Behold! The United Nations is set to appoint an obscure Malaysian astrophysicist to act as Earth’s first contact for any aliens that may come visiting. Mazlan Othman, the head of the U.N.’s little-known Office for Outer Space Affairs (Unoosa), will describe her potential new role next week at a scientific conference at the Royal Society’s Kavli conference center in Buckinghamshire, England. She will tell delegates that the recent discovery of hundreds of planets around other stars has made the detection... Read more

has a seriously big bleg for a seriously ill, in fact dying, little girl. Read more

“Stupid is as sputid does.” Read more

Interesting piece here. Excerpt: In an article welcoming Benedict’s visit to Britain, the UK’s Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sachs observed, “Whether or not you accept the phrase ‘broken society,’ not all is well in contemporary Britain.” The facts cited by Sachs were sobering. In 2008, 45 percent of British children were born outside marriage; 3.9 million children are living in poverty; 20 percent of deaths among young people aged from 15 to 24 are suicides; in 2009, 29.4 million antidepressants were... Read more

Conference Applies Catholic Social Teaching STEUBENVILLE, OH—The Society of Catholic Social Scientists (SCSS) will hold its 19th annual national conference at Holy Cross College in South Bend, Indiana, on October 22-23, 2010. The conference will feature over 40 presentations by Catholic scholars and practitioners in the social sciences. They will present on a wide range of topics including “Tocqueville and Catholicism,” “Free Markets and Morality,” “Catholic Reflections on Psychology,” Pope Benedict’s encyclical Caritas in Veritate, “Law and the Social Order,”... Read more

First two things: I’m sure as a blogger you end up seeing pretty much the worst any group has to offer, be it the torture supporters, the ‘pro-Choice Catholics’, or now, Anti-Pants Jihadists. Second, I DO NOT think you’re trying to smear everyone who loves the old Mass as some kind of pants-hating, Bishop Williamson devotee. But I do wonder, have you ever met any normal people who love the traditional Mass? I’m not sure who these anti-pantsers are, or... Read more

A reader writes: My name is JP Brown and I actually met you once, along with Fr Shane Tharp, when you visited the University of Oklahoma for a series of talks several years ago (approx 2004?). In fact, I was the one who drove you back to the OKC airport after a failed attempt of trying to show you lingering tornado damage through Moore, OK. Haha. Anyway, I know you often post links and give your thumbs up to various... Read more

Helmz Deep is offering film and book reviews (including of John C. Wright’s Golden Age trilogy). Meanwhile, elsewhere in cyberspace, Fr. Victor Feltes undertakes the worthy task of Praying for Politicians. Read more

Today, my minions, I bid you ponder this quote, acquired from Mike Flynn, who has himself baptized a few aliens in his day: “Any entity – no matter how many tentacles it has – has a soul.” — Guy Consolmagno, one of the Vatican’s astronomers, on whether he would baptize an alien. Nitnoid theological point. It’s true that all living creatures have souls. A plant has the sort of soul proper to a plant, a dog has a doggy soul,... Read more

Jeepers, the guy is funny: The deer in the headlights look on some of the congressional faces is priceless, like those stony, aghast silences from the audience after the laugh lines from dancing Nazis in “The Producers”. “He has cast down the mighty in their arrogance and lifted up the lowly.” Anybody who can honor dirt poor farm laborers and make Congresscritters on both sides of the aisle look bad is okay in my book. Read more