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Pope Francis: Fresh violence in Syria's Eastern Ghouta is 'inhumane'
Posted on 02/25/2018 12:37 PM (CNA Daily News - Vatican)
Vatican City, Feb 25, 2018 / 04:37 am (CNA/EWTN News).- After a week of heavy bombardment near Damascus left hundreds of civilians dead, Pope Francis has made an appeal for global leaders to rally in ending the siege, allowing civilians to evacuate and humanitarian aid to get in.
"In these days my thought is often turned to the beloved and martyred Syria, where the war has exploded again, especially in Eastern Ghouta," the Pope said Feb. 25, noting that this month marks one of the most violent since the Syrian conflict erupted seven years ago.
Thousands of innocent lives have been claimed by the ongoing, bloody war, with several hundred more being added just this past week, many of whom are women, children and elderly, he said.
"Hospitals have been hit, people can't get enough to eat...all of this is inhumane," Francis said, stressing that "evil cannot be fought with another evil."
The Pope then issued "a heartfelt appeal" for global leaders to work to stop the violence, to allow humanitarian aid such as food and medicine into the area, and to ensure that the sick and wounded would be evacuated.
Francis' appeal comes a week after Russian-backed Syrian forces launched a series of deadly airstrikes and artillery fire on besieged Easter Ghouta enclave, which sits just northeast of Damascus.
Home to some 400,000 people, Eastern Ghouta is the last rebel-held area east of Damascus and has been a target of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces since 2013 in a bid to drive the rebels out.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the fresh eruption of conflict in the area, which began Feb. 18, has so far left more than 500 civilians dead, of whom 121 are children. Aid groups also report that several hospitals in the area are now out of commission.
After three days of deliberation to come up with a ceasefire deal, the U.N. Security Counsel yesterday voted unanimously in favor of a resolution calling for a 30-day calm to allow residents of the suburb to evacuate, and food and medicine to enter.
However, reports indicate that just hours after the deal was accepted, the Syrian government launched a new ground and air offensive in the area.
Pope Francis' appeal, which he made during his Angelus address for the Second Sunday of Lent, asked pilgrims gathered in St. Peter's Square to join him in praying that his plea would be answered "without delay." He then led pilgrims in a moment of silence before reciting a Hail Mary.
In his address, he focused on the transfiguration of Jesus in the day's Gospel reading from Mark, saying the announcement that he would be rejected, put to death and would then rise on the third day "put Peter and the group of the disciples into crisis," since they had been expecting a powerful Messiah who would rule the nations.
However, instead, Jesus presents himself "as a humble and meek servant of God and of men," who was to give his life in sacrifice through persecution, suffering and a violent death.
The transfiguration, Francis said, ultimately helps the disciples to face the Passion of Christ in a positive way, "without being overwhelmed" by it. It also helps both the disciples, and us, to understand that while Jesus' Passion is "a mystery of suffering," it's above all "a gift of infinite love on the part of Jesus."
"The event of Jesus who transfigures himself on the mountain also helps us to better understand his resurrection," the Pope said, explaining that if the transfiguration and God's declaration that "this is my beloved Son" had not happened before Jesus' Passion, neither this nor Jesus' rising in the Paschal mystery would be easily understood.
In order to understand these events, he said, "it's necessary to know in advance that he who suffers and who is glorified is not only a man, but the Son of God, who with his love faithful to death has saved us."
Francis said that it's important, especially during Lent, to go up the mountain with Jesus and be with him and listen to his voice, allowing oneself to be transformed by the Holy Spirit.
"It's the experience of contemplation and prayer, of living not in avoidance of daily struggles, but of enjoying familiarity with God, in order to take up with renewed vigor the tiring path of the cross, which leads us to the resurrection."
At Villanova, Archbishop Chaput talks faith and society
Posted on 02/23/2018 23:36 PM (CNA Daily News - US)
Philadelphia, Pa., Feb 23, 2018 / 03:36 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Nation-wide violence. School shootings. Political tensions. Drugs. Unemployment. Hunger.
These are some of the illness which plague the nation, said Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia, who discussed faith as the antidote to these challenges in an address Thursday at Villanova University.
"In my experience, this moment in our country's history is the most conflicted and divided since the 1960s," said Archbishop Chaput during his address.
"One of the tasks of the Church, and each of us as individual believers, is to live and work in a way that does help to make the world around us better," he continued, noting that "there's no healing without a good diagnosis."
Chaput's words were addressed to students at Villanova University in Philadelphia on Feb. 22, with a speech titled "Things to Come: Faith, State and Society in a New World." The archbishop delved into some of society's challenges, what has led to them, and a renewal of faith as a way to heal some of the nation's wounds.
"The United States is the most powerful market economy in the world…and most of us would probably agree that since World War II, American democratic capitalism has reshaped much of the world; in effect, created a new world of political and economic relationships," Chaput said.
Global market economies, Chaput continued, have benefited millions around the world by improving their opportunities, standards of living, and lifespans. They have also reshaped other dynamics, such as family, political, and educational relationships, and shifted philosophies and behaviors around the globe.
However, while noting its many benefits, Chaput also highlighted capitalism's damaging side effects.
"A consumer market economy tends to commodify everything and recast all relationships as transactional," Chaput said.
"In practice, it depersonalizes a culture by commercializing many of our routine human interactions. It also very easily breeds a practical atheism by revolving our lives around the desire and consumption for new things," he continued.
While many of the country's changes and steps in progression over the years have aided Americans, especially through medical advancements, Chaput said that the pros and cons do not balance out.
"…the benefits and deficits of change have been very unequally shared. The result has been a deep dislocation in the American sense of stability, security, common purpose, and self," he said.
Chaput particularly pointed to the lower classes, who are promised with the lures of "sexual freedom," and yet burdened by its consequences because of a lack of wealth. He noted destroyed marriages, fatherless children, angry males, and increased poverty and crime as a result.
Chaput also underscored the nation's other "deep and chronic problems" of drugs, unemployment, inadequate schools, and inner-city hunger.
The Philadelphia archbishop also spotlighted the rise in secularism over recent years, saying that Americans who identify as atheist, agnostic, or of no religious affiliation rose from 16 percent to 23 percent from 2007 to 2014. This shift, Chaput said, "has political and legal implications," particularly seen in the attacks against religious freedom and human rights.
"Religious freedom – as the nation has traditionally understood it – can't be a major concern for people who don't respect the importance of religious faith," Chaput said.
"Human rights, without a grounding in God or some higher moral order, are really just a matter of public consensus," he continued.
While many leaders and politicians have promised change with various notions such as income equality and increased opportunities, or various other plans of action, Chaput believes the only antidote to the nation's plague is a renewal of faith in God.
"The point is, God's authority ensures human freedom," Chaput said.
"When God leaves the stage, the state inevitably expands to fill his place. Without the biblical God, we end up in some disguised form of idolatry. And it usually involves politics," he continued.
Despite the culture's downfalls, Chaput said people still have the desire for beauty, relationship, and new life – all of which can be found in the treasure of the Catholic Church and its proclamation of the truth.
"People still have a need for beauty, which means that beauty has the power to evade the machinery of logic and reach right into the human soul," he said.
According to Chaput, the nation is desperately in need of the uncompromising truth, saying that before the problem can be fixed, individuals need to wake up to the reality of its challenge.
He also encouraged Catholics to protect their identities in Christ and act as faithful witnesses to the truth, saying "this isn't a time for Catholics to be weak or apologetic." At the same time, Chaput also noted this proclamation of truth should be spoke with love, patience and mercy.
Ultimately, Chaput said, the nation's future will depend on the power of "personal witness," through every individual's pursuit of sanctity.
"Leon Bloy, the great French Catholic convert, liked to say that, in the end, the only thing that matters is to be a saint," Chaput said.
"So the task tonight, when each of us leaves here, is to begin that path. And may God guide us all in pursuing it."
Pope Francis returns to Rome after week of spiritual exercises
Posted on 02/23/2018 19:40 PM (CNA Daily News - Vatican)
Vatican City, Feb 23, 2018 / 11:40 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Friday Pope Francis returned from his week-long Lenten spiritual exercises in Ariccia, where he and members of the Roman Curia have been on their annual retreat since Sunday afternoon.
Before boarding the bus that would take him back to Vatican City, Francis thanked the priest who preached the exercises for his reflections and for encouraging members of the Curia to be open to the Holy Spirit and not stuck in bureaucratic structures.
"Thank you, Father, for having spoken of the Church, for having made us, this small flock, feel the Church," the Pope said Feb. 23.
He thanked Fr. José Tolentino de Mendonça for reminding them that "the Church is not a cage for the Holy Spirit," and also voiced thanks for receiving a warning "not to shrink it with our bureaucratic worldliness!"
Fr. Tolentino is a Portuguese priest, poet, and Biblical theologian who preached during the spiritual exercises, which this year focused on the theme: "Praise of Thirst."
De Mendonça is vice-rector of the Portuguese Catholic University in Lisbon and has been a consultant of the Pontifical Council for Culture since 2011. He was ordained a priest in 1990 and completed his master's degree in Biblical Studies in Rome before later obtaining a doctorate in biblical theology from the Portuguese Catholic University, where he later taught as an assistant professor.
In his brief greeting at the end of the retreat, Pope Francis also thanked De Mendonça for helping them understand how the Holy Spirit works in the hearts of non-believers and those of other religious confessions, saying the Holy Spirit is "universal, he is the Spirit of God, who is for everyone."
Francis noted that there are many people today like the centurions and the guards at Peter's prison who live with an "an inner search" and who know how to tell when there is "something that calls" them.
He thanked De Mendonça for the call "to opening ourselves without fear, without rigidity, for being malleable in the Spirit and not mummified within our structures that close us off."
The Pope also noted how he had declared Friday as a day of prayer and fasting for South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Syria, saying the spiritual retreat is extended through the offerings they will make on behalf of the war-torn countries.
Held Feb. 18-23, this year's curial Lenten spiritual exercises began Sunday evening with adoration and vespers. The rest of the week followed a basic schedule beginning with Mass at 7:30 a.m., followed by the first meditation of the day.
In the afternoon, a second meditation was preached before concluding with adoration and vespers. Friday, the final day of the exercises, consisted of only a morning meditation. Pope Francis and the curia then left the retreat house, returning to the Vatican at 11:15 a.m.
The exercises took place at the Casa Divin Maestro in Ariccia, a town just 16 miles outside of Rome. Located on Lake Albano, the retreat house is just a short way from the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo. It will be the fifth consecutive year the Pope and members of the Curia have held their Lenten retreat at the house in Ariccia.
While the practice of the Bishop of Rome going on retreat with the heads of Vatican dicasteries each Lent began some 80 years ago, it had been customary for them to follow the spiritual exercises on Vatican ground. Beginning in Lent 2014, Pope Francis chose to hold the retreat outside of Rome.
What's the point of fasting, anyway?
Posted on 02/23/2018 11:02 AM (CNA Daily News - US)
Washington D.C., Feb 23, 2018 / 03:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- God commanded it, Jesus practiced it, Church Fathers have preached the importance of it – fasting is a powerful and fundamental part of the Christian life.
But for many Catholics today, it's more of an afterthought: something we grudgingly do on Good Friday, perhaps on Ash Wednesday if we remember it. Would we fast more, especially during Lent, if we understood how helpful it is for our lives?
The answer to this, say both saints of the past and experts today, is a resounding "yes."
"Let us take for our standard and for our example those that have run the race, and have won," said Deacon Sabatino Carnazzo, founding executive director of the Institute of Catholic Culture and a deacon at Holy Transfiguration Melkite Greek Catholic Church in Mclean, Va., of the saints.
"And...those that have run the race and won have been men and women of prayer and fasting."
So what, in essence, is fasting?
It's "the deprivation of the good, in order to make a decision for a greater good," explained Deacon Carnazzo. It is most commonly associated with abstention from food, although it can also take the form of giving up other goods like comforts and entertainment.
The current fasting obligation for Latin Catholics in the United States is this: all over the age of 14 must abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, and all Fridays in Lent. On Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, adults age 18 to 59 must fast – eating no more than one full meal and two smaller meals that together do not add up in quantity to the full meal.
Catholics, "if possible," can continue the Good Friday fast through Holy Saturday until the Easter Vigil, the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference adds.
Other Fridays throughout the year (aside from Friday within the Octave of Easter) "are penitential days and times throughout the entire Church," according to Canon Law 1250. Catholics once abstained from meat on all Fridays, but the U.S. bishops received permission from the Holy See for Catholics to substitute another sacrifice or perform an act of charity instead.
Eastern Rite Catholics, meanwhile, follow the fasting laws of their own particular church.
In their 1966 "Pastoral Statement on Penance and Abstinence," the National Conference of Catholic Bishops exhorted the faithful, on other days of Lent where fasting is not required, to "participation in daily Mass and a self-imposed observance of fasting."
Aside from the stipulations, though, what's the point of fasting?
"The whole purpose of fasting is to put the created order and our spiritual life in a proper balance," Deacon Carnazzo said.
As "bodily creatures in a post-fallen state," it's easy to let our "lower passions" for physical goods supersede our higher intellect, he explained. We take good things for granted and reach for them whenever we feel like it, "without thinking, without reference to the One Who gives us the food, and without reference to the question of whether it's good for us or not," he added.
Thus, fasting helps "make more room for God in our life," Monsignor Charles Pope, pastor of Holy Comforter/St. Cyprian Catholic Church in Washington, D.C. said.
"And the Lord said at the well, with the (Samaritan) woman, He said that 'everyone that drinks from this well is going to be thirsty again. Why don't you let me go to work in your life and I'll give you a fountain welling up to Eternal Life.'"
While fasting can take many forms, is abstaining from food especially important?
"The reason why 2000 years of Christianity has said food (for fasting), because food's like air. It's like water, it's the most fundamental," Deacon Carnazzo said. "And that's where the Church says 'stop right here, this fundamental level, and gain control there.' It's like the first step in the spiritual life."
What the Bible says about it
Yet why is fasting so important in the life of the Church? And what are the roots of the practice in Scripture?
The very first fast was ordered by God to Adam in the Garden of Eden, Deacon Carnazzo noted, when God instructed Adam and Eve not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:16-17).
This divine prohibition was not because the tree was bad, the deacon clarified. It was "made good" like all creation, but its fruit was meant to be eaten "in the right time and the right way." In the same way, we abstain from created goods so we may enjoy them "in the right time and the right way."
The fast is the weapon of protection against demons - St. Basil the Great.
Fasting is also good because it is submission to God, he said. By fasting from the fruit of the tree, Adam and Eve would have become partakers in the Divine Nature through their obedience to God. Instead, they tried to take this knowledge of good and evil for themselves and ate the fruit, disobeying God and bringing Original Sin, death, and illness upon mankind.
At the beginning of His ministry, Jesus abstained from food and water for 40 days and nights in the desert and thus "reversed what happened in the Garden of Eden," Deacon Carnazzo explained. Like Adam and Eve, Christ was tempted by the devil but instead remained obedient to God the Father, reversing the disobedience of Adam and Eve and restoring our humanity.
Following the example of Jesus, Catholics are called to fast, said Fr. Lew. And the Church Fathers preached the importance of fasting.
Why fasting is so powerful
"The fast is the weapon of protection against demons," taught St. Basil the Great. "Our Guardian Angels more really stay with those who have cleansed our souls through fasting."
Why is fasting so powerful? "By setting aside this (created) realm where the devil works, we put ourselves into communion with another realm where the devil does not work, he cannot touch us," Deacon Carnazzo explained.
It better disposes us for prayer, noted Monsignor Pope. Because we feel greater hunger or thirst when we fast from food and water, "it reminds us of our frailty and helps us be more humble," he said. "Without humility, prayer and then our experience of God really can't be unlocked."
Thus, the practice is "clearly linked by St. Thomas Aquinas, writing within the Tradition, to chastity, to purity, and to clarity of mind," noted Fr. Lew.
"You can kind of postulate from that that our modern-day struggles with the virtue of chastity, and perhaps a lack of clarity in theological knowledge, might be linked to an abandonment of fasting as well."
A brief history of fasting
The current fasting obligations were set in the 1983 Code of Canon Law, but in previous centuries, the common fasts among Catholics were stricter and more regularly observed.
Catholics abstained from meat on all Fridays of the year, Easter Friday excluded. During Lent, they had to fast – one meatless meal and two smaller meatless meals – on all days excluding Sunday, the day of the Resurrection. They abstained from meat on Fridays and Saturdays in Lent – the days of Christ's death and lying in the tomb – but were allowed meat during the main meal on the other Lenten weekdays.
The obligations extended to other days of the liturgical year. Catholics fasted and abstained on the vigils of Christmas and Pentecost Sunday, and on Ember Days – the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday after the Feast of St. Lucy on Dec. 13, after Ash Wednesday, after Pentecost Sunday, and after the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in September – corresponding with the four seasons.
In centuries past, the Lenten abstention was more austere. Catholics gave up not only meat but also animal products like milk and butter, as well as oil and even fish at times.
Why are today's obligations in the Latin Rite so minimal? The Church is setting clear boundaries outside of which one cannot be considered to be practicing the Christian life, Deacon Carnazzo explained. That is why intentionally violating the Lenten obligations is a mortal sin.
But should Catholics perform more than the minimum penance that is demanded? Yes, said Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P., who is currently studying for a Pontifical License in Sacred Theology at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C.
The minimum may be "what is due to God out of justice," he explained, but we are "called not only to be just to God," but also "to love God and to love our neighbor." Charity, he added, "would call us to do more than just the minimum that is applied to us by the Code of Canon Law today, I think."
In Jeremiah 31: 31-33, God promises to write His law upon our hearts, Deacon Carnazzo noted. We must go beyond following a set of rules and love God with our hearts, and this involves doing more than what we are obliged to do, he added.
Be wary of your motivation
However, Fr. Lew noted, fasting "must be stirred up by charity." A Catholic should not fast out of dieting or pride, but out of love of God.
"It's always dangerous in the spiritual life to compare yourself to other people," he said, citing the Gospel of John where Jesus instructed St. Peter not to be concerned about the mission of St. John the Apostle but rather to "follow Me." (John 21: 20-23).
In like manner, we should be focused on God during Lent and not on the sacrifices of others, he said.
Lent (is referred to) as a joyful season...It's the joy of loving Him more.
"We will often fail, I think. And that's not a bad thing. Because if we do fail, this is the opportunity to realize our utter dependence on God and His grace, to seek His mercy and forgiveness, and to seek His strength so that we can grow in virtue and do better," he added.
And by realizing our weakness and dependence on God, we can "discover anew the depths of God's mercy for us" and can be more merciful to others, he added.
Giving up good things may seem onerous and burdensome, but can – and should – a Catholic fast with joy?
"It's referred to in the preface of Lent as a joyful season," Fr. Lew said. "And it's the joy of deepening our relationship with Christ, and therefore coming closer to Him. It's the joy of loving Him more, and the more we love God the closer we draw to Him."
"Lent is all about the Cross, and eventually the resurrection," said Deacon Carnazzo. If we "make an authentic, real sacrifice for Christ" during Lent, "we can come to that day of the crucifixion and say 'Yes Lord, I willingly with you accept the cross. And when we do that, then we will behold the third day of resurrection.'"
This article was originally published on CNA Feb. 20, 2016.
Former president of Franciscan U posthumously receives Poverello Medal
Posted on 02/23/2018 00:59 AM (CNA Daily News - US)
Steubenville, Ohio, Feb 22, 2018 / 04:59 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Father Michael Scanlan, TOR, former president of the Franciscan University of Steubenville, will posthumously receive the 2018 Poverello Medal, the college's highest non-academic award.
The medal will be given in recognition of the achievements of Father Scanlan, who helped rejuvenate the school's Catholic spirit and advanced evangelization world-wide.
"Very few college presidents who could not only reinvigorate Catholic higher education … but also be an evangelist, a writer, [and] a Catholic media figure," Public Relations Manager for Franciscan, Tom Sofio, told CNA.
The award will be accepted by Father Richard Davis in memory of the school's fourth president, who died in January 2017. The event will be held March 3, coinciding with school's Mission Immersion Day - a preparation for the nearly 300 students who plan to leave on mission trips this spring.
Acknowledging individuals and organizations who have emulated the qualities of St. Francis of Assisi, the award is given in recognition of substantial Christian character and works of charity.
Father Michael Scanlan served as the school's president from 1974-2000 and aided the restoration of the university's Catholic identity. He emphasized school's theology program, making it the largest undergraduate theology program of any U.S. Catholic university today.
Having a good rapport with the students, he also created an environment for young adults to grow in their faith. He established faith based fraternity groups called households, where men and women would be formed and supported in their Catholic faith.
Under Father Scanlan, Franciscan University in 1989 became the first U.S. Catholic university or college to adopt an Oath of Fidelity - a promise from the priests and theology faculty to teach according to the Church.
Additionally, Father Scanlan was a strong supporter of the pro-life movement and the charismatic renewal, speaking at international conferences like the Franciscan Conferences, which now serves over 55,000 high school students, and Fire Rallies (Faith, Intercession, Repentance, and Evangelization), which have reached over 400,000 people.
Father Scanlan also wrote 16 books and spiritual pamphlets and was one of the first priests to get involved with EWTN, hosting the theology series Franciscan University Presents for 18 years.
"He could help rebuild a Catholic university and spearhead the move to Catholic higher education, and be preaching in front of large groups of people, leading pilgrimages, and writing books about the faith," Sofio added.
"It was amazing how he could do all those and move from one to other so effortlessly. The Holy Spirit gave him a lot of energy and he used it well."
Change your heart, change your abortion votes, Bishop Paprocki tells Sen Durbin
Posted on 02/22/2018 22:42 PM (CNA Daily News - US)
Springfield, Ill., Feb 22, 2018 / 02:42 pm (CNA).- Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield in Illinois has reiterated that U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin should not receive Holy Communion due to the Catholic lawmaker's support for abortion, including a recent procedural vote against a bill that would bar abortion after 20 weeks into pregnancy.
"Sen. Durbin was once pro-life. I sincerely pray that he will repent and return to being pro-life," Bishop Paprocki said Thursday. "Because his voting record in support of abortion over many years constitutes 'obstinate persistence in manifest grave sin,' the determination continues that Sen. Durbin is not to be admitted to Holy Communion until he repents of this sin. This provision is intended not to punish, but to bring about a change of heart."
Paprocki's statement cited the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Pro-Life Activities chairman Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who said it was "appalling" that the Senate failed to pass the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Act.
Durbin was one of the 14 self-identified Catholic senators who on Jan. 29 voted against cloture for the bill, which was needed to prevent a filibuster.
The Springfield bishop, in whose diocese Durbin resides, cited statements of previous priests and bishops of Springfield regarding the Democratic senator's support for legal abortion. In April 2004, his pastor Msgr. Kevin Vann, who is now Bishop of Orange, said he would be reluctant to give Holy Communion to the senator because of his lack of unity with the Church's teaching on life.
Then-Bishop of Springfield George Lucas, who now heads the Archdiocese of Omaha, said he would support that decision.
"I have continued that position," Paprocki said.
The Springfield bishop cited Canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law, which says those who "obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion."
He also cited the U.S. bishops' 2004 statement on Catholics in Political Life, which said failing to protect the lives of the innocent and defenseless is "to sin against justice."
"Those who formulate law therefore have an obligation in conscience to work toward correcting morally defective laws, lest they be guilty of cooperating in evil and in sinning against the common good," the U.S. bishops' statement said.
Backers of the bill which Durbing voted against said that fetal neural development means the unborn child can feel pain at 20 weeks into pregnancy. The bill included exceptions for an abortion in the case of rape or incest, as well in circumstances in which the pregnancy threatened the life of the mother.
Twenty-one U.S. states have laws barring abortion after 20 weeks.
The federal bill, which was passed by the House of Representatives in October 2017, is opposed by most Senate Democrats. To prevent a filibuster, Republicans needed Democratic support to reach 60 votes, in addition to the votes of the 51 Republican Senators.
Democratic Senators Bob Casey, Joe Manchin, and Joe Donnelly supported the motion. Republican Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski voted against it.
In France, Italy, and Germany, abortion is illegal after 12 weeks of pregnancy. The United States, China, North Korea, Canada, the Netherlands, Singapore, and Vietnam are the seven countries that permit elective abortions after 20 weeks.
Archbishop Chaput: Catholics need faith and reason, not a new paradigm
Posted on 02/22/2018 22:01 PM (CNA Daily News - US)
Philadelphia, Pa., Feb 22, 2018 / 02:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- St. John Paul II's encyclical Fides et ratio will mark its 20th anniversary this year, on Sept. 14. Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia reflected on the encyclical in his essay "Believe that you may Understand" in the March 2018 issue of First Things.
Making the case that the 1998 encyclical on the relationship between faith and reason was a "prophetic" document which "confronts the crisis of truth within the Catholic Church herself," the archbishop warned against "faddish" theology. Vigorous philosophy and good theology are, rather, mutually enriching. "Knowledge of the truth expands our freedom to love," Archbishop Chaput said.
In an interview with CNA, he spoke more about the encyclical's relevance for today.
How can the average Catholic benefit from Fides et ratio, 20 years after its publication?
The first thing to know is that it's not the sort of text you can browse like the Sunday paper. Fides et Ratio takes time to read and absorb. Most people are rightly focused on things like raising a family and earning a living. So a lot of good people may never read it. But that doesn't lessen its importance for the average believer.
The main takeaway from Fides et Ratio is that learning how to think clearly, with the Church, in a mature and well-informed fashion, is vital. It's every bit as crucial as feeling our religious convictions deeply. Sentiment isn't enough, and that directly affects how we understand the role of conscience.
Christian faith is more than good will and kind intentions. Conscience is more than our personally sincere opinions. A healthy conscience needs a strong formation in the commonly held truths of the Catholic community. Without it, conscience can very quickly turn into an alibi machine. The world is a complicated place. It requires sound Catholic reasoning skills rooted in the teaching of the Church.
The trouble is that we've now had at least two generations of poor catechesis and very inadequate conscience formation. So when voices tell us to leave today's hot button moral decisions to the "adult consciences" of our people, we might want to agree – ideally – but before we do, we need to examine what exactly that means. We have a great many otherwise successful, credentialed adults who see themselves as Catholic but whose faith education stopped in the sixth grade. Recovering the discipline of good Catholic moral reasoning is urgent.
If someone finds himself or herself in a cultural or ecclesial environment dominated by poor philosophy and theology, how should he or she respond?
Ignore the nonsense, read, watch and listen to good Catholic material, and live your faith in conformity with what the Church has always taught. The basics still apply on marriage, sex, honesty and everything else. There are no "new paradigms" or revolutions in Catholic thought. Using that kind of misleading language only adds confusion to a confusing age.
If we're in an environment with good philosophy and theology, what do we need to guard against?
Pride and complacency, and taking the blessing of good teachers and pastors for granted. All of us are called to be missionaries. We preach Jesus Christ best when we witness our faith well in the charity and justice of our daily actions.
Why do you think these problems of faith and reason are so recurring in our time?
Science and technology can seem – but only seem – to make the supernatural and sacramental implausible. The language of faith can start to sound alien and irrelevant. This is why we lose so many young people before they even consider religious belief. They're catechized every day by a stream of materialist distractions that don't disprove God but create an indifference to him.
The Church is struggling with a lot of self-doubt. It's natural in an age of rapid change. I think many Church pastors and scholars have simply lost confidence in the rationality of faith and the reliability of God's Word without being willing to admit it. Instead they take refuge in humanitarian feelings and social action. But you don't need God for either of those things, at least in the short run. In the long run, God is the only sure guarantor of human rights and dignity. So we need to think our Christianity – deeply, faithfully, and rigorously – as well as feel it.
Which is why Fides et Ratio is so important. It reminds us.
A Catholic 'paradigm shift' would be corruption, not development – Cardinal Muller
Posted on 02/22/2018 21:48 PM (CNA Daily News - Vatican)
Vatican City, Feb 22, 2018 / 01:48 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The authentic development of doctrine is about making more explicit the revealed truths of faith, not changing, or "shifting," Church teaching – and to use this idea to defend an agenda is wrong, Cardinal Gerhard Müller has said.
In an essay published Feb. 20 in First Things, the prefect emeritus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said there can be no such thing as a "paradigm shift" in the interpretation of Catholic doctrine, and to push for one is to contradict God's commandments.
Anyone who calls a major shift in the Church's teaching in moral theology a "praiseworthy decision of conscience… speaks against the Catholic faith," wrote the 70-year-old prelate.
The idea of a "paradigm shift" – a "fundamental change in theoretical forms of thought and social behavior" – with respect to "the form of the Church's being and of her presence in the world" is not possible," Müller wrote, simply because "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever," as it says in Hebrews 13:8.
"This is, in contrast, our paradigm, which we will not exchange for any other," Müller stated.
He also explained that the Pope and his fellow bishops have a duty to preserve the unity of faith and to prevent polarization and partisan mentalities. Therefore, it is also a duty of conscience to speak up in opposition when the term "pastoral change" is used by some to "express their agenda to sweep aside the Church's teaching as if doctrine were an obstacle to pastoral care."
In his essay, he explained the concept of the "development of doctrine" in the Church as taught by Blessed John Henry Newman, and how it relates to debates on the interpretation of Pope Francis' 2016 apostolic exhortation on love in the family, Amoris laetitia.
Chapter eight of Amoris laetitia "has been the object of contradictory interpretations," he said, stating that when a "paradigm shift" is spoken of in this context, it seems to be "a relapse into a modernist and subjectivist way of interpreting the Catholic faith."
According to Blessed Newman, a way to identify an authentic development of doctrine is to see if the surrounding cultural environment is growing in conformity with Christianity, not the other way around.
"Thus, a paradigm shift, by which the Church takes on the criteria of modern society to be assimilated by it, constitutes not a development, but a corruption."
The formal principle is a category within Christian theology which distinguishes the source of the theological teaching from the teaching itself.
In the Catholic Church, Müller said, the "proper method for interpreting revelation requires the joint workings of three principles, which are: Holy Scripture, Apostolic Tradition, and the Apostolic Succession of Catholic bishops."
He pointed out that the Protestant Reformation is an example in history of when a new formal principle was introduced, in this case, Scripture alone.
"This new principle subjected the Catholic doctrine of the faith, as it had developed up to the sixteenth century, to a radical change," he said. "The fundamental understanding of Christianity turned into something completely different."
Regarding debates surrounding the interpretation of Amoris laetitia, Müller noted that groups of bishops or individual bishops' conferences have issued directives recently on the reception of the Eucharist by divorced-and-civilly-remarried people.
He pointed out the teaching of St. John Paul II in Familiaris consortio, which says that "the divorced living in a new union must resolve to live in continence or else refrain from approaching the sacraments."
"Is there any logical continuity between John Paul II's Familiaris Consortio n. 84 … and the change of this selfsame discipline that some are proposing? There are only two options," he said.
"One could explicitly deny the validity of Familiaris Consortio n. 84, thus denying by the same token Newman's sixth note, 'Conservative Action upon the Past.' Or one could attempt to show that Familiaris Consortio n. 84 implicitly anticipated the reversal of the discipline that it explicitly set out to teach. On any honest reading of John Paul II's text, however, such a procedure would have to violate the basic rules of logic, such as the principle of non-contradiction."
Cardinal Müller added that "when cardinals, bishops, priests, and laity ask the pope for clarity on these matters, what they request is not a clarification of the pope's opinion. What they seek is clarity regarding the continuity of the pope's teaching in Amoris Laetitia with the rest of tradition."
For the statements of bishops to be orthodox, "it is not enough that they declare their conformity with the pope's presumed intentions" in Amoris laetitia, he said.
"They are orthodox only if they agree with the words of Christ preserved in the deposit of faith."
Texas bishops support Catholic Charities in wake of gay adoption lawsuit
Posted on 02/22/2018 21:40 PM (CNA Daily News - US)
Fort Worth, Texas, Feb 22, 2018 / 01:40 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Catholic bishops of Texas voiced strong support Tuesday for a Catholic organization being sued by a lesbian couple in Texas.
The couple, Fatma Marouf and Bryn Esplin, filed a complaint this week in district court in Washington against Catholic Charities of Fort Worth after being denied a request to adopt refugee children.
The couple believes they are being discriminated against on the grounds of their sexual orientation, and told the Washington Post that they hope their lawsuit results either in a policy change at Catholic Charities or in a loss of the organization's taxpayer funding.
In a joint statement Tuesday, the Catholic bishops of Texas voiced their support for Catholic Charities of Fort Worth, which they said is in compliance both with Catholic teaching and "with all federal regulations associated with funding from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) through its Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) is carrying out the federal government's Unaccompanied Refugee Minors (URM) and the Unaccompanied Alien Child (UC) programs."
"Catholic Charities of Fort Worth's International Foster Care program is an outreach that is faithful to the Church's mission to care for the poor and vulnerable," Bishop Michael Olson of the diocese of Fort Worth said in a statement. "This mission is entrusted to the Church by Christ."
"Finding foster parents – and other resources – for refugee children is difficult work," Bishop Olson added. "Catholic Charities are often the lead agent in this work. It would be tragic if Catholic Charities were not able to provide this help, in accordance with the Gospel values and family, assistance that is so essential to these children who are vulnerable to being mistreated as meaningless in society."
According to Church teaching, the ideal and normative family situation is a married mother and father and their children.
In 2014, Pope Francis emphasized that "(c)hildren have a right to grow up in a family with a father and a mother capable of creating a suitable environment for the child's development and emotional maturity."
In compliance with Church teaching, Catholic Charities places children in families in which the child can experience the presence of a married mother and father.
Marouf and Esplin learned about Catholic Charities after Marouf, who directs Texas A&M's Immigrant Rights Clinic, was invited to visit Catholic Charities of Fort Worth and learn more about their refugee programs.
Marouf said she felt "shock, disappointment, anger" after being denied the adoption, and the couple told the Washington Post they did not know of other agencies through which they could adopt refugee children.
In the bishops' statement, Jennifer Allmon, executive director of the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops, noted that "all couples seeking to foster in Texas can easily find a regional agency to serve them. By contacting Wendy Bagwell at 512-438-2133, or visiting https://www.dfps.state.tx.us/adoption_and_foster_care/adoption_partners/private.asp, all couples in Texas have the opportunity to serve and through the protections of HB 3859, faith based providers are welcome to serve as well."
This case is not the first time that Catholic Charities has come under fire for reserving adoptions to a mother and a father. In 2006, Catholic Charities of Boston was forced to shut down its adoption services because of a state law barring "sexual orientation discrimination." That same year, Catholic Charities of San Francisco was forced to close for similar reasons.
In 2010, after a law redefining marriage, the Washington, D.C. branch of Catholic Charities was forced to close its foster care and adoption services for holding the belief that children should be placed with a married mother and father.
In 2011, Catholic Charities affiliates in Illinois were forced to close after a new requirement stipulated that state money could only go to adoption services that offered those services to same-sex couples.
"In the name of tolerance, we're not being tolerated," Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki of the Diocese of Springfield, Illinois, said at the time.
On their website, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops says that Catholic adoption agencies should be allowed to operate according to Church teaching as a matter of religious freedom.
"Religious liberty is more than freedom of worship; it includes our ability to make our contribution to the common good of all Americans without having to compromise our faith," the bishops noted.
"Without religious liberty properly understood, all Americans suffer, including the neediest children seeking adoptive and foster families, as well as birth parents who wish to turn to faith-based providers in order to place their children with adoptive parents."
Pope Francis to youth: face your fears with discernment, courage
Posted on 02/22/2018 20:55 PM (CNA Daily News - Vatican)
Vatican City, Feb 22, 2018 / 12:55 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Addressing youth around the globe, Pope Francis encouraged young people Thursday to face their fears with discernment and courage, looking to the Mother of God as their example.
"What are your fears? What worries you most deeply? An 'underlying' fear that many of you have is that of not being loved, well-liked or accepted for who you are," Pope Francis said in his Feb. 22 message, saying that many insecurities arise from a "sense of inadequacy."
"For us Christians in particular, fear must never have the last word but rather should be an occasion to make an act of faith in God…and in life!" the Pope continued.
Pope Francis' words come ahead of the 33rd diocesan-level World Youth Day, which will take place March 25. This localized event is a preparation for the international World Youth Day, which is set to occur in Panama in 2019.
The diocesan World Youth Day also coincides with the Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, which will discuss the topic of "Young People, the Faith and Vocational Discernment." Pope Francis called this a "happy coincidence," which will place the gaze of the Church on young people.
While many youth are ruled by their fears and hide behind "masks and false identities," Pope Francis encouraged young people to remember the words from Scripture "do not be afraid," which have been "repeated 365 times with different variation, as if to tell us that the Lord wants us to be free from fear, every day of the year."
"In moments when doubts and fears flood our hearts, discernment becomes necessary," the Holy Father said, noting that it is also "indispensable when searching for one's vocation."
While many see discernment as an individual process, Pope Francis said that it is rather an interior reflection on each person's vocation, or "call from above." Prayerful silence and dialogue with others, the Pope said, are necessary for the process of discernment.
On this note, the Roman Pontiff pointed to the example of Mary and her witness of love despite her fears, which was "full of boldness and focused completely on the gift of self."
"Mary, like others in the Sacred Scriptures, trembles before the mystery of God's call, who in a moment places before her the immensity of his own plan and makes her feel all her smallness as a humble creature," Pope Francis said, noting her complete willingness even in the face of uncertainty.
"The first reason not to fear is the fact that God has called us by name. The angel, God's messenger, called Mary by name," Pope Francis continued, noting that God has also called "each of you by name."
The angel's words to Mary also ring true for youth today, the Pope said, noting that the all-knowing power of God will always sustain every individual, even amidst fear and darkness.
"The Angel's words descend upon our human fears, dissolving them with the power of the Good News of which we are heralds: our life is not pure chance or a mere struggle for survival, rather each of us is a cherished story loved by God," Pope Francis said.
However, the Pope said that courage is also needed for the youths of today to address their fears and discern what God wants for them, just as Mary did.
"From the certainty that God's grace is with us comes the strength to take courage in the present moment: the courage to carry forward what God asks of us here and now, and in every area of our lives," the Holy Father said.
Encouraging young people to face their fears with faith, discernment, and courage while looking to Mary as an example, Pope Francis said that the universal Church awaits the gift that all youths have to offer in their unique personhood.
"Dear young people, the Lord, the Church, the world are waiting for your answer to the unique call that each one receives in this life!" the Pope said.
"As World Youth Day in Panama draws closer, I invite you to prepare yourselves for our gathering with the joy and enthusiasm of those who wish to participate in such a great adventure… do you accept the challenge?"


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subset: commoncrawl


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Does TV focus too much on the iconic images of war?
The toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad yesterday is likely to become this war's iconic image, the symbol of the fall of Baghdad. TV stations dwelled on it, and replayed it again and again as some news anchors gushed over the event.
Meanwhile, gunfire and looting were occurring elsewhere in Baghdad, and wide-angle shots showed that relatively few Iraqis were at the statue.
Does TV focus too much on simple messages that sometimes obscure the more complex reality playing out beyond the camera's lens? Or was the toppling of the statue so important symbolically that the blanket coverage was justified?
In today's Globe
Page 1
Well, TV hasn't mentioned this quote from Vice President Dick Cheney in 2000: "A commander in chief leads the military built by those who came before him." It would seem that when those try to 'blame Clinton' for all that's wrong, TV should call their bluff.
Phil, Worcester
IMAGE...........is everything !
Bill, Waltham
I think it's important that they continue to show these symbols. What TV and newspapers are guilty of is giving way too much exposure to the anti-war/America "movement". Latest poll numbers show support for the war is upwards of 80% (and probably climbing) yet all we see in the media are the kumbyah singing, head in the sand, fools who thought (they STILL can't think this way, can they?) that asking Sadaam "pretty pretty please with sugar on top" would get him to step down. I think TV can't show enough of the Iraqui citizens praising Pres Bush and the troops for liberating them. But, then again, that too goes against what the anti-war movement was saying only a few days ago. I guess now they'll complain that their buddies in France and Germany are going to be shut out of the rebuilding. Do they actually think that the Iraqui people will view France and Germany with anything other than comtempt?
Diamond Dave, Taunton
It doesn't matter if the message is simple or complex, the media focuses on what will sell. If 80% of the population believes this war is about democracy and liberation, that's what the news will show. Why haven't we seen the hospitals in Basra, the bomb craters in Baghdad, or the thousands upon thousands of people who have died? Welcome to the Bush presidency, one that is lived in black or white, good or bad. Unfortunalty, life is lived in the gray...but gray doesn't sell.
C. , Boston
Television is a medium for short bursts of information. As such, it will seek out the symbolic events that define an event. That results in a simplistic "headline" perspective of world events which can often be manipulated by the people who actually make the news. As reasoning people who are concerned about what is really happening, it is incumbent upon us to dig further. Television sometimes offers in depth analysis. It, like other media, also offers self-glorifying palaver that they try to pass off as "in depth". That is why the most important thing a free society can do is to educate its citizens to see, read, and think in order to draw reasoned conclusions. It's an investment in self-preservation.
Mark, Maynard
TV gave no perspective, only breathless play by play. Nowhere, for instance were these two facts mentioned. President George W. Bush signed the Afghanistan Freedom Support Act into law last Dec. 4, authorizing $3.3 billion in economic, political, humanitarian and security assistance for Afghanistan over the next four years. The next month, Bush submitted the 2003 budget authorization to Congress but requested slightly less than that. As in: $0.00. Such perspective might explain the reservations of those who opposes this war on the grounds that it would make the world LESS safe, not more safe. Instead, TV, afraid of being labelled as "unpatriotic" gave us distant explosions, personal profiles, but, consiering their access, gave us no blood. War is, after all, about blood and sacrifice. And it seems that for people to truly make up their minds as to whether this is a good thing, they need to see it.
Steve, Melrose
The media definitly concentrates too much on iconic symbols. The pulling down of a statue does not mean the end of the struggle. If it were Hussein being physically pulled down we could say the end of fighting was near; but as it was an inanimate object located in a city we had overtaken, who is not to say Hussein has moved to another location and rebuilding his ediface piece by piece?
Claire, Salem
Yes, I do think that TV - and the media in general - latch on to certain phrases and images that simplify complex situations. However, if we successfully help develop a new government in Iraq, the toppling of the Saddam statue will be a very appropriate image to represent the historic event. I do have a problem with the repetitive use of the word "evil" to describe the Saddam regime. Granted, Saddam is evil, but I am afraid that people will become desensitized to the horror by using a word that is better used in comic books and Austin Powers movies.
Anne, Cambridge
Absolutely - such images play better to the media's vanity as it allows them to feel like they are creating history. The toppling of the statue was nice, to be sure, but it was little different than a photo op: carefully scripted (note how the Marines assisted on cue after the first hour of efforts by the Iraqis) and well accompanied by deep and touching descriptions and comparisons to other previous photo ops (Berlin Wall, etc.). Also, in all fairness, it is what much of the viewing public wants: quick and easy moments to define an otherwise complex and troubling situation. I would much rather learn more about what combat is still going on in Baghdad, as well as the efforts to find the POW's, but I guess I will have to make do with replays of Saddam falling down.
Debate The War, Support Our Troops, Salem
absolutely! we're looking for the "feel good" story to justify our actions....so we can all feel happy and proud and move on to the next thing. Where's all the news coverage of hospital wards full of people dying because there is no medicine, of the fighting still going on, of the people who's homes and families where destroyed, etc. I think the press is just giving us what we want to see because obviously this is what sells. Don't get me wrong, I didn't support us going to war but I am happy that we accomplished the first goal of removing Saddam from power so quickly. Still remains to be proven, but I think surely the Iraqi people will be better off without him. However, I think we should be humble in this victory and focus our energy now on getting the country under control, setting up the new government, and bringing Saddam to justice for the crimes he has committed. I hope we bring as much committment and determination to these next steps.
Mike, Quincy


text:
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text:
Welcome to Fun Facts About the 50 States, where – week by week – I'll be taking you on a tour around this great nation of ours, providing you with interesting, yet completely useless and probably untrue, information about each of the 50 states.
This week, it's time to do a little digging into where all those Yankees in King Arthur's Court keep coming from as we visit Connecticut, so let's get started…
* Connecticut is a small state in the northeastern US and is best known for being the place that beer cans land after New Yorkers throw them out of their car windows.
* The highest point in Connecticut is Mt. Frissel, at 2380 feet, which is where Connecticut residents go to throw the empty beer cans back into New York.
* Connecticut has only 2 interstate highways, neither of which gets you out of the state fast enough.
* Connecticut is an Algonquin Indian word meaning "yuppie scum".
* Although Connecticut borders Massachusetts, no Kennedys live there because Connecticut liquor stores all close at 8pm.
* Many areas of Connecticut are plagued by foraging herds of white tail deer that destroy crops and gardens. The only way for residents to keep the deer at bay is pay "protection money" to Don Bambi, head of the deer mafia.
* The New England Patriots football team almost moved to Hartford, Connecticut, but declined to do so because the deal included renaming the team to the Hartford Homos.
* The fuchsia & chartreuse uniforms WERE tempting, though.
* The official insect of Connecticut is the Praying Mantis – an obvious violation of the separation of church and state.
* Connecticut is populated mainly by people who couldn't decide whether they wanted to live further away from Boston or New York City.
* Connecticut is called the "nutmeg" state" because the early Connecticut colonists would sell fake nutmegs to unsuspecting tourists. This is somewhat analogous to referring to the Kennedys as the "designated driver family".
* The state motto of Connecticut is "As close to New York as New Jersey is, but with less toxic waste."
* In terms of distance, Connecticut is the closest state in the US to France, which is why most people in Connecticut face east when they spit.
* George W. Bush was born in New Haven, Connecticut on July 6, 1946, but moved to Texas as a teenager to pursue his dream of stealing oil.
* Although Connecticut ranks 48th among the states in terms of size, it ranks a close second behind Massachusetts in terms of snooty, upper-class arrogance.
* Connecticut become the 5th state on January 9th, 1788. It would've joined sooner, but everyone was out skiing in Vermont.
* Despite the state's small size, it DOES have a state college – the University of Connecticut or UCONN – which should NOT be confused with the popular rat poison.
* The state flag of Connecticut consists of a blue background, a white shield, 3 grapevines, and a Latin motto meaning "He who transplanted sustains us". Officially, it refers to early colonists coming in from Boston, but that doesn't explain the large number of tourists who wake up in a tub of ice, missing a kidney.
* The official state song of Connecticut is Yankee Doodle, which was originally written in 1750 to honor the official state pasta.
* Being a small state, Connecticut has only one radio station, which plays nothing but different versions of Yankee Doodle 24 hours a day. The most popular being Snoop Dogg's "Yo Yo Yizzle Dizzle".
* The world's first nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus, was built in Groton, Connecticut in 1954, after which it turned on its creators and went on a fearsome, building-destroying rampage through the city.
* The practice of branding farm animals began in Connecticut, where farmers were required by law to mark their pigs, which is why Michael Moore will never visit the state.
* The Hartford Courant, established in 1764, is America's oldest newspaper. A glance through some of the earliest editions shows that, even back then, Doonesbury wasn't funny.
* Seriously, when is Trudeau gonna stop recycling that "Thomas Paine lied, people died" line?
* The Polaroid camera was invented in Connecticut in 1934. Blackmailing people with compromising photographs was invented about 60 seconds later.
* The first English settlers arrived in Hartford in 1636 and were tricked into staying in the area by settlers from Boston who promised them that the Patriots would move there "any day now".
That wraps up the Connecticut edition of Fun Facts About the 50 States. Next week we'll discover that crossing the river wearing a tri-cornered hat actually had nothing to do with the state as we look at Delaware.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go step on a Praying Mantis to protect my freedom of religion.
[The complete e-book version of "Fun Facts About the 50 States" is now available at Amazon.com. If you don't have a Kindle, you can download free Kindle apps for your web browser, smartphone, computer, or tablet from Amazon.com]
UPDATE: Linked by Old Hippie


text:
Fall 1997
Femininity and masculinity for sale: Consumerism and gender ideology
Each of the following exercises will ask you to conduct an analysis of some aspect of a magazine to examine how femininity or masculinity and consumerism are linked. With your group, choose a magazine to examine and one of the exercises to conduct the analysis. All references to chapters and pages below are found in Talbot.
In your analysis you should come to some conclusions--what conclusions about consumerism and femininity/masculinity can you draw from your study? Tell a) what kind of femininity or masculinity is being constructed, b) how is it being constructed discursively, and c) why is this particular femininity or masculinity being created? What's the ideological or social purpose of this discursive practice? In other words, what does it all mean???
1. Narratives: Using Caldas-Coulthard's example (pp. 187-190), apply Labov's model of story structure to analyze one narrative presented in the magazine. See Chapter 4 for a discussion of Labov's narrative framework.
2. Creating readers' identities: Identify and describe the discourses and genres (p. 191, first full paragraph) of the magazine. What subject positions do these genres and discourses set up for the reader? In other words, what kind of woman or man do they create the reader as, what kind of femininity or masculinity to they put on the reader? Are there contradictions among the voices? What are they?
3. Multiple voices: Choose one genre in the magazine to analyze: headlines; an article on home, health, beauty, fashion; advice column, interview, but NOT ads. Look for the voices "talking" in this particular writing. What voices embedded in the text of this genre? Whose voices do we hear (friends, experts, a group?) Who are the characters? What attitudes, values, and perspectives are reflected in these voices? Do the various voices interact? How? (pp. 195-204, especially p. 197, first full paragraph and p. 199 "grammatical choices").
4. Classification schemes: Choose one particular genre to study--headlines; an article on home, health, beauty, fashion; advice column, interview, but NOT ads. Examine the vocabulary and topics of this genre. What frames of knowledge or mental representations do they establish? In other words, how is femininity or masculinity classified? What other categories are a part of this classification? What world view is set up by these categories? (See pp. 198-199)
5. Ways of knowing: Choose one genre to study--headlines; an article on home, health, beauty, fashion; advice column, interview, but NOT ads. What common knowledge is supposedly shared by readers and the magazine? What is presupposed? In other words, what assumptions do the writers make about what readers know, about what is "true"? In addition to presuppositions, look for use of the inclusive 'we'. (See p. 203, first full paragraph).


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Lot Size: 33 x 116
Property Taxes 2015: $1,253.02


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Shane Co.
Diamond Channel-Set Ring with Black Rhodium (7mm)
Description & Specifications
This swank and sophisticated men's ring is crafted in quality 14 karat yellow gold with satin and polished finishes. Five round channel-set diamonds, at approximately .50 carat total weight, adds sparkle to the design, while the black rhodium finish adds depth.
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Item Number: 41065557
- *Total Carat Weight1/2 ct. t.w.
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- Design Type5 Stone
- Stone ShapeRound


text: In response to Theme 1, a key challenge is to engage entrepreneurs/experts/organisations from various sectors for addressing the malnutrition problem. The key opportunity here is creating a platform to crowd source innovations to address malnutrition and to provide support for scaling them up. This way we can cross-pollinate ideas across regions as well.


text:
A Dread of Yardbulls
The Seasonsun gone entirely from the sky that month, slush heaped the gutters of Broadway, as if all the flavored-ice carts of August had spilled their contents, both Trackside and Riverside. (Did the distant, generally imperceptible heat from the Wrong Side of the Tracks possibly melt the slush slightly at the corresponding curbing, while the cooling mists of the Other Shore gelled more firmly the parallel glaciated sluice? Perhaps, but perhaps not. True, in summer residents of Trackside buildings claimed to swelter more than their cross-Broadway neighbors, while heralding a compensatory lowering of the thermostat in winter. And equally true, Riverside dwellers shivered a wee bit more in winter, but boasted of their residential coolth when rat days raged beneath the ascendant Seasonsun. But Diego, favoring the rationalism of an ingeniator, was inclined to believe that neither effect from the antipodal regions was real, but only psychosomatic reactions to the respective proximity of Tracks and River.) Going out to visit the old man was an offputting chore in the best of weathers, but particularly tiresome at this time of the year.
Diego lived in the Borough of Gritsavage. Population: 100,000 or so, distributed up and down one hundred Blocks; current Mayor: the loudly opinionated Jobo Copperknob; ambiance: despite the Borough's grim appellation, quite cultured and congenial. Diego's digs: a Streetview apartment on the 10,394,850th Block of Broadway, above a fruit and vegetable store named Gimlett's Produce. (His father dwelled just a few Blocks Downtown.) The bluestone building housing Diego and his immediate neighbors occupied the Riverside of Broadway.
Streetview and Riverside both: sweet. (Not always thus. Diego frequently winced to remember a childhood of grim days and eerie nights spent in the same apartment that now housed the dying Gaddis Patchen. The subliminally whispering distant flames from the Wrong Side of the Tracks cast capering shadows on young Diego's bedroom walls no matter how firmly he tried to paste the lowered green oilcloth rollershade against the window glass before sleep. And the regular roar of Uptown-bound trains rattled those same panes. What Diego enjoyed nowadays, he had earned through his own endeavors, not effortless inheritance.)
This overcast winter morning, Diego, lazing a-bed, found real wakefulness hard to attain. A late night out with friends–involving too many cigarettes, an excess of highflown bloviation and a constant stream of hops-heavy Rude Bravo beer from the neighboring Borough of Shankbush–had taken its predictable toll. Mired in his clammy sheets, Diego's sour mood allowed him to contemplate only the many injustices thrust upon him by existence, rather than any of the compensating glories. Thus the parade of his thoughts featured such performers as these:
His cheap and refractory landlord, Rexall Glyptis, who had for months running now failed to hire even an apprentice ingeniator to repair the radiators in Diego's apartment, a failure made all the more galling by the fact that the heatful steam itself was free, piped beneath every Block as part of the ineffable infrastructure of the Linear City.
His best friend, the impulsive and wily Zohar Kush, who had discovered the saloon in the10,395,001st Block of Broadway named The Lookalike Boys, where Rude Bravo flowed like liquid suicide, and who had insisted on staging a drinking contest with some of the Shankbush locals.
Kush's newest lover, the capricious Milagra Eventyr, who had, by sensually occupying Diego's lap at one point in the boozy, bleary evening, precipitated a fight with Diego's own lover, the formidable Volusia Bittern.
Volusia, in turn, came in for her share of mild mental recriminations, as Diego recalled how she had punctuated her jealous accusations with a wild swing at Milagra–a swing which fortunately, given Volusia's physical proportions vis a vis Milagra, had failed to connect, due to a certain boozy skewing of perceptions. The hot temper some devilishly attractive women had!
And then of course one could not omit from the catalog of infamy Yale Drumgoole, Diego's fellow writer. Although neither a proponent nor practitioner of CF and consequently a member of a rival literary camp, Yale had been invited along for the night's spree. But Drumgoole's one accomplishment of the evening had been only to prove his utter inability to process internally more than five pints of Rude Bravo without blithely and crudely propositioning the wife of the brutish bouncer of The Lookalike Boys, thus earning the Patchen party summary ejection into the Shankbush slush, which differed not one whit in its wet chilly properties from the slush one-hundred-and-fifty-one Blocks Downtown.
Memories of the sight of the puffy flesh around Yale's left eye mottling colorfully as they all rode the Subway home cheered Diego up slightly, and he inched several toes out from under the blankets to test the air. Much too frigid. Perhaps there was some veracity after all to the notion that Riverside buildings were prone to effects from the Other Shore….
Music might help. Diego dashed a lean bare arm out to snap on the radio on his bedstand. Once its tubes warmed, brilliant trumpet notes, unmistakably phrased, swelled like a chorus of Fisherwives, and Diego's heart immediately lifted.
Rumbold Prague was a genius, maybe the only genius Diego personally knew. The black musician, his phtisic visage perpetually cool behind his onyx-lensed cheaters, dapper in his trademark gabardine trousers and loose silk shirts, typified for Diego all that art could achieve. Diego's own prose was most accomplished, he knew, wherever he let it be inspired by and emulate the unpredictable fluencies of Prague's lyrical compositions.
The cut ended, and the announcer came on. "That was 'The Road Goes Ever On.' Rumbold Prague, trumpet. Lydia Kinch, sax. Scripps Skagway, piano. Lucerne Canebrake, bass. Reddy Diggins, drums. From the Roughwood shellacker, Burning Fountains, catalog number RLP4039. Next up, Percival Ragland's 'Aeota.' But first, the ten o'clock news."
Diego groaned. Ten o'clock! If he were to cram both a visit to his father and some writing into the hours between this moment and his dinner date with Volusia Bittern, he had not a second to spare. But a dilemma presented itself: the order of his actions. Were he to begin writing immediately, he might labor on in a creative trance, unwitting of the time, and miss any chance to visit Gaddis Patchen. Go first to his father, and Diego would almost certainly emerge from his boyhood home full of strong emotions that would taint that day's writing.
After momentary hesitation, Diego let duty to his blood win out. He was a professional writer, after all. Surely he could put by any distractions to his craft. Did Rumbold Prague let his hypothetically ill-tempered father sour his embouchure? Not likely!
Diego hopped out of bed, clad only in his skivvies. After a hot shower (at least that utility had survived the incompetence of Rexall Glyptis) and the application of his favorite cologne, Meyerbeer's No. 7, to his near-beardless face (curse these boyish looks! thought Diego for the uncounted time), he felt halfway human again. Dressing in his favored winter outfit of tweed trousers, denim shirt, wool vest and baggy black jacket, he acknowledged that his stomach might have forgiven last night's excesses enough to accept a meal. But a quick check of the icebox revealed nothing fit for human consumption, and Diego resolved to pick up something enroute to his father's. He scuffled into his battered brogues and left his apartment with a wistful glance at his disordered writing desk.
Tripping lightly down the single flight of stairs to the street–familiar banister smooth under his touch, metal insets on the wooden risers offering firm purchase, old cooking odors historying the habits of his neighbors–Diego found himself alternately rehearsing the next section of his story in progress and trying to come up with some conversational tactic that might jar his father from his accustomed paranoid rut.
Once on the busy sidewalk, Diego immediately encountered Lyle Gimlett arranging some cold-tolerant produce–potatoes, turnips, apples and the like–in his outdoor stands to attract whatever trade he could from the bustling mass of pedestrians. The burly, slope-browed businessman–as always, a five o'clock shadow lending his face a smudgy look–hailed Diego in a friendly fashion.
"Patchen! In the market for some fresh bananas? The latest Trains have brought some particularly fine ones. Can't say when we'll see their likes again."
"Sure, Lyle. Save me a bunch of green ones, and I'll pick them up later today."
Diego rucked up his jacket collar against the chill and made to move off, but Gimlett stopped him with a hand on Diego's elbow. The grocer leaned in conspiratorially and said, "Any chance you and your pals will be getting more of these soon?"
From beneath the bib of his white stained apron, Gimlett produced an odd locket. Strung on a leather cord threaded through a drilled hole, a thick iridescent reptilian scale big as a fat potato chip shimmered in chromatic uncertainty across most of the spectrum.
Diego flinched from the sight. Bad memories of dire times, when he had been down on his luck and willing to take risks that nowadays appeared unacceptable, tumbled out of the mental attic trunks where he had thought them safely stored.
"I–you need to talk to Zohar Kush about more scales."
"Fine, fine, you both come around some evening after the store's closed. I'll give you a good price for them, since I can sell as many of these as you can get me. People always need a little good luck. Here, take an apple, Diego."
Diego accepted the fruit and hustled off. But once out of sight of Gimlett, he consigned the fruit to the gutter, despite his hunger, where it sat cradled in dirty winter icy suspension like an insouciant autumn orphan.
Preview courtesy of Fictionwise


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Difference between revisions of "User talk:NetGrab Ltd"
From ForensicsWiki
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Latest revision as of 16:44, 1 February 2012
Welcome to Forensics Wiki! We hope you will contribute much and well. You will probably want to read the help pages. Again, welcome and have fun! .FUF 08:44, 1 February 2012 (PST)


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|Home | About | Journals | Submit | Contact Us | Français
Find out automatically when an article is published on a specific topic or by a particular author. We can also alert you when an article is cited or if an eLetter or correction is published. You can also choose to be alerted when a new issue is published online [and when we post articles Online First]. Check out the New Content Alerts and Citation tracker from the Online tools section on the home page.
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Our good friend Lane Baldwin is generously providing us with a new FREE bass lesson each month. All these lessons are bundled here in this forum section.
Use this control to limit the display of threads to those newer than the specified time frame.
Allows you to choose the data by which the thread list will be sorted.
Order threads in...
Note: when sorting by date, 'descending order' will show the newest results first.
Forum Rules


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Here you go, D&D fans. Some weekend reading for you. Make sure your game, or your DM's leadership, isn't getting stale. Authors The Wizards RPG Team promise Volo's Guide to Monsters is much more than another monster manual. Though it does examine some of the most iconic monsters in the Forgotten Realms, this guide also pits loremaster Volothamp Geddarm, and his recollections, against the Sage of Shadowdale, Elminster, and his versions of both the common and most obscure creatures in Dungeons & Dragons history.
In addition to the Volothamp-Elminster academic faceoff on the lore behind popular and iconic D&D monsters, Volo's Guide to Monsters includes dozens of new monsters in this fifth edition, along with new playable races for building characters to fit stories in your existing game. Some highlights:
- The Kraken Society and their schemes.
- The origin of the froghemoth.
- How to avoid getting sucked into the reproductive cycle of the vargouille.


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Bakes in 17 minutes.
Enriched Flour Bleached (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Ferrous Sulfate, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Water, Soybean Oil, Baking Powder (Baking Soda, Sodium Aluminum Phosphate, Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate), Hydrogenated Soybean Oil*. Contains 2% Or Less of Sugar, Whey, Salt, Datem, Wheat Protein Isolate, Modified Corn Starch, Sodium Caseinate, Cream, Propylene Glycol Alginate, Natural and Artificial Flavor, Xanthan Gum. *Adds A Trivial Amount of Trans Fat. Contains Wheat and Milk Ingredients.
Always refer to the actual package for the most accurate information


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DeLeon students perform folk dances (w/video)
Nov. 30, 2013 at 5:30 a.m.
Updated Dec. 1, 2013 at 6:01 a.m.
Arm-in-arm, Anmarissa Sierra and her dance partner went round and round.
The gymnasium's yellow light bounced off Anmarissa's sequined blouse as she completed her square dance.
"I learned many dances," said Anmarissa, 9, wearing a timid smile and pigtails.
Kathy Stratmann, who has taught at DeLeon Elementary School since 1994, clapped along with her 90 third-grade students as part of the school's North American Folk Dances program.
The program revolved around circle dances, line dance and an old-time square dance, Stratmann said.
"They have to be able to identify similarities, comparisons and differences between the dances," she said. "It's a lot of fun."
From the crowd of parents lining the walls, Annie Ramos, 66, tapped her foot along to a familiar tune.
The students were dancing to La Raspa, an eastern Mexican folk dance.
"That was popular in my time," said Ramos, who was there to see her 8-year-old granddaughter Haley Ramos perform.
Next to her sat Kristina Mascorro, 25, watching her stepson, Miguel Alvarez, 8, as he danced.
"It's cute," Mascorro said. "I can't believe they learned all these dances."
Once she and her stepson return home, Mascorro said, she hopes he'll teach her some of his new steps.
"He's been telling me about this all week," Mascorro said. "I told him not to show me any of the dances beforehand because I wanted to be surprised - I'm surprised."


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Classic revival
The National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) took up the mammoth task of restoring 80 of its films and releasing them on DVDs two years ago. Now, 17 classics, including Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, Mirch Masala and Ghaire Baire, are available in stores. Nina Lath Gupta, Managing director of NFDC explains the intricacies of the process and shares the body's future plans
What is the restoration process undertaken by the NFDC?
The NFDC has the finest catalogue of films in the country. We realised that a lot of negatives were in a state of deterioration, so we wanted to restore the movies in a digital format. The aim was to restore 80 films within a span of two years. As of now, we have digitally restored 17 movies and released them under the home video label, 'Cinemas of India' on DVDs for the public. These include classics such as Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, Dharavi, Mirch Masala, Party, Ek Hota Vidushak, Duvidha and so on. The DVDs are priced at Rs 199 each.
Why is the restoration of a film essential?
A film negative is a perishable product. The restoration of a film is essential mainly for two reasons. Firstly, we don't have facilities in India to preserve the negative. And secondly, the climactic conditions are not conducive for it to sustain for a long time. Abroad, the master negative is usually safe, as multiple negatives of it are made. So the master negative is not accessed as much. In India, we strike prints directly from the master negative. This repeated use of the negative ruins it over a period of time. We can't follow the same process as they do abroad, since it is expensive.
How does the process work?
Restoration essentially means taking the film to its original state when it was first made. We start off by identifying the source material. We pick it up from a negative. Then we digitally scan it and, later, we colour correct it frame by frame. We usually ask the director and the director of photography (DOP) to be involved in the restoration process. For instance, while restoring Party, we sought the help of Govind Nihalani. In case the director and the DOP of the concerned film were no longer alive, for instance for Satyajit Ray's movies, we sought the assistance of filmmaker AK Bir, who oversaw the process. For sound process, we used the expertise of award-winning sound engineer Nakul Kamte.
Was there any criterion while choosing the films for restoration?
We wanted to disseminate the film culture. So we first picked up those movies that were in public memory. However, having said that, we want to promote all kinds of cinema — right from Adishankaracharya, the first film in Sanskrit, to the most popular Hindi movie.
What challenges did you face?
The challenge was different for each film. For instance, when we decided to restore Ray's Teen Kanya, we realised that there was no source material available in India. The Academy of Motion Pictures and Arts had restored it in the 1980s. So we asked them for a copy. But when we got it, we realised that there was scope for further restoration, so we repeated the process.
In the case of Kalpana Lajmi's Rudaali, there was a green line running through some frames as the negative had curled up. It was one of the earliest films to go in for restoration and took the maximum time. Then in Kundan Shah's Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, the Mahabharata sequence towards the climax was in pink, as light had crept into the negative. So it took us a lot of time to colour correct it. During this entire exercise, we learnt that colour correction is a huge challenge.
With the advent of the digital domain, is restoration still important?
The digital domain has become powerful and is constantly evolving. First we had floppy disks, then we had CDs, DVDs and now we have the hard drive. The negative can be restored in whatever form you have. But there is a possibility that the hard drive can disappear or crash. Also in the future, we might use some other kind of storage device rather than the hard drive. Today, thanks to YouTube and other sites, filmmakers can put up their films directly on these sites and they will be there for posterity. But what about the earlier movies? In such cases, restoration becomes important.
What are NFDC's future plans?
The NFDC will be the executing agency of the National Film Heritage Mission that will be launched under the aegis of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting from April. As part of this programme, we will put together the film heritage of India, collect all kinds of audio-visual documentation and motion pictures and restore them within a span of five years.


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Museum Day Live!VIEW EVENT DETAILS
Free admission to Asia Society Museum
As part of national Museum Day Live!, this Saturday, September 28, Asia Society Museum is offering free admission for two to anyone with an official Museum Day Live! ticket.
Museum Day Live! is an annual event hosted by Smithsonian magazine in which participating museums across the country open their doors to anyone presenting a Museum Day Live! ticket... for free.
Please register here to receive two free tickets. We will accept either a printed copy of the ticket or accept it on the screen of a smartphone.
Complete Museum Day Live! details
Asia Society Museum is open from 11:00 am to 6:00 pm on Saturdays. Click here for complete visitor information, and visit the links below to learn about the Museum's current exhibitions.
Event Details
Sat 28 Sep 2013
725 Park Avenue (at East 70th Street), New York, NY
Free admission.


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You Are What you Eat
Are You Sending Your Body Mixed Signals for Health?
You truly are what you eat…and that starts with how food and other natural substances that complement the diet affect your cells and influence your health.
In the past, the main focus was on the nutrients we might be missing. That's still important. However, now scientists realize that there's a lot more to consider when planning our daily diets than just avoiding a deficiency. Healthy eating, nutrition, and other modifiable lifestyle factors can help you reverse the disease process and improve health. Many chronic diseases of aging, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, high cholesterol, depression, diabetes, osteoarthritis, overweight/obesity, osteoporosis and even cancer are not inevitable but are preventable simply by making wise lifestyle choices. Lifestyle choices are also the key to addressing other health concerns and symptoms, such as:
Hormone imbalance
Low sex drive
Stress-related symptoms
Poor memory or lack of mental clarity
And many others
Dr. Zilahy can work together with you to develop the dietary and lifestyle prescription that's exactly right for you.
How Lifestyles Affect Your Body's Nutritional Intake
Despite a wide variety of foods, people today generally eat more but actually get fewer nutrients. Many common aspects of daily life can deplete the body of the nutrients it needs to function properly:
Drinking— alcohol, coffee/sodas (caffeine)
Smoking— nicotine
Medications— statin drugs, corticosteroids, diuretics
Eating— junk food, refined carbohydrates
Stress— work, family
State of Health— illness, injury, intestinal issues, pregnancy
These things can rob you of nutrients by:
Increasing your need for certain nutrients
Causing accelerated nutrient loss
Impairing the absorption of nutrients from food
What You Eat Affects How You Feel
Processed foods and other unhealthy dietary habits can interfere with the dietary signals sent to cells throughout the body, which can lead to premature aging and disease. Addressing unhealthy eating patterns allows you to manage symptoms and even halt or reverse the progression of illness. Eating plans can also be tailored to specific conditions to maximize healthy signals—to help regulate blood sugar or reduce inflammation, for example.
Call Dr. Zilahy today in
Watertown at
or Waterbury at
Eating to Send a Healthy Message
Quality of food is key for your body's ability to communicate between its cells and organs. As an example, if you consume more than you should of Omega 6 fats (red meats, dairy, corn oil etc..) than Omega 3 fats ( cold water fish, algae, grass fed beef) you are sending messages of inflamation and pain in your body.
As you probably know, the foods you eat can be broken down into 3 categories: fats, proteins, and carbohydrates. They're all essential to health—but not every food supplies them in a "good" way. And too much of anything—even a good thing—is still too much. Dr. Zilahy can work with you for suggestions on daily calorie intake and serving size suggestions to match your individual needs and activity level.
Fat is Good for You
It must be the right kind and amount. Fat is a vital nutrient that your body needs for a wide range of biological processes, including growth, healthy skin, and absorption of nutrients. It's also an important fuel source. Eating the right fats, in moderation, will help you feel full faster, and in turn, decrease your appetite. They can even help lower your risk of heart disease by reducing your levels of total and LDL ("bad") cholesterol.
Good. Mono- and poly-unsaturated fats and omega-3 fatty acids (from coldwater fish, nuts, flaxseed oil) are healthy.
Bad. Saturated fat and trans fat (from animal products and processed foods) can be harmful.
Disease alert. Saturated and trans fats can increase your risk of heart disease by increasing your total and LDL cholesterol.
Protein is More Than Just Meat
Protein is a key component of practically every tissue in your body, including muscle, skin, hair, and other tissues. Proteins manufacture the enzymes and hormones that power digestion, metabolism, and tissue growth and repair.
Protein can be found in all meats and vegetables. Some are "complete" proteins (typically from animals) because they contain all the essential amino acids your body needs to build more protein. Others are "incomplete" proteins (vegetables, nuts) because they lack one or more essential amino acids.
Good. Lean cuts of hormone and antibiotic free meat and poultry, eggs, whey protein, soy protein, nuts, seeds, beans and limited dairy products .
Bad. Fatty cuts of meat, dark poultry meat, excess cheese or "whole" dairy product consumption, poultry skins.
Caution. Even lean protein sources can be prepared in unhealthy ways—battered, deep fried, or covered in fatty sauces or cheeses.
Carbohydrates: the Key to Healthy Eating
Carbohydrates are important sources of energy and can be found in most foods. Not all carbohydrates are beneficial, so choosing the right carbohydrates is essential.
Good. Better sources of carbohydrates are whole grains, vegetables, fruits, and beans. These foods are a good source of energy and provide fiber, vitamins, and minerals—as well as phytonutrients that are essential for good health and play an important part in cell signaling..
Bad. Refined carbohydrates or sugars (white bread, white rice, pastries, sugary sodas) provide little or no nutritional value.
Caution. Even the best carbs can be prepared in bad ways. Overcooking can deplete nutrients, or they can be covered in cheese, butter, and fatty/sugary sauces that counteract their benefits.
Disease Alert. Over time, a steady intake of refined carbohydrates can lead to insulin resistance, a harmful condition in which the body can't properly convert blood sugar into energy. Insulin resistance, in turn, can result in weight gain, low energy levels, diabetes, heart disease, and other health conditions.
Fiber and Water: Filling You Up and Cleaning You Out
Good sources of fiber include bran, beans, brown rice and nuts, and green vegetables (broccoli, asparagus, spinach). Dr. Zilahy may also recommend a fiber supplement. Dietary fiber helps:
Promote healthy insulin and blood sugar response by slowing digestion, which helps to prevent a surge of blood sugar.
Create a feeling of fullness, helping you control the amount of food you eat.
Increase bowel motility, helping you empty what your body doesn't need more regularly.
Disease alert. Low fiber diets can increase the risk to insulin resistance, digestive discomfort, and more serious intestinal concerns.
Water helps to transport vital nutrients to, and export waste from, our cells. It's also necessary to moisten the lungs and respiratory tract, lubricate joint surfaces and internal organs, and ensure proper digestion. Like fiber, it can increase the feeling of fullness and aid in toxin removal. So it's important to make sure you're getting enough water every day.
Targeted Nutrients—Extra Help for Improving Health
The growing field of research in nutritional genomics—or nutrigenomics—has demonstrated the effects that nutrients and plant substances can have on modifying the expression of genes in favor of good health. This has led to the development of research-based nutraceuticals and medical foods that complement dietary approaches to address today's top health concerns.
"Boosting" Your Healthy Message with Nutritional Supplements
Even if you eat a nutritious diet, you might benefit from nutritional supplementation. Nutritional supplementation not only helps you maintain adequate nutrient levels. It can also help improve your health or manage chronic health conditions.


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When most people park their cars in their driveway at night, there is a certain feeling of safety in having your ride close by. After all, how often is a car stolen or damaged in your own driveway? We like to consider it a bubble of protection, immune from a scary world of bad drivers and car thieves. But the truth is, nowhere is truly 100% safe, especially when it comes to Mother Nature.
Just ask Gary Vasi, who came out of his Troy, Michigan home to discover that nature had toppled a tree over on his prized Corvette. ABC Action News reports that Vasi was one of many Troy residents who woke up to the widespread destruction, though he arguably had greater reason to wince than many of his neighbors.
The powerful storms that moved across Michigan last week knocked out power and uprooted trees across the state, causing plenty of property damage, though amazingly no one was injured during the extreme weather. Vasi, who decided to skip out on his daily aerobic classes because of the weather, would have been in his Corvette around the time of the storm.
So in that aspect he's lucky, but on the other hand we can understand why he would be crying and shaking over the sight of the crushed Corvette. That said, by the time he was interviewed, he seemed to be taking the whole thing in stride. At the end of the day this is what insurance is for, and hopefully Vasi's insurance will replace his Corvette, and then some. At the end of the day, it's still just a car.


text: On Mon, 1 May 2000 16:15:52 +0100 (BST) David Brownlee wrote: > If you have a tool that can take N rc.conf.d files, put them > into a single file, allow it to be edited and then safely split > everything back into individual config files then you have just > about all the functionality needed to be able to mechanically > update or upgrade a single rc.conf, particularly if you keep a > copy of the stock rc.conf around and have an option to list all > changes form the default. True, but I would point out though that dropping in files via pkg_add, rsync, rdist, rcp, etc is easier than dropping in files and afterward running commands. Running commands post-install is clearly possible so this isn't conclusive. My own preference (bias, history, whatever) is for individual files. The first application I used that used this technique irritated me, but I have changed my mind over the years, as I decided that a directory is just another type of file and realised that "vi /etc/rc.conf.d/*" works about as well as "vi /etc/rc.conf". Regards, Giles