Following the example of the locals

TRH the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge recently spent some time in Brisbane on their way back from a tour of the Pacific Islands.

To be precise they spent 90 minutes.

Commander Bill King

A lot of the Daily Telegraph military obituaries are of blokes who did something fantastically heroic at Arnhem, then went home, became accountants and grew roses for the rest of their lives. Commander Bill King...not so much:

The despotism of Gregorian chant

In advance of our wedding, my wife and I agreed that I would be responsible for making decisions about the liturgy. I reached for the Roman Gradual and started selecting chants. We hired a church musician to put together a choir (he wept for joy when we told him what we wanted) and who helped us with choosing some polyphony.

The Prince of Wales, the German Bishops, and Cardinal Newman

The Daily Telegraph in London is held up as a conservative newspaper. It is far more conservative than any Australian daily. And yet in a piece dated 3rd October 2012 (£1m from those who die without wills passes to Prince Charles's estate) we find this:

More than £1 million has passed to the Prince of Wales’s Duchy of Cornwall estate in the last six years from people who died without making a will or having an heir, latest accounts show. Under powers dating back to medieval times, the Duchy is entitled to all unclaimed property and estates left when someone dies in Cornwall, in an arrangement known as bona vacantia. In the last financial year alone, £552,000 passed to the Duchy under the ancient law, which was put in place when the Duchy was created by Edward III in 1337 for his son and heir, Edward, the Black Prince.

Note the oogedy boogedy of "dating back to medieval times" and all that crap about the Black Prince. This is not some part-time hack. The author is Gordon Rayner "Chief Reporter". Note the sense that this is all something rather strange and peculiar. It may not help matters to observe that bona vacantia is in fact a concept far older than the Middle Ages, something that can be confirmed by the obscure modern practice of looking things up on Google.

Religious differences

Further to yesterday's post, somebody recently sent me this video. I had never heard of Emo Philips. I like the cultural translation of famous horses' names in the subtitles.

Cats and Dogs

A while ago somebody sent me this video of a dog discovering all the bacon is gone.

A very long memorial service

From NASA's Image of the Day Gallery:

Armstrong Memorial Service

Attendees of the memorial service for Neil Armstrong sing a hymnal, Thursday, Sept. 13, 2012, at the Washington National Cathedral. Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon during the 1969 Apollo 11 mission, died Saturday, Aug. 25. He was 82.