Pope John Paul II, the Polish pontiff who led the Roman Catholic Church for more than a quarter century and became history's most-traveled pope, has died at 84, the Vatican announced in an e-mail Saturday.

Wouldn't it be great if you can buy a food product in the supermarket where you can pronounce all the ingredients without a degree in chemistry.

Wouldn't it be great if you could visit Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Disneyland, New York City and buy a souvenir that's not made in China. This is true for most place you visit on Vacation.

Rodney Dangerfield died yesterday. I had the opportunity to see him in 1998 in Vegas. I was lucky enough to sit in the first row and had a great time at his show. Later I ordered one of his classic red ties and still have the delivery box that it came in.

Rodney will be missed.

From the AP:

Dangerfield is most remembered for 1980's "Caddyshack," in which he held his own with such comics as Chevy Chase, Ted Knight and Bill Murray.

After "Caddyshack," Dangerfield continued starring in and sometimes writing films such as "Easy Money," "Back to School," "Moving," "The Scout," "Ladybugs" and "Meet Wally Sparks." He turned dramatic as a sadistic father in Oliver Stone's 1994 "Natural Born Killers."

In 1995, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences rejected Dangerfield's application for membership.

It was the ultimate rejection, and Dangerfield played it to the hilt. Public reaction prompted the academy to reverse itself and offer membership. Dangerfield declined.

"They don't even apologize or nothing," he said. "They give no respect at all -- pardon the pun -- to comedy."

The state Supreme Court ruled today that Pennsylvania's drunken driving law can't be enforced against people on horseback, a decision that inspired the dissenting justice to wax poetic.

Here is the poem that Justice Michael Eakin, who is fond of writing rhyming opinions, summed up the lone dissent with two stanzas mimicking the theme song of "Mister Ed" -- a 1960s TV sitcom about a talking horse:

"A horse is a horse, of course, of course, but the Vehicle Code does not divorce its application from, perforce, a steed as my colleagues said. "'It's not vague,' I'll say until I'm hoarse, and whether a car, a truck or horse this law applies with equal force, and I'd reverse instead."

This past week I have been working on getting some new audio into the Real Audio section. Part of this project was to create a way for me to insert the new audio and yesterday I was able to finish that part of the project.

So over the next few weeks you should see a lot of new content in the Real Audio section. I have lots of sound bytes that I want to put up.

Some people want to know why I selected Real Audio as the audio format. In 1996 I purchased an audio package, Sound Edit Pro, and it included a Real Audio encoder. At the time Real Audio was the most popular format for streaming audio, so that's what I choose. With more people today using broadband, there's lots of choices of streaming media. So, I don't know how long I keep using Real Audio format, but for now, that's my choice.