>A larger head! That should be a story, when someone's head changes size during the offseason.

Alright, but what are we to make of Ted Kennedy?

Baseball players are pikers when it comes to real cheating. Check out the fines in NASCAR!

Veritas vos liberabit.
The truth will set you free.

Source:
John 8:31-32 (original text written in Greek, not Latin)

Also alleged to have been carved into the lintel of Chateau de Blanchefort, estate in the Languedoc region of southwestern France of Bertrand de Blanchefort, sixth Grand Master of the Knights Templar.

The Latin saying was also incorporated into the famous Johns Hopkins [University]Ode:

Truth guide our university,
And from all error keep her free,
Let wisdom yield her choicest treasure,
And freedom reach her fullest measure;
O, let her watchword ever be:
The truth of God will make you free,
Will make you free!

Let knowledge grow from more to more,
And scholars versed in deepest lore
Their souls for light forever burning,
Send forth their fire, unlock their learning;
And let their faithful teaching be:
The truth alone can make us free,
Can make us free!

The truth shall crown her sons with fame,
Their lives inspire with nobler aim,
Their names make known throughout her borders,
As learning's guide and wisdom's warders;
Then let their watchword ever be:
The truth for aye shall keep us free,
Shall keep us free!

The Earth is the center of the universe.
The Earth is flat.
God created the Earth in seven days.
Eve was created from Adam's rib.
There is no such thing as evolution.

Myths must, out of necessity, die and truth must prevail. Experimentation, scholarship and the questioning of outmoded thoughts and beliefs, as well as the ability to speak and debate openly, are essential to progress. Scientists, journalists, iconoclasts should be our gatekeepers.

I dunno. At a lesser level, it was neat to wander across the UNC campus at Chapel Hill at some ridiculous hour of the night and notice that a baseball game was still underway at the cute Colonial-style Cary Boshamer Stadium. The stadium made you wonder whether George and Ben and the other colonials would have liked the Game.

Here, it's kinda neat to live close enough to the Dodgers' spring stadium to watch the fireworks from the still-porchless back yard. The Dodgers liked it so much, that they hired the same New York guy to design their new stadium in LA.

Bad behavior? Do professional baseball players behave any worse than a college lacrosse team from 10 miles from Chapel Hill?

Dave, you sound like you're probably one of the folks on my husband's Tarheel basketball "boodle."

I remember when the Post printed a circle the same diameter as Mark McGwire's bicep along with another corresponding to the bicep of a mortal. Mark’s was so much larger that, in retrospect, it clearly suggested that Dark Forces might be involved. But accusing someone of being ‘juiced is like accusing somebody of attempting to create life from an assemblage of dead parts in his castle laboratory. Or having WMD. In all cases you need to be pretty gosh darn sure of your facts. This is hard to do, especially when the desire to believe, or not to believe, is so strong.

Another thought. Perhabs MLB should start to routinely publish the "cup size" of professional players, which could then be tracked over time. This might serve to inhibit steroid abuse, as well as provide yet another statistic to follow.

Baseball fans love stats.

I have to say I am always astounded at the ability of sports fans to pull up the most obscure statistics. I watch several racing series but I could hardly tell you who won any particular race in any year, or how many races a driver has won.

Pass the mustard.

In your article, you refer to Ted Williams as "a nasty man we pray will never be thawed." One might argue that your comment reflects nastiness in the extreme.

But what is it about Ted Williams that you find "nasty"? To the contrary, one can find scores of examples of his extreme generosity, particularly towards fellow ballplayers and servicemen down on their luck. These examples are not hard to find, but I've documented quite a number of them by talking to real people with whom Mr. Williams interacted over time, dating from visiting hospitals in Minneapolis in 1938 right up to the last years of his life.

In fact, I have an entire book coming out sometime in the next few years devoted to Williams' work with the Jimmy Fund, a children's cancer charity in Boston. He was associated with them for over 50 years, a mark rivaled only by Jerry Lewis (and MS) and Bob Hope (with the USO) for longevity of relationship between a celebrity and a given charity. And Williams served as Chair of the Jimmy Fund for many, many years. There are scores of stories of him staying overnight in the hospital with children who were dying. He did not pick an "easy" charity with which to associate.

Money that Ted Williams helped raise led to the growth of chemotherapy. Maybe you know someone who has benefited from chemotherapy. When Williams started helping fund the efforts of Dr. Sidney Farber of Boston's Childrens Hospital in 1947, chemotherapy was laughed at in the medical profession. Farber achieved the first remissions of leukemia in children, and is today considered the "father of chemotherapy." The efforts of Variety Club theater people in Boston, the Boston Braves baseball team, and local Boston celebrities such as Ted Williams were instrumental in his early funding. You can look it up.

Yes, he spit at sportswriters a few times. He had a foul mouth, and sometimes was indiscreet about his temper. But talk to almost any ballplayer who really knew him, or his fellow US Marine Corps pilots (like John Glenn), and they'll tell you many tales of generosity that more than compensate for Ted's feud with a few fans and sportswriters.

Bill Nowlin

The Wayfarer
by Stephen Crane

The wayfarer
Perceiving the pathway to truth,
Was struck with astonishment.
It was thickly grown with weeds.
"Ha," he said,
"I see that no one has passed here
In a long time."
Later he saw that each weed
Was a singular knife.
"Well," he mumbled at last,
"Doubtless there are other roads."

The caricature of Bonds in the Rough Draft column appears to be batting right-handed. Get me the continuity editor!

Say this about Sammy Sosa, not only did he mysteriously "bulk up" but used a juiced up bat. Nothing like the belt and suspenders approach . . .

The late thirties are tough for an athlete. Physical abilities wane, at least the agility and litheness. The end of the career is in sight; there is a need to leave a legacy. If Barry Bonds, son of a successful Major Leaguer, were a US president, perhaps he'd take decisive foreign policy action to indelify his name. Anyway, for both cretinous windbags and baseball's creatinous windbags, the decision to leave a personal legacy seems to be an individual one, even though there is an establishment that deeply enables it.

Barry Bond, Mark McGuire, doing the same thing, but when McGuire was in the limelight, no one murmured a word about his feats may have been helped with steriods. Everyone was loving the man, didn't have time to critique. Now it's bury Bonds. Come on, folks, be fair. All these guys are pumping up in an effort to get that record, fame, money, and who knows what else.

As for Duke and the lacrosse team, a big blunder there. They tried to hide that stuff, but it's going bad for them. A bunch of drunk guys now saying, hey, we didn't rape anyone. And the police dragging their butts in collecting the evidence. Why? Because Duke is Duke, and these guys have probably never heard the word "no". Duke has had enough bad publicity to last them a lifetime, they definitely need to straighten up, and this latest incident is not helping, and that doesn't even take in the fact that a woman was raped, and treated less than.

Cassandra S is correct about double standard. My sense is, though, the media never had the opportunity to deliver the goods on him because he retired as soon as he realized what he'd done to his body. He has been pretty discredited since his appearance before Congress, however.

Mr. Nowlin, Ted Williams may have (and did) many fine things in his work with children, but the fact remains that his personal behavior is pretty well documented, and to minimize his "nastiness" by saying it was just a spat with a few sportswriters is to "spin" the truth and turn your forthcoming book into hagiography. How Williams treated sportswriters is irrelevant; most athletes don't get along with sportswriters if the sportswriters are doing their jobs properly and aren't "homers" and suck-ups. The fact is, Williams treated his three wives and his children badly, was difficult to get to know, and was a pretty prickly personality. To pretend otherwise is dishonest. (See "Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero" by Leigh Montville.)

It doesn't help to point out that Williams' great arch-rival, Joe Dimaggio, was probably even nastier, and that the alltime nastiest, meanest, most bigoted and all-around awful guy was the great Ty Cobb. Williams was probably the greatest poure hitter who ever lived, but let's not make Williams something he wasn't: a saint.

From a review of "Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero" by Leigh Montville:

Hitting exploits helped Ted Williams avoid criticism of nasty side

Sunday, May 02, 2004

By Jon Caroulis

What makes a hero? Is it winning baseball's Triple Crown twice? Is it risking batting .400 by not playing it safe? Is it flying combat missions in two wars? Did all these things make Ted Williams a hero?
It was these deeds and much more, says Leigh Montville. A Boston boy who rooted for Williams' Red Sox, Montville has compiled a revealing and engrossing book.
He suggests that Williams was a hero not only because he gave great performances on the ballfield and battlefield, but also because he rarely turned down an autograph request and spent much time and effort visiting sick children in hospitals.
But often Williams treated these anonymous fans and other people's kids better than his three wives and three children.
Williams was the idol of millions but was little loved on the personal level.
He was moody with a volcanic temper. He had spats with fans and sports writers -- actually spitting at a Fenway crowd -- but at the same time was revered by many in the stands and in the press box.”
(http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04123/309234.stm)

Heck, all you have to say after observing an athlete's bulk-up add random factioids like: "Sports researchers find with weightlifting alone, a normal human gains only X pounds of muscle in 5 months..."

Truly objective is doing one's homework and being careful not to leap to conclusions... after all, some people do over-bulk up in response to exercise, although you would expect that to have been noticeable BEFORE they hit the major leagues.
Just saying.

Joel writes:

Imagine if we could write political stories that said, "The senator, a cretinous windbag whose seven-term tenure has been an uninterrupted fandango of political whoring, could not be reached for comment."

I don't know how he is allowed to do it, but Carl Hiaasen actually writes articles that sound a lot like that. Sometimes, I get whiplash coming across Hiaasen in the paper--it's unbelievable how different "news" (the normal fare in the newspaper) is from "truth" (what Hiaasen writes). Here's an example, an excellent summary of a very complicated situation, but no punches pulled, and no euphemisms:

http://www.tms.tribune.com/htmlmail/commentators/articles/0802hiaasen.htm

--(filed from the Key West Boodle Bureau)

Carl does call them as he sees them. Mye head still hurts from trying to follow that story. Wasn't he on a phone to a reporter when he committed suicide and the reporter got in trouble for it somehow. South Florida politics is just a little bit loonier than the rest of the country.

Afterall, Abramoff got tripped up by an ugly casino deal right out of a Hiaasen novel.

Nani: I hope you find the time to peruse...The dark boodle, IMHO,(re.: Mr. Buchwald) brought some of the family out in us. I say that to all of you collectively as I've noticed some congruence of musical and poetic tastes, automobilia, politics and general life expreiences. I think that kbert referred to a big tent. Regardless, we had a haymaker thrown at us this weekend that seems as nothng less than piling-on-when-you-think-that-all-is-pretty-much-ok...know whuteye mean? My wife's stepbrother fell victim to a rather viscious brain tumor at age 39. I don't think he knew what hit him, because he didn't pay attention to the blinding headaches he had been having over the past year...migrane like in the sense that they were literally incapacitating. By the time he sought medical advice, it was too late. Biopsy confirmed the worse this past Thursday, and he passed this afternoon. This has been a long day. Joel's kit is refreshing as it reminds me of throwig baloney and mustard sandwiches off the balcony at the old Comiskey Park while we were at YMCA day camp. (Tommy John was a pitcher for the Sox then.) Mom hadn't figured out that I was more of PBJ/plain person at that point. I found an old picture of Ernie Banks from a loaf of Wonder Bread stuffed in the back of my dresser some twenty five years ago, dating back another fifteen years into my childhood in Chicago. Put aside the piling on..."let's play two".

Jack, Ernie Banks was a class act. I saw him play against the Phillies at Connie Mack Stadium on several occasions in the late 1950s/early 1960s. I don't give a damn about stats: Bonds, Sosa and McGwire will never hold a candle to a Banks, An Aaron, a Mays, a Campanella, an Ashburn. As onsessed with numbers and stats as baseball fans often appear to be, every one of them knows that at the end of the day, it's not about the numbers. It's about class.

I'm sorry to hear about your wife's stepbrother. Life is nothing but haymakers, and there's only ever one answer to them: "Let's play two."

To take up Joel's reality gantlet:

"Justice Scalia, defender of the idea that women are vessels of procreation for the male gender, when questioned as to the objectivity of his opinions for the Court declined to comment other than to say *moving back of hand forward from under the chin in an aggresive manner*"

This is fun.

Great column, Joel. I keep thinking about Barry Bond's big bouncing head on top of one of those dash board figurines. Scary, really. Funny, too.

Sorry, Jack, about your wife's stepbrother. Sometimes it's like before you can get over one thing, something else jumps out at you. Best wishes for you, and your family.

If you're not going to poke fun at the rest of the crew that's taking steriods, you really ought to limit the nasty remarks about Bonds. It just seems like maybe you're singling him out?

jack, my condolences...

'Mudge, thanks for saying what I was planning to say about Teddy Ballgame. I grew up in New England and I'm a die-hard Bosox fan, raised by a mother who still lives and dies by the box score from Fenway. I was as happy as anyone when Ted was honored at the Fenway All-Star Game, but I've never considered him other than an average human being at the personal level. Even when he died (I was in NH at the time), the Boston radio folks pointed out he was less than civil on a regular basis.

Imagine my surprise when coming home from DC I had the radio to WaPo-AM and the signal lasted all the way to my house in Ellicott City. Most DC broadcasts peter out about 198 or 32.

This morning on the way to work the signal stayed rock solid to I-70 and 29 and then started cracking but remained listenable all the way to my office in the Social Security area.

I am so tired of WBAL here in Baltimore with the endless "live" promos and commericals after every newsbite. AM radio is such a wasteland.

I did like the slightly longer stories. I heard ones about Enron and private school tuitions. I thought I heard a baby crying in the background of one of the stories. Are we waking up reporters just to get news stories? Poor dears.

Hey, Dave, the Duke lacrosse players' alleged acts make baseball players look like choir boys in comparison... corking bats and taking steroids is so quaint a way to stray in this evil world of ours.

I think the Duke lacrosse players thought they were Minnesota Vikings. And who says there are no more role models in sports?

Bonds' biochemical performance enhancement experiments have taken some new directions in search of flexibility.

http://www.funnyhub.com/pictures/pages/barry-bonds-in-drag.html

bc

Not sure, but I want to say that it was Jackie Robinson who was famous for and developed the fine art of stealing base. I only saw him once during a televised game (early or mid 50s?)but it was memorable to say the least. After every hit and successful run to first, Mr. Robinson postured, pranced, taunted (the pitcher) and danced between 1st and 2nd base while the pitcher swirled, twirled and finally threw, never able to "OUT" Robinson. It was great fun to watch.

Jack... so sorry about your brother-in-law. Brain tumor is what got my mom, too. We joke about brain tumors a lot to ward them off, I think, so when they actually show up it's hard to believe. I still shudder when I hear myself say, "My mom died of a brain tumor." Still so hard to fathom.

Stick with the family and you'll all get through it. I hope any wife and kids of his can depend on you and yours for support.

I'm glad you thought of stopping by here when you got home last night after such a horrible day. I hope our company helped a bit.

That was one scary piece Kevin Phillips had in yesterday's Outlook: How the GOP Became God's Own Party"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/01/AR2006040100004.html

ledegraf: "Now that the GOP has been transformed by the rise of the South, the trauma of terrorism and George W. Bush's conviction that God wanted him to be president, a deeper conclusion can be drawn: The Republican Party has become the first religious party in U.S. history."

scary graf: "On the most important front, I am beginning to think that the Southern-dominated, biblically driven Washington GOP represents a rogue coalition, like the Southern, proslavery politics that controlled Washington until Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860."

Rogue coalition? Wow. Pretty strong stuff, and this from the guy who wrote the strategy textbook for the GOP in the 1960s.

"Four decades later, this framework has produced the alliance of oil, fundamentalism and debt."

..."Unfortunately, more danger lurks in the responsiveness of the new GOP coalition to Christian evangelicals, fundamentalists and Pentecostals, who muster some 40 percent of the party electorate. Many millions believe that the Armageddon described in the Bible is coming soon. Chaos in the explosive Middle East, far from being a threat, actually heralds the second coming of Jesus Christ. Oil price spikes, murderous hurricanes, deadly tsunamis and melting polar ice caps lend further credence.

The potential interaction between the end-times electorate, inept pursuit of Persian Gulf oil, Washington's multiple deceptions and the financial crisis that could follow a substantial liquidation by foreign holders of U.S. bonds is the stuff of nightmares. To watch U.S. voters enable such policies -- the GOP coalition is unlikely to turn back -- is depressing to someone who spent many years researching, watching and cheering those grass roots."

..."These developments have warped the Republican Party and its electoral coalition, muted Democratic voices and become a gathering threat to America's future. No leading world power in modern memory has become a captive of the sort of biblical inerrancy that dismisses modern knowledge and science. The last parallel was in the early 17th century, when the papacy, with the agreement of inquisitional Spain, disciplined the astronomer Galileo for saying that the sun, not the Earth, was the center of our solar system." ...

"warped the Republican Party and its electoral coalition"--yowser, yowser, yowser.

And maybe my favorite sentence: "No leading world power in modern memory has become a captive of the sort of biblical inerrancy that dismisses modern knowledge and science."

You go, girl.

OK, Mudge. But what are Phillips and the "real" Republicans going to do about it? Are they willing to give up Republican control for the good of the nation?

We all see the country sliding into he11. What are we going to do about it?

'Mudge, Cassandra, TBG, Nani, et.al.: thanks for responding...celebrate life...

I'm not even sure that Phillips himself is any kind of recognizable "Republican" at this point, and I suspect he's about as welcome in GOP ranks as Hillary might be.

As for the rest of them...I think they are headed for an irretrievable breakdown and split. The big coalition they managed to put together after the civil rights movement "converted" all those Southern Democrats into Southern Republicans is on its last legs. The 40% of the GOP Phillips identifies as the religious wing cannot long exist with the non-religious conservs, who cannot continue to tolerate the luddite and anti-science wing. As Phillips says, that was an unholy alliance to begin with. So without any help from the Dems whatsoever, they will continue to fracture. I don't think it's a question of being "willing to give up" control--I think it'll be wrestled away from them whether they are willing or not.

Got to run to a meeting....the Dems solutions when I come back.

Jack, I'm sorry to hear of your loss.

bc

PS. Thanks for the link, 'mudge.
Indeed, TBG.

So 'Mudge, why do you hate America? (ducking)

We are The New Centurians
Shepherds of the Nation!
We'll keep on our guard
for sin and degradation...

We are the National Guard
Against filth and depravity
Perversion and vulgarity
HOMO-SEX-UALITY

Keep it Clean
Keep it Clean
Keep it Clean
Keep it Clean

I visualize a day when people will be free
From Evil like Perversion and Pornography
We'll cast out Satan and we'll set the sinners free
So people of the nation, unite.

PUT ALL THE PERVS IN JAIL
BRING BACK THE BIRCH AND THE CAT OF NINE TAILS
BRING BACK CORPORAL PUNISHMENT
BRING BACK THE STOCKS AND THE AX MEN'S BLOCK
LET RIGHTEOUSNOUS PREVAIL!!!

The Kinks, Preservation Act II

Oops. The 10:14 AM was me. But you knew that.

Jack, I just saw the post you entered last night. My condolences to you and your family.

jack,

Your brother-in-law sure was tragic news. I hate hearing about people cut down in their prime. There is so much life to live.

Ha! My favorite part of this column is the last part with the would-be-truthful journalism. I wish journalism could be like that sometimes. I mean, I like reading the news, but that would give it a little kick. Like throwing some paprika (the real kind, not the decorative American kind) on the news.

"Meanwhile, entertainment in America requires ever more stimulation. We have to crank up the volume. On a scale of 1 to 10, we've got our culture set on 11."

We set entertainers of all sorts on pedastals, and we hero worship them. These are not heros but just adults who play a children's game better than average. Yes its sport and its big bucks but its a game, and they are merely entertainers. We apply hero status to what really is just marketing hype.

I sure hope that somehow our kids have a better understanding of the truly heroic than we have.

Indeed, dr.

"In the '60s, we talked about the Military Industrial Complex (MIC). And while that is still an operative force, quietly and steadily over the years it has been supplanted by the Entertainment Industrial Complex (EIC). This impacts [sic] everyone's life moment by moment a hundred times more than the MIC. You see, the EIC are masters of two important things: manipulating desire and choice and disempowering people. They use 'entertainment' to create the desire and the emptiness that make you buy what they produce. And although in principle it's not that different from the Roman coliseum, with the reach of technology it's overpowering. Just observe how every news show, magazine, movie, TV show creates desires and/or makes you feel powerless and empty -- feelings that only products can fill."

-- Will Arntz, director, "What the Bleep Do We Know!?"

"I do not think that because someone can, with an aluminum pole, redirect a ball over a fence 300 feet away, that they are a Hero. I do not think that spouting someone else's ideas in front of a camera makes one a Hero. Without the [scientists] sitting here with us, and other explorers of the unseen, we would be in a stagnant, boring world . . ."

-- Will Arntz

Kevin Phillip's article was very interesting, but it was too obviously a SparkNotes summary of his book and needs way more detail to pull together all the rather disparate elments it has. The Republicans have thrown their fortunes in with rascists and religious charlatans for quite a while now and if and when those chickens will roost has yet to be determined.

There was an interesting article I can't find at the moment about a conservative minister that breaks away from Bush on environmental issues. I remember when James Watt was trying to furiously cut down all the trees before the Rapture.

Also on the environmental front, George Will has determined that global warming is the fault of journalists. Don't make me try to explain the argument because I can't. He's still mad about getting suckered into buying too many parkas back when a new ice age was the climate crisis du jour.

*laughing along with yellojkt* Yes, I read that George Will column, too. What a hoot. Never realized Will had a sense of humor. What a wacky guy. Hilarity ensues as Will blames global warming on Dave Barry.

In a separate matter, what the bleep does Will Arntz know? People who direct balls 300 feet over fences (on a professional basis, anyway) don't use aluminum poles. They use wooden ones (generally made of white ash, if anyone cares, though the aforfementioned Bonds has been leading a trend toward bats made of maple), which are usually (but not always) solid. Or at least supposed to be solid. Cork is frowned upon.

And I see in my previous post not one but TWO words from the first line replicated. TypePad is making progress! It's growing! Soon it will be replicating whole paragraphs.

And if Arntz thinks the EIC has supplanted the MIC, he is sadly mistaken. The EIC has taken over the culture, but then again, the MIC never much bothered with that to begin with.

Can a self-replicating Boodle be far behind now that we're seeing multiple repeat words??? Has Michael Chricton been informed???

SCC: Crichton...

"Monday, Monday
Can't trust that day"

Bah.

Could George Will perhaps visit the offices of Science Magazine in Washington at lunchtime and talk to some of the staff? William F. Ruddiman wrote an interesting and plausible book titled Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum: How Humans Took Control of Climate (from Princeton. Just Google for "pup" and mash the "I feel lucky" button). He thinks that over the millenia, we humans have burned enough forests and whatnot to fend off the next Ice Age. Of course Princeton is also selling a wildly popular little book, "On B.S."

It might possibly be a sign of global warming that Carl Hiaasen has decamped the Keys and moved to Vero Beach, a place where rich northeastern retirees enjoy the dullness.

yellojkt writes:
There was an interesting article I can't find at the moment about a conservative minister that breaks away from Bush on environmental issues. I remember when James Watt was trying to furiously cut down all the trees before the Rapture.

That minister is Rick Warren, author of best-selling Christian book, "A Purpose-Driven Life"...Funny line from the article, with link below: ..."global warming is not just a liberal issue" (I am reminded of Bill Sammon's comment on George Stephanapoulus's show just before the Academy Awards that Brokeback Mountain was just a "leftie movie" or my call to San Antonio Express-News public editor Bob Richter about three local issues and his need to put a label on me as far as my politics.)

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060211/LIFESTYLE04/602110410/1041

My distant great-grandfather, Philip IV The Fair, was responsible for the Babylonian Captivity of the Catholic popes, which led to the Great Schism. I have at least one ancestor who was Templar, and Philip IV who is credited with the demolition of their Order. I even have an ancestor buried at a shrine--Compostela in Spain. As I said is 2004, for me, it's no longer history, it's family.

When was basic science and experimentation first outlawed and opposed by the Catholic Church? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the first organized resistance by the church to a challenge to their increasingly concentrated power was in response to alchemy--and it was opposition to more than just the experiments themselves but to much of the symbology associated with alchemy.

The first link I provide tells a great deal about the Babylonian Captivity of the papacy.

http://atheism.about.com/od/popesandthepapacy/a/avignon.htm

Since the "captivity" of the popes at Avignon lasted approixmately the same amount of time as the exile of the Jews in Babylon, the phrase "Babylonian Captivity" came into fashion to describe the interlude. Shortly after the papacy returned to Rome the Great Schism began.

http://www.hyw.com/books/history/Great_Sc.htm

The Great Schism began shortly after Gregory XI returned the Papacy to Rome in 1377, after its "Babylonian Captivity. " Gregory died within a year.

The subsequent papal election was conducted under considerable "pressure" for the election of an Italian pope by the Roman baronial families and rabble. The cardinals took the hint, and elected Urban VI (1378-1389), and Italian from Itri . But as soon as the election was over, some of the French cardinals reconvened at Avignon, declared Urban's election void, and elected another pope, Clement VII (1378-1394), a Frenchman.

Thus began the Great Schism, as two lines of popes continued to succeed each other, one based at Rome and the other at Avignon, each appointing cardinals. The kings of Europe soon began choosing among the popes, based on their political objectives (England favored the Roman line, France the Avignon one).

The whole affair casued a scandal throughout Christendom (and the Muslims even got in some jokes about it--**if only we could hear them today**!!!). An attempt to resolve the problem through a church council only resulted in the election of a third pope.

In the end the whole business was resolved when the fortuitous concidence of the death of one pope and the resignation of another allowed their cardinals to convene together to elect Martin V (1417-1431): the third line of popes had never attracted much support, and was ignored. Martin, a Colonna , proved a very able pope, and a dedicated reformer, but the prestige of the papacy had been seriously injured, helping to pave the way for Protestantism, which is another story.

**A whole 'nother story.**

Linda, is there a particular genealogical database you consult, or did you have it all charted out, or... ?

As I've finally learned the name of my real grandfather I'm curious where I should go to find out more relatives in the chain.

As long as we don't like, owe them any money or anything. :-)

Lindaloo, I'm not a very "good" Catholic because my prayers are only to Mary. The g-girls love the TRUE story of when I was 5 years old being temporarily raised at boarding school by strict disciplinarian Roman Catholic nuns (I toned the discipline waaay down in my story so it wouldn't be too scary). As I knelt before the statue of Mary in the chapel at Ursuline Academy, praying for her to make me a good girl, I looked up into Mary's eyes and she **winked** at me. So.....

When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
And in my hour of darkness
She is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

nani - i'm a very very bad used-to-be-catholic - but i do hafta admit i luv me some mary! i don't know if it's a hispanic thing or just a panamanian thing or a family thing but my grandmother and my aunt both have shrines in their homes for mary...

error - didn't you see in the achendictionary that lindaloo is related to everyone. period. (btw - did you get my e-mail?)

mo, the coolest thing ever is the way elderly Hispanic ladies make the Sign of the Cross. Instead of just one regular S of C, forehead, chest, left shoulder, right shoulder, they make little miniature complete crosses on their forehead, chest, left, right. I used to stare at them in awe. Dressed head to toe in black, shawls covering their hair and framing their lovely wrinkled old faces. Such fervor in their eyes! Once during Mass, I tried making one of the super-duper triple cross signs, but Mother poked me in the side (ya know, those motherly pokes?) and shook her head slightly.

nani - it's not only elderly hispanic ladies - my mum does it that way as well (and god forbid you call her elderly) and i think you touch your mouth at the end - i never learned the super-duper triple cross sign... i tried it once and got all triped up...

>error - didn't you see in the achendictionary that lindaloo is related to everyone. period

Sorry, I must have missed it, although it does seem obvious. For me it's like I grew up thinking I was more English than anything, and it turns out I'm more like a Von Wittgenbaum than a Scotts-Jenkins.

>email
No, haven't checked that account in awhile, been busy. Just too many accounts. Tonight, fer sure.

Technical question for Joel, ScienceTim, scottynuke, and any other folks with detailed scientific knowledge:

Over the past 20 years, what technical/scientific principles, theories, and ideas have been completely overturned/changed/significantly disproved, e.g., "constants" that aren't any longer "constant," etc.

The primary one I'm aware of is that there were "only" nine planets. I'll accept answers in the field of astronomy, but would like other fields as well, especially physics and engineering. (I need to make an argument to some scientists and engineering types that some of what they were taught in college and grad school was "wrong" or less immutable than they thought.)

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Ack!!!!!!!!!!!! New Kit!!!!

Will re-post my 2:13 over there.