lullaby pit

Verily, we’re following up yesterday’s first snow of May with today’s second snow of May. My cup runneth over.

Brian Angliss over at the Daedalnexus reflects on the loss of ritual in his life here. I hear where he’s coming from, although for me, the real sense of loss in walking away from Christianity was less about ritual (hey, I was a Southern Baptist, and while we had our rituals, it was nothing like a high Catholic Mass) and

What could be more enchanting than sitting here, as I am, staring out the window at the first snow of May….

Nick Kristof said it, not me: As a baby boomer myself, I can be blunt: We boomers won’t be remembered as the “Greatest Generation.” Rather, we’ll be scorned as the “Greediest Generation.” Our influence has been huge. When boomer blood raged with hormones, we staged the sexual revolution and popularized the Pill. Now, with those hormones fading, we’ve popularized Viagra.

Dr. Frank Venturo, dad-in-law extraordinaire and chief of the Pit’s Gunnison Valley Desk, sends along this commentary from Bob Benz and Mike Phillips at the OJR. In general, they raise interesting questions about the AP’s “April 18 announcement that it would start charging newspaper and broadcast clients an additional fee for using AP content on their web sites,” a move

Dear WNY Business Owner: What the hell is wrong with you damned people? I refer to the fact that there seems to be some kind of feckin’ cultural and economic taboo up here against accepting credit and debit cards. We noticed this aberration shortly after moving here last fall – we were surprised to learn that an unusually high number

Yup, after months of inexcusable shagginess, Ronan visited the salon yesterday. Underneath all the fur we were shocked to discover a terrier.

Ooh, ouch. This is not kind. But hey, Bush making out with a Saudi sheik, well, you knew it was coming, right? [THX: Norman T of the Cleveland Rocks! Desk.]

Noah Singman (nsingman) and I (and several others, as well) are bouncing back and forth on education funding in a comment thread on , which you can see in its entirety here. I wanted to drag a particular part of this discussion back to the top of the board, though, because I don’t want it to get buried. For those

Well, it’s official. Government’s Change in Calculating Need Will Deny Pell Grants to 81,000 Students, GAO Report Confirms The U.S. Education Department’s new way of determining a student’s need for financial aid will disqualify 81,000 students from receiving Pell Grants, the Government Accountability Office said in a report last week, a conclusion that confirmed earlier predictions by many higher-education lobbyists.

Well, things are looking bleak for Bolton backers everywhere (pick your source here), and at this stage there is no smart money being wagered on his confirmation to the post of UN Ambassador. The Dems are actually acting like an opposition party, key GOP senators are getting noticeably twitchy, and even Colin Powell, the most faithful party-line purse pup Dubya

[sigh] Shanahan still has no pass rush. He spends three picks on special teams and nickel-package DBs. Then he uses a 4th round pick on a back that nobody was likely to take before the 6th round. Look for the Broncs to miss the playoffs by a game this season. And then look for Pat Bowlen to sign Shanahan to

Okay, a little thought exercise for everybody. It goes like this. The 1st Amendment provides us all with a freedom to speak our minds that was, at the time of its composition, unheard of in human history. We Americans place a tremendous value on this ideology and (even when we misunderstand it, take it for granted, trample on it, etc.)

NASA has been taken to court in Russia over its plans to crack open a comet. Marina Bai, a Russian astrologist, filed a lawsuit last month with the Presnensky district court in Moscow, demanding that the U.S. space agency call off its $311 million Deep Impact mission. As reported in MosNews.com, Bai is also asking for 8.7 billion rubles ($311

I have a prediction regarding the future of the Church that I’m willing to offer up with some confidence. There has been a good bit of controversy about the issue of ordaining women as priests, and the College of Cardinals’ election of Pope B16 suggests we’re not going to see any rush to reform in this particular area. However, I