December 1, 2014

America Magazine editorial: Why Catholics must condemn anti-gay violence

The recent assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the Family has brought renewed attention to Catholic approaches to gay and lesbian persons. During the synod, church leaders discussed pastoral and theological perspectives regarding the place of homosexual persons in the church, and church teaching vis-à-vis homosexuality. Given the text of the midterm report and the final report, called a relatio, much of the conversation focused on the extent to which homosexual persons were welcome within the church and in local parishes.

Despite a significant opening in dialogue, the synod discussions made relatively little mention of the violence that sexual and gender minorities regularly face in communities around the world. (In this essay I use the term sexual and gender minorities as a shorthand to refer to all individuals who identify as something other than heterosexual or cisgender.) Sadly, violence is still a lived reality for Catholics and non-Catholics who fail to conform to certain expressions of sexuality or gender. International entities like the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights have noted alarming rates of physical aggression against these individuals. Additionally, in at least 76 countries, laws still criminalize particular expressions of sexuality and gender. These laws often make people vulnerable to prosecution by the state, as well as to attack and persecution by members of the public. Governments often use sexual and gender minority groups as convenient scapegoats for social, political and economic ills, thus increasing their vulnerability.

Growing awareness of such discriminatory practices underscores the importance of having Catholics reiterate a message of care and nonviolence toward these individuals when discussing issues of sexuality and gender. As church leaders have noted, these calls are consistent with Catholic doctrine on the dignity of all human beings. The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls on Catholics to treat “homosexual persons” with “respect, compassion and sensitivity.” The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s letter “On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons” (1986) mandates respect for the intrinsic dignity of each person in word, in action and in law and condemns violence against homosexual people. While some church leaders and faith communities have stressed a message of dignity and respect, many others have not. In recent years, both religious and lay Catholics, through their actions and words, have promoted policies and practices that seem to contribute to a climate of indifference or even hostility, in which violence against members of sexual and gender minorities can occur.

http://americamagazine.org/issue/zero-tolerance

November 30, 2014

26 charts and maps to be thankful for

The press — and humans in general — have a strong negativity bias. Bad economic news gets more coverage than good news. Negative experiences affect people more, and for longer, than positive ones. So it's natural for things like Russia's incursion into Ukraine or the rise of ISIS or the Ebola outbreak to weigh on us more than, say, the fact that extreme poverty has fallen by half since 1990, or that life expectancy is increasing, especially in poor countries. But for Thanksgiving it's worth paying some attention to the latter factors. The world is getting much, much better on a whole variety of dimensions. Here are just a few.

http://www.vox.com/2014/11/24/7272929/charts-thankful

Saw this a bit late for Thanksgiving, but worth a read any day of the year.

November 30, 2014

Guy invents pill that makes farts smell like chocolate

France has given the world fragrant perfume and very stinky cheeses, but the country's latest and greatest olfactory contribution may be a pill that makes farts smell like chocolate.

The sweet-smelling product is the creation of Christian Poincheval, a 65-year-old inventor who hails from the village of Gesvres and looks like Santa Claus' younger hippie brother.

Poincheval sells the pills online at pilulepet.com for around $12.50 for 60 capsules. The web page promises the chocolate pills will "allow the user to fart through to the New Year in grand style."

The chocolate pills are a new addition to Poincheval's odorific arsenal, which also includes pills that make farts smell like roses or violets, and fart-reducing powder for pets.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/26/christian-poincheval_n_6227404.html

November 29, 2014

Want fries with your communion wafers? McMass project wants McDonald's in churches

Would you be more inclined to go to church if services came with a Big Mac and a side of fries? That's the idea behind McMass, a group whose goal is to put a McDonald's franchise in a church.

The group, led by Paul Di Lucca, a creative director at the church branding agency Lux Dei design, has launched a page on the IndieGoGo crowdfunding site. He's looking to raise $1 million to build the first McDonald's church.

The $1 million will go toward purchasing a franchise and construction. The group is currently looking for a church to partner with.

"It's time for churches to engage with entrepreneurship," writes the group. "By combining a church and a McDonald's we can create a self-sustaining, community-engaged, popular church, and an unparalleled McDonald's restaurant."

http://www.latimes.com/food/dailydish/la-dd-mcmass-mcdonalds-in-church-20141126-story.html

Besides the absurdity of this, I'd wonder how this would affect churches' tax-exempt statuses.

November 28, 2014

Florida man sets up meth lab in public restroom

A 20-year-old New Smyrna Beach man is arrested, accused of having a meth lab in a public bathroom, police said.

Investigators said a construction worker saw smoke coming from the men's bathroom at Detwiler Park around 8 a.m Tuesday, then saw a man run away.

Police found remnants of a small meth lab inside the bathroom.

Justin Hill was arrested.

http://www.wesh.com/news/police-man-20-set-up-meth-lab-in-new-smyrna-beach-park-bathroom/29934130

November 28, 2014

Michigan mall threatens fines for retailers that didn't start Black Friday hours on Thanksgiving

Source: MLive

If the Regis salon had its choice, the store in the Grand Traverse Mall would not have opened its doors on Thanksgiving.

But the alternative was to pay the mall a fine of around $500, the salon's manager told MLive and The Grand Rapids Press.

"We had to be open all the required hours," said the woman, who declined to give her name.

During those required hours from 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving to 1 a.m. Friday, the salon didn't do much business.

Read more: http://www.mlive.com/business/west-michigan/index.ssf/2014/11/michigan_mall_threatens_fines.html

November 25, 2014

Florida man hugs tree to resist arrest, gets arrested anyway

A Florida man resisted arrest Thursday by hugging a palm tree after police confronted him, according to a Greenacres Department of Public Safety arrest report.

Homer Stacey, 50, has been charged with threatening an officer, resisting arrest and disorderly intoxication.

According to the report, Stacey was belligerent when police confronted him outside his home on Lancaster Drive after they heard reports of a disturbance. He said he was going to cause problems and get his friends to help. Shortly after this, a family member told the officer that Stacey had been drinking.

“Yeah, I’ve been drinking, so what?” Stacey said, according to the report. He went in his house and came back, yelling at the officer, who then said he would arrest him. Stacey attempted to leave and ignored the officer’s warnings. Stacey then proceeded to hug a palm tree, yelling, “You’re not going to [expletive] take me!”

http://www.actionnewsjax.com/news/news/national/police-report-greenacres-man-hugs-tree-resists-arr/nh8K2/#__federated=1

November 25, 2014

Howard Dean tells Salon how he remade the DNC

On the 50-state strategy:

This was the hard part for me. My experience as a governor was that the state party was weak. They were also kind of a pain in the neck. I was a centrist governor, and they were always complaining about things that I was doing, and I was very annoyed by it. So I didn’t have a good experience with the state Democratic parties. But I also knew that one of the reasons they were weak was nobody would fund them. So nobody would fund them because they were weak, and they were weak because nobody would fund them. So it was a hard decision for me, do you take the leap of faith, and understand that you’re going to get burned on some of these parties, but you’re going to have to do it? The problem was that people in Washington are always moving people in and out of races and telling them who can and can’t run. And they don’t do as good a job, they’re not as in touch with what’s happening on the ground.

So we decided we would guarantee every state, the goal was four staffers, some got three, some got five, depending on the size of the state. We would guarantee staffers paid for by the DNC. They get to choose the staffers, but we get to train them three or four times a year. And then we put a tech capacity in these states so they could do what Iowa always did, maintaining a voter file. The model was the same, Iowa had been doing it for a long time. I actually wanted to buy the VAN. I made a mistake. It was a little pricey at the time, but looking back now, it would have been great. Buy the VAN and run the company. And then Catalist came along, which was a big pain in the neck. Only because to have the voter file controlled by some people who were outside the DNC, I thought was a bad thing. If you want a Democratic Party, you have to have a Democratic Party.

So anyway, we did it. We put money into the states. And lo and behold, the difference between not taking the House and taking the House in 2006 was 17 candidates that people like Kathleen Sebelius found in Kansas. We didn’t know much about them, it was the people in the states. They found them, they nurtured them, they trained them, they now had the capacity in their states to get out the vote and identify voters. And it worked. And in the Senate, I have to say, we did really well in the Senate because we were a little lucky, Jim Webb came along and Macaca happened. But we picked up seats too because of people like Mark Begich in Alaska. We found they had great people there but they had no money, but suddenly they had a computer capacity, they could get some votes out.

We also had some rules, we would give you the technology capacity, but you would be obligated to allow candidates to use it for free. See, in order to raise money, states would sell their lists to their own candidates. So we said OK, we’re going to do this, but you’re going to give these people lists, on the condition that they give it back to you after the campaign with all their markings. There was a lot of resistance to that too. Illinois was problematic, because the House Speaker is the chair of the party and also personally owns the list. So for Illinois we had to do it through Durbin. We couldn’t use the state party. So really it was a 49-state strategy.

http://www.salon.com/2014/11/25/people_yelled_and_carried_on_howard_dean_on_how_he_remade_the_dnc_and_dems_new_path_forward/

November 25, 2014

Howard Dean tells Salon how he remade the DNC

On the 50-state strategy:

This was the hard part for me. My experience as a governor was that the state party was weak. They were also kind of a pain in the neck. I was a centrist governor, and they were always complaining about things that I was doing, and I was very annoyed by it. So I didn’t have a good experience with the state Democratic parties. But I also knew that one of the reasons they were weak was nobody would fund them. So nobody would fund them because they were weak, and they were weak because nobody would fund them. So it was a hard decision for me, do you take the leap of faith, and understand that you’re going to get burned on some of these parties, but you’re going to have to do it? The problem was that people in Washington are always moving people in and out of races and telling them who can and can’t run. And they don’t do as good a job, they’re not as in touch with what’s happening on the ground.

So we decided we would guarantee every state, the goal was four staffers, some got three, some got five, depending on the size of the state. We would guarantee staffers paid for by the DNC. They get to choose the staffers, but we get to train them three or four times a year. And then we put a tech capacity in these states so they could do what Iowa always did, maintaining a voter file. The model was the same, Iowa had been doing it for a long time. I actually wanted to buy the VAN. I made a mistake. It was a little pricey at the time, but looking back now, it would have been great. Buy the VAN and run the company. And then Catalist came along, which was a big pain in the neck. Only because to have the voter file controlled by some people who were outside the DNC, I thought was a bad thing. If you want a Democratic Party, you have to have a Democratic Party.

So anyway, we did it. We put money into the states. And lo and behold, the difference between not taking the House and taking the House in 2006 was 17 candidates that people like Kathleen Sebelius found in Kansas. We didn’t know much about them, it was the people in the states. They found them, they nurtured them, they trained them, they now had the capacity in their states to get out the vote and identify voters. And it worked. And in the Senate, I have to say, we did really well in the Senate because we were a little lucky, Jim Webb came along and Macaca happened. But we picked up seats too because of people like Mark Begich in Alaska. We found they had great people there but they had no money, but suddenly they had a computer capacity, they could get some votes out.

We also had some rules, we would give you the technology capacity, but you would be obligated to allow candidates to use it for free. See, in order to raise money, states would sell their lists to their own candidates. So we said OK, we’re going to do this, but you’re going to give these people lists, on the condition that they give it back to you after the campaign with all their markings. There was a lot of resistance to that too. Illinois was problematic, because the House Speaker is the chair of the party and also personally owns the list. So for Illinois we had to do it through Durbin. We couldn’t use the state party. So really it was a 49-state strategy.

http://www.salon.com/2014/11/25/people_yelled_and_carried_on_howard_dean_on_how_he_remade_the_dnc_and_dems_new_path_forward/

November 25, 2014

ESPN announces new 30 for 30 episode: "I Hate Christian Laettner"

Do you hate Christian Laettner? If so, you’re not alone. So many people hate the ex-Duke and NBA player that ESPN’s “30 for 30″ about him will be called “I Hate Christian Laettner.”

The documentary directed by Rory Karpf, who also did “The Book of Manning” and “Tim Richmond: To The Limit” will feature interviews with Laettner’s former teammates and rivals, as well as Laettner himself, an ESPN press statement notes, to explore “why the polarizing basketball player was — and still is — so disliked.”

http://www.kansascity.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/for-petes-sake/article3999278.html