Spectre’s Sayings

This was a moving story.

We can at least hope that tensions between China and the Vatican may ease because of this development. In Guangzhou (formerly Canton), China the Catholic Patriotic Association ordained Joseph Gan Junqiu bishop. What is unique about this development is that the 43 year old cleric has publicly declared his fidelity to the pope, as Benedict XVI asked of the Chinese bishops in a letter to the Chinese faithful earlier this year. Read the full story here and here.

There are two Christmas movies that I absolutely have to watch at least once every December. The first is The Muppet Christmas Carol directed by Brian Henson and starring Michael Caine and Jim Henson’s Muppets. It tells Charles Dickens’ traditional story, with slight changes and Muppet-esque jokes, of the redemption of a Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge. I love it.

The second movie that I absolutely must watch is another redemption story. I’m speaking, of course, of the 1966 animated version of Dr. Seuss’s How The Grinch Stole Christmas! which was voiced by the famous Boris Karloff. It’s also an excellent, excellent movie.

Dawn of the Dinosaurs: Life in the Triassic is not for the faint of heart. It’s not a book that “popularizes” science. It lacks too much in the way of description and illustration for that. And it’s not really a scholarly work that argues a thesis. It’s more of a catalogue of triassic fossils from around the world, or a superficial glance at the state of the science in the field. The illustrations by Douglas Henderson are exquisitely done, but are too infrequent to be of much aid to the text.

If you want to learn something new about the animals of the Triassic, you may just want to look for a different book.

Teen Loses Hand in Homemade Bomb Blast: I guess he won’t do that again. At least, I hope not.

The calendar tells me that Hannukah begins tonight, so my best wishes to any and all who celebrate it.

Granite City Food and Brewery has finally opened a new restaurant in East Peoria. Now, if they’d just keep moving south.

A 1904 Rolls-Royce two-seater broke auction records when it sold for (GBP) 3.5 million pounds. Larger picture here.

Remains of a bus-sized prehistoric “monster” reptile found on a remote Arctic island may be a new species never before recorded by science, researchers said Tuesday.