Ms. Rebecca Hagelin continues to point out the numbers documenting our cultural disaster.[1] Its useful to know at times, these are the sort of things that you bring up when others want to justify this or that. But the barrage of numbers, of statistics, has its own danger, we tend to turn our brains off and tune things out when the problem seems overwhelming, and the numbers seem never-ending. Plus, we all distrust statistics now, and with good reason. What is the right approach? I do not know.

[1] http://www.townhall.com/columnists/rebeccahagelin/rh20050527.shtml

What will it take to drive it home to society that men and women are different, and that these differences cannot be ignored? The rising divorce rates have not done it, the ever more evident cost of delaying the decision to have a family has not done it. The ever more evident cost of day care and latch-key children has not done it. What will?

It will obviously take a significant change in mindset. Women will have to embrace their femininity, it cannot be forced on them. Perhaps, though I pray not, we will see women in combat, as Ms. Martha Kleder fears we are coming ever closer to seeing, with all the added horrors and added risks that will entail.[1] I pray it never comes to pass. I fear it is inevitable. I wonder though, will that be sufficient to wake us up? Or will it make things even worse? Will it desensitize us even further to the problems that our refusal to admit reality has brought us to?

[1] http://www.townhall.com/columnists/GuestColumns/Kleder20050526.shtml

Intel has started including Digital Rights Management(DRM) functionality in their Pentium line of chips.[1] The new Pentium D processor will have functionality that will both tie in with the Windows DRM functionality, and will also allow administrators to remotely administrate machines “independent[ly] of an operating system.” Can you only imagine having your computer hacked not just at an operating system level, but at a firmware level? How would you even detect that? This goes well beyond the fears that first awoke with “Secure Computing.”

[1] http://www.digitmag.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=4915

Way back when I was in grade school, there was a significant amount of opposition to having sex ed in St. Josephs. Reading some of the recent townhall.com articles, I begin to see the danger here that simply was not even envisioned back then. While I doubt that even at their worst, any of the Catholic Schools have anything even approaching the horrors that Ms. Janice Shaw Crouse documents,[1] I do see the rise in outcome-based-education type initiatives in the Catholic School system here to have a significant potential for state or federal regulation of the Catholic school systems much along the lines of the “Standards of Learning” tests now mandated for the public schools. Such regulation would eventually contain mandates for programs such as those that Ms. Crouse rightly denounces.

[1] http://www.townhall.com/columnists/GuestColumns/Crouse20050524.shtml

It is nice to see that Richmond’s new Bishop is bringing some much needed reform to that wayward diocese.[1] Perhaps one day I will be inaccurate to say that Richmond is as theologically liberal as you can get without going heretic, perhaps I will even know that to avoid saying it. ☺

[1] http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=4026