The variation on Beacon’s saying is this:
The Internet shows us that, while a million monkeys at a million keyboards might eventually produce the complete Works of Shakespeare, they’ll first produce a lot of monkey porn.
A Comment, and picture, stolen from Get Religion
MUZAFFARABAD: Death toll in the disastrous earthquake that had struck Azad Kashmir, Frontier province and Punjab is likely to go beyond 40,000 marks, while the much needed relief works in some of the devastated areas could not yet been taken up.
The nightmare and the huge tragedy that visited these ruined and ravaged vast areas of hills and dales and the plane lands with no exceptions and with equal severity could hardly be described as words fail to depict the real scene of that doomsday …
Rich and poor nations have taken the hit over a period so twisted in nature’s assaults that one month, rich is helping poor and the next, poor is helping rich as best it can, and then the poor gets slammed once again.
The United States, giver of tsunami aid in December, accepted hurricane aid from some of those same countries in September. Now it is giving to South Asia a second time, in response to the weekend earthquakes. India is sending tents, food, blankets and medicine to its foe, Pakistan, geology briefly shoving aside geopolitics.
More than 176,000 people died in the earthquake and tsunami of December; an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 in the quake Saturday; perhaps 1,000 or more in Guatemalan landslides last week; more than 1,200 in Katrina. Asian beaches, mountainous Kashmir villages and American urban streets and casinos all were overwhelmed.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
H/T Drudge
The city of Lisbon, capital of Portugal, was flourishing in a sustained economic boom based on the development of diamond and gold mines in Brazil when a massive earthquake struck on the morning of Nov. 1, 1755.
It was All Saints Day, and the churches were packed with worshippers when the first of two shocks hit. At least 30,000 lives were lost. The 18th century rationalist philosopher and skeptic Francois Marie Arouet — better known as Voltaire — used the disaster to attack the concept of a kindly, beneficial God watching over a world where everything worked out for the best in his satirical novel “Candide.”
The Book of Revelation predicts a dramatic earthquake will shake the earth before the Second Coming of Christ. Accordingly, Christian fundamentalist groups have always been prone to see earthquakes as signs of divine judgment or of the imminence of the return of Jesus.
It was on this day in 1962, Pope John XXIII convened the first session of the Second Vatican Council in Rome, also known as Vatican II. Vatican II resulted in some of the greatest changes in the history of the Catholic Church. As a result of it, Catholics were allowed to pray with Protestants and attend weddings and funerals in Protestant churches. Priests were encouraged to say mass facing the congregation rather than facing the altar, and Priests were allowed to perform mass in languages other than Latin.
Taken from today’s Writer’s Almanac. Subscribe
Interpretation:
Vatican II resulted in some of the worst changes in the history of the Catholic Church. As a result of it, Catholics were allowed to become Protestants. Priests were encouraged to say mass with their arse facing God and to perform mass in languages such as street slang.
[T]he first collective meeting of 256 bishops representing the Catholic world in four years, and the first presided over by the new pope inevitably brought out the major problems facing the episcopates – terrorism, Islam, and the issue of married priests.
Vatican experts were making the point this week that the church has recently removed the celibacy rule for individual married Protestant clergymen wishing to become Catholic priests. An undisclosed number of Anglican and Episcopalian priests with families have turned to Catholicism because they opposed the introduction of women clergy in their own churches. The Orthodox church separated from Rome operates a ‘dual track’ system for its clergy in which married priests are excluded from becoming bishops.
VATICAN CITY (AP) – A top cardinal from an Eastern rite church that allows married priests cautioned Friday that allowing Roman Catholic clergy to marry might resolve the shortage but would create new and ”equally serious“ problems.
Lebanese Cardinal Nasrallah Pierre Sfeir, patriarch of Antioch of the Maronites, told the Synod of Bishops that married priests have to divert their attention away from their parishes to their wives and children, assuring their care and education.
If you’ve ever been part of an Internet discussion list, you will appreciate the wit and art of Mike Reed at Flame Warriors. I’ve had him in my side margin links for a long time, but noticed his URL had changed.
Pay him a visit, it’ll do ya good.
