This is Actually Rather Big International News

So, naturally, you won't see it in the U.S. media.

Saudi crown prince visits Egypt’s Coptic Cathedral in Cairo

Yes, and One of Them Was a Beloved Relation of Mine

Medicaid Scandal: 21,904 Truly Needy People Died While Waiting Behind 13 Million Able-Bodied Adults

Which is why I have no patience with posturing politicians, even if they belong to The Episcopal Church's preferred political party, especially when they mess with issues of life and death.

Lenten Wave #22

“To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh, to watch the flight of shore birds that have swept up and down the surf lines of the continents for untold thousands of year, to see the running of the old eels and the young shad to the sea, is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be.” - Rachel Carson

Even the New York Times is Starting to Notice

When Everyone Is A Fascist, No One Is A Fascist

To Understand This is To Understand Our Entire Contemporary Reality

Dunning–Kruger effect

Lenten Wave #21

"Do your little bit of good where you are; its those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.” - Desmond Tutu

Yep

When the guy who hosted the breast-obsessed “Man Show” appears onstage with an NBA player once accused of rape to give awards to people who spent decades doing business with Harvey Weinstein — you know Hollywood has gotten serious about sexual harassment.

Yes, I Still Miss Australia

Snake caught hiding in wall at Toowoomba shopping centre

No Surprise Here, Either

Metaphor Alert: ‘Young Karl Marx’ Loses Tons Of Money

Well, Here's a Surprise

The Episcopal Church's House of Deputies Special Committee on Sexual Harassment and Exploitation Appointed

As predicted in The Coracle only last month:

The Only Change Will Be That I, and My Secular Compatriots, Will Have to Attend More "Workshops" on Misconduct

You know, those of us who are not mashers, molesters, and rapists.  For the Hollywood/Washington/Wall Street men who behave in this abysmal manner, and the women who enable them, nothing will change.  It will simply become less visible.

Yeah, That's Hardly a "Shocking" Truth to Any Teacher

By the time they reach high school, nearly 20 percent of all American boys will be diagnosed with ADHD. Millions of those boys will be prescribed a powerful stimulant to "normalize" them. A great many of those boys will suffer serious side effects from those drugs. The shocking truth is that many of those diagnoses are wrong, and that most of those boys are being drugged for no good reason—simply for being boys. It's time we recognize this as a crisis.

Lenten Wave #20

“God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.” - C.S. Lewis

An Obituary of Note

How did I miss this from two days ago?  He was our idol when I did track and field back before electricity.  I'm proud to say I once broke the eight minute mile.

Sir Roger Bannister: First person to run a mile in under four minutes dies at 88

A Pungent Observation

If one wishes to join the military, the age of adulthood is 18.
If one wishes to buy alcohol, the age of adulthood is 21.
If one wishes a driver's license, the age of adulthood is 16.
If one wishes to buy a rifle or shotgun at a sports store, the age of adulthood is 21.
If one wishes an abortion, the age of adulthood is 16.
If one wishes to vote, the age of adulthood is 18 [although there is a recent push to lower the age to 16].
In the Affordable Care Act, the age of adulthood is 26.

Is it maybe a good idea to have a settled age of adulthood in the United States?

Maybe Rethink a Lot of Things

To Stop Mass School Shootings, Rethink Antidepressants

But if you want to get at the real cause of these horrific events, don't ignore the potential impact of a type of antidepressant medication that should probably not be given to teenagers at all, and has been associated with an increase in the type of violence seen at Columbine, Newtown, Aurora and — perhaps — at Parkland, Florida.

These and similar attacks have a common pair of elements: The assailants were all late adolescents or young adults, and they were all taking a particular type of antidepressant called an SSRI.

Noticed That, Too, Have You?

In the aftermath of the tragic Parkland shooting, moral norms that have guided our American society through evil and tragedy — even through past mass shootings — seem to have been turned upside down.

Qualities traditionally considered “good” — bravery, sacrifice, even just fulfillment of basic job duties — are apparently no longer necessary in the face of evil. Instead, some thought leaders tell us that we’re not to go too hard on those who display cowardice and fear. They justify this moral relativism by arguing that “guns are too scary” to confront in traditional ways....  The overwhelming narrative has been to assign moral agency to inanimate objects: the guns. Everybody else, and the morality of their action or inaction, is somehow irrelevant.

They Won't, Though. They've Too Many Advertisers to Appease.

School Shootings Spread Like a Virus. The Media Can Help Stop Them.

Overheard on this morning's news, a local anchor admitting that she's lost count of how many school threats there have been in Connecticut over the last two weeks.

It's Time for Millionaires to Give One Another Awards and Self-Congratulate

Having been caught maintaining one of the most perverse and abusive industries in American culture, Hollywood's Guardians of Woke are over-reacting, deflecting, and hyper-moralizing so that we proles will be encouraged to permit the social conversation to migrate elsewhere.  Once that's accomplished, they can go back to "business as usual"; and they will, as it's a long-standing system that is inculcated in their industry.

[Please, please America, forget about Harvey Weinstein and how all those "nice" movie stars knew what was happening and said and did nothing while they worked on their careers and bank balances.  Look, that NRA is bad!  Also, Trump is bad, too!  Everything that's not us is bad!  Really!!]  

I have this creepy feeling that a collection of the creative class, along with oleaginous politicians and puzzle-witted, enabling media, were eagerly awaiting the slaughter of school kids so that the national conversation could be changed.  They seemed to have a lot of organized responses ready to engage within mere hours of the atrocity.  These coordinated efforts to control how we perceive the world are a tad alarming.

However, I see the remake of Creature From The Black Lagoon won something.  Man, that movie was one of my favs when I was a child.

Lenten Wave #19

So where can you find someone truly wise, truly educated, truly intelligent in this day and age? Hasn't God exposed it all as pretentious nonsense? Since the world in all its fancy wisdom never had a clue when it came to knowing God, God in his wisdom took delight in using what the world considered dumb—preaching, of all things!—to bring those who trust him into the way of salvation. - 1 Corinthians 1:20-21

A Pungent, and Fitting, Quotation

“Stupidity is always amazing, no matter how often one encounters it.” - Jean Cocteau