This And That (Again)

Born on this day in 1809

Edgar Alan Poe

January 19, 1809 - October 7, 1849

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The Cardinal Newman Society blog has an interesting article concerning St. Joseph's College (where I was once employed) in my hometown of Rensselaer, Indiana. Its headline is:

Catholic College Honors MLK with Abortion Rights Activist and Republican Basher

Its opening paragraph is:

Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican for much of his life, at least according to the National Black Republican Association. And according to his niece Alveda King, he was pro-life.

That’s why it’s odd that Saint Joseph’s College in Indiana, founded and sponsored by the Missionaries of the Precious Blood, will honor the legacy of Martin Luther King by hosting a lecture by a former Planned Parenthood board member and outspoken abortion rights activist who has called the Republican Party racist.

Isn't that puzzling? A self-proclaimed Catholic College hosting an abortion rights activist. Not that I object to that. But it's certainly an unexpected and curious thing to contemplate.

Note:
An entry in Rensselaer Adventures was where I was first introduced to the above.

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The AWAD word for today:

Satisficing

Satisficing (a portmanteau "combining satisfy with suffice") is a decision-making strategy that attempts to meet criteria for adequacy, rather than to identify an optimal solution. That definition is from Wikipedia.

Also from AWAD, here is a little known factoid:
It took 12 years to complete, but Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases Classified and Arranged so as to Facilitate the Expression of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition has been in print continuously since its publication in 1852.

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Creative Minority Report presented a piece titled:

U.G.L.Y. You Ain't Got No Alibi

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I have been reading about BENJAMIN FRANKLIN who was born in 1706 and died in 1790. Here is one of the things I have learned about this fascinating man:

Though he only had two years of formal schooling, he taught himself foreign languages and read books on grammar, science, and math. He was awarded honorary degrees from Harvard and Yale even though he lacked a formal education.

Wow! A self-taught intellectual. How 'bout that?

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Here is an announcement:

My writers group has issued a challenge -- an exercise that calls for members to write six short stories in six weeks (one story each week) and I am going to try it. So I might not be posting my usual blog entry each and every day for a while. Not sure though... time will tell.

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"Let's face it, writing is hell."
--William Styron

What Do YOU Believe In?

Tucson Weather Today

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On TV's PBS News Hour they spoke of an online news organization with the name ProPublica and I spent some time looking it over. And I was impressed.

ProPublica was awarded the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting and a 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting. And that's only the beginning of the awards this organization has won.

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The newscasters are all agog at one of the latest reports from NASA, the one about the discovery of Kepler-22b, such as the believable headline at the online New York Daily News:

Newly discovered planet Kepler-22b is eerily similar to Earth, NASA finds.

Well, even though, on the surface of the average human mind, this seems to be an exciting discovery, I remain unexcited. Why? Because I am skeptical of the technology used to discern such a conclusion as Kepler being an Earth-like planet. I see this as being no more than an outright guess.


One must keep in mind that the image shown (here and in many other news pieces) is not an actual photo of Kepler-22b but is merely an artist's conception of what the planet might look like... an artist's artistic guess. That's all.

I wonder how many people think the image is an actual photo of the far away planet. After all, millions of people believe in ghosts. And millions believe that the placement of the solar system's planets and the stars as seen from Earth can foretell the future and the fortune of each individual observer. And millions of gullible people believe that nonsense.

Oh well.

Yes, I am, as always, a cranky old skeptical curmudgeon.

Believe what you wish to believe... you will anyway, with or without my permission.

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The Average Salary Of A Catholic Priest is the title of an article in eHow money. In it I read the following sentence: The Occupational Outlook Handbook notes that a Roman Catholic Priests' compensation package offers a lot more than cash compensation.

Being the inveterate amateur editor, I could not help noticing the placement of the apostrophe in a Catholic Priests'... -- It seemed to me that the apostrophe indicating possession should be placed between the letters t and s instead of after the s since a Catholic Priest denotes the singular. But I'm not sure how to go about finding out which of the two is grammatically correct.

My writers group should have at least one member who will know the answer. I've asked them the question and have received two opinions, so far. Hopefully, more will soon arrive via email.

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Putting the U.S. Postal Service back in the black? I have a few suggestions:

1. Cut mail delivery down to 5 days per week.
2. Cut out pensions; workers can draw Social Security.
3. Eliminate low postage rate for printed matter.
4. Raise crap-mail rates. Nobody wants it anyway.
5. Raise first class rate to one dollar per ounce.

While this list might appear to be radical, and will probably be greeted with various hoots and hollers, I believe that the suggestions comprise the only solution that will work... temporarily. Of course, I also believe that they will not be adopted.

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"Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is
good is not original, and the part that is original is not good."
--Samuel Johnson

Before Today's Rain Begins . . .

My note in yesterday's blog entry regarding a problem with my email has now resolved itself somehow. I can only surmise that my email provider corrected the situation. I can now respond to messages that I have received from members of Writers and I will be doing so in the near future.

. . .

Yesterday morning I was otherwise occupied and later it rained most of the afternoon, so I did not go for a walk. And then, today, during my three-and-a-half mile fitness walk I discovered that striding along a sometimes busy paved road in a populated community soon after having finished three cups of coffee is inadvisable, unless of course there is plenty of concealing roadside foliage along the way.

. . . 'nuff said?

. . .

This photo is meaningless for all but one reader

A successful repair

. . .

About halfway through my morning walk a roadrunner appeared in a home's front yard. I missed it in two photo attempts while it was speeding away, but I got it once after it had retreated into the far distance. It's in the approximate center of the pic. Sorry it's so small. The landscaping is interesting though. Right?

. . .

There is a phrase that particularly irritates me. That phrase is "...in my heart of hearts" and, in my opinion, it is intellectually meaningless in itself and is only semi-valid when used as a poetical representation of another mythical object: the soul.

Even "in my heart" is meaningless.

Think about it.

. . .

Oh well. I'm off now to attempt to write some more perfect sentences to include in my novel.