Catholics holding steady at 17.2% of the world's population. Goodness knows, I'm doing my part.
Prima facie dumb story of the day: Chimpanzees may have been using stone "hammers" as long as 4,300 years ago. I honestly don't understand the significance. Nothing in the story indicates that the chimps were making these hammers. They were picking up rocks of proper heft and shape and using them to break nuts. Okay. Why is this important? The experts are spinning it wildly, of course: "It's not clear whether we hominins invented this kind of stone technology, or whether both humans and the great apes inherited it from a common forebear." Give me a break. "Stone technology," "common forebear." Sounds like someone needs to use stone technology on nuts today, but if anyone understands why this is newsworthy stuff, please email me (link on left).
A piece I wrote awhile back about exaggerating the significance of minimal archaeological finds.
Far out: "A large new study has found that people who regularly took a [nap] were significantly less likely to die of heart disease." I should be sitting pretty good. Possible problem: It was a study of more than 23,000 Greeks, and there's no indication that they controlled for the effects of pederasty.
The Pope applies natural law to Portugal and Italy and other states that are trashing it. People who snicker at natural law either don't understand it or they're at bottom amoral positivists (read: "moral morons").
Natural law, incidentally, isn't a vague belief that there's some sort of cosmic justice out there. If that were the case, things like this wouldn't happen: "A "sexual predator has hit the Florida jackpot, winning the Sunshine State's $14 million lottery, officials said."
First, the good news about napping. Now: The Bionic Woman is coming back. What more could a guy want?
