or you Windows users out there, Microsoft recently released a free add-on for Windows XP and Vista called SteadyState. Whether you manage computers in a school computer lab or an Internet cafe, a library, or even in your home, Windows SteadyState helps make it easy for you to keep your computers running the way you want them to, no matter who uses them.

Briefly, SteadyState allows you to set up your computer as a shared workstation with multiple accounts so that others can use it. “But Windows already lets us do that!,” you say? True. But SteadyState is designed to allow you to easily specify what is allowed and forbidden for certain users, protecting those prying eyes from the dangers that lurk. And if you have a little hacker in the family (or perhaps a well-intentioned but computer-challenged and accident-prone friend or relative), you can protect your computer from system-wide changes.

Here is a sampling of the available features:

• Lock the profile down so that no settings are saved after use. This is good for a temporary “rubber room” to let kids explore, without worrying about the consequences.
• Limit the amount of time that a certain account has access to the internet or before logging-out altogether. Great for setting time limits for kids.
• Set Windows restrictions, such as blocking access to the Registry editor, Task Manager, Control Panel, etc.; preventing users from changing their passwords or locking the computer; and prevent access to certain drives and devices. You can even force all hard-disk writes to be saved to a cache file (serving as a pseudo disk and effectively protecting your real hard drive from being altered). You can later select whether to retain some of these changes or to dump the cache file altogether.
• Set feature restrictions: Lock-down the Internet, prevent downloading and installation of applications, etc. You can block certain programs from running (no chat clients? no games?). Sure, SteadyState lets you specify blacklisted web sites that are banned (and in combination with the aforementioned ScrubIT, you can sleep soundly knowing your kids are protected from the majority of internet threats) — but it also lets you limit Internet browsing to a selection of safe sites specified in a whitelist. Finally, to monitor what those shrewd kids have been up to, you can block access to Internet Explorer’s settings and prevent clearing of the system cache and browser history. (This feature does not work on other browsers, such as Firefox.)

Lifehacker has a screenshot tour of SteadyState, and there’s an interactive video on the SteadyState web site. You may download SteadyState for free here.

“Our issues this Sunday…”

With these four words, Tim Russert greeted millions of viewers each Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press for over 16 years.

Sadly, Mr. Russert collapsed on June 13, 2008, and died of a massive heart attack.

Fr. Richard John Neuhaus recently shared his thoughts:

The outpouring of tributes to Tim Russert on his death at age 58 was both surprising and well deserved. There was a palpable sense of guilt in the many descriptions of him by his colleagues in the commentariat. They frequently seemed to be saying that he was such a genuine human being uncompromised by stardom when the rest of them, having achieved only a small measure of his success, had become phonies of one kind of another. True, there were a few curmudgeons, such as Michael Kinsley, who accused Russert of “downward social climbing,” of playing the good ol’ boy shtick for all it was worth. As the show business adage has it, Once you’ve learned to fake sincerity, the rest comes easy. I don’t believe that about Tim Russert.

Indeed, Jon Meacham, who knew Mr. Russert well, summarized it well when he said that “Russert was one of the least self-important people in the capital.” Mr. Meacham is an Episcopalian and vestryman of the St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue, New York City, but seems to have an excellent understanding of how Mr. Russert was influenced and shaped by the 1950s Catholic culture of rust-belt Buffalo, New York:

It is not sentimental to say that Russert’s rise and reign can be best understood in the context of his religion, for his religion was not just a part of his life but his whole life, and his story is a common one for ethnic Roman Catholics of his generation.

To be a certain kind of Catholic in America in the years between, say, the death of Franklin Roosevelt and the election of Richard Nixon (to date it in a way Russert would have liked) was to be immersed not only in a faith but in a consuming culture. Protestants talked about “going to church.” Catholics spoke of “the Church.” Life revolved around sacraments and the schools, priests and nuns. One Christmas season I asked Russert how much of his childhood had resembled the movie Going My Way. “Just about all of it,” he replied.

Growing up on Kirkwood Drive in Buffalo, “Timmy” Russert attended mass at St. Bonaventure’s, where he also went to school. “In the altar-boy world, he was the No. 1 server,” recalled Patrick J. Griffin, a neighbor. “They always gave Timmy the prime mass. He got the 10 o’clock mass on a Sunday; we got the 6 o’clock mass on a Sunday. He was a cute little fellow, blond hair and blue eyes, and everybody liked him.”

There were crosses above the Russert kids’ beds, a portrait of Jesus and his Sacred Heart on the wall and a statue of the Blessed Virgin in the backyard; in May, the month of Mary, the family lit a candle every day. There was no meat on Fridays, and if someone lost something, Mrs. Russert prayed to St. Anthony of Padua, the patron of lost things. On Good Friday they re-enacted the Stations of the Cross. (”I remember, in seventh grade, kneeling in church from noon to three as a form of sacrifice,” Russert recalled in his memoir, Big Russ & Me. “It wasn’t easy.”) In second grade came first communion and the perils of the confessional. The priest’s face was hidden by a screen, and Russert did his homework even then. “We always prepared for confession by thinking of various sins we might have committed,” he recalled, “such as being mean to your sister or the always available wildcard sin of ‘impure thoughts’.” The rhythms and rituals of the church—communion, confession, absolution, catechism—were not exotic to Russert; they were givens, part of the air he breathed. …

He prepared for broadcasts the way he had prepared for mass back in his altar-boy days. “Part of your responsibility was to be punctual,” he wrote. Sometimes he had to go wake the assistant pastor, who liked his sleep; if Russert did not do what he was supposed to do, the service would not happen. “It all seemed so natural then, but when I look back on it, I’m struck by how much responsibility we had,” he wrote. “We weren’t even in high school yet, but age-old traditions with great meaning depended on our showing up on time and doing the job exactly right.”

Fr. Neuhaus continues,

These themes are evident in the book dedicated to his father, Big Russ and Me: Fathers and Sons, Lessons of Life. I ran into Russert and his father one day, and the latter told me, “He makes me look better than I am.” He really seemed to mean it and to be embarrassed about it. That, too, reflects a part of the Catholic culture with which Russert kept faith. …

From his Catholic faith and from Big Russ, Tim Russert learned the “lessons of life” that enabled him, and can help the rest of us, to survive the follies of life with a measure of equanimity and with uncompromised conviction. John Meacham writes that Russert believed that there are three really big things: God, human folly, and laughter. The first two surpass human understanding, so in our humbled state we should make the most of the third.

Meet the Press paid Mr. Russert a heart-felt tribute recently. The episode opens with the familiar opening fade-in of his (now empty) desk and chair.

To view and read more tributes, MSNBC has created a Remembering Tim Russert site.

nce upon a time, Miserere.org had something called VisualStyles — alternate CSS stylesheets for your web browser that would allow you to view the site in one of various designs and colors. Approximately 5 different styles were created: Of course, there was the traditional Pietà black-and-white theme that’s been with Miserere.org since its conception (and upon which the present design is based), but there were also some strikingly different themes, including a Brown Scapular theme (beige and brown), an Agony in the Garden theme (green), a Madonna col Bambino theme (lavendar and violet), and a Sacred Heart theme (red).

Over time, as Miserere.org grew iteratively and organically, eventually, the site’s code needed to be tidied up. This required a complete rehauling of the site’s graphics and design.

Since redoing all the themes at the same time would have required too much work, I started by just redoing my personal favorite, the black-and-grey theme. To add a new twist to it, I made it appear as if the content area were a pane of translucent grey glass, overlying a background. The art behind the glass (the “Last Judgment” by Michelangelo) is blurred beneath the glass. The beauty behind this theme is that the background artwork can be changed easily, so refreshing the theme is quick and painless. One idea I had was to make the artwork coincide with the liturgical seasons or with specific feast days.

While I really like the blurred glass theme, I also missed the “crispness” of the original theme, as well as the diversity of the other visual styles. And thus, I decided to remake some of them. To start, I have recreated the traditional black-and-grey theme. It is now activated by default, but you may activate the transparent glass theme by clicking on the appropriate icon in the menu bar at the top. Your setting is remembered by your browser (using cookies), so the next time you view the site, it will use your preferred stylesheet.

As time allows, I’ll create some other themes, and these will be listed in the menu bar.

On First Things’ The Catholic Thing web magazine, Brad Miner, former literary editor of National Review and author of the excellent and highly recommended The Compleat Gentleman: The Modern Man’s Guide to Chivalry, shares his view of sprezzatura, grace and gentlemanliness.

What was once called sprezzatura, a wonderful word coined by the sixteenth-century writer Baldassare Castiglione, is a kind of graceful restraint that is an elemental characteristic of true civility. It helped define Western ideas about the gentleman, and it helped strangers to manage the slow transition to friendship. Yet today many people — too many — believe in casual and even instant intimacy. They think it’s perfectly acceptable to say the first thing that pops into their heads and to confess their darkest secrets to folks they have just met. …

Nothing — and I mean nothing — is more destructive of civility than notions of instant intimacy: the way we immediately address one another by our first names; the way we share intimate facts about our lives with strangers; the way some clothing displays nudity.

The handshake developed as a way strangers could show themselves unarmed. It was a sensible and cautious first step towards friendship. We do well to remember that intimacy must be a process, a negotiation, and that who meets a stranger and jumps quickly into bed, so to speak, has a better than even chance of waking up next to an enemy.

Baldassare Castiglione was born to a noble family near Mantua, Lombardy (in present-day Italy) in 1478. At the age of 16, he began his humanist studies in Milan. By 1516, Castiglione became advisor to Pope Leo X and continued to serve as advisor and Apostolic nuncio (to Madrid, Toledo, Seville and Granada) under Pope Clement VII. Castiglione wrote several works, ranging from books and letters to poems, but his most famous book, Il Cortegiano (The Book of the Courtier), was published in Venice in 1528, the year before his death.

As Brad Miner comments, The Book of the Courtier “was considered revolutionary in its time,” yet even today it has a surprising freshness and undeniable relevance. Castiglione based his notion of sprezzatura upon Cicero’s Stoic concept of neglentia diligens, or studied negligence, combining it with an Aristotelian drive for arete, or excellence. He described that a complete gentleman should be educated and fashioned to be a balance between things martial (athleticism, courage, military prowess) and artistic (knowledge, art, manners). Mr. Miner describes this as attaining the “golden mean” in all things — for example, courage being the mean between rashness and cowardice, and the proper degree of liberality as being the mean between extravagance and parsimony. And overlying it all is the concept of sprezzatura — a seeming effortlessness or grace derived from talent and ability, but with a notable self-restraint and sense of moderation that derives from the virtue of humility, which is the foundation of all other virtues.

To read more about sprezzatura and the making of the “compleat gentleman,” check out Brad Miner’s The Compleat Gentleman: The Modern Man’s Guide to Chivalry. An interview with the author is posted at the Catholic Educational Resource Center.

Yesterday, Mozilla released Firefox 3, a major update to its popular web browser. This open-source project is the culmination of three years of work by thousands of contributing developers and testers. The most dramatic change that users will notice is that it is roughly three times faster than Firefox 2 — but version 3 boasts over 15,000 improvements ranging from aesthetic integration with the operating system to a revolutionary smart bar (that learns from your browsing habits to make frequently used features more accessible) to virus/malware/phishing protection to improved memory management and more.

With the release of Firefox 3, Microsoft has its work cut out for itself as it struggles to improve and refine its Internet Explorer browser (version 7, released last year, is a respectable upgrade from IE6; version 8 is expected next year).

To learn more, go to the Firefox 3 feature page. Ready to upgrade? Download Firefox 3 for free here.

any of you might read First Things, a premier journal of religion, culture and public life, edited by Fr. John Neuhaus. Many of you might even subscribe (only $19.⁹⁵/year). Many of you might already frequent the First Things blog or take advantage of On the Square, where you can read selected new articles for free even before they appear in print.

For those of you who dislike First Things’ strongly ecumenical and interfaith positions — or for those of you who love everything about the journal and hunger for more — you may be interested in The Catholic Thing. This new web site is run by First Things and features content by many First Things contributors but focuses on a strictly Catholic perspective. In their own words,

A portion of what we do at First Things is the Catholic thing, but obviously it’s also the Protestant thing, the Jewish thing, and the Islamic thing, too. But a new web-zine has just been launched focusing on — and appropriately titled — The Catholic Thing. … Check it out every day for new commentary by Hadley P. Arkes, Jason Boffetti, George Marlin, Ralph McInerny, Michael Novak, Robert Royal, Austin Ruse, William L. Saunders, and Michael Uhlmann.

Ignatius Press has just launched a new series called the Ignatius Critical Editions. Just like the Norton Critical Editions (with which you may be more familiar), the Ignatius Critical Editions will take important classics and present them with annotations and critical essays — from a traditional (orthodox) Catholic perspective. This year, Ignatius Press will release Shakespeare’s King Lear, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.

According to Ignatius Press,

The Ignatius Critical Editions represent a tradition-oriented alternative to popular textbook series such as the Norton Critical Editions or Oxford World Classics, and are designed to concentrate on traditional readings of the Classics of world literature. Whereas many modern critical editions have succumbed to the fads of modernism and post-modernism, this series will concentrate on tradition-oriented criticism of these great works. Edited by acclaimed literary biographer, Joseph Pearce, the Ignatius Critical Editions will ensure that traditional moral readings of the works are given prominence, instead of the feminist, or deconstructionist readings that often proliferate in other series of ‘critical editions’. As such, they represent a genuine extension of consumer-choice, enabling educators, students and lovers of good literature to buy editions of classic literary works without having to ‘buy into’ the ideologies of secular fundamentalism. The series is particularly aimed at tradition-minded literature professors offering them an alternative for their students. The initial list will have about 15-20 titles. The goal is to release three books a season, or six in a year.

I think this goal is quite laudable — not to mention necessary.

The series is edited by professor and accomplished author, Joseph Pearce, who was recently interviewed by the Ignatius Insight blog:

Ignatius Insight: How did the Ignatius Critical Editions [ICEs] come about?

Pearce: The idea for the Ignatius Critical Editions arose from the frustration I felt at the pernicious nonsense that is published as “criticism” in the standard critical editions of great works of literature. Specifically I was annoyed at the plethora of feminism, “queer theory” and “gender studies” that is seemingly omnipresent in mainstream editions. I resented ordering these editions as set texts for my students at Ave Maria University. Why should my students be affronted with this rubbish? Such were my thoughts and this was the genesis of the idea for the ICEs.

Ignatius Insight: What is the main purpose of the ICEs? What particular need or niche do the books fill?

Pearce: It seemed to me that what was needed was a new range of critical editions in which tradition-oriented criticism would take precedence over the fads and fashions of postmodernity. Such a series would offer a real choice to Christian and other non-secularist professors and students. Thankfully, Father Fessio and his colleagues at Ignatius Press shared this vision and gave me the go-ahead for the series. I would add, however, that I hope that Ignatius Press’s customers will also buy these editions. They are an excellent way of becoming introduced to the great works of Christian culture, enabling them to read the text of the work with the assistance of an introduction and a selection of critical essays on the work by leading academics.

Ignatius Insight: How are the books for ICE being chosen? What are some future titles?

Pearce: We aim to publish six titles a year in the hope that we can have ICEs for most of the “Great Books” of western civilization in twenty or thirty years. It’s an ambitious project! At present, the plan is to publish two Shakespeare plays and four other works each year. The first three titles, launched this spring, are King Lear, Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights. The next six are Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, Pride and Prejudice, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Scarlet Letter and Huckleberry Finn. Other titles planned in the near future include Macbeth, Measure for Measure, The Romantic Poets, The Canterbury Tales, A Tale of Two Cities, Robinson Crusoe, Beowulf, The Consolation of Philosophy, and The Metaphysical Poets.

Ignatius Insight: Are you writing all of the commentary/introductions, or are others involved? What sort of format is being used?

Pearce: I have written the introductions to four of the first six editions but we will be finding the most appropriate scholars to write the introductions. This project is much bigger than any one individual. For example, I am honored to have enlisted the talents of Mary Reichardt, editor of the two-volume Encyclopedia of Catholic Literature, as the editor of The Scarlet Letter and Huckleberry Finn, and I have enlisted the gifted and widely-published medievalist, David Williams, as the editor of The Canterbury Tales, The Consolation of Philosophy, and Beowulf. The format consists of an original introduction, the full newly-annotated text of the work, and a selection of new critical essays. Some editions will also include a selection of older “classic” criticism.

More about the Ignatius Critical editions can be found on the Ignatius Press web site.