Get over yourself, Mr. Cheney. You’re not a rock star.
See Dick Demand
2 Replies
“Did you mean adoption?”
This is fascinating. Apparently the search engine at Amazon.com was prompting users who searched for "abortion" whether they meant to type "adoption," purely for intersecting reasons of technical and typographical chance. They have changed it, but similar problems are bound to crop up more often as large amounts of information are increasingly subject to user searches by algorithmic sorting of relevance.
Still, it is an excellent example of processes not directly under the control of humans coming up with results that humans perceive as holding a human bias, despite the absence of one. Welcome to the age of miscommunication between people and software.
No, Peter, this isn’t about miscommunication. It’s about a bunch of whining hypocrits who, despite all their posturing and pontificating about the importance of choice, got their panties all twisted when an algorithmic anomaly presented users with *gasp* a choice. If they wish to protect the right to abortion, that’s their prerogative; we can argue about that later. Just don’t sing the praises of choice and then freak out when someone, even accidentally, offers choices for pregnant women that don’t require blind and uncritical acceptance of the supposed necessity of killing their children.
"I thought it was offensive," said the Rev. James Lewis, a retired Episcopalian minister in Charleston, W.Va. "It represented an editorial position on their part."
You’d think "adoption" was a dirty word or hate speech. I guess it’s just not the politically correct choice.
Pittsburgh TV News Rant
Pittsburgh TV news reporting sucks.
Why are Pittsburghers are so bloody obsessed with weather? Between that and sports there’s barely any real news reported. I really don’t give a flying fig about Super Mega Kickass Vibromatic Storm Chaser 6000 and how it can slice and dice and make julean fries. Just give me a simple 5-day forecast and a little detail about tomorrow and shut the hell up!
As for sports, I enjoyed watching the Steelers beat the Seahags in the Superbowl and all, but can the celebration please stop? Then there’s the plight of the Penguins. I’m getting really sick of all the speculation. Leave the issue alone until something newsworthy happens, like the team moving to another city or Pittsburgh spending millions of dollars it doesn’t have on a new arena. Lastly, if I have to hear the sob story of Pitt’s early loss in the NCAA tournament one more time, I might go postal. They lost. Get over it and move on.
After you’ve suffered through a half hour of weather and sports, what kind of news gets reported? We hear about 5 minutes of sound bites about important world events (Iraq war, genocide in Sudan, etc.) and the remainder is local interest crap. Reporting local news is fine in moderation, but one can only watch footage of a broken down PAT bus for so long.
I shouldn’t have to watch PBS (Zzzzz) or be lucky enough to get BBC America in order to get decent national and international news. Before you say it, I get neither CNN nor Fox News, nor do I care to. If I want biased news, I’ll stick to reading blogs.
*grumble*
Investigating NFP: Contraception Debate
Investigating NFP: Pius XII
Click here to read the previous post in this series.
I have recently come to the (re)realization that bishops are the authoritative teaching body of the Church. As such, it is their responsibility to properly and effectively teach such sticky subjects as the regulation of births. However, those teachings must be in accord with the Bishop of Rome and magisterium of the Church, so I still think there is merit in exploring the relevant papal documents. Let us then continue by hearing the thoughts of Pope Pius XII.
I had thought that Pius XII had written an encyclical about contraception. As it turns out, the only statements he made about the subject were in in various allocutions (addresses) to associations of doctors and the like. These don't carry nearly the same weight as encyclicals and are certainly not infallible. An exploration of the doctrinal authority of papal allocutions can be found here, but I cannot vouch for its accuracy. Nevertheless, Paul VI quotes from these addresses extensively in Humane Vitae, thus lending some of theauthority of an encyclical. I searched for the texts of these addresses and only found the 1951 Address to Midwives on the Nature of Their Profession and the 1958 Address to Officers and Representatives of the Associations for Large Families-of Rome and of Italy. If anyone knows where I might find the rest of them, I'd be indebted. Anyhow, here's the address to midwives.