From the article: “Newsweek magazine has named Jesuit Father John P. Foley, president of the national Cristo Rey Network of Catholic high schools, among “the people to watch in the year ahead.”

I’ve never worked directly with Fr. Foley, but I’ve worked in apostolates that were influence by his ideas and passion. He took a good idea, added some know-how and turned it into a turnkey solution for bringing quality education to those who otherwise would not have the access to learning.

I spent about 6 months in the Philippines and one of the things that I quickly noticed in my community was that all of the older Jesuits were anglos from the New York Province, while the younger Jesuits were native Filipinos. The community may have been started by a generation of Jesuits who were raised in the missionary tradition that was “sent to the native lands”, but the current crop of priests and brothers are all home-grown Catholics who bring their own culture and upbringing into their ministry. — I saw the same in China, Vietnam, South America and Africa — now that these cultures are sending their priests, brothers and sisters around the world, how much closer are we to a truly universal and apostolic Catholic Church?

More after the Jump »

From the article: “New research suggests algae may prove even more important as a source of energy than as food. Indeed, to the growing industry of biodiesel and ethanol refiners accustomed to treating biomass and the lipids derived from it as faceless commodities, algae looks like green gold.”

More after the Jump »

The boys over at Treehugger found a Technology Review article that talks about using the power stored within hybrid cars to stabilize the power grid during peak-demand times. This is a fantastically interesting idea… especially since the US has such a bad record with alternative-energy concepts. We’ve tried the same thing with solar and other alternative energy sources, but since this idea involves cars, something that the US is not short of, perhaps it could gain some traction.

More after the Jump »

From the article: “VEILED women will be forced to reveal their identities at UK airports under a government plan to tighten security, Scotland on Sunday can reveal. Home Office insiders last night confirmed that immigration officials will be ordered to impose their legal right to lift the veils of passengers after it emerged a suspected police killer may have escaped the UK dressed as a Muslim woman.”

More after the Jump »

The school over-reacted – The police WAY over-reacted —

Now… with that out of the way. The student was completely and totally in the wrong. He shouldn’t have defaced the website — even if it was a harmless prank. The problem that I see in this posting is that the teen refuses to see that what he did was wrong — he has not apologized to the school for illegally accessing their webserver — he has not said “sorry” to the teacher who TRUSTED him with the administrative password. Instead, he is worried that this might somehow interfere with his plans to attend FSU. He writes, “my plans for the future have been interfered with” instead of, “I may have made a mistake for which I need to make amends.”

More after the Jump »

From the article: “Having won the election by only a hair’s width and almost getting himself kicked out of Congress seems to have had some profound psychological effects on poor Mr. Hayes. A speech that flip-floppin’ Robin gave last week at the Concord Rotary Club seems to prove he has finally gone off the deep end… Then comes the real kicker: “Stability in Iraq ultimately depends on spreading the message of Jesus Christ, the message of peace on earth, good will towards men. Everything depends on everyone learning about the birth of the Savior.”

I hate to be the voice of reality intruding on the candy-cane-lane world of good Mr. Hayes…. But we used to call this strategy THE CRUSADES! — And I don’t think it’s going to work THIS time either.

From the article: “A woman going through security at Los Angeles International Airport put her month-old grandson into a plastic bin intended for carry-on items and slid it into an X-ray machine. The early Saturday accident — bizarre but not unprecedented — caught airport workers by surprise, even though the security line was not busy at the time, officials said.”

Wait… you mean we’re NOT supposed to put babies through the machine? The TSA makes me put just about everything ELSE through the X-Ray box (my computer, shoes, belt, water, colostomy bag) — why do babies get a free pass? (/sarcasm)

From the article: “Television prices are dropping faster than expected, and Sony’s not too happy about it. Prices for liquid crystal display TVs should drop between 25 percent and 30 percent this year. That’s between 5 percent and 7 percent more than Sony anticipated, Stan Glasgow, president of Sony Electronics, said in a meeting with reporters in San Francisco last week.”

So… the company that brought me the DRM rootkit that screwed up my computer, batteries that turned my laptop into a Molotov cocktail, and an overpriced game system that does everything well EXCEPT play games is now complaining that I’m not paying enough for my new TV? — Yeah… If you’re looking for sympathy, it’s in the dictionary between shit and syphilis.

From the article:“Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That’s why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today’s rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products.”

I WANT to say that this person has obviously been taking crazy-pills… but unfortunately I’ve heard enough “ministers” spout off similar nonsense about topics ranging from children’s TV characters to life on other planets.

From the article: “According to a July poll conducted by Scripps News Service, one-third of Americans think the government either carried out the 9/11 attacks or intentionally allowed them to happen in order to provide a pretext for war in the Middle East.”

I post this article NOT because I am shocked by the statistic… but because I think it points out the ludicrous nature of some of these polls. Most likely, they asked a sampling of people — perhaps a few thousand in “Crazyville, Idaho) — and 1/3 of them said that they believed the US government was behind 9/11. From that, they infer that 90 Million Americans believe in the conspiracy theories… PLEASE.

From the article: “A boy who almost had his head ripped from his body in a racing car accident has told Sky News he wants to get back behind the wheel. The impact from the crash lifted 12-year-old Christopher Stewart’s skull from the top of his spine – an injury which normally results in death. Despite having trouble speaking, the young driver said he was “fine” and confirmed he wanted to get back on the racing track – but doubted his parents would let him.

Sigh… kids these days…. When I was growing up, severing ones head normally was a deterrent to ever again doing whatever it was that you were doing when you severed your head… nowadays… well…

From the article: “An Apple customer was shocked, shocked, when he bought a Macbook from the London Apple Store for his 11-year old daughter, and the desktop was full of pornographic JPGs.”

Yeah… most of the time Macs aren’t filled with porn until AFTER they’ve been used for a few hours.

From the article: “SCO took big hits this week — both in the courts, and in the stock market. Regardless of what SCO’s management decides to do, the company’s stockholders seem to have finally had enough of the troubled company.”

All I can say is, “It’s about FRICKIN’ TIME!” — SCO is a company that should have been put out of its misery long ago. They have pioneered new fields of legal morass and their strategy might even had worked if they had not picked on the 1000 pound gorilla that is IBM. — Now that the vast majority of their claims have been dismissed and the judge has refused to allow them to add more violations to their complaint, perhaps we will finally see the end of this pathetic excuse for a tech company.

Still… this is usually when things get dragged out like the last 30 seconds of a basketball game. There will be much legal maneuvering, probably a bunch of name-calling, and quite a bit of unsubstantiated accusations, but mark my word… SCO will be done within 24 months.

From the article: “A tough California bill that would have prohibited companies and individuals from using deceptive “pretexting” ruses to steal private information about consumers was killed after determined lobbying by the motion picture industry, Wired News has learned.”

Everybody take notice… “Pretexting” — the practice that has HP is so much hot water these days — has been denounced as wrong by just about every politician, business leader and upstanding citizen of these United States::: HOWEVER… the MPAA lobbied against this anti-pretexting bill because they NEED to pretend as if they are somebody else to do their job. (Of catching pirates) — Sorry if this doesn’t convince me… but if pretexting is bad… it’s bad…. It doesn’t matter WHO does it.