I’m not a Catholic, but I certainly understand the importance of the Roman Catholic Church and the papacy to the life of world affairs. As John Paul II’s health has declined in recent months, I’ve begun wondering what his death will mean for us. His successor (who I’m desperately hoping decides to call himself Pope George Ringo, btw) will assume

I’m pleased to announce the launch of yet another LJ community – really, LJ needs more communities, you know? Anyway, after a lot of snooping and deliberating a few of us decided to start a new forum. We like a lot of the ones we currently frequent, and we have no plans to abandon the wonderful places that we already

Odom Close to Taking Virginia Job By Mark Schlabach and Eric Prisbell Washington Post Staff Writers Monday, April 4, 2005; Page D09 ST. LOUIS, April 3 — Virginia Athletic Director Craig Littlepage has offered the school’s head coaching vacancy to South Carolina Coach Dave Odom, whom two sources said Sunday night was poised to accept the job. Wow – the

Anna Quindlen’s column in the current Newsweek provides a thoughtful reflection on the Schiavo case and what it really means for us (past the fake wailing and gnashing of teeth from certain politicans, that is). She says, in part: There are many ways in which this case has been divvied up in public. Spouse vs. parents. Liberals vs. conservatives. Secular

Ms. Wheelchair stripped of title for standing up APPLETON, Wisconsin (AP) — Ms. Wheelchair Wisconsin has been stripped of her title because pageant officials say she can stand — and point to a newspaper picture as proof. Fine – interesting enough human interest kind of story, I suppose. But I found in the CNN.com top stories section. I was going

DENVER, Colorado (AP) — Colorado Gov. Bill Owens apologized for saying “the natives are getting restless” during a conference on tribal gambling. Owens made the remark at the Western Governors’ Association Summit after a participant’s microphone wouldn’t work and he urged it be fixed quickly. Some attendees told the Rocky Mountain News the audience fell silent, then groaned and chuckled.

Among other things, XM and Sirius have announced plans to merge. XM, SIRIUS TO MERGE With an unanticipatedly quick technological breakthrough allowing interoperablity for Sirius and XM receivers, the two companies will announce later today that they are merging to form Your Satellite Radio (YSR). “They were the technology leaders,” Mel Karmazin, Sirius’s chief executive, said of XM. “We were

Item of note: State of the Blogosphere: Increase in post volume mostly Josh Marshall on Social f#@king Security Blah Blah Blah As we drilled a little deeper into David Sifry’s excellent State of the Blogosphere report, we discovered that the numbers aren’t as encouraging as we first thought. While Sifry found that Technorati is logging about 500,000 posts a day

Oh, joy. Questions surround cash flow at university The Internal Revenue Service is investigating two summer football camps run by University of Colorado coach Gary Barnett. Both Barnett and his attorney acknowledged the investigation Wednesday, but said they were not sure what tax issues the IRS is looking into. … Barnett’s lawyer, John Rodman, described the investigation as “broad” and

Right now at CNN.com the top story is – duh – terrischiavo: ‘This was for Terri,’ husband’s lawyer says In the rest of the news box on the first screen, in order: President: Millions feel Schiavo’s passing Schiavo video released just before her death CNN/Money: Wolfowitz elected World Bank President Report: Iraq intelligence ‘simply wrong’ Prince Albert takes over Monaco

You know, it’s bad enough that you play for the worst team in baseball. At least you could show some manners, huh? Story…

terrischiavo is dead. (CNN story.) I hope she died peacefully, whenever it was all those years ago that she actually died, and I’m sure I echo the sentiments of millions when I say that we profoundly regret the way in which her name came to symbolize the very worst aspects of our culture. From what we’ve read she was a

[Credit: Thanks to tempter on for bringing this to our attention.] This is just hysterical, and the responders landing on the guy for what he did are amoral morons. Verily, cheating doesn’t pay, huh? (Updates.)

I was already somewhat bummed that, thanks to a variety of financial difficulties at the school here (for the moment I’ll stay clear of the various arguments as to who might be to blame for said shortfalls) the faculty was only looking at what’s being termed a 2% “pay raise.” The question of applying the term “raise” to an amount

Good take from a man in a position to know whereof he speaks…. It won’t be a good day when high school entrepreneurs have to get a fairness opinion from a technology oriented law firm to confirm that big music or movie studios won’t sue you because they can come up with an angle that makes a judge believe the