Don Singleton

La Shawn Barber posted an outstanding blog about:

I completely agree with LaShawn about people leaving a trackback that does not link to them. There are three related Pet Peeves of mine

• I hate it when a blogger quotes me but fails to leave a trackback so that I can know I was quoted.
• I hate it when a blogger does not provide me with the ability to leave a trackback. I hate to quote someone without leaving a TrackBack, but if they don’t give me the ability, I can’t very well leave one. Some don’t know how to enable TrackBacks (I helped one new blogger get set up with HaloScan trackback), but some have disable TrackBacks because of TrackBack Spam (this may be what LaShaws is upset about, and some don’t allow either comments or trackbacks - they expect you to read their thoughts, but don’t give you a way of indicating it when you agree or disagree with them
• The one that ticks me off the most is a site that supposedly allows trackbacks, but when you capture the URL and do the trackback, it gets errors. PowerLine is one site with a bad trackback.

Usually I just quote a few lines of a blogger’s post, but this one is so good I am going to post the entire thing, and not just in my primary blog, but I am also evaluating several blogging packages for an article in next month’s I/O Port Newsletter and I am going to post it in each of them, because when the readers of that article check out the sample sites I posted, I want to be sure they read her thoughts. I will only TrackBack the post from my main site, so as not to clutter up her TrackBack list with a bunch of duplicate posts, but I will TrackBack the posts on the evaluation blog packages to my post, if any one wants to see them.

Houston Chronicle reported The unanimous vote today by 130 cardinals to maintain public silence was unprecedented. But in an era of continuous news updates and constant speculation, Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls called the media ban an “act of responsibility.”

“The cardinals, after the funeral Mass of the Holy Father, began a more intense period of silence and prayer, in view of the conclave,” Navarro-Valls said. “They unanimously decided to avoid interviews and encounters with the media.”

This was a wise decision by the cardinals. I suspect many in the press were trying to influence the cardinals decision, and the cardinals should be listening to God, not to the press.

I am not Catholic, but I suspect many in the USA and Europe are going to be disappointed in the new Pope the cardinals will select. Many in the USA and Europe would like to see the Catholic Church lighten up on the strict discipline the John Paul II imposed, and they would like to see acceptance of abortion, a more lenient view of sexual orientation, and women becoming priests, but since John Paul II appointed almost all of the cardinals I suspect their selection will want to maintain the policies John Paul II believed in. Since church attendance has dropped of in the US and Europe I don’t think they are likely to select a Pope that will cater to people that don’t even attend Mass regularly. Rather I suspect the new Pope will come from the third world, where the largest increases in membership have come from — either Latin America or Africa. But whereever the new Pope comes from, I don’t expect the Cafeteria Catholics to approve of the selection.

I uploaded the TCS Logo

This Day In History

• 1847   Newspaperman Joseph Pulitzer was born in Hungary.
• 1849   Walter Hunt of New York City patented the safety pin.
• 1866   The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was incorporated.
• 1912   The luxury liner Titanic set sail from Southampton, England, on its ill-fated maiden voyage.
• 1925   ‘’The Great Gatsby,'’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald, was published.
• 1932   German president Paul von Hindenburg was re-elected; Adolf Hitler came in second in the voting.
• 1959   Japan’s Crown Prince Akihito married a commoner, Michiko Shoda.
• 1963   The nuclear-powered submarine USS Thresher and its crew of 129 was lost off Cape Cod, Mass.
• 1972   Some 70 nations, including the United States and the Soviet Union, signed an agreement banning biological warfare.
• 1974   Golda Meir announced her resignation as prime minister of Israel.
• 1981   Imprisoned IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands won election to the British Parliament.
• 1992   Financier Charles Keating Jr. was sentenced in Los Angeles to nine years in prison for swindling investors when his Lincoln Savings and Loan collapsed. (The convictions were later overturned).
• 1992   Comedian Sam Kinison was killed in a car crash at age 38.
• 1996   President Clinton vetoed a bill that would have outlawed a technique that opponents call ‘’partial-birth'’ abortion.
• 1998   Negotiators in Northern Ireland reached a landmark settlement that called for Protestants and Catholics to share power.
• 2001   Republican Jane Swift took office as the first female governor of Massachusetts.
• 2001   The Netherlands legalized mercy killings and assisted suicide for patients with unbearable, terminal illness.
• 2002   Eight Israelis were killed by a suicide bomber aboard a bus in Haifa.
• 2003   The House passed a bill creating a national Amber Alert system and strengthening child pornography laws.

• 1829   William Booth (founder of the Salvation Army; author: In Darkest England, The Way Out; died Aug 20, 1912)
• 1847   Joseph Pulitzer (publisher: St. Louis Dispatch, New York World; died in 1911: his will left $2 million for establishment of school of journalism at Columbia Univ. and a fund which established annual prizes for literature, drama, music and journalism; died Oct 29, 1911)
• 1915   Harry Morgan (Bratsburg) (Emmy Award-winning actor: M*A*S*H [1979-80]; Dragnet, You Can?t Take It with You, Pete and Gladys, HEC Ramsey, December Bride, The D.A., Aftermash)
• 1951   Steven Seagal (actor: Executive Decision, Under Siege series, On Deadly Ground, Out for Justice, Marked for Death, Hard to Kill, Above the Law)