A Hole In The Sky

From the Daily Comet:

Some people saw Jesus. Others blamed UFOs.

Harkening to the popular Journey song, a wheel in the sky appeared over Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes early Saturday morning, a seemingly perfect hole punched though the sheet of clouds blanketing the sky.

Locals who phoned and e-mailed the Daily Comet and the Courier this weekend about the strange cloud formation did agree on one thing: “It was the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen,” said Raceland resident Sandra Ledet, who shared some spectacular photos with the Daily Comet.

Shawn O’Neil, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Slidell, identified the phenomenon as a hole-punch cloud.

“They don’t occur all that often, and they are usually caused when an aircraft intersects altocumulus or cirrocumulus clouds,” he said.

My son called us on Saturday to go outside to see the phenomenon. I tried to take a picture, but I was shooting too close to the sun, and mine did not come out. I've surely never seen anything like it. I confess that I thought UFO, too. I don't believe in them, but Hey!

Elizabeth And Lady Catherine In the Garden

For Doxy, who says in the comments to the JA birthday post:

But honestly...the scene between Lady Catherine and Elizabeth in the garden is the single best piece of dialogue in the English language, AFAIC. Every time I read it, I want to cry because I know that I will never write anything half that good.

I'd quote from the scene, but it's pages long. No one can write dialogue like Jane Austen. Her exquisite writing is enough to drive any writer to despair.

I'm Dick Cheney, And I Approved Water-Boarding

From the L. A. Times:

Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that he was directly involved in approving severe interrogation methods used by the CIA, and that the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should remain open indefinitely.
....

Cheney's comments also mark the first time that he has acknowledged playing a central role in clearing the CIA's use of an array of controversial interrogation tactics, including a simulated drowning method known as waterboarding.

"I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared," Cheney said in an interview with ABC News.

Asked whether he still believes it was appropriate to use the waterboarding method on terrorism suspects, Cheney said: "I do."

Shameless, with no moral compass, or a compass that is woefully out of whack.

Waterboarding involves strapping a prisoner to a tilted surface, covering his face with a towel and dousing it to simulate the sensation of drowning.

NO, NO, NO, NO, NO! The procedure does not SIMULATE drowning. It IS drowning. The torturers have to bring them back from drowning, resuscitate them.

Happy 233rd Birthday, Jane Austen!

Let's celebrate with quotes from her novels.

Everybody likes to go their own way--to choose their own time and manner of devotion.

Mansfield Park

If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way; but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out.

Mansfield Park

Nothing amuses me more than the easy manner with which everybody settles the abundance of those who have a great deal less than themselves.

Mansfield Park

Oh! Do not attack me with your watch. A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.

Mansfield Park

For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?

Pride and Prejudice

Loss of virtue in a female is irretrievable; that one false step involves her in endless ruin; that her reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful; and that she cannot be too much guarded in her behaviour towards the undeserving of the other sex.

Pride and Prejudice

She consoled herself for the loss of her husband by considering that she could do very well without him.

Mansfield Park


"I cannot be dictated to by a watch," is my mantra. I'm always late. Sometimes it actually pays off. Today I went to my doctor's appointment a tad tardy, and he saw me right away. I by-passed the second waiting room.

The image is from the Pride and Prejudice 2009 calendar, with illustrations by Hugh Thompson. If you'd like, you can buy a mouse pad and stickers there, too.

Muntader al-Zaidi To Appear Before Judge

From the New York Times:

The Iraqi television reporter who threw his shoes at President Bush during a news conference is scheduled to appear before a judge on Wednesday, the first step in a potential criminal prosecution against him, a senior lawyer and the reporter’ s brother said on Tuesday.
....

The lawyer who volunteered to defend Zaidi, Dheyaa Saadi, says that the case should be closed, because he did not commit a crime. “He only freely expressed himself to the occupier, and he has such a right according to international law.”

During the joint news conference with Mr. Bush and Mr. Maliki on Sunday evening in Baghdad’s Green Zone, Mr. Zaidi, a reporter for Al-Baghdadia, a satellite television network, rose from his seat and threw one of his shoes at Mr. Bush’s head. He shouted: “This is a gift from the Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog!”

Mr. Bush ducked and the shoe missed him. Moments later, Mr. al-Zaidi threw his other shoe, this time shouting, “This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq!” The shoe struck the wall behind Mr. Bush.

We already know that al-Zaidi was beat up by the security guards.

Praying The Antiphons

The painting is from the massive Ghent altarpiece, "The Adoration of the Lamb" by Hubert and Jan van Eyck at St. Bavo Cathedral, Ghent, Belgium. Wiki shows the whole altarpiece, except for missing parts, and it is worth a look.

The well-known carol, “O come, O come, Emmanuel,” provides just such a passageway linking the old and the new. The carol’s familiar names for Christ are based on the Advent Antiphons—the “Great O’s”—which date back possibly to the sixth century. These antiphons—short devotional texts chanted before and after a psalm or canticle—were sung before and after the Magnificat, the Song of Mary, at Vespers from December 16 through December 23. Each of the antiphons greets the Messiah and ends with a petition of hope. The simple refrain of the carol, “Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!” sets the tone for this Advent time of waiting and expectation.

From "Hasten the Kingdom: Praying the O Antiphons of Advent" by Mary Winifred, C.A. (Liturgical Press, 1996).

Over the next several days, beginning today, I plan to post the "O Antiphon" of the day.

Reposted from last year with slight editing.

Pedro And Rosita

It's a romantic full moon, when Pedro said, "Hey, mamacita, let's do Weeweechu."

Oh no, not now, let's look at the moon!" said Rosita.

Oh, c'mon baby, let's you and I do Weeweechu. I love you and it's the perfect time," Pedro begged.

"But I wanna just hold your hand and watch the moon." replied Rosita.

Please, corazoncito, just once, do Weeweechu with me."

Rosita looked at Pedro and said, "OK, one time, we'll do Weeweechu."

Pedro grabbed his guitar and they both sang....

"Weeweechu a Merry Christmas, Weeweechu a Merry Christmas, Weeweechu a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year."

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

You Knew I Would Do This

The shoe was size 10. Bush has good reflexes at dodging shoes and recovering from insults.

UPDATE: Bush: "...that's what people do in a free society, draw attention to themselves."

New Spiritual Gift

From Scotteriology, via Chris Tilling:

A shocking new spiritual gift has been discovered at St Mellitus College and St Paul’s Theological Centre. This gift is the power of the spoken word to put members of a classroom or audience into a powerful and peaceful sleep. Apparently, the gift which is being termed hupnos was unknown before the arrival of their new NT tutor; then during the last semester many began noticing powerful movements of the spirit as they would “come to” after a lecture feeling like they had been in a state somewhere between narcolepsy and a coma.

Read the rest over at Scotteriology.

Chris Tilling is a brave man in more ways than one. Besides this link to a good laugh at his own expense, he courageously lists my humble blog on his theology blogroll. To give you an idea of how out of my depth I am at his blog, he and his fellow commenters joke around in Greek.

While you're there, you may want to have a look at his PopeTarts™ and Popesicles™ post.

The One Time I Cheated

The story of the students who were disciplined for setting up a Facebook discussion group on the subject of an apologetics course which they didn't like reminded me of the only time I cheated as a student.

While I was at Loyola University in New Orleans, the head of the history department or the president of the university, someone in authority, ordered that all final exams in the department include a section on the Reformation. In my American history class, we were handed a rather fat stack of mimeographed sheets on the Reformation (or Protestant Revolt, as it was often called) to study. We were outraged. Our professor did not like the idea at all, but I suppose he had no choice.

A few days before the exam, a key to the true-false test answers for the Reformation part of the exam found its way into the hands of the students, and we all took advantage of it. I answered a few questions wrong, so my paper would not look suspicious. When I finished my exam, most of which consisted of essay questions on American history, plus the mandatory true-false Reformation test, I asked the professor what percentage of the grade the Reformation test would count for. He said 1%.

The powers ordered the profs to include the Reformation test, but they rebelled by counting it as only a tiny percentage of the grade. Once I heard that, I was ashamed of cheating. The teacher was brilliant and fair, and I should have trusted him to make things right.

I'm not counting the time in the second grade, when I missed several days of school due to illness, and I had quite a few pages of math problems in my workbook to make up. I was falling asleep over the math, and my mother told me to go to bed, and I could finish in the morning. When I woke up, the problems were already done, by my mother writing with her left hand.

I hope that no one in authority at Loyola reads this post and renders my diploma null and void, but really, at this point, what would it matter?