Excellent summary of the Conservative position on the Ground Zero Mosque

I am not exactly sure what I'd do as the mayor of NYC with the current situation. But, I must admit I have a lot of sympathy for this kind of thinking. Freedom of Religion is a cornerstone of our society... but so is consideration for others.

"But if they moved it somewhere else, we would put up a prime building for these people," he said. "Hell, you could do it next to my house in Rockaway Beach, I would be fine with it. But I'm not fine with it where blood has been spilled."

Remember, your GPS is not infallible

I love GPS technology. Unlike the rest of my family, I have NO sense of direction and a mental block against remembering street names. So my Garmin Nuvi 780 (and the Navigon app on my iPhone) have saved me from any number of near-disasters trying to get from point A to point B. But I am almost an Information Technology professional, and therefore know any system is only as reliable as the worst programmer/engineer/tester working on it. So, I always remember to question the device and not assume it has more common sense than I do.

In Oregon, GPS systems can direct drivers to thousands of miles of Forest Service logging roads that lace the state's mountain ranges. In the winter, they are often plugged with snow.
On Christmas Day, a Nevada couple took one such road in Evinger's County and spent three days stuck. They were rescued when a break in atmospheric conditions allowed them to signal their coordinates to 911.
Three Portlanders and their small dog got into trouble Monday when their vehicle slid off a forest road as they were using GPS directions to a hot springs in the southern Willamette Valley. Lane County officials said the three and the dog were exhausted and mildly hypothermic after walking 17 miles without survival gear to get into cell phone range and call 911.
Griffin's family was rescued when friends and relatives used a GPS like Griffin's and duplicated the route they assumed the family had plotted. That led them straight to the family. The three had been stuck about 24 hours.

Remember, whenever possible, double-check the GPS route against the map, and be especially aware that the GPS has no idea about the capabilities of - or lack thereof - your particular vehicle.

Don't panic over Swine Flu "Pandemic"

Since I was mostly out-of-pocket this weekend, I was unable to post. But it was interesting to watch on my iPhone's browser as the swine flu repots swelled from concern to panic to pandemic in about 72 hours. Currently, the latest news/rumor is that the World Health Organization is ready to declare the Mexican swine flu to be a pandemic. Why, exactly, it is a "pandemic" at this point is unclear, since the spread appears to be moderate.

The WHO raised its pandemic alert level for the swine flu virus to phase 4, indicating a significantly increased risk of a pandemic, a global outbreak of a serious disease.

The last such outbreak, a "Hong Kong" flu pandemic in 1968, killed about 1 million people.

Although the new flu strain has so far killed people only in Mexico, there were more than 40 confirmed cases in the United States, including 20 at a New York City school where eight cases were already identified.

At this point, the unique point about this flu is that there is no vaccine for it. Therefore, your best strategies to avoid infection are the usual ones: (1) try to stay healthy - eat well, get plenty of sleep, (2) avoid people who are known to be sick with the flu, and (3) if you are sick, try to stay home rather than "working through it" in the office, which is likely to spread the virus farther. People are making much of the fact that 149 people have died from the disease, but remember that millions die annually from the flu despite vaccines, and most of those are because people were already in a weakened condition.

Fight the panic with facts, and take care of yourself. Those are your best bets.

A priest's advice on finding a spouse

It is funny how UNcommon it is to find COMMON sense in the world. But here is advice from a celibate, unmarried priest on what to look for in a spouse. It comes not from direct experience, but from watching happy and miserable parishioners. Funny how simple and logical it all is.

“Don’t marry a problem character thinking you will change him. He’s a heavy drinker, or some other kind of addict, but if he marries a good woman, he’ll settle down. People are the same after marriage as before, only more so.

“Take a good, unsentimental look at his family — you’ll learn a lot about him and his attitude towards women. ...I remember counseling a pious Catholic woman that it might not be prudent to marry a pious Muslim, whose attitude about women was very different. Love trumped prudence; the annulment process was instigated by her six months later.

What do our married (and formerly married) readers think? Good advice? Do you have any more for we singletons?