About time!

I haven't sounded off about the Pope for a while, have I? Sorry about that, Romeboys. Anyway here's the conclusion of the editorial in the latest Tablet, much as I hate to say I told you so...

"John Paul II was perhaps the last Pope to embody the best of the Counter-Reformation tradition; Benedict XVI offers a link with far older roots of European civilisation such as those of the Fathers of the Church, and of the founders of European monasticism, like his namesake. That may give him a deeper insight into the European soul than his predecessor, and suggests this could be a much more creative and surprising papacy than many might at first have expected."

Bad Medicine

"Biochemist Martin J. Warren of the University of Kent and his colleagues studied five strands of George III's gray hair preserved at London's Science Museum. They concluded that the hair had an arsenic content of 17 parts per million — 17 times the level generally considered to indicate arsenic poisoning." -- The LA Times