When will the Catholic Church move into the 21st Century???

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Vatican: condoms don't stop Aids: "The Catholic Church is telling people in countries stricken by Aids not to use condoms because they have tiny holes in them through which HIV can pass - potentially exposing thousands of people to risk.
The church is making the claims across four continents despite a widespread scientific consensus that condoms are impermeable to HIV. "

Is this incredible or what? A global crisis and the church is stupid enough to say something like this? What can I say? What can any sane human say?

For some interesting comments by others on this issue - check out this page.

Hoofin' it with Vindigo

Recently spent 3 days in Washington,DC prowling around checking out museums,coffee shops,etc. Made good use of a program called Vindigo which works with a Palm Pilot (or in my case a Handspring Visor). You can download maps of any major city into your Palm Pilot and then just tell it where you are and it will show you a map with an X on it for where you are at that very moment. Then, let's say you're hungry and want to check out a restaurant. You just click on restaurants and choose whether you want to see them listed by distance (1/2, 1, or 2 miles), or by rating, or by cost. Once you've selected one (they're a hundreds listed and they are even categorized by food type), you just click on it. The map will then show you with an x where it is and you can tell where it is in location to where you currently are.

But it gets even better. You just click on "Directions" and it tells you how to walk there (works just as well for driving). Now that is slick. It's highly accurate, kept us from ever being lost and led us to all kinds of places we wouldn't have normally heard about.

It will also list all the current movies playing, where the theaters are , and how to get to each of them.

If you have a GPS unit with you, you can even enable it and it will show you where you are on the map as you walk along.

You can "synch" it with your computer before heading off to the city, to make sure it has the latest info. By synching, I mean you can hook up the palm pilot to your desktop and then it will connect to the Vindigo site where it downloads the very latest info into your handheld device. That is essential to make sure you have the correct movie times, museum times,etc.

For $20/year, it's a great deal and the best app I have on my Handspring Visor.Here's a few screen shots of what it looks like:


  

Nifty freebie tool for seeing what's on your Hard Drive

Werkema.com: Software: SpaceMonger
SpaceMonger is a tool for keeping track of the free space on your computer. Each file or folder on a given drive is displayed in a box in the main window whose size is a relative comparison to all the other files in your system. So, for example, if the "Windows" box takes up 90% of the screen, the "C:\Windows" folder and all its sub-folders and files are taking up 90% of your "C:" drive
This is an unusual tool in the way it displays hard drive usage. Worth a look, especially since it is free.
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Wanna make Google even better?

Google Preferences
Just click on the link above and it will take you to the preferences page, where you can check the box that says check for pages in English only - that will save you looking at lots of pages in languages you don't understand. And checking search for 50 items rather than the default 10 will keep you from hitting the Next button so many times. Also, open in a new browser window is handy, so that you can easily return to your search results page without having to reload it, so check that box too.  

Fascinating Insights - our Big Grain Problem

The (Agri)Cultural Contradictions of Obesity
"All this would be bad enough if the government weren't doing its best to make matters even worse, by recklessly encouraging farmers to produce even more unneeded food. Absurdly, while one hand of the federal government is campaigning against the epidemic of obesity, the other hand is actually subsidizing it, by writing farmers a check for every bushel of corn they can grow. We have been hearing a lot lately about how our agricultural policy is undermining our foreign-policy goals, forcing third-world farmers to compete against a flood tide of cheap American grain. Well, those same policies are also undermining our public-health goals by loosing a tide of cheap calories at home"

A very good read, by the same fellow who wrote the widely read article some months back about antibiotics and steroids in our beef industry.
  

The Sneaky Boys are up to No Good Again!

Provisions Benefiting Energy Industry Are Folded into Bill (washingtonpost.com): "The little-noticed decision shows the extent to which the far-reaching energy legislation has become a catchall for environmental provisions long advocated by industry lobbyists."

This will impress you that our govt. is trying to take care of us. Wonder how they figure they are immune to all these future problems? Do they live in some kind of cocoon where they don't get diseases? Of course the major drillers are contending this is all wonderful and safe. Seems like we've heard that kind of talk from Monsanto and all those other wonderful polluters before.

Quote of the day:
It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor."
Neil Gaiman
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Now's your chance to make Steve Jobs a bit richer!

BetaNews | iTunes to Make Windows Debut October 16: "One week before it launches Mac OS X version 10.3, code-named Panther, Apple will officially unveil iTunes for the Windows platform - bringing the company's music store to an immense new market of PC users."

Only.99 per tune! Each tune has DRM (Digital Rights Management). Not sure exactly how that works yet - does it allow you to play that tune anywhere other than on your computer or IPOD? (the use .acc files which are supposedly better than .mp3).