Month: March 2006

Probably doesn’t need any comment from me. From a March 29th Reuters news report:

Muslims in Shkoder, in northern Albania, are opposing plans to erect a statue to the Roman Catholic nun Mother Teresa, an ethnic Albanian who is in line for elevation to sainthood by the Vatican.

The dispute is unusual for Albania, where religion was banned for 27 years under the dictator Enver Hoxha and where religious harmony and mixed marriages are the norm.

Seventy percent of the population are liberal Muslims, and the rest are Christian Orthodox and Catholic.

But Muslim groups in Shkoder rejected the local council’s plan for a statue of Teresa, saying it “would offend the feelings of Muslims.”

“We do not want this statue to be erected in a public place because we see her as a religious figure,” said Bashkim Bajraktari, Shkoder’s mufti, or Muslim religious leader. “If there must be a statue, let it be in a Catholic space.”

Several residents said they felt that there was an underground effort to treat Shkoder as a Catholic town, ignoring its majority Muslim community. Shkoder’s Muslims recently protested against placement of crosses on prominent hilltops

Hello, I’m David Scott. You should accept no substitutes for Eric Scheske, but unfortunately, for the next few days you’re going to have to. Here’s something to get us started. At least it got my brain working a little on this Friday morning at the end of March, which, by the way is my wife’s birthday. Say a prayer for my bride, Sarah, if you will today.

What do penguins, the shortages of priests and nurses, the always declining success rates for marriages, and the chronic job-hopping of the younger generations have in common? Carolyn Moynihan over at mercator.net, thinks it’s all about fidelity and commitment. She might be on to something:

“The chief suspect is individualism, that dynamic in post-modern society that makes the world seem to revolve around personal choice. People have to be free to choose, of course, but today’s freedom of choice tends to be freedom from commitment rather than for it.

Once, embarking on adult life was a matter of finding a place in society—in the workforce and in other social institutions, making their ethos and rules one’s own. Now it is a question of selecting from society the elements of a unique personal lifestyle, or “life shopping” as British researcher Kate Fox calls it. And this can be a complex and lengthy process.

Fox, the director of the Oxford University Social Issues Research Centre, has studied the generation born between 1978 and 1994, the so-called Generation Y, noted their tendency to flit from one career or relationship to another in pursuit of an elusive ideal, and concluded that Y stands for young experimenting perfection seeker. Unlike the yuppies of the 1980s who were after money and status, “Yeppies are often not quite sure they want, some vague notion of fulfillment, usually, and even

In a story that I suspect is closely linked to the last one, for reasons that I don’t have time to explore:

A Las Vegas company is putting a new extra-large ambulance into service to handle extra-large patients. . . .

A company official said that in the last six months, AMR has handled 75 calls involving patients that weighed more than 600 pounds.

Link.

The unvirtuous (criminals, drunks, people who can’t control their anger) cause problems for society at all levels. This is just a little snapshot of it. … Read the rest

Women would rather get their teeth drilled than shop for a new bathing suit, a report said.

You bedded the man, Katie, now enjoy it:

Tom Cruise has given Katie Holmes an iPod with calming tunes to help her stay silent during childbirth.

The gift came after The Sun revealed the couple had put up 6ft posters in their Beverly Hills mansion reminding her not to make a noise and keep her movements slow. . . .

Tom, 43, and Katie, 26, follow the Scientology cult which claims it is traumatic for babies to hear their mother scream during childbirth.

Mums are also banned from taking painkillers.

Link.… Read the rest

On pretty Eva Braun. Excerpt:

Eva twice tried to kill herself: in November 1932, she shot herself in the throat, but missed the jugular. Then, in 1935, she tried again, this time with sleeping pills. Her reason, both times, was Hitler’s neglect. Although he expected her to give up her career and all hope of marriage or children, he might see her only every three or four weeks. While away, he often didn’t write or phone. Just before her second suicide attempt, she wrote: “If only I had never set eyes on him!” Yet however unhappy she was, her devotion was a fact of life. When they finally married, she seems to have considered her life fulfilled for the 36 hours during which she was addressed as “Mrs Hitler” — though her husband still referred to her as “Miss Braun”.