You’ve seen the ads… white background… pop-happy music… iDon’t multitask… iDon’t take pictures in the dark… iDon’t have an open operating system… suddenly broken into a thousand pieces by a very transformer-esque distortion that proclaims, “Whatever iDon’t… DROID DOES Well, the world was finally given a peek at the next version of Google’s Android operating system loaded on the Motorolla DROID on the Verizon Network. Set to release on Friday, November 6th, pundits and techies alike are wondering if this will be a iCompetitor or an also-ran.

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The TSA is getting ready to fully implement their new “Secure Flight” procedures for check-in. The idea is that the personal information listed on your ticket should be EXACTLY as it is specified on your government-issued ID. That means you’ll have to enter the following every time you purchase a ticket. Full Name (first name, middle name and last name, as it appears on the non-expired government-issued photo ID that you will use when traveling) Date of Birth Gender

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This item was brought to my attention by one of our brighter Jesuits – Fr. Lan Ngo, SJ – currently in doctoral studies at Georgetown University. He’s been closely following Rome’s creation of the “Anglican Option” which will allow members of the Anglican Church, both laity and clergy, to smoothly transition into the Catholic Church while retaining their Anglican traditions and identity.

Fr. Tom Reese, SJ — A California Province Jesuit and the former Editor of America Magazine — has written an insightful piece that looks a little more deeply at Rome’s movement to reconcile the Anglican faithful.

From the Washington Post: “The Catholic Church has always been willing to accept individual Anglicans who want to join the church. For more than a decade, it has allowed married Anglican priests to act as priests after they were ordained by a Catholic bishop. What is new in these procedures is the possibility of admitting not just individuals but groups and even whole dioceses. Cardinal Levada, prefect of the Congregation for Doctrine of the Faith, said that 20 to 30 Anglican bishops have enquired about union with the Vatican.

Also new are provisions for personal ordinariates, headed by a former Anglican bishop or priest, where the new Catholics would be allowed to preserve their Anglican spiritual and liturgical heritage. These ordinariates are similar to ones that minister to the military in various countries and could even have houses of formation to train future priests. “

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From Catholic News: “Pope Benedict XVI has established a special structure for Anglicans who want to be in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church while preserving aspects of their Anglican spiritual and liturgical heritage, said U.S. Cardinal William J. Levada.

Anglican priests who are married may be ordained Catholic priests, but married Anglican bishops will not be able to function as Catholic bishops in keeping with the long-standing Catholic and Orthodox tradition of ordaining only unmarried clergy as bishops, Cardinal Levada said.”

First, let me preface any discussion by saying that this is nothing new. Anglicans have long had the choice to be in full communion with the Catholic Church and there are many former Anglican priests (some of whom are married) who have become Catholic Clergy. What this DOES do is to create a framework within the Catholic Church for members of the Anglican Church to be welcomed back into communion with the Catholic Church without abandoning their Anglican origins. In other words, the Pope just made it possible for an Anglican to take on a Catholic identity without disavowing the faith in which he/she was raised.

From the Global Post: “”The biggest mistake that our societies have made is to believe that you must punish hard to change criminals,” explained Oeyvind Alnaes, Bastoey’s then-prison governor. “This is wrong. The big closed prisons are criminal schools. If you treat people badly, they will behave badly. Anyone can be a citizen if we treat them well, respect them, and give them challenges and demands.”

Alnaes’ views reflect the way Norway and the rest of Scandinavia run their penal systems. In Norway, there are no death sentences — or even life sentences. The maximum jail term anyone can receive is 21 years, including for murder. Most people will serve two-thirds of their term before being released. Convicts retain the right to vote and can exercise it while in jail.”

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From Yahoo: Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.

“I’m not a racist. I just don’t believe in mixing the races that way,” Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. “I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else.”

In a way, I understand what this judge is trying to say and do. He’s not a bad man, nor does he spend his time twirling his moustache, thinking of new ways to “beat down the colored man.” He is simply making an observation from the empirical data that is before him.

However, the very fact that he doesn’t believe in mixing the races “that way” says very plainly that he IS acting in a prejudicial manner (then again, who among us isn’t a little projudicial at one time or another). That he is then allowing that prejudice to dictate who can and cannot receive the services from him THAT THEY HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO RECEIVE is just plain criminal.

For many Americans the recession means that we reduce or eliminate “disposable income” from our budget. For the most at-risk and vulnerable, the hard economic times have forced serious cutbacks even in the things that the majority of us would consider “needs” and not “wants.” For the most unfortunate of us, the recession has cost a job, a car, a home or perhaps made health-care unobtainable except in the most dire of circumstances.

Still, as hard-hit as some of us might be by the global economic meltdown, could it ever be so bad for us in this country that our lives might hang in the balance of what millions in another country throw away and wash down the drain?

I’m writing of soap… that’s right… soap. You know, that stuff that you squirt on your hands before you eat or after you use the restroom. The slowly dissolving bar of slippery stuff that helps you wash off the day’s grime and muck. The wonderful concoction of lard, lye, and perfume that is the very picture of clean. Having soap in the US, in whatever form it might be found, is a basic resource. We have so much of it that we throw it away a when the bar gets too small or because it had been used, no matter how briefly. But what if you lived in a part of the world where the lack of soap has caused millions of deaths from diseases that could have easily been avoided with just the soap we toss because our hotel stay has ended?

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Just before I left DC for a few weeks of business travel in California I received a brand-spanking new Netgear WNDR3700 router and plugged it into a series of switches and traffic generators that are designed to “torture” network devices.

Most consumer-level routers will die after a few hours of having their ports maxed out. They overheat, start dropping packets, freeze, or just up and die. I expected to come back to a diagnostic screen with a run time in the 10-12 hour range, a definite improvement over most low-cost routers, but what I found was much more interesting… 3,536 hours and counting. (Wish I had taken a screen shot.) The WNDR3700, or “Ultimate Network Machine” has lived up to the hype… at least in terms of dependability under stress.

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It’s an oft-lamented fact in the tech world that the batteries which power our gadgets and gizmos have not followed Moore’s Lawand expanded their capacity to match the demand of an ever-increasing array of power-hungry devices. Quite simply, we’ve having a hard time squeezing more power into small spaces and what successes we do have in creating high-density batteries are tempered by side-effects like exploding batteries and heavy metals.

Well… what if the next battery for your device wasn’t actually a battery?

From ars technica: “Schindall, who had spent some time away from academics, explained that during his first stint at MIT, a capacitor that could hold 350 Farads would have filled the whole stage. Before he returned, someone working on fuel cells had accidentally produced the first ultracapacitor. Now, with refinements, he was able to walk on stage with a 350 Farad ultracapacitor that was about the size of a D battery. The current generation of devices use activated carbon to hold charges, as its highly complex topology creates a lot of surface area across which charge differences can build up.

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A few weeks ago I received the Otter Defender case for 3G/3Gs iPhones and I packed it into my gear for a three-week, 15-city business trip through California. It was light, really light, but somewhat bulky unless I had it strapped into the belt holster, so I spent half the time with my iPhone 3Gs in the Defender, and the other half of the time in a Mophie Juice Pack. Though I liked the Defender and I’m an acknowledged fan of Otter products, I was leaning more towards keeping my iPhone in the Juice pack because I figured the power-hungry iPhone needed extended runtime more than it needed protection.

Wow… was I wrong about that…

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Earlier today Fox News broke a story about a Military Robot that would “eat” biomass to power itself on the battlefield. Fox was horrified that the Obama administration would support the development of a weapon that would commit the ultimate horror of consuming the bodies of fallen soldiers to keep itself charged. (iCorpse anybody?) It was a nightmare scenario of a technology that saw humans as nothing more than a source of fuel… something that could only be dreamed-up by the evil machinations of the evil, super-nazi, birth-certificate-forging, socialist, devil-worshiping, red-bastard, Kenya-born demon seed also known as Barack “Hussein” Obama.

One little problem… none of that story was true.

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I absolutely KNEW that those skinny SOBs had something to do with the fact that I keep stuffing my pie-hole with Super-Sized portions of animal fat!

From Reuters:“Researchers from the University of British Columbia in Kelowna, Canada, found that when college students watched a movie and ate snacks with a companion, the students typically followed a thin friend’s lead when she overindulged.

However study participants used more self-control when snacking with a heavier companion who overate.”

Whew! — For a moment there I thought that “I” was responsible for my overeating and being 80 lbs over my target weight. Now that I know it’s the fault of that skinny dude formerly known as my “best friend” I can go back to consequence-free indulging in McDonalds and KFC.

They say that the best engineers are composed of equal parts imagination, ingenuity, inspiration and disregard for common sense. — Now I’ve never met “they” who say such things, but I’m pretty sure that they had stuff like THIS in mind when they came up with that philosophical truism. At first glance this might appear to be a pretty typical parking-lot scene… Poor motorist leaves his/her lights on during the day. The battery in their vehicle gives up the ghost. Some good Samaritan pulls out a set of jumper cables to breathe life back into said vehicle and the now-happy motorist drives home to a wonderful wife/husband and their 2.4 kids. Of course… that’s NEVER how things work at Interop!

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I wasn’t going to post this, but I find it too entertaining to turn down. A “Conservative Activist” in Texas has written a $1.99 iPhone application that intends “to arm conservatives with a powerful arsenal to confront and debate liberals.” (quotes are from their press release)

The author of the application is quoted as saying, “Glenn Beck inspired me during the April Tea Party Protest event in San Antonio to create Conservative Talking Points as a way to save our country from socialism and financial ruin. Looks like we may have had the same idea.” and the press release goes on to conclude, ”
The goal of the CTP iPhone App is to help conservatives battle this political civil war in the arena of ideas while we still have our first amendment rights.”

While I am a staunch supporter of raising the level of public discourse, you have to remember that this is from the same people who thought that screaming childishly at public meetings was a good idea. These are the same people who think that Joe Wilson is a hero for disgracing more than two centuries of honor and decorum. This will just be more of the same…

Here’s an interesting little ditty that fell into my email. At the Fleet Week ceremonies next week in San Francisco, nine members of the US military will take their oaths of citizenship on board the newest San Antonio class amphibious transport dock ships. — Kind of a no-brainer really, if you’re willing to put your life on the line to defend a country, you should be welcomed into her arms as a citizen.

From the Press ReleaseSAN FRANCISCO – On Oct. 12, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will naturalize nine military members onboard U.S.S. Green Bay, (LPD-20). Three of the ship’s crew will be among those to take citizenship. This ship is the fourth of the San Antonio class of amphibious transport dock ships, moored at piers 30 and 32. Green Bay is part of the bay parade that starts the U.S. Navy’s annual San Francisco Fleet Week celebration. It’s a new ship, having been commissioned on January 24 of this year. This ship will be open for visiting on that day, but visitors will not be escorted to the area where the ceremony takes place.

Nine military members from four nations will take their oath of citizenship, administered by Acting District Director Larry Crider at 11 a.m. on the Upper Vehicle Deck of the vessel. Military services represented at this ceremony are Army, Army National Guard, Marine Corps, Navy and Coast Guard.

Special guest speaker for this event will be Captain Kirk A. Foster, Commanding Officer, Region Legal Service Office Southwest. Opening remarks will be made by the ship’s commanding officer, Commander Joseph Olson.