How close a friend are you?

If you're close enough to walk through the door without knocking, go. Don't comfort, don't console--make sandwiches. Make sure all things that need doing get done. All the phone calls get answered ("I'm sure you understand, Mary's not taking calls right now--but I'll be sure to let her know you called, and I'm sure she'll want to talk to you. Thanks for calling..."), and well-wishers you do not recognize do not cross the threshold.When the press appears, fend them off ("the family is not prepared to make a statement, but thanks the public for their concern.")

Lots of people, in this economy, have reason to be depressed. 99.999% of them soldier on. The ones who choose suicide are committing the biggest single act of narcissism possible: one glorious moment of Look! At! Me! that leaves their family in agony for decades.

Do not waste your time with sympathy for the suicide. Regard the family as victims of a horrendous crime--because they are.

Erma Bombeck.

This is astonishing--but in light of recent events, not surprising at all.

But--what is the relationship between Lerner and the attorney asking questions about Pat Robertson praying for Col. North? Absent some tangible connection, it seems to me that the entire event could be hand-waved as "aggressive questioning in the scope of a wide-ranging deposition of a famously combative witness."

I'm staying up really late tonight, participating in the modern liturgical ritual of printing and binding the Pentecost liturgies so they're ready for church tomorrow.

We're a liturgical congregation in an evangelical Presbyterian denomination. We don't do a lot on Pentecost Sunday specifically--but with the new season come some substantial changes in the liturgy. Ten weeks from now we'll change it again--to what we call "Pentecost II"--just because people (read: the elders) get kind of bored singing the Benedictus to the same Anglican chant.

For me--producing the liturgies and editing all the music--this is the end of a couple of weeks of devotional bliss. I've been rehearsing and singing and modifying scores and rehearsing and singing and prototyping books and rehearsing and singing--it's a continual delight to revel in the music--and the poetry--of the Church from the dawn of printed music till today.

Humbly I adore Thee, Verity unseen,
Who Thy glory hidest 'neath these shadows mean;

Lo, to Thee surrendered, my whole heart is bowed,
Tranced as it beholds Thee, shrined within the cloud.

(Adore Devote, sung to Mode V plainsong)

I can't count the number of times I've been told that "Christians," or "the Church" taught/believed that the earth was flat--until Columbus proved them wrong.

When, in fact, every literate person in Europe, and every single seaman, literate or not, knew perfectly well the earth was round. The question was the circumference.

And Columbus was wrong--it was Amerigo Vespucci who correctly concluded that the earth was as large as Euclid predicted, which is why we live in America, not Colombia.

Inevitably, the lib simply can't get that through their head--because independent, critical thought is just too hard....

I so agree. Every time I think that finally--finally!--our nation is going to take a fair and balanced look at horse-drawn-vehicle-rights, bam! Some crisis somewhere or other knocks us off the front page. Again.

John--

Can you isolate the noise in the recording?

If you can get as little as 4 seconds of that noise without any talking over it, you can use the ReaFir plug-in in Reaper to cancel the sound.

I'm very sorry, and I feel it my right-wing fundamentalist Christian duty to apologize. I've been very busy over the past couple of days, personally oppressing every downtrodden social outcast I could find, so I've been somewhat behind on my online spewing of hatred and vitriol.

I'll try to do better.

The Clintons have had far more of an impact on the Democrat party than people realize. In particular, remember that while Bill was attorney general of Arkansas, and immediately before he took office as governor, Hillary engaged in commodities futures trading.

The Wall St. Journal did a big investigation--and what they figured out was this:

Hillary was very, very careful not to break any rules.

Her broker broke a number of federal laws, as well as a bushel of rules.

But her broker was dying of cancer, and knew it. He had a long term relationship with Tyson Foods--and earned a fat commission on the trade (singular) involved.

The net result: Tyson Foods and Hillary Clinton figured out a legal way to pay a six-figure bribe to the next governor of Arkansas.

As we have seen scandal after scandal, and coverup after coverup, we have seen people in the Obama administration who have been carefully, exhaustively, lawyered--so that they can avoid criminal prosecution. They do not remember, they have no recollection, they "have nothing for you on that."

They embody the ethos that "nothing is illegal, unless you are caught with evidence that can convict you."

There may have been other issues involved--the person on the plane may have been a licensed A&P mechanic, but may not have been "current" on that particular aircraft.

There are a number of pilots on Richochet--I think it would be instructive to hear their thoughts on this issue. There may be more to the story than "union rules prevent me."

After all--the mechanic was on the plane too. He suffered the same annoyance--and more so, since he was likely the Most Unpopular Man in the World, or at least that part of it.

As a general theme, I get frustrated by airline delays. But I'm entirely happy--take all the time you need, fellas--to ensure that the plane takes off with all the parts attached and functioning, and no bombs in the baggage compartment.

California residents: Are fluorescents (including compact fluorescents, or CFLs) sold with the label saying that they contain materials known to the state of California to be hazardous?

Fluorescents fluoresce by creating a plasma across an anode and cathode in the presence of mercury vapor. That happens by heating a mercury powder in the lamp.

And when that lamp is crushed (for example, in the landfill, or the back of the trash truck) that mercury powder ends up in the sewer, or in the landfill. And--very likely--in the groundwater.

I find it odd that environmentalists are going bananas all over America about the purported threat to groundwater from improperly-drilled wells for hydraulic fracking. But have no qualms at all about the very real problem of groundwater mercury pollution--a serious enough problem that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania maintains a web site listing the maximum safe number of fish to eat from any given stream, based on levels of mercury in the water.

And since we're on the subject--how many know that ultraviolet radiation (which causes skin cancer) is a known hazard with fluorescent lights?

A link or two might be helpful to understand what you're talking about....

Pretty please?

There is a HUGE difference in the way that Mother's Day and Father's Day are celebrated:

A young woman is pregnant with her first child--what happens on Mother's Day? Not only does everyone call her a mother, but she becomes the very center of the "billing and cooing" of all the women in church on that Sunday morning. She is the star of the show.

Four weeks later, it's Father's Day. What happens to our young mother's husband (assuming the baby has not yet been born)?

Nothing. Zip, zero, nada. He doesn't count as a father, and if he were to so forget his place as to suggest that he is, he'd be viewed with contempt. The hapless scrub.

If you know of a young couple, expecting their first, watch--she'll count as a mother as soon as she is visibly pregnant; he will not count as a father until the baby is born.

Can I ask for some help?

Is Elizabeth Colbert Busch a carpetbagger? I thought she and her brother were raised on South Carolina (although a South Carolina of upscale private schools). Has she been living in San Francisco? Was Sanford's linking her to Nancy Pelosi not just the typical campaign demagoguery, but actually a legitimate accusation?

UPDATE: I did some Googling--she's director of development at Clemson University. And apparently has a list of tweets that paint a pretty solid picture of her politics--but no specific times to Nancy Pelosi other than endorsements and money.

Try buying decongestant in the U.S.

Ooh, ooh! Can I play too?

Iron-Blood Mayhaw Fillmore.