A "new" church policy
In the tragicomedy that the Catholic church has become, a policy has been announced after the meeting of the cardinals:

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The American church leaders said they would recommend a special process to defrock any priest who has become "notorious and is guilty of the serial, predatory sexual abuse of minors." In cases that are "not notorious" they would leave it up to the local bishop to decide if such a priest is a threat to children and should be defrocked.
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Read that carefully. That word notorious is the key. What this means is that if the local bishop can somehow keep cases of abuse quiet, then the priest in question gets to stay in the Church, but if it hits the newspapers, then he's out. Isn't this the same policy the Church has been following for the last twenty years which got them into this mess?

This is ludicrous. This is beyond rationality. It really is saying that the church will continue to try to cover up evidence of criminal behavior and try to avoid involvement of civil law enforcement authorities. Priests of the church are not above the law, and if bishops try to cover up the crimes of priests, then the bishops are committing a felony. If the Pope supports this, then he's just as much a pedophile and just as guilty of accessory felony. This doesn't make any sense from either a legal or religious perspective. Why should notoriety be a factor in a decision of whether a priest has committed a mortal sin, or violated a law? It's time to start handing out jail terms, folks. Extradite the Pope to answer charges, too.

Once again, a real-life affirmation of my decision to avoid all involvement with any organized religion.

NE Snow Depth
This graph says almost all about how dismal a ski season it was in the Northeast. What it doesn't tell you about are all the rain/freeze cycles that reduced what little snow there was to truely dismal conditions. Once again, I'm soooooo happy to be in the Wasatch.

Mud Rain!
Storm total at Alta/Snowbird since Monday is 20", with more today.
On Wednesday it was 36F at 10am, ceiling down to 5500', strong winds, black clouds over the Wasatch and the east benches (but the Salt Lake is in sunshine), still 16,000 without power from Monday's storm....and a foot of new snow in Little Cottonwood Canyon with more expected.

Monday was intensely strange. Mid 60's and really strong winds coming up from the south, with gusts to 75mph, stirred up more and more desert dust - visibility dropped all day till it looked like thick fog at 5p. Then it started to rain. After 1-1/2 years here I've seen some strange weather, including the ever freaky ice fog, but this was my first experience with mud rain. There was so much dust in the air that it collected on/in the raindrops, each one leaving a tan, muddy splat where it hit. It looked like we had all driven through multiple mud puddles.

Sunday was Alta's last day of daily operation. Started cloudy with gusty winds then went to partly sunny and 55F. Legs turned to unresponsive rubber by about 2:00 since it was my third day of turning in heavy corn.



Finally!"-- Rush has announced summer tour dates in support of its forthcoming album, Vapor Trails. The road stint starts June 28 at the Meadows Music Center in Hartford, Connecticut, and runs through August 21 at the Journal Pavilion in Albuquerque, New Mexico. More tour dates will be announced at a later time."

Alas no SLC date yet, if ever. May have to travel for this one. Full article...




Good news!

Reuters News tells us:
" "Ally McBeal," the quirky, critically acclaimed show about a yuppie lawyer that helped Fox gain a reputation as a serious TV network, will end its run in May after five seasons due to low ratings, the network said on Thursday.

The move marks the second major cancellation of a big Fox show following the network's announcement in January that its popular series "The X Files" would also be canceled in May."

Both of these should have been put out to pasture a couple of years ago. It's nice to see a burst of sanity among TV execs every now and then




A new drinking game:
Grab a bottle of your favorite spirt and a shot glass.
Watch The X-Files.
Each time Scuzzy,...uh, Sculley, says "...my baby...", drink a shot.
Each time she says the infrequent "...my child...", drink two shots.
If she utters the extraordinarily rare "...my boy...", guzzle directly from the bottle.

My guess is that on average you'll be drunk on single shots by the third commercial break

The poets have been remarkably silent on the subject of cheese.


Sony has included software that will crash your computer if you try to play certain CDs on your PC:
"The CD will probably cause a system to crash, but it will not alter anything," the spokeswoman said. "And it won't eject properly, but that's just because the computer has crashed."
[Thanks to: Signal vs Noise]

Apparently this is currently restricted to certain CDs sold in Europe, (and the article references a Celine Dion CD, as if anyone should care) but I'm trying to understand something here. Isn't Sony the same company that advertises their MP3 players and how you can copy music from your PC onto your Sony MP3 device and take it "anywhere you go"?


Megadeath is breaking up. Why do things like this seem to happen 10 or 20 years too late?



Finally, a physio-chemical explanation of why condiments go bad in your refigerator.

OH NO! Britney Spears has the same birthday as me.


I suppose I should see Amelie as it's received great reviews from the professional critics as well as from blog folk (who I suppose would be amateur critics). I see two problems with this:

1) It qualifies as an art film. I've yet to remain awake through a single art film. I don't attend screenings of films, I don't go to a cinema - I go to a movie theater to watch a movie.

2) Many of the same blogs that are agog over Amelie also just love Radiohead. I interpret this as a distinct warning, if not a sign of the coming apocalypse. I just don't get Radiohead. Kid A and OK Computer - two back to back discs of pure, undiluted shit. Does crap actually become art if you claim it's art often enough?


From Signal vs. Noise: A court in Sweden has ruled that a man who donated sperm for artificial insemination, enabling a lesbian couple to have three children, must pay child support after the two women separated, a Swedish newspaper reported on Sunday.
What?!
Originally at: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011209/od/life_sweden_sperm_dc_2.html ...but that has "expired" according to Yahoo.

How could I possibly forget Lifehouse in my list of bands that must go?


Bet you didn't know that Britney Spears is an expert in semiconductor physics.
Want proof?


Now for your moment of zen we present the Samuri Lapin
[It's a large-ish Flash animation]

Hey. Wow. I got yet another "pre-approved" credit card offer in the mail today. This one is for a gold Mastercard from First Primier Bank in that bustling metropolis of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Not only am I pre-approved for a coveted unsecured credit card, I get the attractive rate of 9.9% Fixed APR. OK, now on to the fine print...........

Seems that to get this card, I get to pay the following fees:
Program fee - $95
Account Set Up fee - $29
Annual fee - $48
Participation fee - $72 billed at $6 per month

Fucknozzles.

The Pope finally (after how many decades?) broke his silence on the Catholic priest sex abuse cases. He said the priests had succumbed ``to the most grievous forms'' of what he called, using the Latin phrase, ``mystery of evil.''

``Grave scandal is caused, with the result that a dark shadow of suspicion is cast over all the other fine priests who perform their ministry with honesty and integrity and often with heroic self-sacrifice,'' the pope said. He said the Church ``shows her concern for the victims and strives to respond in truth and justice to each of these painful situations.''

Gee, maybe the church can "show her concern" for the victims a little more by finally refusing to hire pedophiles.

Today's music rant:

Elton John claimed that the disc he is currently recording will be his last album. This was excellent news and proved that some all-powerful being loves us. Then the bastard went back on his promise. Fortunately Garth Brooks claims that the disc he is currently recording will be his last album. This is even more excellent news and can only be seen as proof of Dog (or God if you're dyslexic). If there really is a Dog, Garth will keep his promise.

Wow. A solo album from Mick Jagger. Wow. We've been waiting for this, right?

Yet another one-word-named-band, Default, is getting airplay. Heard their tune "Wasting My Time" yet? What did we do to deserve this? These lack luster lame lounge act wannabes sound like Hootie & The Blowfish. Give me a freakin' break. This is what "modern music" has become? Time to bring back Ozzy.

Other bands that suck worse than the vacuum between George W. Bush's ears:
Train
Staind
Creed
Coldplay
Radiohead
Everclear
Incubus

Exactly how many whiny 20-something female singer/songwriters with thin voices do we really need as a society?

Aerosmith in a Nissan commercial. Now *that* will sure get me to buy a new car. Yawn. Is it just me or does Steve Tyler sound like he's trying to pass a bowling ball in that spot?
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Convoluted obtuse double speak gibberish from HR....
Here's how one immensely clueless dot com company informed it's employees of imminent layoffs:

Thanks to our corporate restructuring of the basic scalable elements need in the vertical dissemination of value-added products through a series of networked servers connected via fiber optics, we are projected to enjoy a brief productivity spurt proportionate to the rest of the undervalued market. In lieu of this unexpected spike, we are still moving forward proactively with our plan to monetize our vertical information resources and reorganize the essential e-business units of our company. The reorganization requires upper-management and upper-upper-management to identify the underachieving nodes within the corporate structure and de-emphasize their impact, thereby preserving valuable investor assets, and preserving our market niche.

Screaming idiots.

A comment on skiing at particular VT area this past Sunday:

Of course there were rocks, dirt, and ice to avoid, but it was actually considerably better than "not terrible," which is high praise this season.

I am soooooo happy to have moved to the Wasatch.

Canada won a gold medal in Hockey during the Olympics. Then there was that whole figure skating thing. Add in the Roots hats business and it all seems to have gone to their heads.
Be afraid. Be very afraid .....
http://www.standonguard.com/index2.html