I once read a Mad Magazine parody
where a fast food restaurant offered a mystery value meal that was basically "Here's what we scraped off the grill last night...we're not sure what it is, but we're putting it in a bag and selling it to you".

So, in that spirit, here are some leftovers -- items I had collecting dust for a while. May they tide you over til I get back to blogging:

I must believe that there is hope for the world, and that, in the end righteousness will prevail. But in order for this to happen, we must be re-learn the ability to make moral distinctions between right and wrong.

Basically, what I got from this article is thatCardinal Pell's lack of ignorance is an obstacle to dialogue on Islam. It is precisely because he understands it that as a believing Catholic, he is prepared to point out its shortcomings as it is currently practiced. Why has tolerance (I don't care) become so intermeshed with its dull distant cousin, ignorance (I don't know)? Because if you don't know anything about a reality, it is easy to tolerate it. I don't know, therefore, I don't care.

The opposite of course, is to learn about something, and in learning, come to understand it. But knowledge and understanding is not equivalent to acceptance. In fact, once you know a great deal about something, morality demands that you speak out if it is wrong. Yes, that is "judgmental", and "discriminatory" Once upon a time to discriminate meant To make a clear distinction; distinguish among the options available, or To make sensible decisions; judge wisely.

Like with so many other topics, the Catholic Church offers a refreshingly unambiguous and blunt assessment of its main competitor religion and its adherents: They are in error. the following passage on the ethics of islam is from the article "Mohammed and Mohammedanism" in the Catholic Encyclopaedia Online:

It is hardly necessary here to emphasize the fact that the ethics of Islam are far inferior to those of Judaism and even more inferior to those of the New Testament. Furthermore, we cannot agree with Noldeke when he maintains that, although in many respects the ethics of Islam are not to be compared even with such Christianity as prevailed, and still prevails, in the East, nevertheless, in other points, the new faith — simple, robust, in the vigour of its youth — far surpassed the religion of the Syrian and Egyptian Christians, which was in a stagnating condition, and steadily sinking lower and lower into the depths of barbarism (op. cit., Wollaston, 71, 72). The history and the development, as well as the past and present religious, social, and ethical condition of all the Christian nations and countries, no matter of what sect or school they may be, as compared with these of the various Mohammedan countries, in all ages, is a sufficient refutation of Noldeke's assertion. That in the ethics of Islam there is a great deal to admire and to approve, is beyond dispute; but of originality or superiority, there is not. What is really good in Mohammedan ethics is either commonplace or borrowed from some other religions, whereas what is characteristic is nearly always imperfect or wicked.

*****
Sesame classics

Johnny Cash singing Don't Take Your Ones To Town? Amazing --If this does not bring a tear of nostalgia to your eye, you may not have a soul. One of my fave's is "Born to Add", featuring a leather-jacket wearing muppet doing a suprisingly good cover of one of the Boss's classics. There's alot of us adders on the Jersey shore -- a line good enough to have been in the original.

*****

Uh, is there any place cooler than Montreal? I lived there for a year, and as far as I know, there isn't. But what is the price of cool? It's pretty hefty, it turns out.

An editorial in the Gazette lays it out in stark terms:

We Montrealers have less disposable income than people with comparable jobs in other cities. Even those of us barely managing on an annual salary of less than $30,000 pay higher taxes than we would anywhere else in the country. So much for the tenacious myth that Quebec is kinder to its less well-to-do citizens. For too many years, Montrealers have clung to the fiction that we are better off than Torontonians or Vancouverites because housing is cheaper here. Fine - housing and living costs should be part of any comparison among cities. Taxes are not the whole story, it's true. The beauty of the recent study we're quoting is that it combined three elements - salaries, taxes and cost of living - to determine how well off residents of various cities are. It did the calculations for four family types - couples with and without children and single people earning high and low salaries - in order to take into account such social benefits as our $7-a-day daycare.
Once everything is thrown into the mix, the stark reality is impossible to avoid. Take for instance the Montreal couple with no kids. They earn $6,819 less a year than their counterparts in Vancouver - but pay $4,929 more in taxes! Incredible.

Guess that is what a statist political culture, and a patrician, pseudo-intellectual political elite educated abroad and dedicated to a completely impractical notion of quasi-independance will get you!

Let the hand wringing begin

So the Senators have been felled in five, and already the hounds, smelling blood, have begun their baying. In seeking a martyr to satiate their hunger, I trust they will look past Emery, who stood on his head during these playoffs and who wasn't even supposed to be between the posts-- don't kid yourself pal, one nod from the Dominator and they would have yanked poor Ray. Perhaps their gaze will fall on a more likely victim: the happless Alfie.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating firing the guy, but lets call a spade a shovel, and lay the blame where it belongs: Right between the wobbly ankles that allowed a snot-nosed punk who was on waivers at the beginning of the season to waltz around him like a young Wayne Gretzky, circa 1981, and score shorthanded in OT, for crissakes. I swore I saw Emery weeping.

From 2000 until the lockout, Daniel Alfredsson was racking up 70-80 points during the regular season, and he's a big part of the reason that the Senators have dominated of late. But then comes the playoffs, and a change seems to come over the guy. Alfredsson who plays like a norse hero for 82 games, suddenly becomes a mere mortal. You can see the bewilderment in his nordic blue eyes, as everyone around him seems to kick their game up a notch, and he is left, far too often, looking like he just can't do the same.

Now I know that fans will point to the Captain's goal last night, and his classy post-game interview. But as Luke writes in the Gospel, "of those to whom much is given, much is expected". Occasional moments of brilliance won't cut it. A player of Alfredsson's calibre who has the priviledge of wearing the C in arguably the league's best team should be consistently fantastic. It's the second round of the playoffs, and Ottawa is already out. That wasn't supposed to happen.