Thursday, January 02, 2020

Stories below the fold

StrategyPage has a summary of the Afghanistan tribal wars (Pashtun vs everyone else) and why things are complicated there.

includes this intriguing snippet: refugees are going home.
November 22, 2019: The number of Afghans returning from Iran has accelerated this year because of the growing poverty and public protests in Iran. So far this year nearly 400,000 have returned. About 60 percent of those returning were illegal migrants in Iran. Another 50,000 returned from Turkey and Pakistan. Over a million Afghans returned in 2018, mainly from Pakistan
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related story: Tetsu Nakamura, a doctor who spent his life helping the Afghan people. Not just as a physician, but building irrigation canals and improving infrastructure of the area.

sigh.

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Is all that Alzheimer's research investigating the wrong thing? and did the "scientific consensus" mean other theories were not funded or published?

Summary: maybe the amyloid and tangles should be seen as the result of a disease, not the cause.

Well, since amyloidosis in other organs is from inflammation (e.g. seen in chronic TB), and one sees Alzheimer's disease in young (age 40) people with Down's syndrome, who have known immune problems, this makes sense.

headsup via Instapundit.
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Beetlejuice Beetlejuice BEETLEJUICE.

no, not the film: The star:




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The Nutcracker is a traditional Christmas Ballet

(alas, the latest Disney film of the Nutcracker was okay but so visually ugly that I couldn't enjoy the film... I noticed this same visual ugliness in the Wrinkle in Time, making me wonder what's up at Disney's art department.)

So what is the history of nutcrackers?



so turn up your speakers and enjoy:

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update:

Crazy Trumpieboy said something about hoping North Korea's threatened "gift" would be a vase


as usual, passed off as a crazy quip in the MSM, and I saw a lot of commentary if Vase is pronounced vaez or vazh, but when I lurked on a conspiracy page I found a commenter who pointed out:

Chinese Charms -- Hidden Meaning of Symbols primaltrek.com/impliedmeaning.html A picture of a bottle or vase can represent the meaning of "peace" or "safety" because both the character for vase (ping 瓶) and that for peace (ping an 平安) are pronounced ping. A vase ( ping 瓶) with flowers from all four seasons ( siji 四季) conveys the hidden meaning of peace for all the year ( sijipingan 四 季 平 安) . primaltrek.com/impliedmeaning.html
I checked, and here is another link (scroll down page).


As 平 píng ‘peace’ sounds the same, the gift of a vase symbolizes a wish for peace. A rare and precious vase 宝瓶 bǎo píng sounds the same as 保平 bǎo píng ‘ensure peace
so was Trumpieboy sending a message to Kim while trolling the MSM? 

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