It’s hard to follow American politics from ten thousand miles away (I live in the rural Philippines, and we get the news a day late), but as a Democrat, I was bemused to read in today’s papers that Rick Santorum just won in the Republican primaries of Minnesota and Missouri.
Santorum? I wasn’t aware he […]

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Here in the Philippines, thanks to Wikileaks, we know that not only American money is behind our “Reproductive Health Bill”, but that the American State Department is pressuring our president to pass the bill.
Heaven knows that the Philippines does need access to cheaper Birth control, but it’s not as if it’s not available: they sell […]

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 As a Canadian who spends a great deal of time in the U.S. I am always amazed at the differences between our two countries. I live in Montreal and most of my extended visits are to New York City. This again exaggerates things as the flight is but an hour. One would expect two international […]

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It rained last night, and more coming. In some ways, this is good news, because it means we don’t have to pay so much to irrigate our “dry season” crop. But it is bad news for the south, which is still recovering from the devestating storm that killed over a thousand people..
Superficially, the storm makes […]

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While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people…

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The one charity that has the lowest administrative costs (i.e. more of your donation actually gets to the needy) is being boycotted by the Gay Liberation Network. Why? Because it adheres to its religious beliefs. It stands up for what it believes in.
(Ever notice that folks who admire others who “stand up for what they […]

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The NYTimes has an article about problems with the Global fund to fight AIDS.
It seems that they checked the books and found some of the money was stolen or diverted, and as a result, a lot of European donors are not giving any more money until the problem is cleared up.
You want honesty at […]

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October is always a memorable month, as is May when I recall the parochial school days at Saint Gabriel Parish School. It was Mary’s Month, and the school was festooned to reflect Marian Blue in all of the classrooms and hallways. The most favorite recollection is the magnificent decorations that decorated the Mary Altar within […]

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A lot of Republican bloggers in the US are rolling their eyes up in mockery at the report that President Obama plans to send in US troops to fight the so called “Lord’s Resistance army” in Uganda.
A typical response is this, from the National Review Blog The Corner:
This is even crazier than getting involved in […]

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Paranoia kills. And the internet, which allows anyone to post any conspiracy theory without having to include minor things like facts, is a growing problem for doctors, because our patients who google sometimes end up at conspiracy theory sites for their medical information.
And this ignorance is one reason why Bachman is now no longer […]

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The latest “Western” movie from Hollywood, about aliens and starring a petulant British actor, was a bomb, and that led many “experts” to again predict the demise of the Western as a film genre. Of course, the real reason for the problem is the nihilism of Hollywood, not the lack of stories.
So could I suggest […]

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No, it’s not a fantasy for kids, but about the dragons that lurk in the dark places of the mind. And the setting of the drama has enough controversies to make the ideologues of the left and rights, the religious and the skeptical, to be suspicious and stay away. Why? Because the film discusses the […]

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It was a cute photo, so I place it on my blog. a great photo of a happy young teenager holding a water sprayer, somewhat wet herself, and smiling happily.
There is enough bad news in the world, so I like to post stuff that reminds us that not all of life is war and […]

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In case you are only aware of the “hits”, the movie Soul Surfer is a “sleeper”: a small movie that becomes widely seen by word of mouth recommendations.
I usually dislike surfer movies (e.g. Blue Crush) but I do like the photography of the ocean in them, so I watched this one.
The good news: some good […]

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I am old enough to remember when women were exiled into specific specialties in medicine (quick: how many women Urologists do you know), and a similar problem was seen in college (few women in my advanced science classes) and in the newspaper (where women often were expected to write fluffy reports for the fashion and […]

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Last week, my son in law went for the fifth time to Manila to try to collect rent owed and damages for a house we rented out. (We bought it when he was attending university there, and now rent it out).
In the USA, usually after a few months of non payment, you can get them […]

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It was called “Operation Vengence”.
He had ordered the deaths of thousands of Americans using airplanes, and alerted the average American that a war of civilizations was now endangering them.
Therefore, the president used secret intelligence networks to find where the mastermind was hiding. And after some discussions, the president approved of the mission tasked to kill […]

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In Massachusetts, a mom who stopped her son’s cancer medicines has been convicted of attempted murder.
Apparently, the son had autism, the mom was not a pristine heroine but a mom who resented being burdened with a handicapped son, and so when he developed a cancer that had a good cure rate with chemotherapy, she didn’t […]

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While doing some investigation into the history of epidemics, I came across this fact in an article about Native American women veterans, many of whom served as nurses in the US Military.
  Four Native American Catholic Sisters from Fort […]

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There is an old comedy monologue by the late Alan Sherman where he explains why he got fat: As a boy, his mother reminded him that people were starving in Europe, so he needed to eat everything on his plate.
So I would clean the plate, four, five, six times a day.
Because somehow I felt that […]

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Phllip Jenkins has an interesting article on how fertility is falling in the Muslim world.
In just the last thirty years or so, those very Middle Eastern countries that used to teem with children and adolescents have gone through a startling demographic transformation. Since the mid-1970s, Algeria’s fertility rate has collapsed from over 7 to 1.75, […]

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If you live in the Philippines, the big news of the day is sorrow and anger that China has executed three of our OFW (overseas foreign workers) for carrying drugs into China.
The anger is partly because two of the “drug mules” were women with families, and many Filipinos who have family members overseas shudder at […]

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I am aghast at a lot of the news coming out of US sites about what is going on in Libya.
First, there are the “ain’t it awful” posts, lamenting that the side backed by the West hasn’t won yet, (in 7 whole days).
Second, they find out that some of those revolting are Islamicists. Well, duh. […]

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In the wow, just wow category, Bryan Fischer continued his supremacist ways by stating that constitutional guarantees of freedom of  religion applies only to Christians. To wit:
Islam has no fundamental First Amendment claims, for the simple reason that it was not written to protect the religion of Islam. Islam is entitled only to the religious […]

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Yes, we should.
It is past time for evangelicals to express remorse and regret to Native Americans for the mistreatment they experienced at the hands of Christians throughout the history of the nation. Although President Obama signed a resolution of apology in 2009 on behalf of the nation, evangelical groups should also […]

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ArcheologyNews reports that a researcher claims Henry VIII didn’t die of a combination of syphillis, obesity related diabetes and malaria, (and perhaps a bit mentally unstable from cerebral syphilis and the mercury used back then to treat it).
No, they claim it was a rare complication of the Kells’ antigen called McLeod syndrome.
Research conducted by […]

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He used to be a committed Christian; then he became a convinced atheist; and now businessman and entrepreneur Geoff Crocker is arguing that even unbelievers should be able to find meaning and significance in religion.
Reading his new book, An Enlightened Philosophy: Can an atheist believe anything? it is clear that Crocker is as sick of virulent atheism […]

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When I heard that there had been a Native American prayer at the memorial ceremony in Tucson, I was not surprised.
When I lived on Indian Reservations, we commonly had such prayers at most ceremonies or meeting. But for memorial services, we often also had Christian clergy (usually either Anglican or Catholic) give a prayer. Tribes […]

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Peace on Earth, Goodwill to men…except in the headlines.
You see headlines about NATO troops killed in Afghanistan. Yes, that nasty war is still going on. But the headlines don’t put it into perspective: the Taliban wants to stop education of girls, and any western type education for anyone. But the headlines don’t talk about positive […]

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Ordering the US military to enlist openly homosexual men and women is being pushed as a civil rights matter, with everyone quietly ignoring the “elephant in the living room”: sexual activity.
A similar “elephant” was ignored when women were integrated with their male colleagues in the military. Yes, there was a fairly high pregnancy rate, but […]

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