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Saturday, April 02, 2005On the Pope...The fate of John Paul II is not in doubt. His corporeal existence soon shall end and soon he shall find himself in heaven. And so those of us down here remember him. There has been much controversy surrounding this pope, life issues, the obligations of rich nations to poor nations and a million other things. But this pope came to his high office as a Pole at a time when the Soviets were crushing his homeland. And he stood against them and their repressive ways. By his selection, the Catholic church defied those who would bring the end of history; by his service, the quasi-spiritual authority of Marxism was shown to be hollow. And in the end, in a mocking reply to Stalin's question about how many divisions the Vatican has, John Paul II outlived Soviet Communism by better than a decade. Note this then: The Catholic church is often ridiculed for the Crusades, for the Inquisition, for the trial of Galileo and more. But at the end of the 20th century, the Catholic Church saw clearly the most important issue of the day and stood firmly on the right side of history, surpassing in its wisdom the faculties of most of the major universities of the world. 
posted by gbarto at 7:16 AM Thursday, March 31, 2005A Dog's Life quotes Shakespeare. Cicero springboards off Nat Hentoff's latest. And the TurkeyBlog signs off for the night.
posted by gbarto at 9:45 PM I may not agree with everything he says, but this VodkaPundit essay is probably the most useful thing I've seen written on the Schiavo case.
posted by gbarto at 9:39 PM Instapundit discusses the high emotions surrounding Terri Schiavo's death and the venom that has spewed forth on all sides. We'll note that the post below isn't exactly cotton candy and lemonade. But it is intended, however unsuccessfully, to highlight the oddity of the situation in a darkly humorous way. We mention this in order to add that venomous commentary is one thing, but venom toward the commentators themselves is another matter. Michael Schiavo and his future wife's family are free to send me hate mail. Anybody else should probably limit themselves to an assertion or two about yet another right-wing Christian lacking in charity on their own blogs. In other words, lay off Instapundit, LGF and all the others out there who have sought, as have we on the "tubist" side, to give an honest accounting of their views and the ways in which they were arrived at. If you've got a better idea, write it on your site. There's a fair chance that if it's a good point made in the spirit of deeper understanding it will even get linked. In the meantime, if you've got too much venom to keep to yourself, drop by blogger. Blogspot will even host the site for free and you'll get a chance, should you be good at it, to not only surpass Instapundit, but even surpass him in the hatemail you yourself one day collect.
posted by gbarto at 9:04 PM Schiavo update With the death of Terri Schiavo, it is presumed that Michael Schiavo will marry his fiancée, already mother to two of his children. In a related story, two of the future Mrs. Schiavo's brothers have been arrested for breaking into their sister's home. Police reported that the two men had installed defibrillators and rubber wall pads in all the rooms of the house. An angry Michael Schiavo denounced the gesture as "rude and insensitive," while the brothers insist it was a good faith effort to ensure that Schiavo doesn't suffer the same tragedy twice. One of the brothers characterized it as an early wedding present. Schiavo's attorney issued a short statement to the press, underlining that "still sickened by his wife's demise, the last thing Mr. Schiavo needs is the intrusion of busybody future in-laws."
posted by gbarto at 8:29 PM Wednesday, March 30, 2005On Trial for Blasphemy in Merry Old EuropeNatalie Solent points out something we ought bash into the skulls of all the Europhiles wandering our fair continent: Thanks to an EU-wide arrest warrent, an Austrian author is being charged with blasphemy by Greek authorities. His crime? A comic book mocking Jesus Christ. Now, blasphemers are not at the top of my list of sympathetic causes, but... being a bit of a hack myself, I worry when other hacks are catching hell. The book, for the record, was written and first distributed in Austria. It's legal there. But when the publisher released it in Greece, authorities detected xenophobia (you didn't think it would be a real heresy charge, did you?) and put out AE-APB (all-Europe all-points-bulletin), lest some thin-skinned Christian somewhere find himself put out by the thing. So, there you go. That's what Old Europe has to offer: A member country gets its dander up and the whole EU suddenly has an idiotic law on the books if the most tangential national connection can be made. Glad I live in the good old USA, where "banned in Boston" says nothing about Silicon Valley. Be sure though to suggest to your Europhile friends that they have an opportunity to participate in the evolution of the Union they so laud: Help them publish a work obscene to the Greeks, send them on a book tour in Spain and see if they demand for themselves the treatment offered real Europeans.
posted by gbarto at 4:43 PM According to Bob Parsons of GoDaddy.com (which is where turkeyblog.com, multilingua.info and a few of our other domains are set up), the government, specifically the NTIA, has changed the privacy rules for holders of .US domains with neither hearings nor advance warning that any rule changes might be coming. Not sure about the overall impact, but I am nervous about setting the precedent that a government agency could alter the relationship between a domain holder and the registrar and/or general public without allowing the parties to such questions a chance to give input. To find out more, check out http://www.TheDangerOfNoPrivacy.com and Parsons' own blog, http://www.BobParsons.com.
posted by gbarto at 3:24 PM Cicero picks up an El Mundo interview with Giuliana Sgrena and offers a translation. Interesting, particularly her efforts to decide if she might have Stockholm syndrome.
posted by gbarto at 1:20 AM Why I'm glad I don't have television... According to Instapundit, one of the side effects of the Terri Schiavo story is that Randall Terry is back in the news. As if her life hadn't been cheapened enough by the pull the plug, why bother crowd. Whenever they give this jerk airtime, you know the media's a-gunning for the right, and particularly for those on the right who take their religion seriously. Too bad St. Terry doesn't, but he has always seemed to relish the stage too much to let simple piety speak for itself. Glad I don't have tv, inasumuch as I haven't yet had to see his ugly mug in the middle of this. Shame for Terri that others have.
posted by gbarto at 12:48 AM Monday, March 28, 2005www.localtranslation.comGot an e-mail from this outfit, offering to put a free translation button on the site. It is a bare bones translator, and with a few problems. Here are a few examples: French: Je voudrais un verre d'eau, s'il vous plaît. Translation: I would like water glass, please. Proper translation: I would like a glass of water, please. French: Savez-vous où se trouve le boucher? Translation: Do you know where is to stop it? Proper translation: Do you know where the butcher is? To be fair, "boucher" means both "butcher" and "to plug". On the other hand, it did this one nicely: French: Je n'aime pas du tout manger les champignons. Translation: I do not like at all to eat mushrooms. And look at this: French: Lorsque j'avais six ans, j'ai vu une fois un magnifique image de la Forêt vierge dans un livre qui s'appelait Histoires vécues. - Le Petit Prince Translation: When I was six years old, I saw once a splendid image of the Virgin forest in a book which was called lived Histoires. - The Small Prince Proper translation: Once, when I was six years old, I saw a magnificent picture from the Virgin Forest in a book called True Life Stories. - The Little Prince Hardly perfect, but it gets to the substance of the thing. In any case, if you're looking for another translator to fuss with, localtranslation.com offers a resource for getting the gist of things, particularly if you know a little of the language but don't want to sort the whole thing out yourself. The free button has, by the way, been set up at multilingua.info.
posted by gbarto at 3:44 PM Sunday, March 27, 2005Razorblogging!Instapundit has been writing about electric razors. And gotten quite a response. For the record, the TurkeyBlog has a beard. I gave up with daily shaving years ago, and the TurkeyGal likes the beard so it stays. But you do still have to trim the edges, trim for length, etc. I like my Norelco beard trimmer, but the bit of shaving technology that has impressed me most of late is the M3 Power Razor. Some may like it, others not, but for trimming around the edges of my beard, I haven't found anything that gives a cleaner shave more comfortably. While on the subject of Instapundit, we'll note that our passionate views on the Schiavo matter have not prompted us to think Glenn & co. should be railroaded from the conservative/libertarian movement, nevermind decent humanity. There are some in the middle of this, I fear, who fall squarely into the culture of death with which Holland is suddenly faced. For those folks, it's way too easy a call, and I'm glad they're not in charge of my living will. But Glenn, LGF and others have evidenced sincere doubt about what's best in the main case before looking at the secondary issue, where our Congress may appropriately act. They are, in my opinion, wrong. (As am I in theirs.) But it's moving way too fast to start writing people off. Whether you're Bill Quick threatening to leave the Republicans or a flamer harassing Glenn, you're headed in the wrong direction. What's needed right now is for people who take this stuff seriously to figure out where they agree and why they disagree so that in the future we'll have less of the circus and a better idea how best to deal with this stuff before it comes to the point that the Schiavo case came to.
posted by gbarto at 10:23 PM Notes Cicero, Spain has effectively shut off all peaceful, political outlets for expression for Basque nationalists. What's that leave? Well, submission or violence. The Zapatero government owes its existence to an al-Qaeda attack at first wrongly blamed on the Basques. What will it say, then, if the Basques are at the source of new violence? Will they falsely blame al-Qaeda? I understand Spain's problem in that you can't let unhappy constituencies leave your country willy-nilly. But given the Basques' historic separation from everyone else, it would seem like they could offer up enough autonomy to marginalize the full-blown secessionists while making the majority of folks who are Basqe first, Spanish second happy.
posted by gbarto at 10:06 PM |
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