Wednesday, November 30, 2005

How to eat sushi

Personally, I am not that fond of sushi, but my husband loves it, and gets it when we go to Manila....

This is part five, with links to the first four posts...(heads up from Duediligance blog)



"How sushi touches the soy sauce before it goes into your mouth. This may be surprising, but you should dip the fish side, not the rice, into the soy sauce. Many people in Japan do not know this, either, but this is critical in good sushi eating. How you do it, however, is a little tricky.

When you pick up a sushi piece using your thumb, first and second fingers, you just turn it over so that the sushi piece is almost upside down. If you are using chopsticks, you might first want to knock down the sushi piece sideways, so that you only need to twist your wrist 90 degrees to dip the sushi upside down into soy sauce..

When you touch the soy sauce with sushi, it has to be quick, almost like a fish jumping up from between the waves. You do not soak sushi in soy sauce. Sushi is after all about freshness and liveliness. So, remember, if your sushi piece resembles yourself in a bathtub on weekends, resting comfortably in liquid very long, you have done it incorrectly.

Many sushi connoisseurs say that it is the fish side, again, that first touches your tongue when eating. This way, you can enjoy the taste and the texture of the fish well with some flavors of soy.

See also Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 of the series.


Noriko Takiguchi's blog

Galeras threat lower

PASTO, Colombia - Authorities on Friday lowered the threat level for a volcano in southwestern Colombia, a day after an eruption covered a nearby city in ash and forced the evacuation of thousands of people.

The 14,110-foot Galeras volcano appeared to be settling down, but the risk of further eruptions remained, said Julian Villaruel of Colombia's Volcanology Institute.

Several thousand families living in the volcano's shadow streamed out of the region after the eruption at dawn Thursday. The families had defied an earlier evacuation order. Officials were providing temporary shelter at a nearby tent camp and deployed police to abandoned villages to prevent looting.

Tolkien Encyclopedia


For those of you who can't figure out if Ugluk is a uruk hai or a regular orc....

Hint he captured Merry and Pippin...LINK

Internet censorship

I ran across rumors of this a couple days ago, but finally found a blog with links.

Global Voices Online, a website that is "sponsored by and launched from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School" describes a head-on collision between the Third World blogosphere and Third World courts.

The blog of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, or PCIJ, has made history — of sorts. Last week, the PCIJ was served with a court order to remove this Aug. 12, 2005 post related to an ongoing political scandal. ...

(it seems that while investigating the "hello garci" tapes, they mentioned someone had two wives, so the Philippine court forced them to remove the whole entry on their blog)....

Before anyone laughs too loudly, it is well to go to the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) project of the United Nations website, which is embarked on a crusade to liberate the Internet from United States nongovernance....

Summary: if the courts can remove a political post for insulting one of the wives, then soon they will find excuses to remove or govern all political posts...and the UN and the dictatorships trying to take over the web will allow such things to be done legally...

Matt drudge call your office...

Crafts on line

It's a slow news day, so I thought that I'd put up a playset to download...via boing boing

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Dophins take two

"It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much -- the wheel, New York, wars and so on -- whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons. "
Other quotes from Adams:

All it takes to fly is to hurl yourself at the ground... and miss.

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.
Capital letters were always the best way of dealing with things you didn't have a good answer to.
Very deep. You should send that into Reader's Digest, they've got a page for people like you.

The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second-rate technology, led them into it in the first place.

I really didn't foresee the Internet. But then, neither did the computer industry. Not that that tells us very much, of course - the computer industry didn't even foresee that the century was going to end.

My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fibre, and that I am therefore excused from saving Universes.


It is not the fall that kills you. It's the sudden stop at the end.

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

Dolphin therapy


The BMJ just published an article saying that if you take people with mild to moderate depression, fly them to an exotic tropical resort and let them pet dolphins, they will improve...

Duh...mild to moderate depression has a high rate of spontaneous resolution (translated: people get down sometimes, but most get over it without treatment). Or as one commenter dryly remarked: "paper shows that single depressed women who want to try swimming with dolphins as therapy, actually feel less depressed if they are allowed to do this than if they are disapointed by being allocated to a control group." ...anther remarked: Douglas Adams was right...

Wonder if a kitten would be more cost effective?

Douglas Adams call your office

King Kong, Garci, and other trivia

Right now, Harry Potter is big in Manila, and I just saw the first advertisement for King Kong on tv....

I doubt I will see them at the theatre, but they will have pirated copies on sale on the street by next week...right next to the "hello Garci" tapes...

And this being the Philippines, where even the maids carry cellphones and text constantly, the newest craze is "hello Garci" ringtones for your cellphone.. there are quite a few, as you can see, but the most popular one is here.MP3HERE

Of course, Garci is now out of hiding and saying that Gloria really didn't steal the election....he was merely hiding out because of death threats....

More HERE on Garci...

Sunday, November 27, 2005

Yum...Turducken

Oh, and what's a Turducken?
For those of you who aren't from Louisiana or versed in the new yuppie sport I have dubbed Extreme Eating*, a Turducken is Old MacDonald's farm on your plate: a chicken ... stuffed inside a duck ... stuffed inside a turkey ... with three sausage and shellfish dressings packed between the layers.


Philippine doctors and nurses

The NYTimes is worried about Filippine doctors and nurses going abroad...

The key paragraph is this one:

But above all, the study found, salaries were a major factor, averaging $3,000 to $4,000 a month, compared with $180 to $220 a month in the Philippines.

Duh...
We pay our maids 100 pesos a day, plus room and board...that comes to 60 dollars a month plus food. Our drives get twice that.

Our relatives work as doctors here, because they managed to get a public health job, but now have a good private practice....Dr. Ange's charge for an office visit is 120 pesos (four dollars)...so as you see, she makes more than the quote.
However, our relatives who are nurses don't work here, because they would be paid $120 to $180 a month...

Tuition at a nearby private high school is 1500 pesos a month (30 dollars).

Rice is 30 pesos a kilo (30 cents a pound). You can buy a small house for 20 000 dollars here in the country.

But if you live in Manila, most things cost almost the same as in the USA.
So it would be impossible for our relatives to work here and support a family on $180 a month.

So many of our relatives now live in Chicago. Others work inLondon, or spend a couple years at a time in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait (they prefer Kuwait, since they can practice their religion there)...

Indeed, there are 400 000 Filippinos in the Middle East right now, supporting extended families on their salaries. Most are nannies or maids or oil workers.

Actually, when my husband was left head of the family, he was the one who left to go to the USA to support the family and put all of his neices and nephews thru school.

You want to stop the brain drain?

Clean up the government and all these skilled workers will come home and the Philippines will be the new Singapore...

Hello, Gloria, Garci is still on the line...

chief cook and bottle washers

The help, wearing "better country" Orange...

In Oklahoma, our prisoners would wear orange jump suits when they were brought to clinic...so the orange tee shirts made me feel nostalgic... Posted by Picasa

conference photo two

kids playing at the fountain at our conference...
sorry about the photos being poor...later maybe I'll get the photos from the camera instead of my palmpocket... Posted by Picasa

Pastor Assuncion and family of nine children

from our conference last week Posted by Picasa

Bubbles, bubbles, bubbles


Tim Kehoe has stained the whites of his eyes deep blue. He's also stained his face, his car, several bathtubs and a few dozen children. He's had to evacuate his family because he filled the house with noxious fumes. He's ruined every kitchen he's ever had. Kehoe, a 35-year-old toy inventor from St. Paul, Minnesota, has done all this in an effort to make real an idea he had more than 10 years ago, one he's been told repeatedly cannot be realized: a colored bubble....

BOOOOOMMM!

When we were kids, we did a skit about a reporter who kept bringing news to the editor, only to be told the news was "old" and he had to bring in the report faster...so the reporter then came in yelling: Quick the factory just exploded...and when the editor asked "When did that happen", the reporter said, "Listen".....and then they heard a loud BOOOMMMM

When we were kids we thought it was hilareous...

I watched CNN International this morning for two minutes, and they were showing an Army guy explaining how the Marines clearing out the infiltration from Syria helped lower the number of car bombs...
CNNI then went on to mention, ah yes, but now the car bombs are hitting hotels with reporters and foreigners...and then stated showing a van pulling up near a hotel, while the reporter narrated, and here is a video that captures one such bomb....

Hmmmm...hello....unless it was a security camera, which it did not seem to be (e.g. the focus was good, and the view moved with the van), then it meant that someone was WAITING for the car to arrive, so he could take a video from a safe area...One: They knew about it in advance

Two: They filmed anyway, so CNNI and other news media could show the glamourous "insurgents"...

Am I paranoid? Well, no,

Yesterday was a terrible action by a suicide/homicide killer: Targeting children who were being given gifts by some US soldiers....

Most of the US press seemed to headline only "30 killed"....a few had "outside Hospital" in the headlines, but you had to dig deep to find it was children...Was this deliberate?

Well, thanks to Google, I checked headlines...most merely mentioned 30 killed, or the soldiers killed...
Some even combined the headline with "as soldiers celebrate holiday" or as US touts successes...The Beeb doesn't even mention the toys, instead saying they were targeting "Iraqi policemen at the hospital, and only mentioning the dead women and children in paragraph 9...

I take that back: The Chicago Tribune mentions it in a headline...Insurgent attacks kill 43, including kids and 2 GIs...

But most of the others don't...
-----------------------------------
Update:
Major K gives this information about those killed:
The reason those troops were at that hospital handing out candy is because several of their officers were inside doing an assessment of the hospital facilities so they could be refurbished and upgraded. Another crime punishable by death according to the arhabi

China take two

A second chemical disaster in China? Developing....

And don't forget their earthquake...

China's ecological disaster: the coverup

It has gotten a lot of press here, but yesterday's NYTimes has a nice summary of the spill, the coverup, and the ecological implications....

HARBIN, China, Nov. 25 - A toxic 50-mile band of contaminated river water slowly washed through this frigid provincial capital on Friday, leaving schools and many businesses closed, forcing millions of people to spend a third straight day without running water and raising fears of a long-term environmental disaster......
It seems that in their efforts to hide a chemical spill, Harbin officials may have helped fuel unfounded fears of an earthquake. The provincial earthquake bureau has since issued a reassuring statement that no temblors are predicted.
"They were trying to lie and get by," Qi Guangzhong, 64, said as he walked on a promenade beside the brown waters of the Songhua on Friday. "The government wanted to hide this."...

Saturday, November 26, 2005

Rev. Sensing gives thanks

Photo essay

Don't forget to bookmark this


Random Frog Generator...

Haldol alert

Blogfather reports on the REAL reason Bush invaded Iraq....

SEA GAMES


The Southeast Asia games are being held in Manila...

And they are SMOKE FREE....there is enough smoke from cars in Manila that they don't want to add to the pollution.

The Mascot is the Philippine Eagle...but in the commercials, he looks more like a chicken...
In a land where cock fighting is more important than working, that is a natural mistake...

As for the games, no I am not going...we live up country....

RIP

Pat Morita, best known for his role in Karate Kid, has died...
Many people also know him from "Happy Days"....

How dare they bomb TV stations

I ran across a "controversy" that Blair and Bush merely discussed bombing AlJazeera so that Sadam Hussein couldn't get information...

Now, I didn't read all the stories on line...but none of the reports that I saw mentioned that Clintond didn't just "discuss" bombing TV stations, he actually did it...

Nope, don't put things into context...must bash Bush must bash Bush...

Controversial poem?

Family update

We had fish for Thanksgiving...

The Turkeys are still alive and well in our vacant lot...will post photos if I can find the connection to the computer from the camera (That's what I get for cleaning house...can't find anything).

The female dog that we got fixed had puppies under the porch, but we hadn't heard them for three days and thought they were dead. This morning, we found them crawling around, and they got out of the hole so we could grab them and move them to a new area...so Lolo is in the room with the three dogs: Mama (Coco), Midnght (Black puppy) and Puti (White puppy).

Lolo is happy as a new father.
I am busy watching Disney channel with Ruby.
The cat fell into kerosene and was dying for a few days, but now she is eating, so will probably live.
All the maids quit, so the house is a mess (there is a long story about this) and the driver, who was flirting with one of the maids, is hiding out from her husband, and so will probably not work for us anymore.

Soupoperas, anyone?

Friday, November 25, 2005

Philippine earthquake

But since it was in Mindinao, we had no tremors here...Thank God...

And the Philippine army attacks etc. are down in Sulu.

We don't have abusaef here...(although they are worried that this group will bomb another mall or gathering this holiday season).
Our local communists cause trouble, however, and shoot politicians and soldiers on and off...and a couple gave themselves up last week...

But they are still a danger, and a bit popular in a town where landless people can't find work...

Manolo loves the Ratz


Red Prada shoes, how fashionable...

Galeras take two

watching volcanos....the bottom picture shows the volcanoe at left and the town at the right

Galeras erupting

Galeras, the volcano in Pasto, Colombia, where my son lives, is erupting.

I have two sons adopted as young boys from that town, and the oldest went back
at age 18 to check on his younger brothers and sisters, who were adopted locally, and stayed. He is now married, and runs a Panderia...

The town is at the bottom of a bowel between mountains (hence the name "Pasto", i.e. pasture)...
You have to go down a couple thousand feet down a canyon then go to a hilltop where the airport is.

If the volcano has a big eruption in the wrong direction, the city will be covered...so it is a big danger for all of them.

The good news is that the town has been there for 400+ years, and so far only small eruptions.
But a "small" eruption killed a bunch of scientists about ten years ago...and their story has been chronicaled on NG channel...

They are evacuating...LINK
but there have been so many false alarms that some people just won't go...-----------------------------

Update LINK

The compulsory evacuation order covers a 15km (9-mile) radius, including one of the most affluent areas of the city.
Army troops have been drafted in to co-ordinate the evacuation.
Local farmers fear their land and livestock will be taken by others if they leave. People here are suspicious that they will not get their homes back once the emergency has passed.
President Alvaro Uribe has appealed to everyone to leave immediately. ...

(Note: When MtSt Helens erupted, it went sideways for thirty miles, and most of those killed were in the "safe" zone...)

Opiates and the middle east

When in doubt, google....

It seems that Syria is a conduit for narcotics to the middle east....

Most narcotics transiting Syria go to other parts of the Middle East and to Europe. Syria is a transit country for hashish, cocaine, and heroin, particularly from Turkey, but also from Lebanon. Syria is also a transit country for opium entering Lebanon from Afghanistan via Jordan.

Since Syria was removed from the Majors List in 1997, The U.S. continues to monitor Syria's efforts to suppress cultivation of poppies in the Biqa' Valley, as well as the effect of drugs transiting Syria to the U.S., and sees no evidence that cultivation of significant amounts of either opium or cannabis has resumed, despite initial reports to the contrary in 2001.

Drug Abuse?

Surfing the Milblogs, I ran across this long post...most of it I have no expertise, but as a doctor, I found this line interesting:

Fun fact: Random autopsies on dead insurgents shows a high level of opiate use.

Why opiates and not marijuana
Well, Iran has a high rate of opiate addiction...but Iran is Shiite, and the source of most of the very bad bombs in the south...whereas most of the foreign "insurgents" (read outsiders) are from Sunni areas, such as Syria or Saudi Arabia...

Now, there is a lot of under the cover drinking and drug use in Saudi arabia but are they getting their opiates there? Or from Iran? Or are the drug dealers, like the dealers in other areas of the world, apolitical, and sell to all comers?
Inquiring minds want to know...


Thanksgiving Trivia

It was the Spanish....

Ecological disaster in China

CNNI of course reports on car bombs in Baghdad for their lead story....

But the REALLY important story is this one.

100 000 people were evacuated after an explosion in a chemical factory, and now the river is contaminating drinking water in a major city (and next week, the chemicals will reach a Russian city on the coast)

The 50-mile-long patch of water carrying toxic benzene began entering Harbin, a city of 3.8 million people in China's northeast, before dawn, the government said. It was expected to take 40 hours to pass.

"After it passes ... we will have to make efforts to disinfect the water," Shi Zhongxin, director of the city's water bureau, said on state television. He gave no details.

Harbin shut down its water system at midnight Tuesday after a chemical plant explosion Nov. 13 in the nearby city of Jilin spewed toxic benzene into the Songhua River. Jilin is about 120 miles southeast of Harbin.

The announcement of the impending shutdown set off panicked buying of bottled water, soft drinks and milk. Families stocked up by filling bathtubs and buckets....

Sigh...guess ecological disasters don't count if those suffering are not politically correct minorities....or if you can't blame the disaster on Bush....

Thursday, November 24, 2005

Happy Thanksgiving!

Here it is not a holiday, so our turkeys are still alive and squawking...

As for the internet:
The Good news is that we now have Broadband.
The bad news is that it doesn't work if the telephone is plugged in...perhaps because the extention to the office goes from my office to the main office...and their line is not on the splitter...

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

The great "medicine keeps people sick" myth

Callahan calls for rationing of medical care again....(he has a whole book about who should die if they don't meet his criteria for "quality of life)...

As baby boomers age, you will hear this more and more, and I suspect "post Christian" Europe, who have contracepted/aborted themselves into negative population growth, will increase their euthanization of the old and sick, at least until Sharia law takes over...

But the argument is based on a false premise that we hear over and over again:

The momentous gain in life expectancy—which began long before modern clinical medicine became efficacious but accelerated thereafter—was accompanied by changed patterns and trajectories of death. Death from most infectious diseases (such as dysentery, typhoid, plague, and smallpox) was often miserable but relatively fast, lasting from a few days to a few weeks; and, if one survived, there was rarely any lingering damage. Contemporary death, increasingly in old age, is for the most part slow and drawn out, lasting many weeks, months, and often years.

Reality check please...

Two major problems.

The first is the "bell curve"...
In Africa, people were "old" at fifty...
Read history...Washington died of "old age" at age 70 or so...my grandmother was bedridden for years from high blood pressure and varicose vein ulcers, and died of "old age" at 66...
My mother drove a car until she was 87.

Old age isn't what it used to be...people age slower.
The REAL problem is that the "bell curve" moved right...so the "old age" is now 85, not 65.

Percentagewize, there are probably just as many 85 year olds now as 65 year olds a hundred years ago...what has changed is that there are not as many 5 year olds, or 25 year olds to care for them....

Second problem:
Death from infectious disease was not necessarily "fast"...
Typhoid? You were high fevers for 4-6 weeks and might spend 6 months recovering until you were strong...
Ditto for other diseases (typhus...strep throat aka Scarlet fever, Rheumatic fever...)
How about Tuberculosis? HOw many languished with that for years, unable to work, but not dying either?
And what about TB of the bone? Talk about pain and disability?
And Remember Polio?
How about Neurosyphillis? Untreated schizophrenia?
Rheumatic heart disease and "dropsy"?

But you don't even need infectious disease to cause chronic disability.

How about clubfoot...or a poorly healed fracture...or chronic osteomyelitis from a cut...all those wounded soldiers? Farmers? women with fistulas from prolonged labor? Scoliosis? Severe osteoporotic fractures due to excess childbearing? Ricketts?

The woman "with a hemorrhage" in the Bible...and many other women suffering from obstetrical or gynecological illnesses....

Chronic diarrhea (The Black prince and General Braddock suffered for months before dying of this)....

And furthur back in history: Leprosy....BeriBeri dementia...Scurvy...

Trachoma causing blindness....

Calahan forgets that the complaint about the chronically ill being a burden is not new...

Plato's Republic laments doctors who prolong the lives of the "sick" but who don't cure them...

And of course, that was the argument that inspired the Nazi T4 project....

Street signs













from an email from Col. Thermal Updraft...

Bob and Ray

For those who like subtle humor, Lileks has an MP3 of Bob and Ray on his bleat...

Katrina rebuilding news

NEW ORLEANS - He started out in a small boat, making his way through swirling floodwaters to help rescue his frightened parishioners from their homes.

Then he drove from Louisiana to Texas to Arkansas, twice, to check on them. He knew they were resilient; he and they had survived a war and fled Vietnam long ago....f his parishioners could endure all that, the priest was sure they would endure Katrina....
"Twenty-four years ago, I came here with $20, only $20," Nguyen said in a halting voice, holding back tears. "Today, I have two children, two graduates from college. They have an education. I still have a home. And I have the store. The building is empty. It is damaged. But it's there."

She pauses, clasps her hands tightly in her lap as she sits on a church stage.

"I work very hard," she said, "and I can work very hard again."

Nguyen is staying with family in nearby Metairie and hopes to move into her garage soon while she repairs her home.

"When we run from the storm, we feel so lonely," she explained. "When we come back here, there's such a warm feeling. We need each other. Even when we clean up, we feel like family."

Duc Dang, a building contractor, agrees.

"It's important for us to come back," he said. "We have a school for the little kids who learn our language and our culture. I feel that when we're living here, it's like being in Vietnam."

Vien says that since Katrina, he senses his parishioners have a deeper attachment to their neighborhood and the city. He says there is a Vietnamese expression, que huong, that's used to describe homeland or ancestral birthplace.

"In the pre-Katrina days, when we say que huong we mean Vietnam," he says. "Now when they say it, they mean New Orleans......

The MSM forgets the aftermath of the US withdrawal from Vietnam, probably because most of the reporters are still living in the "glory" of their youth...they ignore that terrorists who blow up civilians and who torture and kill "collaberators" will do the same if they get to power, except on a much larger scale...

Here is another story of those who fled tyranny and found a life in the Southern US

LINK

Again, a long story of hurricane survival, slow government help, and widespread private help...but also at the end the story of why they are in Mississippi in the first place...

"....A vast majority of the Vietnamese in America immigrated here between 1975 and 1980. The immigrants were almost all Southern Vietnamese fleeing the Communist takeover.

Many were the famous "boat people."

After the Vietnam War, more than one million refugees desperate to get out of the country took to overcrowded and leaky fishing boats and set out into the seas around Southeast Asia. It became the largest mass departure of asylum seekers by sea in modern history."

So, Mr. Murtha, remember history: One million boat people, many of whom died on the sea or languised in camps for years...not to mention those in "reeducation camps", or the Hmong refugees (who fled to Thailand), or the murder of a million Cambodians...

nahh, the MSM would rather remember their glory days of smoking pot and protesting...

It's all about ME ME ME.....

-----------------------------------------------
Addendum....

While googling about the Vietnamese in Mississippi, I ran across THIS HEADLINE....

Veteran faces new charge in Vietnam protest

Seems that some protesters are more equal than others, and that if your protest is not PC, and you are declared not guilty, they will recharge you for the crime until the jury gets it right....


Katrina update

A long list of help by various Catholic charities....

Catholic Community Services of Baton Rouge, LA (Updated Oct. 17) Catholic Community Services continues to partner with Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New Orleans which has been welcomed in Baton Rouge since Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast.

Over 3,000 families have registered with agency to receive assistance....

Catholic Social Services of Houma-Thibodaux, LA (Updated Oct. 26) Catholic Social Services has been aiding victims from both Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Catholic Social Services' Hurricane Katrina response began the day after the storm and included supplying the shelters with emergency shelter kits (kept permanently in storage at CSS for immediate availability with such things as first aid kits, flashlights, diapers, crayons, hygiene products, etc), blankets, towels, and other basic necessities. Catholic Social Services took over a shelter for New Orleans police officers and their families at the request of the local government. Two Catholic parishes operated additional shelters.

In cooperation with Operation Starfish, a program created by the diocesan Vocations Office, CSS has coordinated and paid for travel for over 1,500 people flying or being driven to relatives around the country from local shelters....

The list is quite long, but you get the idea...

Nope, no news here, folks, just move along...

AHHH BROADBAND

The good news is that we finally got broadband.
The bad news is that it is the same old telephone line that always gets cut that is carrying the DSL...

Good news: Randy has been found

(via DaveBarry)

He's been missing for two weeks. And even though he was found floating face down in a sulfur spring Saturday, officials are breathing a sigh of relief.


Rescue Randy, West Routt's life-size fire-training doll, soon will be back in the hands of the people who need him most: firefighters....

Officers Luster and Gerald Geis pulled Randy out of the pool, placed him in the snow and waited for backup. Randy appeared to have black smudges on his "skin," and one arm was bent behind his back. No officer or deputy spoke about Randy's condition, but Luster wondered about his garb.

"Are these the clothes he was wearing before?" he asked. Randy had on dark, stylish jeans and a belt around his metallic-colored waist.

Sheriff's deputies Rob Smith and Tom Munden arrived at the scene, and they helped the officers haul Randy onto the parking lot and into a sheriff's patrol SUV, where he took up the entire back seat.

The deputies were not sure where Randy would go next. It's possible, they said, that he would be entered into evidence as stolen property.

If you have information about Randy's whereabouts during the past two weeks, call the Sheriff's Office at 870-5504.

Ragemonkey recipes

Father T has links to some Thanksgiving recipes, including this one lINK

1 (14 to 16 pound) frozen young turkey
For the brine:
1 cup kosher salt
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 gallon vegetable stock
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
1/2 tablespoon allspice berries
1/2 tablespoon candied ginger
1 gallon iced water
For the aromatics:
1 red apple, sliced
1/2 onion, sliced
1 cinnamon stick
1 cup water
4 sprigs rosemary
6 leaves sage
Canola oil
Combine all brine ingredients, except ice water, in a stockpot, and bring to a boil. Stir to dissolve solids, then remove from heat, cool to room temperature, and refrigerate until thoroughly chilled.

Early on the day of cooking, (or late the night before) combine the brine and ice water in a clean 5-gallon bucket. Place thawed turkey breast side down in brine, cover, and refrigerate or set in cool area (like a basement) for 6 hours. Turn turkey over once, half way through brining.
A few minutes before roasting, heat oven to 500 degrees. Combine the apple, onion, cinnamon stick, and cup of water in a microwave safe dish and microwave on high for 5 minutes.
Remove bird from brine and rinse inside and out with cold water. Discard brine.
Place bird on roasting rack inside wide, low pan and pat dry with paper towels. Add steeped aromatics to cavity along with rosemary and sage. Tuck back wings and coat whole bird liberally with canola (or other neutral) oil.

Roast on lowest level of the oven at 500 degrees F. for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and cover breast with double layer of aluminum foil, insert probe thermometer into thickest part of the breast and return to oven, reducing temperature to 350 degrees F. Set thermometer alarm (if available) to 161 degrees. A 14 to 16 pound bird should require a total of 2 to 2 1/2 hours of roasting. Let turkey rest, loosely covered for 15 minutes before carving


Hmmm....Let's see...
Frozen Turkey?
Well, forget it.
Try LIVE TURKEY. We have two...
Our two turkeys are in our vacant lot where the generator is....
We are fattening them up.

We have two pitbulls, and have had to rescue the turkeys from the dogs several times (luckily the dogs just like to play, and have only gotten feathers in their mouths)
And remember that conference I discussed a few days ago?
On the day of the conference, while people were arriving, the front gate was open...and the turkeys took a stroll....
We found them two blocks over, in a vacant lot...

For awhile we thought they would be liberated for someone's stew, but we actually got them back...

One reason that they got out is that the female dog chose the morning of the conference to have her puppies...

Hmmm...we had her fixed two months ago, but I guess she was already pregnant...

So there we were, with bigshot Americans coming to the conference, a dog under the front porch with puppies, and the help chasing turkeys down the street.

Luckily, the visitors didn't notice anything wrong...until the third day, when the cat decided to chase a mouse into the conference room, and made one of the American wives hysterical...
Heck, it was only a mouse....

She should have been here last week when we did our monthly bug fumigation and killed a couple hundred cockroaches...

Pinoy streetfood

we live a block from the city hall square, and on the south side of the square are the street vendors...yum. Barbecue...
And a block away is the Jolebee...
We live in a "dual" economy here.
Prices for a stick of barbecue is 10 or 20 pesos...for a serving of pancit, 40 pesos, for a hamburger from a vendor 15 pesos, and for green coconut drink 10 pesos.
Our help gets paid 100 pesos a day plus room and board.
Our skilled help gets paid twice that.
On the other hand, a starbucks is 100 pesos.
I might have the prices off a bit, but you get the idea.

Yeti wants a shave

From those surfing neocons at the corner...

Carnival of the recipes, take 66

Monday, November 21, 2005

Bud light

Bird flu humor

link has a lot of links to bird flu humor, including:

Top Ten Dumb Guy Tips For Avoiding The Bird Flu
10. "Before eating chicken, soak it in Lysol"
9. "Don't lick unfamiliar pigeons"
8. "Frighten birds by constantly meowing"
7. "Stay away from basketball great Larry Bird"
6. "Anti-bacterial smoothies"
5. "Move to a place where there are no birds, like the moon"
4. "Avoid birds that look like they're up to something"
3. "Go back to the old Y2K bunker, start drinking"
2. "Fill birdfeeder with Sucrets"
1. "If you have a chicken, check for swelling in the McNuggets"

Of course, all you really have to do is eat your chicken with KimChee (sauerkraut)

Down's syndrome speaks

Hmmm...NYT has a person with Down's syndrome actually speak...don't they know that parents whose test is positive are told these children will never speak walk or care for themselves? (or are called "profoundly" retarded, when they are actually mild to moderately retarded).
Having Down's usually means your IQ is thirty points lower than your parents...so the range is variable...but since they are rarely "aggressive", often their intellect was overlooked..

Sunday, November 20, 2005

Tra la la la la

Elvish
Elvish

To which race of Middle Earth do you belong?
brought to you by

Medical humor

Benign......................What you be after you be eight.
Bacteria...................Back door to cafeteria.
Barium.....................What doctors do when patients die.
Cesarean Section....A neighborhood in Rome.
Catscan..................Searching for Kitty.
Cauterize................Made eye contact with her.
Colic.......................A sheep dog.
Coma.......................A punctuation mark.

see link for the rest.
(headsup from Medpundit).

OUTRAGE OF THE WEEK

After the signing, South Africa's intelligence minister scolded a journalist who raised questions about Zimbabwe's record on human rights.

Details of the deal were not released but Zimbabwe's secret police is accused of torturing opposition activists.

South Africa is a key player in attempts to negotiate an end to Zimbabwe's political crisis.

President Thabo Mbeki has been criticised at home and abroad for not putting more pressure on President Robert Mugabe's government to end abuses.

Zimbabwe prayers

"This week's historic meeting further consolidates a long-standing socio-political and economic relationship between our two countries," South African Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils said at the signing of the agreement in Cape Town on Thursday.

Robert Mugabe (left) and Thabo Mbeki
President Mbeki (r) has been criticised for taking a stronger line with President Mugabe (l)
After the signing, a journalist asked Mr Kasrils how South Africa, with a "good human rights track record", could sign agreements with Zimbabwe, which had a "poor human rights record".

Mr Kasrils apologised to his Zimbabwean counterpart, Didymus Mutasa, for the question.

"We have very strong ties with our neighbour and we are indebted to our neighbour for achieving freedom and liberty," Mr Kasrils said.

Mr Mutasa suggested praying for the journalist.

"Lord forgive him for he does not know what he is saying," Mr Mutasa said.

Cardinal Arinze has a podcast?

Podcasts are the future....and lots of subjects...now if I can only get broadband!

White phosphorus take two

If you don't believe the marines, try reading FM 8-9, which is on line at the Virtual Naval Hospital..

814. Red and White Phosphorus.

a. At ordinary temperatures, white phosphorus (WP) is a solid which can be handled safely under water. When dry, it burns fiercely in air, producing a dense white smoke. Fragments of melted particles of the burning substance may become embedded in the skin of persons close to a bursting projectile, producing burns which are multiple, deep and variable in size. The fragments continue to burn unless oxygen is excluded by flooding or smothering.

b. WP may be used to produce a hot dense white smoke composed of particles of phosphorus pentoxide which are converted by moist air to droplets of phosphoric acid. The smoke irritates the eyes and nose in moderate concentrations. Field concentrations of the smoke are usually harmless although they may cause temporary irritation to the eyes, nose or throat. The respirator provides adequate protection against white phosphorus smoke. ...

The article then goes on to discuss treatment... hint: Altho phosphorus will burn a deep hole into skin, it tends to be small...and stop burning if you irrigate it...but you have to watch when you take it out...it can reignite. In other words, small and painful, not lethal...

White Phosphorus

Blackfive (the Paratrooper of Love) has a somewhat profane explanation of what white phosphorus is, and how it is used....

3) If it is used for killing people, it's some pretty nasty stuff. It burns straight through anything it touches, and once lit, it's nearly immpossible to extinguish. In that sense, it's indiscriminate, making it more similar to a chemical weapon like Napalm than to conventional weapons.

Anything that kills people qualifies as pretty nasty stuff. Traumatic amputation of a limb, or disembowelment by a high explosive (HE) or chunk of shrapnel would make it quite nasty in my mind and certainly indiscriminate as I am aware of no guided shrapnel. Since our WP rounds are not designed or useful as chemical weapons, the burst and initial explosion rapidly vaporizes into a cloud of irritating, but non-fatal smoke....

read the whole thing...and part two above

Gee, and I thought I was Xena....or Eowyn...

You scored as Indiana Jones. Indiana Jones is an archaeologist/adventurer with an unquenchable love for danger and excitement. He travels the globe in search of historical relics. He loves travel, excitement, and a good archaeological discovery. He hates Nazis and snakes, perhaps to the same degree. He always brings along his trusty whip and fedora. He's tough, cool, and dedicated. He relies on both brains and brawn to get him out of trouble and into it.

Batman, the Dark Knight

83%

Indiana Jones

83%

James Bond, Agent 007

71%

Captain Jack Sparrow

71%

Maximus

67%

El Zorro

67%

Lara Croft

58%

The Terminator

54%

Neo, the "One"

54%

The Amazing Spider-Man

54%

William Wallace

46%

Which Action Hero Would You Be? v. 2.0
created with QuizFarm.com

What if they gave a demonstration and the press didn't notice?

The Arab street finally rises up, and the press ignores it...

a ten second sound bite on CNNI, versys ten minutes to American "torture" (although they did recast a special on North Korea)...

The BEEB is not much better...I searched for "demonstrations" and got the one on november 11th, not yesterday...

the BBC DID mention it, however, it this article:but the headline is
Zaquari defends Jordanian attack
An audio message purportedly from the head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, says the Jordan bombings were not meant to hit a Muslim wedding. ...

The 9 November blasts killed 54 people, and caused widespread public outrage.

At least 100,000 people marched through Amman on Friday in the latest mass show of anger at the suicide attacks.

"Zarqawi, you coward, what brought you here?" shouted the marchers.

The Beeb's headlines are of more carnage in Bagdad....

Again, innocent civilians praying at a mosque were killed...but no outrage here, folks, just body counts (breathless side bar "bloodiest attacks this year") and ending with emphasis on Bush...

Even the mullahs in Iran are mad about that one, if we believe the Chinese papers.... they criticize the coalition for not providing enough security (Hmmm...maybe they want more troops? not a pullout)...sorry, lost the link for that one...) But the outrage of the mullahs isnot news, you see, any more than the arrest of a couple dissadents in Tehran is news...

Luckily, in these days of the internet, we can search Aljazeera, which DID cover the demonstrations...

LINK

And they report that although the city of Amman sponsored the rally, people came from all over...

And they provided this interesting comment:

Palestinians from Jordan's 13 refugee camps also took part in the protest.

Several important Palestinans were killed in the hotel bombings, you see...

AlZaquari claimed he was after "American spies", but the only US citizens killed were Jordanian born citizens, i.e. the producer of the "Haloween" films and his daughter...
People unlikely to be spies...

oh, and a P.S....
The poll on the sidebar is about who should control the internet...right now the US is winning....

Who should govern the internet?

US-backed pvt body as at present :
31%
Pvt global body without US control :
24%
The UN :
20%
Universal Postal Union-like body :
25%

Number of pollers : 9031


.........................................

Making a snowman?

Don't forget to add this to your frontyard snowman display...

I want it that way

Video link heads up from the tone deaf neocons at the Corner

Saturday, November 19, 2005

Marmite alert

Now it comes in potato chips....


AGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!

Narnia soundtract

it needs quicktime...

alas, my phone line is so slow I can't listen...

Religion update take six


Do you want Fries with that?

(heads up from AngryTwins BLogspot)

Accompanied by music LINK

Gather Us In (to the cookout)
Gather us in, the beef and the chicken.
Gather us in, the pork and the lamb.
Make us to be a barbecued banquet,
Washed down with beer from a keg or a can.

(and that will be three Hail Mary's penance for me)

Friday, November 18, 2005

ah...no snow here

 Posted by Picasa

How to prevent bird flu

The Dilbert newsletter is up, and Dogbert answers a question on bird flu:

Dear Dogbert, How can I avoid getting bird flu? Eric

Dear Error, Your best bet is to avoid intimate physical contact with anything that has feathers. And that means your Dukes of Hazard pillow case has got to go.
Sincerely, Dogbert

Now I remember why I love the Philippines....


Lileks reports it's snowing in Minnesota....

My Brother reports it's snowing in the Berkshires...

Dr. C. reports that there is a drought and ice storms in Oklahoma...

Here, we only worry about typhoons, floods, dengue fever, typhoid, dysentary and terrorism...

Narnia links

lots of preemptive strikes on Narnia...hmmm....might just be a good movie...
LINK TWO

LINK THREE

Heaven post take four

Catholic stuff take three

Then I'll shut up on religious posts for awhile.

Ignatius press has publised books on CSLEWIS and Tolkien...

Anti Catholic bingo

It's an inside joke...
Catholics are asked a question with a bible verse out of context, and when we try to use subtle reasoning with several bible verses, quotes from church fathers, 1968 years of tradition, and using logical rational thinking (albeit based on a primary premise, i.e. that God exists, which can not be logically affirmed or denied), we lose the battle.

Back on line

Well, after ten days of no telephone, we are back on line.
And I see there is only political spinning in the US papers...Gloria is in Korea being Miss Congeniality...hello garci tapes still not answered.
We had a small "regional conference" here for my stepson's religious group...consisting of three families listening to some affluent preachers teaching...well, I don't know what they were preaching, because after taking Benadryl for a terrible cough, they didn't make sense...something about surrender (Translation: Wives obey your husbands) and how God will make you successful if you follow certain rules (and buy our book and take our seminars)....
It was enough to make me an athiest...but then one of the wives kept asking whether or not I would go to heaven...it seems I didn't say the magic words right, so am going to hell...and she said if I did, I would find peace and be assured of salvation.... I almost replied that if I wanted peace I'd take a valium, thank you, and that my duty was to work and pray and not to worry about pie in the sky when I die...
Guess I'll be stuck in Catholic purgatory for a long time...luckily, although in my stepson's heaven "there is no beer" (as the old song goes), in Catholic purgatory the bars are open 24 hours a day....

Sunday, November 13, 2005

on vacation

Actually, I'm not on vacation, but our internet line and telephone line is down...hopefully it will be fixed next week...

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

wheew! I passed

You Passed the US Citizenship Test
Congratulations - you got 10 out of 10 correct!
Could You Pass the US Citizenship Test?

Keeping notes in medicine

Will computerized voice transcribers replace dictation and secretaries?

If so, it's bad news for all the typists in Makati, who now transcribe for US doctors...

Family update

Lolo and I are down sick with a chest cold.
Our son is busy building and arranging the castle for a conference.
Ruby is back in school.
And yesterday was another harvest day...alas, it's been raining so we hope the rice will dry okay...

C.S.Lewis and Pagan myths

It's a long essay, and I will have to read and think about it before commenting ...

Monday, November 07, 2005

Teenager in a 53 year old body

"I have no complaints about my personal life," she says in her stately Georgetown home, where the decor ranges from a pink jukebox to an expensively restored Hungarian portrait of a partially disrobed woman. "I get asked out. I don't know how much more I'd get asked out if guys weren't scared of me..."

...says Dowd, women expect male suitors to pay, are obsessed with looks, sport "plastic breasts," and "appointments with dermatologists are the new status symbols. It's hard to find women to talk about books and politics. They all want to talk about skin."

Hmmm. make you wonder where she is living...

Maybe she should volunteer for the cleanup in Biloxi...might give her something else to do with her time...

"...Watching students act with compassion energizes Mayes. “I love this,” he said. “When you give of your time, money and energy for charity, it makes you a different person. This is one of the best experiences you can get in college; learning to give instead of take. They will never be the same, I’m sure.”

outrages of the day

LINK
"....Media outlets throughout the world have reported Jimmy Massey's claims of war crimes, frequently without ever seeking to verify them....But none of the AP reporters ever called Ravi Nessman, an Associated Press reporter who was embedded with Massey's unit. ....Jack Stokes, a spokesman for the AP, said he didn't know why the reporters didn't talk to Nessman, nor could he explain why the AP ran stories without seeking a response from the Marine Corps. The organization also refused to allow Nessman to be interviewed for this story....

"That Massey wasn't telling the truth should have become obvious the more he told his stories, said Phillip Dixon, former managing editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer ...."He couldn't keep his story straight," said Dixon.....

Smith said that, unfortunately, that is the nature of the newspaper business."You could take any day's newspaper and probably pick out a half dozen or more stories that ought to be subjected to a more rigorous truth test," ....

Your happy story of the day



A Nicasio man and his cocker spaniel puppy were reunited yesterday in a hospital room at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in San Rafael just days after she saved his life after a car crash.

check link for the rest of the story...

Katrina update

"....Because of its proximity to New Orleans, Houston harbored the largest share of evacuees fleeing the Aug. 29 storm and the devastating flood that followed — an estimated 150,000 people. Not quite a month later, Hurricane Rita brought another, though much smaller, round of storm-ravaged people this way. Now, the city's response to the disasters has been so generous that a third wave of evacuees — those who had landed in other Texas cities — may be en route as well..."

Hmmm....imagine that. Those Texans took in 150 thousand people, and got little publicity....

Guess it was easier to report the urban legends than to praise those who actually helped...

Sunday, November 06, 2005

Military uses for silly string

(also from boingboing)

The demise of a great medical journal

it's bad enough that the BMj is now into trivia (medical journals often print humerous trivia) but when it is picked up by Boing Boing, who points out that the author didn't even bother to google for references, it shows how behind the times the journal is...you see, Houdini's book about this is on line...

Botox for facial pain?

Trigeminal neuralgia is a terrible thing...often those who had it in the past became drug addicts or even killed themselves...
In more recent years anti convulsant medicines helped...
So if botox works, it will be a godsend to these people...
And I wonder if it would help with other neurological pain problems....

R.C. Gorman


One of my favorite artists, Navajo artist RC Gorman, has died...

LINK2

he will be in our prayers

Mississippi says thanks y'all

The folks at the Clarian Ledger have this editorial:

Thanks, y'all

If we listed all of the groups and individuals who have stepped up to bring aid and comfort to Mississippi during these difficult weeks after Hurricane Katrina, it would likely fill the newspaper pages...

While much of the news coverage has been on the failures of government agencies to adequately respond, not enough has been on the individuals and groups who have responded and done it with efficiency and care.

Church groups and volunteer groups from across the nation have responded and continue to do so. One of the common weekend activities in the state now is not a football outing, but a volunteer trip to the Coast with a church or civic group. Everything from cleaning up lots and homes to providing food, health care and legal assistance has been invaluable....

The state is posting signs along roadways to thank military personnel, federal and state relief workers and the thousands of volunteers who have given their time and efforts to help. A simple "Thanks, y'all" will never be able to fully express the gratitude felt, but thanks, y'all. ...

The SunHerald has a collection of "before and after" photos HERE

and an article on recovery rebuilding plans HERE
and various articles:
LINK

Of course, rebuilding is not as sexy as stories of rape and murder...even though those stories turn out to be urban legends...LINK LINK
And the reports of euthanasia in NOLA hospitals is being investigated, but the quick disappearance of the story (most of the links I found were from mid October) makes one suspect that this is an "urban legend" too...(I suspect most cases were merely docs triaging cases to be evacuated, and then sedating the dying patients who were left behind...to relieve their suffering in the severe heat...which is not the same as killing them...there is a fine line between treating the dying and killing them that is often ignored or blurred by people either from ignorance or deliberately to promote euthansia, but that's another story)..

Saturday, November 05, 2005

The VAST RIGHT WING KNITTING CHAT

It's amazing the stuff one finds on JimRob's site...this chat discusses knitting and needlework...

That old VCR is NOT useless


it will make a great cat feeder....
Assuming you can figure out how to take the VCR apart and assemble it...and
Assuming, of course, you can figure out how to program the XXXX thing...

Terrorist missing in the Philippines?

"...A possibly very important terrorist has gone missing . Again. Tyrone "Dawud" Santos has allegedly been "with" the mastermind of the 2002 Bali Bombing: Dulmatin, with a $10 million price tag on his head. Probably also involved in last months Bali-II bombing as well..."

Summary: The bad guy got out on bail and absconded...
There is no strong anti terrorism law here, because Filippinos love to have peaceful demonstrations and suspect Gloria would use such laws on her enemies...

(headsup from Philippine political junkie)

Bird flu update

China, Japan and Viet nam have outbreaks, but none so far here in the Philippines...

With the Dengue fever, Red Tide, and an outbreak of Typhoid, the real worry is: If countries can't control easily eliminated disease vectors (i.e. cover open sewers, spray mosquitoes, supply clean water), what makes people think that rural China, Indonesia or the Philippines can find and eliminate Bird flu?

Children of light, children of darkness...

Niehbur's famous book was published in 1944, and reminded Christian leaders that evil did exist, and pretending it did not exist would only lead to it's triumph...

A similar critique is found in today's Wall street Journal, showing church leaders who promote pacifism while ignoring the reality of evil...

there are true pacifists, but alas too many who claim to be pacifists have never confronted evil.

I once had a conversation on line with a Pastor who was a radical pacifist, who said he would not kill even to defend his own life...
Ah, I wrote back, I agree...but when I was in Zimbabwe, the guerillas attacked a Protestant mission run by a pacifistic British church...they did not simply kill those there, they tied up the men and abused the women (including the 13 year old daughter) first before killing them...
He wrote back and said he would not kill even to defend his daughter...

My own reaction was different.
When I came back to the US, I learned to shoot a gun.

It's a Bird, it's a plane, it's a....

Flying Fugo...

Video HERE

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Gout medicine and the Flu

(heads up from MedPundit)
In the days when Penicillin was hard to get and very expensive, doctors gave it with Probenecid, a medicine that increases uric acid secretion in the Kidneys to prevent gout...
Even twenty years ago we gave a dose of it with Penicillin to treat Gonorrhea...
But now one doctor suggests that it is a way to decrease the dosage of Tamiflu in event of a birdflu epidemic...
Since Tamiflu is expensive and not enough for a major epidemic, giving it with the cheaper Probenecid would enable docs to treat more people at less cost...

Sounds good to me.

And I am ashamed that Congress in the US is playing politics with the Federal Government's flu program...they criticized it BEFORE they had a chance of fully reading it and getting second opinions if it was good or bad...especially since most people working as government bureaucrats are apolitical...and often Democrats, like I am...

Pipe v. Crab

The physics of bras...

(via Instapundit)

Newsweek on Narnia


Alas, they discuss the usual trivial question about it's Christian themes....(duh)...not about if it will be an entertaining movie that people (or children) will like...

Quint at Ain't it cool news thought it was good, but his review is old...if Disney were smart, they'd push their film there with the scifi/slasher film geeks...but since the Geeks just gave Disney's Chicken little a bad review, one suspects that unlike Peter Jackson, they are not pushing their film with the geeks who hated Veggie tales...

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Yoda rap

From the corner

Camp Katrina moving

The guys at Camp Katrina are back home, and will change their blog to reporting good stuff that the NG and other military units are doing...that don't get much publicity in the press...(I know that because I was NG for 12 years)...

I'll change my link as soon as they change their address..

Haloween cat bowling

From the cat-hating neocons at the Corner...

Greenpeace hit a reef

Only Greenpeace would assume that Philippine maps are accurate...duh...

Tolkien links

CS Lewis and Tolkiens' conversation about myths and Christianity is one reason Lewis decided to become a Christian...Tolkien later wrote a poem summarizing his argument...and later, in his famous lecture on Beowulf, Tolkien recited part of that poem...

The heart of man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact,
man, sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with elves and goblins, though we dared to build
gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sow the seeds of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.

But I didn't realize that the poem was much longer than what he quoted, and Quenta Narwean blog has the entire poem at the above link...the part he did not quote in his lecture concerns his aim in writing:

I would that I might with the minstrels sing
and stir the unseen with a throbbing string.
....
I would with the beleaguered fools be told,
that keep an inner fastness where their gold,
impure and scanty, yet they loyally bring
to mint in image blurred of distant king,
or in fantastic banners weave the sheen
heraldic emblems of a lord unseen.

And in another post
, QN has THIS LINK to a pdf file of the poem Crist...
""Lo ! Thou Splendor of the dayspring, fairest of angels sent to men upon earth..."

This is a translation of

Éala Éarendel Engla Beorhtast
Ofer Middangeard Monnum Sended

A closer rendering would be

"Hail, Earendel, brightest of angels
Over Middle-earth sent to men..."

These lines intrigued the young Tolkien, who developed the character and story of Eärendil from this slender hint. This was one of the earliest seeds of the entire Legendarium..."

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

praying at great grandmother's grave...

Posted by Picasa

All Saints day take three

Well, we have been to the cemetary and back already...
It is like a fiesta. Everyone brings flowers and candles, and then sits and prays and eats...
If you forget anything, there are plenty of vendors selling stuff...coca cola, green coconut drink, various crackers, rolls, pastries, etc. I didn't see any barbecue, but I suspect that is there too...

The police made the roads one way, and were cheerfully directing traffic...
You see, this is not a day of mourning, but a day to remember the dead...who are still with us.

This is a Catholic idea, that the dead are part of the "communion of saints" and watch us and protect us from heaven, and when we pray for their souls, they also pray for us. They are not really dead, but still involved with us and our families.

But also this is an Asian idea (Chinese also go to cemetaries and have family picnics)...

The Protestants don't celebrate it...probably because they see it as a "pagan" idea, which it is...Protestants alas are not only puritans but influenced by scientific, utilitarian Americans : What's the use of spending such money? They are dead...period...move on, folks, nothing happening here...

Ah, but culturally it reminds people that we are not alone, not individuals, but part of a large story, and those before us and those after us are also part of that story...and it is good, for one day a year, to remember those whose story is now finished but who care for those of us still here on earth...

The idea is universal, but not to be discarded because it is "pagan"...after all, all men are made in God's image, and have his ideas in our hearts and minds, so that a poet, a musician--or a simple peasant who lays flowers on the grave of an ancestor-- is merely echoing the idea that God placed there...

(The above photo was taken last August...)

Carnival of the recipes is up...

NOLA NG heroes

Unlike Sean Penn, who brought his publicist and a photographer and got splashed all over Rolling stone magazine, the real heroes were ignored.
This local news story may or may not get publicity (if it does, it is because someone posted it on Lucianne.com, not because CNNI was looking for everyday heroes)...
After the storm, a small group acted on instinct rather than orders. Through four hectic days and helpless nights, filled with unanswered screams of the stranded, they pulled people from rooftops and attics and guarded the remaining firearms and equipment in the flooded armory, with the help of a pit bull -- "Katrina" -- they retrieved from the floodwaters that first day. ...

With more than 40 people in four small craft, the soldiers made their third foray into Katrina's winds, by then at their most vicious. Even more debris whipped around them and into their faces as they made their way to Building 35 on higher ground. After the storm passed, the small armada began ferrying soldiers to the Mississippi River levee, where Blackhawk choppers evacuated them to the Superdome and other refuges. ...

The dog's rescue was the first of what the soldiers recalled as about 75 to 100 -- the rest all people -- they would perform during the following days.
"She hasn't left my side" after he fished her from the flood, Venable said of Katrina. "She's in my backyard in Slidell as we speak."
Cries for help
The day after the storm, the soldiers awoke at 5:30 a.m., untied their boats and set out into St. Bernard and the 9th Ward. Venable made his first trip with Faust, down Delery Street just inside the Orleans Parish line. It seemed every other house had someone waving or hollering for help.
At another house, they saw an old man on his roof in nothing but his briefs. He pointed them to the duplex next door. They could hear screams from a family trapped inside.
They had no tools to break open the roof, so they used the boat anchor -- twice. The first time they broke through the wrong side of the duplex.
On their second try, they found five women and girls from three different generations, two of them small children. "God bless you," one of the women said.
At another house, Venable and Faust rammed a locked door with their boat to break it down, freeing an old couple, Pete and Bertha. The couple had lived there 60 years. Pete said he'd never been on a boat, much less a helicopter...
"I told you we should have left!" the woman told her husband, who laughed off her scorn.
In one of their first rescues, Anderson, Black and Mula coordinated with a Coast Guard helicopter that picked up five people in a rescue basket tethered to the aircraft. The human cargo was then dropped into the boat and proceeded to devour all the Gummy Bears on board.
That Tuesday, the soldiers continued to drop people at the levee, still unaware that the St. Claude Avenue Bridge had become the main hub of the rescue operation.
Black recalled the moment he first approached the bridge, another one of those moments when the scope of the disaster became more disturbingly clear.
"There had to be a 1,000 people there," he said. ...