The Catholic Archdiocese of Boston Invents a New Sin. I must say that I had always thought that by the time I reached 40 I would have heard about or thought of every possible kind of sin. But the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston has proved me wrong. I had never thought of: "Reaching out" to the victims of sexual abuse by priests, telling them that the church cares about them, suggesting that they get therapy and counseling. Offering to pay for the therapy. Then subpoenaing the therapists, trying to trying to break the confidentiality of the patient-therapist relationship, in the hope of learning something (a) that will weaken the victim's case in court, or (b) that would be so embarrassing if it were revealed in court that the plaintiff can be induced to drop or cheaply settle his or her legal case. [Semi-Daily Journal]

A wonderful example of how doing the correct thing in a legal setting is devastating in a moral sense. For the Archdiocese to ask people to seek therapy, to pay for that therapy then to sit smugly while the lawyers it has hired supeona those therapy records is the height of arrogance. They may win the battle but have already lost the war! Why in the world would you ever believe that the leaders of this Archdiocese are really interested in anything but their own secular reputation? Something that is in increasing tatters. Their money would have been much better spent hiring effective marketing people than lawyers. The lawyers are only doing their job. They are not doing anything unethical or illegal. The lawyers are only concerned with getting innocent decisions for the Church, at ANY cost. I do not really think that that is what this Archdiocese wants but I guess we will find out. I do not think that this current approach will win them any friends. This is back to the old 'embarrass the rape victim enough and she won't bring any charges' approach to defending a client.  9:14:35 PM    

Topic Drift in Comments. Looking back over the comments, it seems to me that they suffer at times from excessive topic drift. I've had a bunch of complaints that clicking on "comments" links gets one a discussion that has very little to do with the post... So I'm going to start pruning topics not just for personal attacks on other participants in the discussion, and not just for gross misrepresentations of matters of fact, but also for germaneness. As always, the decision of the... [Semi-Daily Journal]

One of the things that having comments produces -drift. Along with flame wars, this is one of the things that quickly lowers the amount of signal in a site. Weblogs help reduce this a lot.  9:00:27 PM    

Serious TiVo Head. The New York Times's David Pogue has become a serious TiVo head. He sounds as though this technology has truly changed his life... Tomorrow's TiVos January 16, 2003 Tomorrow's TiVos By DAVID POGUE ttending the Consumer Electronics Show, as I did last week, is an exhausting proposition. Sane people fill the days with meetings and dinners; extremists like me actually walk to all 2,200 booths. My feet may never recover. As I wrote in today's paper, there was plenty to... [Semi-Daily Journal]

OhMiGod!! 145 hours of recordable space on a TiVo. I may have to check this out. Plus the ability to listen to music from my Mac. I have ALL my music as MP3s on an external 80 Gb hard drive. Having the ability to play this easily through my home system, really nice. I may have to spring for another TiVo, maybe another DirectTv receiver included.  8:57:03 PM