Yes, I’m a major Tolkien fan. Yes, I’m a liberrrl Anglo-Cat’lick Episcopalian. Yes, I cried when I read this. I make no apologies. Sir Ian McKellen becomes bishop for a day – Telegraph Never one to shy away from controversy, Sir Ian McKellen is secretly plotting to launch a campaign to shame the Anglican Church over its refusal to give equal rights to homosexual clergy. In an act of solidarity with the Rt Rev Gene Robinson, the Church’s first openly homosexual bishop, the celebrated actor intends to read out a sermon written by the prelate, who has been barred from…
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BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Solar Systems look-alike found The newfound planetary system, which orbits the star OGLE-2006-BLG-109L, is more compact than our own and is about five thousand light-years away. The Ogle-Blogarians are a species of compulsive documenters. Every aspect of their lives, every passing interest, every offbeat opinion, every odd theory gets placed on their planetary net. They are extremely interested in their own doings and thus are both happy and agitated that other beings have also taken an interest. Pro- and anti- observationists are even now gearing for the inevitable protests, net-wide opinion surveys, and arts/music/Blogarian introspection…
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Archaeology in Europe: 04/01/2008 – 05/01/2008 Popular British archeology series Time Team is coming to America, as a joint production with Oregon Public Broadcasting. Cool! I’ve been envious of the reports about Time Team digs and episodes ever since I’ve been reading Archeology in Europe, which is written by the partner of a dear college friend of mine. The first series will cover six episodes, with the team of experts on Time Team, USA (working title) exploring some of America’s most intriguing archaeological sites, with locations under consideration including the pre-historic Mounds of Mississippi, earth pyramids outside St. Louis, Missouri…
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Ginny I can has iPhone? Via: Flickr Title: Cherubim By: GinnyRED57 Originally uploaded: 6 Apr ’08, 11.40am CDT PST Ginny I can has iPhone?
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Because I had a positive experience playing around with WordPress 2.5 on Rileycat’s blog, I asked David to go ahead and upgrade me here. Some of the new features replace various plugins I was using before (Image Manager, and ST Visualize Advanced Features ). I’ll be using a new plugin – my husband David wrote a simple one for converting WP tags to Technorati tags, so I’m going to give that one a whirl. Whee! I will say that I like one feature; the edit window has a visual editor tab and an HTML editor tab, and previously, it would…
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Daily Kos: State of the Nation The United States got itself in to a strange situation with Musharraf, in which the structure of its aid to the Pakistan government essentially incented the government not to find Bin Laden because if they found him they had reason to fear that the US would end this flow of more than $10 billion that it was providing directly to the army. The democratic government came to power arguing to Washington that constitutional democracy was a better counterterrorism strategy than reliance on an authoritarian military leader. So, I think they understand, if they can…
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I can hardly wait to get my hands on the beautiful new coins of the realm on our next trip to Britain! The New Designs Revealed Via mediatinker
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Wow! A friend of mine has a connection with this story, which I had scanned briefly via RSS/newsfeed a few days ago. Thus when she mentioned it, I recognized the painting immediately. Just as an aside, I love the hat. Every naked lady should wear one. A Painting With a Nazi Past Britain’s National Gallery announced Thursday that new research has disclosed that a painting in its collection, “Cupid Complaining to Venus,” by the German Renaissance artist Lucas Cranach the Elder, was once part of Hitler’s private collection. “We’ve never had anything like this before,” said museum spokesman Thomas Almeroth-Williams.…
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Evidence Supports Earlier Date for People in North America – New York Times Exploring Paisley Caves in the Cascade Range of Oregon, archaeologists have found a scattering of human coprolites, or fossil feces. The specimens preserved 14,000-year-old human protein and DNA, which the discoverers said was the strongest evidence yet of the earliest people living in North America. Other archaeologists agreed that the findings established more firmly than before the presence of people on the continent at least 1,000 years before the well-known Clovis people, previously thought to be the first Americans. Recent research at sites in Florida and Wisconsin…
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UPDATE: Posted via Flickr so that my husband David could find his car where I parked it, as his flight schedule was changed and we decided he’d taxi to where I work, pick up his car which I drove in, and he’d get me at the end of the day. This was so he’d have a ride to and from work, and so on. The logistics of married people are not fascinating, but they do take a lot of work. It all worked out satisfactorily at the end of the day: so very nice to see my hubby when he…