News Clips: November 2006 Archives
Thomas Serafin fights a battle to Kids are starting to act like teens even though they are much younger. There is the issue of puberty being pushed back some, especially for girls, but a lot of it is culture influencing them, including pop music. Foul language that never used to be on prime-time TV is now found everywhere on TV. Marketers target the "tween" segment, knowing they influence a lot of spending. Experts question whether children their age are able to process things more appropriate for teenagers.
I think music and TV is a lot to blame, that and peers. Even if you want to protect your kids by turning off the TV or filtering the music, they are going to get a lot of stuff from their peers. (A lot of times your kid's parents are much more permissive than you'd like.) This is really an area where community plays an important role — and in some cases, a negative one.
In any case, it's getting a lot harder to raise kids.
Doctors were able to save a baby who was born with his heart outside his chest. Other than not being able to play certain competitive sports, he should be able to live a relatively normal life.
Wow!
I wonder if this happens to other organs. Presumably it does. Probably doesn't make news with as widespread distribution as this one though.
Here in Massachusetts there is a brewing controversy. Massachusetts has a law forbidding most stores from opening on Thanksgiving. A couple of stores plan to defy this, CompUSA being one of them.
Now I was never a fan of blue laws growing up. In some cases they just seemed to be non-sensical; for example, in Texas you couldn't buy batteries or underwear. Note that they allowed stores to be open, you just couldn't buy certain items. I'm still convinced those particular laws were insane and in need of reform.
Now I try to keep holy the Lord's Day. I am not going to comment about whether if I had my druthers there would be blue laws in effect for Sunday today. However I will say that I think it is healthy for society to have a break from shopping on at least a few days of the year, and Thanksgiving is an excellent choice of a day on which not to shop. Really, folks, will the world come to an end if people can't shop on Thanksgiving? I mean I can see a certain argument being made against forbidding shopping on every Sunday, but do we really need shopping 365.2425 days of the year? Ever thought that maybe the employees would rather be eating Thanksgiving meals with their families than manning the stations at CompUSA? It would be a shame if people were coerced by their employers to not celebrate Thanksgiving dinner so their bosses can profit.
Benedict XVI recently was the first to buy a bond from the International Financing Facility for Immunization (IFFIm), and organization dedicated to funding an ambitious program of international immunization.
The way I believe the program works is that several first-world countries have pledged a certain amount of money over a period of years for this cause; in order to realize the funds sooner, they are selling long-term bonds on the international bond market.
Now don't ask me how to buy the bonds, because I can't figure that out from their website. You can easily give cash, however. So check it out.
Here is an interesting article about a man who served as a spy in Al Qaida for European intelligence. Strangely the article goes very little into telling us exactly what is motivating the Muslims, except that it has to do with "reclaiming Jerusalem and a greater Muslim world". I guess I'll have to buy the book if I want to learn more than that.
Sir Elton John thinks that we should ban religion completely. But say I stated the following; what do you suppose he'd think?
"I think gay people often turn their hatred toward religion. Homosexuality promotes the hatred and spite against religion. From my point of view, I would ban gays completely. Homosexuality is barren. It goes against the evolution of the human species and spreads AIDS."
(Note: The preceding doesn't actually represent my views, it is strictly a thought experiment.)
Want to make a pilgrimage to Fatima, but can't make it for whatever reason? A generous and devout Portuguese will execute your pilgrimage for a fee. He walks the whole way from his home Cascais near Lisbon to Fatima, gathering stamps to prove he's done the deed.
This definitely qualifies as weird. Will it mean as much to God that you paid someone else to do it? That much I can't say. I suppose it counts for something. If I pay someone to deliver you a gift, you will likely be almost as impressed as if I made the gift myself and hand-delivered it, especially if I live far away.
Here is his website.
"It promises to be the most famous papal calendar since Pope Gregory the 13th." <rimshot>
(Said to be the best available photo of the calendar)
Here we have another attempt to create a kind of human-animal hybrid, though I'd point out that in this case they plan to put a full set of human DNA into an empty cow egg so that they can conduct stem cell research. Because it is hard to obtain human eggs (even if you have a willing donor it requires surgery) they want to use cow eggs. Also the resulting embryos would be destroyed after six days.
Still, even if you aren't attempting to mix cow DNA with human DNA and bring a chimera to term, it's a revolting plan. It involves the worst aspects of stem cell research — cloning (at least as I read it) and destroying innocent embryos.
Perversely, a liberal MP had the audacity to say, "If human benefit can be derived by perfecting therapeutic cloning techniques or from research into subsequently-derived stem cells, then it would actually be immoral to prevent it just because of a 'yuck' factor." Of course, it's not the "yuck factor" we're balking at.
... especially when it's Slate has a very interesting story: They claim studies demonstrate that Internet access to porn reduces rape, and violent movies reduce rates of violent crime. Supposely, if you examine the arrival of the Internet in all fifty states (which received it, so they claim, at different times) and compare it to rape rates, there is a very close correlation between when the Internet arrives in a state and when the rate of rape falls. And, when a violent movie is released, violence rates fall. Though I would argue, that doesn't mean that violence rates don't increase somewhere down the line. Just because the violent people are occupied one weekend doesn't mean all is well in the long run.
Amen to that. Holiness is not the province of priests and religious; all Christians are called to holiness. All are called to be saints. All, in fact, are called to make a decision to follow Jesus, and to personally believe in him — to make one's own the faith one is professing. (Or, to make one's own the Christian faith one is not professing. Either way!)
(Is he allowed to use JP2's crucifix?)
