The U.S. Naval Institute's Proceedings notes:

ex-Guadalcanal (LPH-7) Sunk as target in a live fire exercise off the Virginia Capes in 2,850 fathoms at 32 degrees 3 minutes N, 74 degrees 15 minutes W.

Paul Begala's good advice for Rudy Giuliani if he wants to be president:

"You can’t switch on everything. So surrender to the far right on one issue: abortion. But the only way to do it is whole hog. Use your trump card: 9/11. Tell them the death you saw that day gave you a greater appreciation for the sanctity of life. You’re Saul on the road to Damascus. Praise the Lord and pass the delegates."

More.

From the New York Times.

A disturbing editorial for prospective Mitt Romney supporters.

More "Best of" Lists than you can shake a stick at.

With a hat tip to the New York Times.

Simon Doonan in the New York Observer:

Don’t get me wrong: It’s not that I’m anti-art. It’s just that, when confronted by the unquestioning, slavish, masochistic fervor of the typical Art Basel attendee, I turn into Ted Nugent. I want to buy a gun, closely followed by a Thomas Kinkade painting.

Not so interesting fact from the New York Times, Sunday, Dec. 10, 2006

Headline: "In Bronx, Job Statistics Paint a Complex Picture"
Subhead: "Work Still Hard to Find, Unemployed Say"

Well duh! The unemployed are by definition those people who are having trouble finding work...so if you ask them...

Metro Section, pg. 47

Interesting fact from the New York Times, Sunday, Dec. 17, 2006:

Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon still sells 10,000 copies a week.

Arts Section, page 36.

The best of part of the new Blogger Beta I've discovered so far is that publishing now seems to be instantaneous.

Carthusians Movie to Open in New York City

Into Great Silence the movie about the Carthusians that gotten rave reviews at festivals will open at New York City's Film Forum on February 28.

The Ordination of The Rev. Al Kimel

(The quality of the pictures reflects both the ineptness of the photographer and his equipment, and the fact that I didn't want to use a flash.)

After the procession.

The Most Rev. John Myers, Archbishop of Newark, incenses the altar, that's the Deacon of the Mass on the left.

The Homily and Admonition of the Candidate at the chair.

The promise of obedience.

The laying on of hands.

The prayer.

I think this is the handing over of the instruments. (I knew what it was when I took the picture...I just don't know remember now.) This is after the vesting, so that's Fr. Kimel in the purple chasuble with his back to the camera.

Can you tell I just got film developed?

Here's a shot of my building. (I've never been in the front door and you actually can't see my entrance in this photo.)

Chickens in the Basement

A closeup and a wide shot of the chickens in my boiler room. I wouldn't mind so much, except that you can see the uncontained chicken feed in the top left picture. The window is just barred (no glass) so rats can feed happily off the chicken feed too.

Sadly there were no roosters perching on the pipes when I took this picture...

In my neighborhood, even the pigeons are undergoing gentrification.

Bishop Bruskewitz's Excommunications Upheld

It only took the 10 years... and some of the people affected say they'll still be appealing.

Article

What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm You're probably in the final stages of a Ph.D. or otherwise finding a way to make your living out of reading. You are one of the literati. Other people's grammatical mistakes make you insane.
Dedicated Reader
Literate Good Citizen
Book Snob
Non-Reader
Fad Reader
What Kind of Reader Are You?

In what seems like an unusual move, Google closes down a service.

Update: The New Criterion critic agreed with me about the arrangement!


Two things.

First, a Visit to the Met:

Saw Raphael's Colonna altarpiece (left) including the predella. All the pieces are assembled in one place for the first time since the 17th century. The predella pieces are quite something (as of course is the main section.)

I disagreed with the Sun reviewer who thought all the pieces should have been hung in their original positions. That wouldn't have worked at the Met where they don't have special exhibit charges or timed entry to special exhibits. It would've just been too crowded to get a good look at the different pieces.

The Astor Court is pretty cool too...

If anyone wants to build me a Chinese scholar's garden feel free.

So many people were crowding the Rembrandt and His Circle exhibit that I resolved to come back to see it on a weekday. (I was there on Sunday afternoon.)

And I took another look at my favorite parts of the Girodet exhibit.

Second:

Dollars to donuts: if she's reading Cornel West she works for a Democrat.

Jeanetta celebrates her heritage...

Anaconda Catholic Community: The polka group provides music for the noon Mass on Sunday, Aug. 6 at Georgetown Lake Chapel.

OK...so it's not really her...but we can blame her anyways.

This room looks great, but the owner seems odd.

Father Laurent Demets, FSSP translates and posts an excellent article on confession.

Hat tip to Jeanetta for one of the best websites I've seen in a long time!

The strange antics of Charlotte Church.

Fun new Pandora doo-hickey on the side-bar.

Great Atlantic Article on Immigration

It's called "Exodus: The ominous push and pull of the U.S.–Mexico border" by Marc Cooper.

This is the part that just blew me away:

With an estimate 11-to-1 manufacturing wage differential between the two countries (some experts put the agricultural wage gap at twic that), why is anyone shocked by what's happening? "You're looking at the biggest story of our lives," Bowden told me over dinner. "This is the largest cross-border human migration in history." Though rarely, if ever posed in those terms, the staggering numbers tend to bolster Bowden's sweeping vision. Something like 15 to 20 million migrants have crossed into the United States over the last two decades. An equal number are expected to do so in the next twenty years. "People aren't coming here as much as they are leaving a cratered economy," Bowden said. "The only way you'll stop Mexicans coming to the U.S. is if you lower American wages to the same level as Vietnam. Someone worth maybe $100 a month in Mexico who comes to the U.S. becomes a human ATM machine. McCain-Kennedy, Kyl-Cornyn?" he said, referrig to the hodge-podge of current immigration-reform proposals. "It's all bullshit. What we're seeing is something right out of the Bible. This is an exodus."

Bowden's book is called Down by the River.

Your Linguistic Profile:

40% General American English

35% Yankee

10% Dixie

10% Upper Midwestern

0% Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Consulates of Red Sox Nation in the Big Apple.

The sucess of a trip to the Strand Bookstore is measured in several ways.

First, if you depart with fewer books then you arrive with and not having spent too much money you have had a moderately sucessful trip. My trip four trips ago was moderately succesful.

My last two trips have been very succesful. That means you depart with more money in your pocket than you had when you arrived.

Here's the Heritage Foundation Backgrounder on Telecom Reform, including "Net Neutrality".

Find me on MySpace and be my friend!

The Book of Pslams from the Navarre Bible, is available on Google Books!

Very cool.

Now if Google would just back off on net neutrality.

Email and memberships updated on sidebar.

This is an interesting article on the Diamond District, right across the street from where I work.

Hippocrates Refusing the Gifts of Artaxerxes by A. L. Girodet-Trioson (1767–1824, currently on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Amazingly they are selling pirated DVD's of the DaVinci Code on the street in my neighborhood already.

I haven't abandoned this entirely.

I saw two street evangelists today (not counting the scientologists). I also went to see the Johnny Cash movie.

There were a number of brothers (and priests? couldn't tell, I just heard one say that he wasn't a priest and that one was a novice) from the Holy Transfiguration Skete of the Society of St. John at the Latin mass at St. Agnes today. They had a couple of days layover in NYC on the way to somewhere else, though I didn't catch where. They looked a bit like Capuchin Franciscans of the Renewal [CFR] (beards, hoods, no scapulars) and a bit like Benedictines (black habits, belts), which was settled after Mass when I found out they were Ukranian Rite Monks.

Thomas was also Chalcedon compliant, but he scored higher on a bunch of heresies.

You scored as Chalcedon compliant. You are Chalcedon compliant. Congratulations, you're not a heretic. You believe that Jesus is truly God and truly man and like us in every respect, apart from sin. Officially approved in 451. Chalcedon compliant 100% Nestorianism 33% Apollanarian 33% Pelagianism 33% Monophysitism 33% Arianism 0% Monarchianism 0% Adoptionist 0% Docetism 0% Donatism 0% Albigensianism 0% Modalism 0% Gnosticism 0% Socinianism 0% Are you a heretic? created with QuizFarm.com

Got the PO Box. Am slowly communicating the address to everyone.

Metafilter filter:

You can't go wrong with a man in a gorilla suit delivering chicken wings.
posted by bondcliff at 9:12 AM PST on February 14

I don't believe it and not just because I detest Palmo's preening style.

And yet...where did I put that Latin grammar.

If you're in NYC, you have to go see the current Onnasis foundation art exhibit on 51st next to St. Patrick's, From Byzantium to Modern Greece: Hellenic Art in Adversity, 1453–1830. I found the ecclesiastical stuff and the War of Independence stuff and some of the non-costume traveler's paintings all very interesting. The household goods type stuff looked good too, but didn't get to much of a chance to look at it. Wasn't as impressed by costumes and pics of costumes and am somewhat tired of maps (went to see that big map exhibit at the NYPL).

Renewed the samueljhoward.us address for this site for another 2 years. .com, .info, .name and a bunch of others are still available, but I don't think I need them.

I ponied up for a paid LibraryThing account. Now I just have to log all the books!

Whoa.

So in the recent publicity over the National Prayer Breakfast, I read this article, "Jesus Plus Nothing", from Harper's, about the group that runs the National Prayer Breakfast.

A dozen guys living together, focused on Christian fellowship, near D.C., somehow associated with the National Prayer Breakfast. This sounded familiar. Oh yeah...The Jonathan House.

See the history of the Jonathan House, from the Internet Archive.

And, we read, the Coe family involved both places.

Now the Jonathan House is not as wierd as the folks in the Harper's article are made out to be and I don't really trust the reporter, but I still feel kind of mystified about the way in which this linking was so mysterious and yet apparently so important.

Pictures are up of Thomas and my trip to hear Cardinal Dulles (we heard his lecture, but he was in the hospital so the Chairman of the Theology Dept. at Fordham read it).

So I've applied for a post-office box at Rockefeller Center Post Office to work around this mail not getting delivered problem. Now, in order to get this they have to send me a certified letter to prove my address (since my drivers license is out of state). So hopefully that will get through!

I was surprised by how little it costs. $50 a year for the small box and $80 for the next larger size (prepaid per 6 months), there are also some larger sizes, but I don't remember what they cost.

Slashdot:

Post:

"I guess these days you could send flowers with "call me" just as fast as a telegram. Or hire one of the dancing monkey-suit people or a clown to sing a song about not being able to make the plane."

Reply:

"Or hire one of the dancing monkey-suit people or a clown to sing a song about not being able to make the plane.

"So, essentially, we've given up traditional telegrams and they can now only be delivered by dancing people in monkey suits. And the world becomes just a little bit awesomer."

(By the way, some people in the thread were smart enough to point out that, though much media reported incorrectly, only Western Union discontinued telgram service. Lots of other people still willing to send them for you.)

Apropos of (Merriam-Webster says it's officially English not French) overhead conversation at T.G.I.Friday's, I don't think that one can morally seek either fame or being a famous X as a goal in itself. The young woman in T.G.I.Friday's wanted to be a "famous singer". One could seek fame so as to be able to do moral goal Y: I want to be a famous singer so I can spread true religion/alleviate hunger/support my family, but not simply for it's own sake.

(does that help Steve?)

I'm off Thursday and Friday. Gotta get my glasses fixed, the one of the rubber nose pieces cracked and fell off.

My brother informs me today that he's still waiting for a plane.

Sometimes I do wish the president had a greater facility with English. "Judge Alito is imminently qualified..." I think that was "eminently" Mr. President.

A number of places I've seen it reported that the NY Times got the miner story right--that is that they stuck with "reports" or "family members say". This picture shows that's not true.

Joel Stein and his Little Red-Haired Girl (Wikipedia for the allusion) , in the LA Times.

Thomas and I were just here this weekend.

SJahaza: http://www.theyoungamericansproject.com/profile.html
SJahaza: i went to high school with brendan mcquillen
Jeanetta: is that a cult compound?
SJahaza: umm..no...it's an organic farm
Jeanetta: cult
SJahaza: you're just jealous
Jeanetta: actually? yes.
SJahaza: i know
SJahaza: i wasn't kidding
Jeanetta: damnit

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