A post to throw out some recent links

Horrific recipe cards from 1974. These literally made me laugh until my sides ached.

Also via Sancte Pater is a story about Voyager 2 still going strong. I had thought it was kaput when I heard a few months ago that it was transmitting gibberish back to Earth, but engineers were able to fix the problem-- a flipped bit.

Cool fact: my father, Don Gray, was chief navigator of Voyager 2 during its heyday, which means he was head of the big team of people calculating the equations that would save power by slingshotting it from one planet to another.

Quotes from Benedict XVI on the traditional Latin Mass, reminding me that I love him and want to read a lot more of his writings and speeches, because I'm impressed whenever I do. He's intelligent, understands the motivations of others, and writes in an irenic, measured way, yet without pulling any punches. His long speech from 1998 surprised me in parts, for example when he says, "the disappearance of the old liturgical books was of no importance in many countries and caused no sorrow."

Elizabeth Scalia and Jennifer Fulwiler have similar takes on church sex abuse scandals: good and evil living side by side. Jesus said something about that too.

Martyr priests of the Mexican Revolution. One little detail that stood out was a soldier who refused to participate in a firing squad to execute one of the priests. He was executed himself. I'm sure none of the soldiers knew they'd face such an agonizing choice that day-- God grant me the grace to be like the one who had conviction.

Reminds me of a story, I can't remember from where, about a group of Christian martyrs in the very early centuries. It was cold and snowy, and Roman soldiers forced them into a lake to freeze to death. They also built a fire and said that anyone who denied God could come get warm and save his life. One of them did, but the rest were so joyful about dying for their faith that one of the Roman soldiers suddenly declared himself a Christian and threw himself into the freezing lake with them.

Naughty boys in 1909.