GinohnNews

The only thing I can remember that we did the week before was go up to Columbia to go to House of India for dinner. We met Dave and Izolda there. This was the place that we'd stumbled upon a few years back and wanted to go back for their mulligatawny soup ever since. But we couldn't remember what it was called or where it was. I came upon a brochure while going through an old pile of papers, so we decided to go.

And wouldn't you know it, the soup wasn't the same. It didn't even look the same color. Not worth the drive, but a nice Indian restaurant all the same. I keep hoping some Indian restaurant will come out with low fat (read - oil) dishes. I decided after that visit that I just can't eat Indian food anymore. It's much too oily, and upsets my stomach (read - acid reflux). But I'm okay with that. Even though Indian used to be my favorite (until I discovered Thai). Maybe one day I can learn to cook some Indian dishes and cut the oil back. Way back.

Here are some recipes I made last week that were very good and not too far off my healthy diet! Vegan Cheese Ball - I've made this twice without bothering with balling it up and rolling it in anything. We just eat it like a spread and it's great. Ultimate Low Fat Brownie Cookies - I probably should have made sure the flax was well ground because some of these tasted a bit too flax-y, but John, Dave, and Izolda loved them.

On Friday we went to the Hoff to see Across the Universe. I hadn't seen it even though I'm a big Beatles fan, because it hadn't gotten good reviews. But I really enjoyed it and even thought some of the sequences were fantastic. I'd even seen it again!

Then we headed to the New Deal for a First Friday gathering. Luckily for us, there was also a Samba dancer who'd put on a show before we got there but lots of people were dancing. It was a very fun atmosphere and I danced a lot with Alfredo. Good times.

Saturday I had to get up early for Greenbelt Om duties, and had been up very late the night before. Then we went to a Ground Hog Day party at Mike R.'s I ate a cookie shaped like a ground hog.  John and I were both tired so we went home early and I slept all afternoon and then got up to go to Pirate Feast. I never get any information about the event even though I volunteer to help bar wench every year to pay my admission. I found out about it two days before when people started asking if I was going. So I got there around 8 thinking it prolly started around 7, but found out it started at 5. There was still plenty of food and I ate and relaxed a bit before tending the bar the rest of the night (with Izolda, among others) and then helping clean up.

J: News item:

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) -  Pope Benedict said on Thursday that embryonic stem cell research, artificial insemination and the prospect of human cloning had "shattered" human dignity.

In an address to members of the Vatican department on doctrinal matters, Benedict said the Church had a duty to defend the "great values at stake" in the field of bioethics.

The speech was the latest in a series in which the conservative Pope has told his listeners that scientific progress should not be accepted uncritically.

I would like to propose that Religion be given the same amount of skepticism and scrutiny that we already afford Science. If scientific progress deserves criticism, then surely religious stagnation deserves the same. I would rather my ethics were decided by my own conscience (informed with everchanging scientific knowledge) than dictated by dogma and one guy in Rome. If your ethics are decided by one guy, who's to say you won't get another Pope Leo XII?

G. S. Godkin on Pope Leo XII:

He was a ferocious fanatic, whose object was to destroy all the improvements of modern times, and force society back to the government, customs, and ideas of mediaeval days. In his insensate rage against progress he stopped vaccination; consequently, small-pox devastated the Roman provinces during his reign, along with many other curses which his brutal ignorance brought upon the inhabitants of those beautiful and fertile regions. He curtailed the old privileges of the municipalities, granted new privileges to the religious communities, and enlarged the power of the clergy to the extent that bishops and cardinals had the power of life and death in their hands. He set the Inquisition to work with new vigour; and though torture had been nominally abolished in 1815, new kinds of torment were invented, quite as effectual as the cord, the thumbscrew, and the rack of old times. He renewed the persecution of the Jews; drove them back into the Ghetto from whence they had begun to emerge, rebuilt its walls, and had them locked in at night; and issued an edict ordering all Israelites to sell their goods within a given time on pain of confiscation. [G. S. Godkin, Life of Victor Emmanuel II, Macmillan, (1880), pp. xiii-xiv]