Ontario Empoblog

The Death Post - Don't Read If You're Queasy From Reuters/Yahoo! : Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman at the heart of a wrenching dispute over her fate that drew in the U.S. Congress and President Bush, died on Thursday. "Terri Schiavo has passed away just a little while ago," said Brother Paul O'Donnell, a Franciscan monk and spiritual adviser to the parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, who fought a seven-year legal battle to keep their daughter alive. Schiavo, 41, died 13 days after her feeding tube was halted under order from a state court, and just hours after the U.S. Supreme Court rebuffed yet another appeal by her parents for the feeding to be restored. Schiavo had been in what courts ruled was a "persistent vegetative state" since her heart briefly stopped in 1990, depriving her brain of oxygen. Courts had long sided with her husband and legal guardian, Michael Schiavo, in ruling she would not have wanted to live in that condition and ...

Sixteenth, C Sharp Much happening in the last few days...European visitors...trip to Vegas...relative O.D.'ed...training with one of the two named experts in a particular field (sorry, confidential)...in other words, busy. Plus, my Saturday night audioblogs apparently showed up as Monday audioblogs. Last I checked Henderson, Nevada was in the same time zone as California. Oh well... Pictures at some point from the Vegas leg.

Yesterday's Controversy From gotquestions.org : The Bible does not specifically state which day of the week Jesus was crucified. The two most widely held views are Friday and Wednesday. Some, however, using a synthesis of both the Friday and Wednesday arguments, accept Thursday as the day. Jesus said in Matthew 12:40 "For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." Those who argue for a Friday crucifixion say that there is still a valid way in which He could have been considered in the grave for three days. In the Jewish mind of the First Century, part of day was considered as a full day. Since Jesus was in the grave for part of Friday, all of Saturday, and part of Sunday—He could be considered to have been in the grave for three days. One of the principal arguments for Friday is found in Mark 15:42 that notes that Jesus was crucified "the day before the Sab...

Do You Know Jack About Golden Earring ?

Pro Life vs. Pro Marriage One interesting tidbit about the Terri Schiavo case is that it pits pro-lifers against pro-marriage people. Think about it - the pro-lifers are asking the parents, the Governor, the President, anybody to interfere with a marriage. Which I guess means that pro-lifers don't regard marriage as all that important. family.org does look at pro-life and pro-marriage people as two distinct groups : Now just think for a moment about strengthening marriage as a pro-life strategy. What if in 1973 pro-lifers had decided upon marriage education, marriage preparation, marriage enrichment, and divorce prevention as their primary strategy for reducing abortion? Imagine if they had been successful and in 1996, 75 percent of all women of childbearing age had been in healthy marriages. Had abortion rates held steady, there would have been 770,000 abortions in 1996, a net reduction of 596,000 abortions (44 percent). In short, one could confidently argue that investing in mar...

Not everyone conforms to the "one blog, one topic" model I knew that I wasn't alone. Take Kevin Aylward's Wizbang ( about ): I started Wizbang in April 2003 with no real goal or master plan, I just felt like talking - you know sort of like the Forrest Gump running thing.... Wizbang is a unique mix of news, politics, and entertainment. Wizbang has grown steadily into one of the most popular conservative weblogs on the Internet. Since its founding in April 2003, and has over 5 million unique visitors. Don't ask me to explain Wizbang's rise in popularity, but I imagine it's a function of topicality, humor, and insight. Over the past year I've covered tons of topics, and I try hard to avoid becoming predictable....I've said before that Wizbang is whatever I feel like it should be that day, which is a philosophy that has served the site well to this point. Sample post : "A student who photographed his principal smoking outside a school building was...

Perhaps the Big Brother house would be better for Pat O'Brien right now No contact with the outside world. That's what Big Brother promises, and usually delivers. If Pat O'Brien were in a Celebrity Big Brother house, instead of in rehab, he wouldn't have to read all of the articles written about him in the last few days. From Gawker : Insider host Pat O’Brien has entered rehab for alcohol abuse. Try to be sensitive; if your biggest competition was the legacy of John Tesh, you’d be marinating in tequila, too. Interestingly enough, Patty’s Dry Journey comes just as a series of voicemails, allegedly featuring O’Brien enumerating some filthy fantasies, are making the internet rounds....Our permatan brother has donned his tinfoil hat to explore the coincidental timing of O’Brien’s media-free stint in recovery, but we all know rehab-as-damage-control is just impossible. Defamer weighs in : Apparently, Pat O’Brien is just like the rest of us and requires at least a bottle of...

A Wardrobe Malfunction Or Something I just discovered an error made in this blog on Friday, March 18. In this post , I mentioned "Fortune Cookie Friday" and intended to link to http://taralynnjohnson.blogspot.com/ . However, I put in the wrong URL, so the link went to a previously-cited post at Anomalous Noodge . No harm in that, but I meant to link to Tara. So, everyone reading this is strongly encouraged - nay, COMMANDED - to go to http://taralynnjohnson.blogspot.com/ . Now. Just don't look for Fortune Cookie Friday. On March 21, Tara chose an alternative distribution method. P.S. Have you visited http://taralynnjohnson.blogspot.com/ yet? If you did, perhaps you should visit it again. She may have posted something new in the last ten seconds.

Smorgasbord, including Angi Taylor news! Now that Blogpatrol is functional again, I can serve you by drawing upon my fount of all knowledge (old BBS joke) to answer those search requests that aren't necessarily fully answered in my blog. "evil baby" Dominican Republic doctor mother die end of the world (Yahoo) OK, maybe I can't help everyone. But perhaps Estephania, who named her blog after an applicable R.E.M. song, can help. Or perhaps not (old Usenet joke). "angi taylor" radio (Google) I FINALLY found something applicable. And yes, she is pregnant : Angi Taylor is expecting a baby girl in early April. The former Q102 morning co-host left the station in September, shortly after learning she was pregnant, to move to Chicago to be with boyfriend Dave Kampel. Taylor says she’s looking back wistfully on her bikini picture from Philadelphia magazine last summer “as it’s the only reminder of the body I once had.” She figured she’d chill for a while in Chicago...

Undeserved Popularity is Kewl, and Andrew Siciliano Can Be Funny Until other people realize that they have to select a new counter display to get their Blogpatrol working, I am up in the Top 100 list of Blogpatrol users. At the moment, the first 20 entries in the Top 100 display looks like this : The Top 100 Counters Of 15558 Users Site Hits Stats 1 http://www.thehustlerdiaries.blogspot.com/ 136029 View 2 http://alex.moskalyuk.com 125070 View 3 http://metamuse.blogspot.com 93474 4 http://nomilk.blogspot.com 78053 View 5 http://antithesis98.blogspot.com/ 74788 View 6 http://www.applianceblog.com 73256 7 http://helpmebubby.blogspot.com 59420 8 http://trevorcook.typepad.com/weblog 41691 View 9 http://www.warpedthoughts.com 40579 10 http://blogborygmi.blogspot.com 40502 View 11 http://evilsciencechick.blogspot.com 34759 View 12 http://cine.blogspot.com 32426 View 13 http://oemperor.blogspot.com/ 31916 14 http://webezi.com 26025 15 http://www.carreirasolo.org 24373 View 16 http://ww...

Rancho Cucamonga Quakes Radio Broadcasts According to the Sports page at the KWRM 1370 website, the first Rancho Cucamonga Quakes radio broadcasts in 2005 will be as follows: 4/7/2005 Thu RC Quakes @ Lake Elsinore Baseball 7pm 4/8/2005 Fri Lake Elsinore @ RC Quakes Baseball 9pm 4/9/2005 Sat Lake Elsinore @ RC Quakes Baseball 9pm 4/10/2005 Sun Lake Elsinore @ RC Quakes Baseball 2pm 4/11/2005 Mon Lancaster @ RC Quakes Baseball 7pm 4/12/2005 Tue RC Quakes @ Modesto Baseball 7pm 4/13/2005 Wed RC Quakes @ Modesto Baseball 7pm 4/14/2005 Thu RC Quakes @ Modesto Baseball 7pm 4/15/2005 Fri High Desert @ RC Quakes Baseball 930pm 4/16/2005 Sat High Desert @ RC Quakes Baseball 7pm 4/17/2005 Sun High Desert @ RC Quakes Baseball 2pm 4/18/2005 Mon Lake Elsinore @ RC Quakes Baseball 7pm 4/19/2005 Tue Lake Elsinore @ RC Quakes Baseball 7pm 4/20/2005 Wed Lake Elsinore @ RC Quakes Baseball 7pm Note that some of these games are tape delay due to other programming on KWRM.

Paradise Pier at night. At Disney's California Adventure. March 20, 2005.  

Paradise Pier at Disney's California Adventure. March 20, 2005. 

Paradise Pier at Disney's California Adventure. March 20, 2005. 

Paradise Pier at Disney's California Adventure. March 20, 2005. 

Paradise Pier at Disney's California Adventure. March 20, 2005. 

Ripped From This Week's Headlines Courtesy Annika and defamer.com , I have discovered the blog I'm Stuck in Rehab With Pat O'Brien . Sample entry : Played checkers with Pat O'Brien this morning. He's an intense competitor. Beat me four times in a row. I'm pretty good at checkers. It's rare that I get beaten. So I asked him what his secret was. "I pretend you are Mark McGrath," he said. "Oh," I said. "You ever play in any competitive checkers tournaments?" I asked. No answer. "You prefer checkers over chess?" I asked him. No answer. Instead he just sat there staring at me like he wanted to kick box. "You still pretending I'm Mark McGrath?" "Yes," he answered. Then Pat O'Brien buried his face in his hands and cried.

Update on Xuxa From (who else?) askmen.com : Maria da Graça Meneghel was born on March 27, 1963, in the town of Santa Rosa, a southern region of Brazil that was dominated by German and Italian immigrants. She was the youngest of seven children, five of whom survived. Big brother Bladimir gave her the moniker Xuxa, which stuck with her for life.... She knew she was big when the Brazilian edition of Playboy invited her for a photo shoot: in Brazil, posing for Playboy marks the pinnacle of a woman's career. She was only 20 when she was given her own variety TV show, Clube da Criança (Children's Club). She was an instant hit: her candor on camera and her way with kids (they all received kisses) caught the attention of Latin America's media giant, Globo TV. In 1985, Globo TV took her as its own.... For seven years, Xou da Xuxa, her daily program on Globo, was a fixture on television....Each year Xuxa released an album of songs, selling a total of 14 million copies. Her third vol...

Beastie Boys To put the following in context, I remember reading an issue of MAXIMUMROCKNROLL in the early 1980s in which many letter writers emphasized that the Beastie Boys could not be hardcore because they were Sexist and that was Not Allowed according to the stringent rules of hardcore. Needless to say, they survived. Incidentally, "Girls" is not one of my favorite songs from the Beastie Boys, to say the least. The Beastie Boys are kind of like Madonna - starting off OK, then really blowing your mind with their later efforts. Again, from amg : Diamond and Yauch formed the Beastie Boys...in 1981....The following year...the band met Horovitz....By early 1984...they had abandoned punk and turned their attention to rap. In 1984, the Beasties joined forces with producer Rick Rubin, a heavy metal and hip-hop fan who had recently founded Def Jam Records with fellow New York University student Russell Simmons. Def Jam officially signed the Beastie Boys in 1985, and that year the...

Golden Earring From amg : Best known in the U.S. for its hard rock material, Golden Earring has been the most popular homegrown band in the Netherlands since the mid-'60s, when they were primarily a pop group....1974's Moontan LP spawned the single "Radar Love," a Dutch number one, U.K. Top Ten, and U.S. number thirteen hit. The group toured America opening for the Doobie Brothers and Santana, but the lack of a follow-up ensured that their popularity remained short-lived in America....1982 saw a brief American comeback with the album Cut and the Top Ten single "Twilight Zone," but as before, Golden Earring could not sustain its momentum and faded away in the U.S. marketplace. Also see radar-love.net . Written by George Kooymans and Barry Hay, released by Golden Earring on their 1973 album Moontan, Radar Love is the highlight in Dutch 70's rock history....On this site you find information concerning 200+ cover versions of Radar Love by U2, R.E.M., Bryan A...

Sweet From amg : The new lineup of Sweet signed to RCA Records in 1971, where they were placed under the direction of songwriters Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman. Chinn and Chapman wrote a number of light bubblegum pop songs for the group....Following "Funny Funny," the duo wrote five more Top 40 hits for the group — including "Little Willy" and "Wig-Wam Bam" — which were all lightweight bubblegum numbers loaded with double entendres.... By the summer of 1974, the members of Sweet had grown tired of the control Chinn and Chapman exerted over their career and decided to record without the duo....In the spring of 1975, Sweet had their first self-penned hit with "Fox on the Run," which reached the Top Ten in both the U.K. and the U.S. There was also a completely different country song called "Fox on the Run," but I don't know the details.

The Power to See Your Vest From AP/Yahoo! : Online journalists who published secrets about Apple Computer Inc. filed an appeal Tuesday in a case that could have broad implications for the media. A California judge ruled March 11 that three independent online reporters may have to provide the identities of their confidential sources and that they weren't protected by "shield laws" that usually protect journalists. In December, Apple sued 25 unnamed individuals, called "Does" and believed to be Apple employees, who leaked specifications about a product code-named "Asteroid" to Monish Bhatia, Jason O'Grady and another person who writes under the pseudonym Kasper Jade. Their articles appeared in the online publications Apple Insider and PowerPage .... Cupertino-based company...attorneys demanded that the reporters identify their sources.... Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge James Kleinberg ruled in Apple's favor earlier this month, saying th...

Service Oriented Architecture (My White Album Strategy May Be Getting Unwieldy) (It's almost like "Pleasure Little Treasure," even - a bunch of junk thrown together with no apparent commonality. Oh well.) From webservices.xml.com : "Things should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." -- Albert Einstein.... Einstein made that famous statement many decades ago, and it's still relevant today for building superior software systems.... As we build more and more software systems, we see similar situations and patterns appearing. Naturally, we want to reuse the functionality of existing systems rather than building them from scratch.... [W]e cannot remove artificial dependencies, but we can reduce them. If the artificial dependencies among systems have been reduced, ideally, to their minimum, we have achieved loose coupling. In that sense, Einstein was just talking about was loose coupling. We might rework his famous principle thus: "Artificial depe...

Squirrels P.S. Yes, "Squirrels" is a parody . Lyrics aqui .

Lanes P.S. Dated information here .

Those Who Remember History Are Like Y'Know Really Really Old And Stuff From who2: Karen Ann Quinlan was the first modern icon of the right-to-die debate. The 21-year-old Quinlan collapsed at a party after swallowing alcohol and the tranquilizer Valium on 14 April 1975. Doctors saved her life, but she suffered brain damage and lapsed into a "persistent vegetative state." Her family waged a much-publicized legal battle for the right to remove her life support machinery. They succeeded, but in a final twist, Quinlan kept breathing after the respirator was unplugged. She remained in a coma for almost 10 years in a New Jersey nursing home until her 1985 death. Like Karen Ann Quinlan, Nancy Cruzan became a public figure after entering a "persistent vegetative state." A 1983 auto accident left Cruzan permanently unconscious and without any higher brain function, kept alive only by a feeding tube and steady medical care. Cruzan's family waged a legal battle to have ...