome. -- Of course the title is "Pope set to bring back Latin Mass that divided the Church" ... I still, for the life of me, cannot figure out what is so objectionable about Latin or the Tridentine mass.

Many I know who follow secular reporting of the Church have said this particular writer is one of the worst offenders in distorting facts about the Church that there is. Thus, I am treating this with a high level of skepticism. You have been warned.

Update: This has been confimed by Catholic World News - Pope will broaden use of Latin Mass

A couple of posts from ZIppy Catholic A Collection of Magisterial Citations w.r.t. Torture
and
The Doctrinal-Juridical Two Step answering the objection about torture during the Inquisition.

I am currently reading another in the long line of discussions going on between Mark Shea and others ... Wanted to save this link somewhere ... enjoy.

Mark Shea: A response (probably inadequate) to the Big Ol' Torture Roundup Post at Against the Grain

First set of meeting notes from the collected monasteries of the new Dark Ages ...

or The FIRST ever Catholic Homeschooling Carnival is up!!!

Here you go -- It's a Carnival

This is all speculation on my part ... but you get it anyway ... I pulled this post that I wrote from a forum that I visit

OK, I went to a brief talk on Theology of the Body and it got me to thinking ... in Ephesians 5 Paul links the relationship between Christ and the Church to that of a husband and wife. So I got to thinking a little more ... We have our 4 marks of the Church

One
Holy
Catholic
Apostolic

Can we draw similar parallels to marriage and family? I need some good examples here ...

One - yeah this is obvious ... "two become one flesh"
Holy - well God certainly intends this of marriage. Divorce, adultery etc. are certainly not supposed to be part of marriage.
Catholic - well marriage has been around for as long as we have history ... and it permeates most, if not all, cultures
Apostolic - results in generations or "passing on" -- include family traditions etc ...

I think there is a point that can be made about the concept of the "invisible church".

Marriage, quite simply, is visible. It mirrors those marks because that is the REALITY of the Church. For marriage to be analogous to the invisible Church God would have to create families or groups of generations (denominations) from nothing, because there is no generational link (apostolic) ... Honestly I think the Church was set up the way it was because God wanted it to be a sign to us regarding marriage and also allowing our marriages to be a sign to help us identify the Church.

In other words, the visiblity of the Catholic Church better represents the reality of marriage and vice versa. Ok enough of my theorizing ... carry on

I heard my wife mention that she heard a man on the radio who wants to eliminate religion from public discourse altogether. It seems his theory is that, historically speaking, all of the ills of the world can be pinned on "world religions". This view suffers from a shortsignted view of religion, mostly the following two points

All religious persons tend towards fundamentalism
No religious belief (i.e. that there is a God) can be arrived at through logical reasoning

I take exception with both of these because I personally would not believe if it were not reasonable and I find that excessive recourse to simplification of matters is at the root of fundamentalism of all types including secular fundamentalism which rejects religion because a religious world contains those who do evil. To turn the tables the increasing secularization of the west has not resulted in less evil in the world. Murders, rapes, molestations and all manner of evil stull occur even in the name of no religion. It is pure foolishness to presume that secularization of the world will remove the consequence of sin. For all the evils done in the name of Catholicism, the TEACHING of the Catholic faith resoundly rejects evil and those who FOLLOW the faith are shining examples of good. Judging religion on the basis of those who do not practice it is, as a famous quote points out, like judging medicine by those who do not take it.

Faith and Reason

or "Why it isn't a bunch of rules"

Since becoming Catholic I have realized that EVERY single good thing that I had as a Protestant is available to me in the Catholic Church. It took me a few years to get to that realization but I can safely now say that is the case. No Protestant would defend his faith against the secular attack that the Bible is nothing more than a bunch of stodgy rules without recourse to a common retort also used by Catholics to defend the teachings of the Church as being nothing more than a series of rules that are difficult to keep. Most readers of the Bible come quickly to the conclusion that grace is the avenue by which we are all moved to salvation, and further to conform ourselves more perfectly to the will of our Lord. External eyes see "rules" but a man of faith realizes that the rules are to protect us from things that really bind and hinder us from achieving the final end for which we are all intended -- that is -- eternal life. It is our faith that this grace will be provided that allows us to assent to difficult teachings in order to find far greater freedom than we could have ever imagined.

Which brings me to a litany of things that we have gained since becoming Catholic

We have gained, through papal encyclicals and ecumenical councils, authoritative teaching that is living and comes to us in the same way that teaching was passed to the churches even in Bible times (by letter and council - Acts 15)
We have gained physical reception of our Lord in the Eucharist
We have gained deep history
We have gained centuries of classic art
We have gained centuries of sacred music
We have gained centuries of world renowned architecture, all built for the glory of God
We have gained the recorded lives and devotional writings of the saints
We have gained the intercessions of prayer partners, in the saints, whose prayers are far more efficacious than those of our friends on earth
We have gained, as married persons, the freedom to love each other in the unitive and procreative aspect of marriage in having rejected the bondage of contraception with its multitude of physical and emotionally destressing effects
We have gained an understanding of the many beautiful and sacramental ways that God wants to provide His grace to us by means of His Church.

We have gained a greater understanding of the truth ... and in greater understanding of the truth lies greater freedom.

First off, I am a total bum with this blogging thing as of the past few weeks ... Honestly, I just haven't had the time. I have a rant for tonight so I will leave you with it.

I have written in the past about isolation and lack of community. In an older post on lack of community I find myself ranting on the giant fences that divide our yards. After watching the whole process for even longer I propose that the real root of the matter is selfishness but cleverly packaged up under the guise of social "virtues".

Specifically speaking those would be independence and self-sufficiency.

I spend less time agonizing over talk radio than I used to. When I do expend the effort I find that most people are complaining because someone isn't taking responsibility for some grave action that occurred that day. In order to shift blame from their preferred candidate or political ideology people choose to place the burden of collosal societal failures on a single individual if at all possible and call it "personal responsiblity". In my opinion this has caused people to think too highly of themselves. To have a consistent worldview they have elevated individualism onto a pedestal of near godlike quality. *I* can do anything -- and damn anyone who dares to get in my way.

Now I am pretty sure that talk radio or blame shifting is not the cause but I think the attempt to create a consistent worldview that panders to individualism and selfishness requires jettisoning a significant amount of contact with the community in order to develop a greater level of privacy with which to perform any of a number of untold "expressions" of individuality. Time AWAY = greater freedom (in modern times even in a legal sense) to perform whatever acts I deem appropriate. After all, whatever is within my walls stays there. To take things further is to retreat into self sufficiency, where you are so independent you don't need much of anyone. *I* can do everything -- there are no people in my way.

None of this is real freedom though. Freedom comes from the One who gave it to us. The problem is *I* need people and that is simply admitting that I need Christ. Christ often comes to us through those who SERVE us. Furthermore Christ calls US to service. If there is nobody there, who hears the gospel? Who feeds the hungry if we decide that isolation and self-sufficiency are our highest ideals?

Each of these virtues can be good as long as they are pursued within the means for which Christ has given us. The problem is we can idolize them and that takes us away from God and away from being vessels of Gods love to the world.

I was raised without ever considering the question for or against abortion (link is admittedly incomplete). The fact that I didn't even know about it stemmed from a family life that wouldn't have even considered such an option. In high school, prompted by other relativist teens, I took a stab at developing some nuanced position on abortion. After all, intelligent people have nuanced positions on everything. Thus, at the time I accepted the "extreme cases" position. "Well ... I figured ... we should most likely leave it legal because after all women should have access to it in the 'difficult cases' of rape and incest". Today I can look back and see that its those "extreme cases" are what always seem to chip away at the foundation of our moral fabric on issues of all sorts ... as I grew older, I grew stronger in my faith and the question of abortion became clearer ... mostly because that was what good Christians told me I should believe. I never reasoned through the issue myself until I had the good fortune of debating a good spirited pro-choice person on a sports forum. The discussion was pretty much a train wreck surrounding the discussion I was having with him. Ad hominem attacks dominated the rest of the thread.

My opponent argued from a certain philosophical angle. The idea goes something like this -- "I think therefore I am" ... "I do not think, therefore I am not" -- His position was that a child prior to rational thought was without value or, at least in terms that I could tell, not a child at all. The child simply "was not" and thus his argument for abortion was founded solely on the rights of the woman bearing the child that "was not". I quickly moved to point out that there are some instances of children describing what it was like to be in the womb as if they DID actually have some amount of reasoning at that point. That muddied the matter a bit for him just enough to admit that he couldn't know for sure that the life within the womb was rational or not ...

At that moment I made the only point that resonated with him.

In many modern nations we take it for granted that we have the right of presumed innocence when accused of a crime. It is so fundamental in the United States that few would dare to suggest that right be denied. I simply asked him "If we are innocent until proven guilty in this country, shouldn't we be considered alive until proven otherwise?"

He stumbled and admitted it was a good point with which the whole discussion ended. In the end, I don't think I changed his mind and he certainly didn't change mine. I left with only one small taste of hope ... a seed

To press the issue of life a little further -- A local college student recently argued quite effectively for an early definition of when life begins -- and what that is worth. You see, Plan B is an abortificient and there is evidence that the birth control pill is as well. I want to press the same question to those reading this reworded for these cases -- "Shouldn't these also be considered abortions until proven otherwise?"

That question rocked my world and started me down a most amazing path that culminated in the work of this blog and website and has resulted in 3 beautiful children in our family and one in the womb. God IS the author of life. We have to trust that He knows what He is doing and truly believe the scriptures when they tell us that "children are a gift from the Lord". (Psalm 127:3)

Let us prepare the way for Him to write more names in His book of life.

One only need to note that the majority of my hits right now are coming from an Altavista image search for Napoleon Dynamite

Sweet!!!

OK two weeks into my fantasy football league and here is how my team looks -- GOOD

I drafted based on what I was used to - yardage leagues, which is not what I was in. You win some, you lose some. This is a touchdown league with unusual defensive scoring -- as in HIGH ... one of them scored 53 points this week. Thus, it pays to have a stud defense. I picked up 9 sack performing San Diego after week 1. They nearly shutout the Titans and managed to come up with 2 interceptions to aid my cause. Here is my current roster ... (normal starters before --)

QB: Eli Manning -- Rex Grossman
RB: R. Johnson, C. Taylor -- D. McAllister, M. Bell
WR: C. Johnson, D. Jackson, A, Johnson -- A. Bryant, D. Bennett, T. Williamson
TE: L. Smith
K: R. Gould
D: San Diego

As of now it looks like I have stud starters at every position. My problem is bye weeks. I do not want to shed anyone from my team and I will have to in order to fill my defensive opening this week. Mike Bell anyone?

I want to immediately make it clear that I support a womans right to choose homebirth. I also maintain that every effort should be made by our society to ensure that women who do choose this route are not inhibited by law or selfish interests.

That said, our discernment about homebirth has become much clearer. There are several practical factors that must be considered which have us almost certainly choosing the hospital route.

We are setting aside the hopital intervention question as it is a seperate issue from the general homebirth safety question. Feeding the hospital intervention information into the queue as if it is relevant is clouding the issue. First off, it presumes that it is near impossible to have a natural delivery in a hopital setting which is simply not true. Everyone knows of people who have done it.

There are several of what I consider to be valid criticisms of almost all of the homebirth safety studies that exist. For example, in one frequently cited study (Johnson & Daviss) even excluding outlying conditions like midwives who try to deliver babies of higher risk (breach, twins etc), we see higher mortality rates in the homebirth group than the hospital group. Second, it is impossible to eliminate bias, as has even been pointed out by midwives

... because the women who choose homebirth tend to have a higher level of education, and higher socioeconomic status, than the general population. These and other traits are also associated with a lower risk of dead or sick babies. Sometimes it's hard to tell whether it is homebirth itself which gets the good results, or the women who choose homebirth.

Third, considering outcomes in other countries pertains to the unique situations that exist in THOSE countries. I have said this in a recent post ... The United States is not the UK. The Netherlands has a lower mortality rate than the United States. They also have high homebirth rates. These are all well and good and show how things SHOULD be in the US, but they are not. Quite simply, for our location, I can see no real evidence that PROVES that homebirth is as safe or safer than hospital birth when including the outcomes of both the mother and the baby.

At best, the studies simply suggest (that is, NOT prove) that under certain conditions home birth is as safe as hospital birth. The evidence is NOT overwhelming and more study needs to be done -- especially in the US where conditions are far from ideal both legally and practically.

Back to those certain conditions -- Every study purporting to show the safety of homebirth generally does so under the following conditions:
- Low risk pregnancies
- Well trained attendants
- Established channels for emergency care

The simple fact is that we do not meet two of these requirements.

Low risk pregnancies: VBAC is not low risk so even using the studies that do exist to make our decision is dubious at best. In fact there is a recent study suggesting that VBAC at home is substantially less safe than in a hospital setting. With the risk of uterine rupture, fetal monitoring is typically required as it is one of the first signs it is going to happen. This type of monitoring is not typically present in your average homebirth situation. Second, uterine rupture can happen quickly and it can be catastropic and result in the death of the mother and the baby.
Established channels for emergency care: Our path to the nearest hospital is not ideal and our nearest hospital is not equipped to deal with the situation we could be bringing them. Our transfer time is anywhere from 20-45 minutes to the nearest hospital. It would be catastrophic to be caught in rush hour traffic with an accident on the interstate for a transfer even with a police escort. Using an ambulance would delay our transfer by as much as 15 minutes (we sadly know this from experience). Accidents on the interstate are NOT uncommon during rush hour. Our two primary paths to the nearest hospital are significantly delayed under that circumstance.

We are an outlying case. In our circumstance we feel it is difficult to justify a decision to homebirth.

My 5 year old son loves Star Wars BTW. In the top left corner he wrote Wednesday ... its hard to see though.

Last night my wife and I went to a timely talk titled "Discernment". It focused on discernment in the model of The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola and was presented by a nun who resides in our parish. It was very thorough for the short time frame. Interestingly, in light of my adoration hour the night before, a particular aspect of her talk came into better focus for me. My prayer the night before had pointed it out, but the talk gave a name to it:

Indifference

This might be better defined as objectivity or total surrender to the idea that whatever the outcome of the decision, you are OK with the path that takes you closer to God. Ideally you do not care which of the outcomes He leads you towards so any of them need to be acceptable if it is His will. After all, His ways are not ours. To point this out let me point out some information that I *was* focusing on in our decision to homebirth or not.

ACOG supports contraception. In fact, OB's almost universally distribute them.
ACOG supports abortion and most OB's recommend testing that aims to terminate the lives of unborn children. In fact, ACOG opposes any restrictions to abortion.
OB's typically support methods of artificial fertilization which violate the unitive act of marriage in conflict with Catholic teaching
Inhibitors to natural child birth and breastfeeding are strongly encouraged by doctors and support staff thus violating the right of children to receive parental care within the effective natural processes intended by God to bring children into the world and nurture them.

Now those are likely true for most doctors. They may EVEN be true for OUR doctor. The problem is, we control the decisions our doctor makes that apply to our faith. We do not contracept. We will not use aritficial methods to achieve conception. We will not engage in testing in order to procure an abortion that will kill our unborn child. The relative stance of the majority of doctors does not apply to us. To that end, the majority of the statements above only cloud the decision and foster bias in favor of the homebirth decision. Of them, only one directly affects our birthing process -- hospitals typically are places that discourage, by their policies, natural childbirth. There are Catholic NFP-only doctors who adhere firmly to the teachings of the Church and there are midwives who support the same stances that I question above. If we were going to choose a care provider based on whether they share our Catholic beliefs we would be limited to only a few options. The real questions we need answers to regarding doctors and hospitals are more like this:

Can our doctor peform the tasks for which we hire her to perform?
Will our doctor undermine our faith by choices she makes? (from experience we know that she will not)
Is the hospital an acceptable, comfortable, nurturing place to give birth to our child?
etc.

Through prayer I have been led to consider things in a different light and in a manner that removes a strong bias I have that might have caused me to choose a provider of lesser skill based on the fact that we would be able to have great rapport swapping conversion stories and devotional tips. Who loses out on the benefit of superior care?

It seems logical to consider the items listed at the beginning and give them high weight in the decision making process but in this case they are clouding the real issues. It is difficult for us to rip down biases, especially those crafted in the guise of following our faith more closely. The fact is, we live in the world and we cannot preach Christ to the world if we spend the rest of our lives avoiding the world we are supposed to live in.

Oh and thank you Mark Shea for pointing me to Holy Office: The Medicine Cabinet

How to Give a Bad Homily
Pope You

It has been a while since I posted and it is this very reason that I will never be an influential blogger (see my Seven Habits for bloggers). My wife and I have been going through quite a few critical discernment issues. They are summarized below:

1. We decided against homeschooling for THIS YEAR because my wife is having our 4th child and our oldest is kindergarten age. It was a matter of answering the question: What sets up the most conducive environment for the development of ALL of our children? There are more factors than "pubik schoolz suck" at play here.

2. We thus, having the advantage of public schools that would make certain squeaky wheels chirp ceaselessly, sent our child to the local public school to start kindergarten.

3. We then discovered that kindergarten is different than it used to be. Most kids are 5.5 to 6.5 in age. This made our son the youngest in his class by about 6 months. We decided after much consideration to transfer him to a Catholic pre-K instead. It costs a little bit more but in the long run I think he will benefit. I then was alerted to an article on the matter of older kids starting kindergarten than in the past ... the bottom line, from our discussions with older parents and in the article, is that nobody seems to regret starting their kids a little later. Plenty of folks seem to regret pushing their kids beyond their means at such a young age. Err on the side of safety and allow our son to develop in his timing not that of businesses dying to get him on the payroll at 22 years of age. They can wait until he is 23.

4. We have a long story about birthing to recount, but essentially we are CONSIDERING the homebirth route for our next child. I have moved from the "it’s a crazy idea" camp to "it’s not totally irresponsible" camp to the "this is more in line with our beliefs on life" camp. I have to stress that we are still in discernment on the matter. I have some statistics on homebirth that I plan to critique. They LOOK great but as I have posted in the past, statistics are not science and ones done on populations are prone to the most abuse by those with agendas.

Never fear ... I will ask for input so I expect some different visitors with different viewpoints when I pose the questions criticizing the statistics often used to support homebirth.

I want to make it clear that I support birthing centers and the general homebirth movement. I think WOMEN should have that choice and avenues should be available to them to make that decision and make it as SAFE as possible. It appears that it is a big struggle for those who make this choice, as we are learning, and in these United States of America we should find that appalling.

Anyway, I have decided that my brain is full and it is time for me to vent on a variety of topics. They are, in no particular order:

Homebirth
6 year olds in kindergarten
Judging parenting decisions
Attachment parenting
The Parousians at LSU

OK, I am sick but this article is worth taking the time to read

Mark Steyn: It's breeding obvious, mate
Australia and the US can avoid the bleak future awaiting dying old Europe via Mark Shea

Now, bear with me, this is going to be a total nerd post but you might benefit from having read it. Geeks reading this will laugh that I am WAY behind on having discovered this. I have been using Firefox for quite a while. If you are not using Firefox, you are seriously missing out. Firefox has something called extensions, which allow you to add functionality to the web browser. I have several that I like to use. In fact, I listed my FIVE FAVORITE on a forum about 3 days ago. They were:

1. The combination of Adblock (or AdBlock Plus) and Adblock Filterset.G Updater - If you hate banner ads, this is for you.
2. CopyURL+ - If you blog or post links a LOT then this extension is VERY useful. Its worth the effort to customize it.
3. IE Tab - there are some websites you want to subject to IE only ... this allows you to switch a tab to IE without getting out of Firefox and it allows you to render certain sites ALWAYS in IE.
4. Dictionary Tooltip - right click on a word, know what it means ... uses several online dictionaries
5. Fasterfox - Trust me ... you will appreciate the performance increase

Then I discovered two more ...

1. Greasemonkey - Allows you to add scripts that modify how certain sites look and even act.
2. Platypus - Allows you to make modifications to web pages that can be saved and applied via Greasemonkey.

I will never browse the same again ..

Here is an example of a perfect use for Platypus (which uses Greasemonkey). I use WeatherUnderground to track storms. WeatherUndergound has TONS of information on the screen that I find useless when all I want to see is the radar and the list of the storms. In about 3 minutes I removed all of the extraneous information using Platypus. When you click save, Platypus shows you the Greasemonkey script and then gives you the option to install it, which I did. Here are before and after pictures.

Before Platypus modification:


After Platypus modification:


Notice the scrollbar on the BEFORE picture and also notice that the table containing the storm data (look for the yellow boxes) is slightly wider so that I can fit more storm information in the same amount of vertical space.

Now, I had to make a modification in Greasemonkey so that all of the radar URL's matched but that wasn't too difficult a task. When I surf around the rest of the WeatherUnderground site, everything appears as normal. It only affects the radar pages. All of the changes I made in Platypus I think anyone reading this can make after playing with it a little bit. Any changes you make while playing around you can get rid of by clicking refresh. The changes are not saved unless you SAVE and INSTALL the script.

So Install them and have fun ....

I HAD to add this ... I couldn't stop laughing

Read more at CVSTOS FIDEI - Beirut Under Attack Again!!!

Since this has been all over the blogosphere in the past few days AND since I already do not have a healthy trust of the media, I thought I would direct you to a post on Bettnet.com titled Don’t believe your eyes … or the media. This makes me feel even less comfortable about what I read.

Pope Says Beaumont Cathedral Now a Basilica

Worshipped there before. It really is a beautiful church. The only thing I did not like about the restoration was that the wood floors are a little TOO brand new. When they age some it is going to look even better.

If you are along the coast stop in. You won't regret it.