Thursday, July 29, 2021

miscellaneous stuff

I am a blue dog Democrat, but sometimes I snoop on right wing sites to find out what is going on

The New York TImes reporter who called trump supporters enemies of the state worked for the Chinese media in the past.
LINK: Conservative Tree House.

yes she has since removed it. But she felt comfortable doing so on the website of America's most esteemed newspaper. Huh?

Then we have this from LifeSiteNews:

Big tech sharing data with counterterrorism organizations.

hmmm... what could go wrong?

And then there are the hearings about the Washington riots. When the hearings are one sided and are being done to push a single line of questioning, it resembles propaganda. This will only convince those who are true believers. I always wondered: So where were the cops?  And who opened the door? 

and is this 1930s novel a prophecy?

https://archive.org/details/itcanthappenhere0000lewi
Dilbert notes that the covid test can't tell the difference between covid and influenza, which might explain why there were so few flu cases last winter

so now we have the delta variant means more cases and can infect the vaccinated. So get hysterical? A lot of people are skeptical.

The real missing discussion is the few deaths. And questions on herd immunity. And on immunity on those who had the virus.

Here alas there is vaccine skepticism especially for  the Chinese vaccine, sinovax...Luckily other vaccines are now available....and most people are going along with masks,.. and contact tracing. Right now our bank is closed for ten days. And Dr. Angie has had to quarantine twice for being exposed, even though she is fully vaccinated and has no symptoms.


 But now with reports of the delta variant,  the govt says they might keep the capital region shut down, and now I am seeing objections in the comments... people want to go back to work and are out of money.

as for farmers, the heavy rain over the last two weeks mean they are waiting to plant rice seedlings.

And with higher fertilizer and diesel prices, plus too much rain, will we see food prices go up? 

I was in Liberia when an increase in the price of rice led to a coup.

Finally, all the civil liberty types are correctly upset that someone snooped on a gay hookup app on a bigshot priest in Washington... Too bad they aren't upset that china hacked my opm file or that big data is not only tracking trump supporters but selling our data to all and sundry.

But China had the dating app data and the social media data too, making some wonder if this helped them blackmail the Vatican to let them take over the church there.
Personally I doubt it...the rumor is that money changed hands.

------------------------

update:  

 the delta varient is less lethal. And vaccinated people who get the infection don't get as sick.

we are due for our second shot next week.

And the single shot Johnson and Johnson shot is now being given out in our town.

Wednesday, July 28, 2021

Weightlifting Fairy: in real life she's a Pinay

 Duterte gave his state of the nation address yesterday, but no one was watching or cared. Because everyone was watching Hidilyn Diaz win the gold medal in weight lifting at the Olympids.


....

She is from a working class family and had to scrounge to get equipment to practice lifting. Her cousin got her interested in the sport.

her biography says she is 30 years old and at present is in the Air Force



....this 2016 article has photos and information on Hidilyn and her family.

the phrase "weightlifting fairy" refers to a popular coming of age K Drama named "weightlifting fairy",  about a girl who learned weightlifting from her father. Wikipedia article.


Miss Diaz is a K drama fan, according to her facebook page... and  although the weightlifting fairy drama came after she was involved in weightlifting, my granddaughter tells me that Diaz did get some tips on training from the series.

Sunday, July 25, 2021

march of the toads

Mysterious toad march to top of Mt. Homanzan






Whatever motivates bufo toads to undertake a seemingly desperate and perilous annual march to the summit of 829-meter Mount Homanzan here, even at risk to their lives, reached its climax in early July. The toads spend several years on the peak of the sacred mountain before making their descent. They take more than 50 days to reach the summit and encounter numerous hazards along the way, mainly from predators....


Family news

So we have been having heavy rain all week. No major flooding here in town but it is delaying the plating of rice seedlings.

we felt an earthquake yesterday morning, only a rumble since it was far south of here. Actually I was asleep but the dogs got upset and work me up, so all I felt was a rumble and thought it was a rice truck going by (at 4 am).

Ruby is taking driver ed training to get her license. She has no car in the USA but can probably use her license to get one there.

Joy's mother has Parkinsons'disease and has stopped eating. She is now a bit better and eating, but Joy has been visiting there frequently.

The cook, the maid, Joy, and Ruby have been sick with a flu like syndrome. Covid? No tests done, but no high fever so probably not. I have been well so far.

The dogs are all sleeping in my room now: so much for protection. But they do wake up and bark if someone goes by the door, even when the help turns off the lights at 5am.


Thursday, July 22, 2021

the gain of function kerfuffle: The facts

Someone posted a snippet of this on twitter: 

Ah: Fauci lied. He knew that gain of function research was dangerous> but what is being overlooked is that this basic rexearch is needed to understand dangerous viruses so scientists can figure out how to protect people.


the snip on facebook was taken out of this longer video which is a long discussion about the risks and benefits of doing gain of function research. from Dec 2012... and it was about bird flu, not SARS.


Dr. Rand Paul was right: by funding Wuhan, it gave money to that lab to do gain of function research.

why send the money to China to do the research? the problem is that the US labs had had accident problems so it was banned in the US....but a loophole let the funding be sent to Chinese labs to do the research... ignoring of course that lab accidents happen in China too...where corruption is widespread and covering up mistakes is the norm.

and it didn't even bother to discuss "dual use" of the research: I.e. it could be used for biowarfare.

But Dr Fauci made things worse by denial to Dr. Paul: instead of giving a nuanced answer, he simply denied the fact that is well documented.


In both of their defences, I should add the MSM and the right wing counterculture news would probably distort their answers.

Which brings us to epidemic threats in the modern world.

The lecture is about bird flu, which had infected a few hundred people mainly in Asia, but had a very high mortality.

Bird flu jumped the species and infected humans, but it did not mutate to the next step, which was to enable human to human transmission. And it is simply a matter of time until this happens.

So a lot of the research was about bird flu, and a lot of the adenovirus and mRNA research for vaccine was being done so that there would be a fast development of vaccine for bird flu.

The adenovirus technology was used for Ebola, and is one reason that, despite the chaos/war/refugees etc. in central Africa, that the public health authorities managed to keep that epidemic under control.

as for the conspiracy types who see the covid epidemic as an evil plot to kill off excess population: 

Well, if that was the plan, they chose a weak virus to do their dirty work. (indeed, the shutdowns probably killed more people than the virus. The problems of the supply chain the increase in prices of commodities, and as my earlier post on increase in fertilizer prices suggest, the possibility of famine related deaths, not to mention riots and uprisings when food becomes too expensive for people, will be a threat for the next few years).

I have to wonder about conspiracy theorists who see this as a bio attack by China, or by the NWO. (it was probably an accidental release, covered up to save face, similar to how the Chernobyl disaster coverup attempt).

Sorry, guys, it just isn't that lethal.

Bird flu would be a better way to kill off the population. Half of the patients died.

the threat of bird flu was so scary that the US prepared plans on how to stop or minimize the epidemic: LINK

The conspiracy theorists see the Johns Hopkins meetings about a Sars like outbreak before Covid appeared as a NWO plan to give the world a dangerous disease: but like hospital disaster drills, city EMS disaster drills, or like war games, the meeting was about figuring out what one should do if something happened.

for example, the Dark Winter exercize ( June 2001) posited a terrorist attack with small pox. After 911, this became a big worry, and our public clinic was sent the plan of how we should set up ring vaccinations and isolation of patients outside of hospitals. I was put in charge of reading and teaching our clinic how to do this. Luckily, Saddam's small pox was not released on the USA, (destroyed or maybe just never existed) only a weak type of anthrax was released, the same strain one finds in barnyards and is used to make vaccines.

as for vaccines: 

Anti Vax is not limited to the right: it was a big push by KGB disinformation in the third world in the past, and in the US and UK it was pushed by celebrities not scientists.

The pseudo science against the vaccines just say vaccine, nothing specific. But the Sinovax (Chinese) uses an old fashioned technique that goes back 100 years. 

And the Astrozeneca and Sputnik use an adenovirus template, which is new, only a decade of so old. But adenovirus based vaccines have stopped recent epidemic of Ebola in central Africa.

As for the mRNA: this is more experimental, but the science suggests it is working and will be an easy and fast way to make vaccines in case of a really scary epidemic. 

So if you don't want to contaminate your body with newfangled vaccines, hey, ask for Sinovax. And if you are a radical prolife catholic who shouts about using vaccines that use fetal cell lines that came from fetuses aborted many years ago, then find, use Sinovax.

This group is more catholic than the pope ( yes, I know: Some of them don't consider Francis Catholic, but several previous popes said  it was okay to use rubella vaccine derived from fetal tissue from long ago aborted fetuses, as long as the fetus was not aborted to make the vaccine, but aborted for other reasons.) 

and if you are young and healthy, then fine. Get the disease. no problem.

one of these days the experts will say you should be checked for immunity instead of being checked if you had the vaccine, especially when there have been break through cases.

but for the vaccine, it comes down to risk/benefit ratio;



https://www.businessinsider.in/photo/81968506/one-chart-explains-why-the-uk-pulled-the-astrazeneca-covid-19-vaccine-for-under-30s.jpg?imgsize=89123


============

related item:



.......

inflation in the rice fields

 we mainly use organic fertilizer for our organic rice, but do grow non organic rice on some of our fields.

So Kuya complained last night that the price of fertilizer has increased greatly in the last year, which means less profit for our farmers.

From the Inquirer:


The sharp increase in fertilizer prices has prompted several farmer groups to renew their call on the Department of Agriculture (DA) for a onetime production subsidy of P15,000 for small-scale farmers who each own less than three hectares. In a statement, the Amihan National Federation of Peasant Women, Bantay Bigas and Anakpawis Partylist noted that prices of urea—the most basic type of fertilizer used in planting rice—surged by between 49 and 53 percent this month in the major rice-producing provinces of Nueva Ecija and Isabela against quotations between December last year and April this year. 

italics mine. 

why has this happened? This article blames the lockdowns.

Due to the shortage of labor and the shutdown of fertilizer plants located in the integrated chemical complexes, shipments were affected in the initial lockdown process.

countries with natural gas resources can make their own urea fertilizer but many need to import it.

It seems to be a widespread problem: I checked out various trade publications, but they all seem to say the price has been going up for awhile. Much of this is not my area of expertise, so I am mainly noting the problem.

intensive cultivation (2 or three crops a year) mean you need fertilizer. 

-----------------------

and right now we have heavy daily monsoon rains made worse by Typhoon Fabian nearby, which mean it is hard to decide when we should start plating the rice.

and Manila streets are flooded: this is common, alas, due to the low lying land and because the sewers don't drain the water: not enough drainage and clogging of drainage by litter etc.

Chinese aggression, unchecked



 Austin Bay has an essay summarizing Chinese aggression against the Philippines (and VietNam and Malaysia) in the west Philippine sea, and ignoring international law to do so.


China used its "sea militia" to invade Filipino territory. Here's how that worked and continues to work in the EEZs of several Southeast Asian nations. Hundreds of Chinese fishing boats enter the smaller nation's EEZ. Acting as a gray-zone warfare armada, they drive off local fishermen. China Coast Guard vessels arrive to protect the Chinese boats.
China's response to the Court's censure vacillates. It attempts to ignore it; it flaunts new violations. Chinese diplomats have criticized the ruling so fiercely their vehemence suggests someone in Beijing fears the decision. China has a face culture. Did the ruling deal the CCP and its president, Xi Jinping, a severe loss of face? The ruling did not halt Chinese expansion and aggression strategy.

they have sent large flotillas of fishing boats which has resulted in overfishing the area, and their dredging has harmed the ecology of the area. Longer report here:

The fisheries and fishers of the South China Sea warrant much more attention. The disputes over the islands, reefs, and waters in the area have made effective fisheries management impossible even as a calamitous stock collapse threatens livelihoods around the region.

translation: no one dares to stop Chinese overfishing or destroying the ecology by dredging for giant clams or dredging to build their so called islands. 

Tools like VIIRS and SAR show that the number of fishing vessels operating in the disputed Spratly Islands is exponentially higher than AIS transmissions suggest. Improving the monitoring of these fleets will be critical if the claimants hope to save the South China Sea fisheries and reduce the frequency of unlooked-for incidents between vessels.

translation: Chinese ships have been threatening local Filipino fishermen, and now this has expanded to collisions with Filipino small fishing boats. And there have been incidents against larger boats transversing international waters: so far nothing major but it is only a matter of time. The essay uses the phrase "unlooked for incidents".... duh. 

Meanwhile, a different kind of fishing fleet, one engaged in paramilitary work on behalf of the state rather than the commercial enterprise of fishing, has emerged as the largest force in the Spratlys. The numbers of militia vessels operating in the area on behalf of China is much larger and more persistent than is generally understood. Experts and policymakers focused on the South China Sea will need to devote a proportionate amount of their attention to these actors and the role they play in the area.
Translation: Today the small Filipino fishing boats, tomorrow the commercial shipping.

deep in the report they notice that a lot of these "fishing vessels" could not actually fish, meaning they are quasi military force who have been chasing out Filipino fishermen... and maybe doing more things: a quiet threat to the sea lanes to other east Asian countries comes to mind, but also their long term plans to steal the petroleum and natural gas resources in the area.

PhilInquirer has the story of what is going on there.

not only are they destroying the fishing ecology but it appears they are planning to check out if oil is there, and most suspect their long term plan is to steal oil resources.

Zarate said that during the term of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, China used the Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking to explore the country’s territory to their advantage, but with the absence of the agreement now, “it seems that they are doing so on the sly.”

It was suspected GMA was bribed by the ZTE deal.

But now Duterte, has been harassed by "human rights" activists from the USA because of his drug war (a war that kept the Philippines from becoming a narco state, but never mind. My neighbors killed by druggies robbing them don't count as drug war murders). President Obama didn't help the Philippines stop China when they started grabbing the area, and now it's too late, especially with Biden in the WH. So Duterte is trying to make nice with China, but alas China keeps screwing him and not keeping their promises. Sigh.

from the Inquirer article:

In October 2020, President Duterte lifted the moratorium on oil exploration in the WPS, a move closer to implementing a joint exploration deal with China.
Fishermen from Infanta, Pangasinan, recently found a device reportedly used for oil exploration, which was later confirmed by an expert to be an ocean bottom seismometer or OBS, north of Scarborough Shoal. The device had been turned over to the Philippine Navy. Zarate said Malacañang should not dismiss the issue and “once again protect China’s imperial interests.”

 

--------------

related article on "Blood Cobalt": StrategyPage on the mess in Central Africa, including China's grab of their mineral resources, especially cobalt to be used for electric car batteries.

Amnesty international report on child labor in cobalt mining.

and the irony is that many greens will celebrate the increase in China using electric cars, but they won't notice that they use electricity from (high sulfur) coal burning electric plants nearby. 



 

Tuesday, July 20, 2021

And now they are coming for ancient history

 I link to a lot of lectures on ancient history and antiquity.

Pretty apolitical right?

Then I ran across this:


....

more here:


On Facebook, History Can Violate Community Standards https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuc...

notice that the excuse is that facebook is stopping "anti government extremists". whatever that means. 

I presume it means Republicans and blue dog democrats like myself who are not members of the extreme left. 

on the other hand, I stopped going to facebook because liberal friends kept posting rabid anti Catholic and anti Christian posts there: usually strawman arguments, often exaggerated, and usually condemning all believers as evil bigots who need to be censored or harassed, especially if you belong to a Christian church, even if you are African, Hispanic, or Asian.

What comes to my mind is when JFK said those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable.

Monday, July 19, 2021

in the Heights the movie

,,,,,,,

the US films I see here in the Philippines (on HBO etc) usually show minorities who are drug dealers or criminals a la "Hollywood Shuffle" cliches, or full of upper class white girls who work elite jobs and then find a boyfriend and "reality" when they go back to their small town (and neither they nor their boyfriend have family ties or money problems) as in every Hallmark movie available.

and of course in too many Hollywood films, everyone falls in bed with each other, and there are car chase scenes, and in a lot of them there a monster who pops out of the sewers to threaten the nubile (blond) teenager.

which is why I watch so many K dramas.

 But here, we see ordinary folks trying their best to live a good life.

WTF? aren't those making the film aware that these cliches are the only ones that can make money in Hollywood?

well, what do you expect when you get a film made by the guys who made crazy rich Asians and Hamilton. link

the story is about a Dominican Neighborhood in NYC, and like most ethnic neighborhoods is full of family stories, people working hard to get by, and caring for each other. And I emphasize family: because Hollywood seems to ignore that families exist, or when they show families, only show neurotic dysfunctional families full of nasty characters.

the main character dreams of going "home" to his family's town to set up a small shop, prompting my granddaughter to point out that often the second generation immigrants don't appreciate the problems of their parent's home country because they only see it on short visits. (One of her complaints about FilAm kids who think the beach in Boracay is the norm, not the rice fields of Pampanga or the barangays of working class Manila).

but like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, he finds his dream is really at home.

About the only thing missing is religion and religious icons on the wall. Oh well, never mind.

A similar story could be told about working class neighborhoods in cities and small towns. But this is told with music and dance.

A nice film filled with hope.

My only complaint is that I hate rap music, so dislike the songs and would have preferred more melodic tunes. But then I am an old grannie: and my granddaughter loved it.




Saturday, July 17, 2021

Gee, didn't I see this in a film a couple years ago?

back in the 1970s, an agnostic catholic wrote a book that was made into a TV movie about the Catholic church turning into a social work organization, and about a monastery that said the mass in Latin and because many went there to hear mass, the Pope shut it down. link

since the book/tv was written by an agnostic, no one in film really believes in God, prayer, or the holiness of the mass, so the film is a bit cynical, as if the author lives in a flat universe without the ability to recognize the nuances of belief.


You can still find a fuzzy copy of the TV movie on youtube:



so today, Pope Francis has issued a decree shutting down the Latin mass in parish churches. Life imitating art.



....

actually the Latin mass was allowed in response to so many going to schismatic Catholic chapels that said the older mass. That group was in danger of becoming a rule oriented cult, so previous Popes decided to let people go to the older mass in their own parishes, and many did.

but now the Pope is shutting them down.

this is similar to the Jesuit war against the Jansenists a couple of centuries ago: The Jansenists were a response to the corruption in the church and incorporated the strict moral code of Calvin and other reformers into Catholicism. 

The danger was that Catholicism would degenerate into a cult where following rules was more important than your relationship to God or caring for your neighbors.  

Why do folks go to the Latin mass? It's sort of a reaction to the collapse of holiness in the mass, (not to mention the rejection of the bishops who allowed abuse to go on under their watch).

Many Catholics felt a mass had become about us instead of about worshipping God and meeting him personally in the sacrament.

myself, I merely found it boring.

but anyway: not much to do with me, since here in the rural Philippines I am not yet allowed inside the church due to covid, and alas many of the young and middle class are going to Protestant churches that actually preach Jesus in a pentecostal way.
------------------

sort of a related story:

StrategyPage has a long essay on China's aggression againts their neighbors, including the Philippines, India, and China, and expansion in Asia. Read the whole thing.

But halfway down the discussion they discuss religious persecution in China, because China knows how religious movements can be a way to oppose a government.

Most westerners know about the persecution of the UIghar Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists, and most Christians know about the persecution of these churches. But SP has details on the FalunGong, a taoist movement, which is being persecuted with little outcry by the west. And they mention the use of the imprisoned Falungong members as a source of organ donation: which by the way is part of a plot of one of Dean Koontz books.

no mention of the underground Catholic church there however, mainly because Pope Francis had the Vatican sign an agreement allowing the Communist party of China to essentially run the church while ordering the underground Catholic church to cooperate.

Cardinal Zen predicts the result will be the collapse of Catholicism in that country, 

“A schismatic Church put up by the communists, whom we suppose will be rejected by the Chinese people, will die out soon,” Cardinal Zen told Religion Unplugged. “There is no foundation in the culture, in a tradition. Their leaders have no credibility, respectability… They will have no market.”
These new regulations seem to completely sever Roman influence from management of the Chinese Catholic Church — a move that would intrinsically make the CCP’s regulated church schismatic and no longer part of the Catholic communion....

ah but deep in the article, the PC version takes over: it says all of this is about the Pope's favorite stalking horse, the synodality movement, meaning every area of the church can make up it's own rules. 

Indeed, that part of the essay compares the takeover of the Catholic church in China by the atheistic communist government as merely an example of synodality, and compares it to the takeover of the German catholic church by their (atheistic) bishops who want to introduce the latest intellectual fads into the world wide church under the guise of "synodality".

again, none of this is new: the CCP takeover of the church has similarities to Henry VIII takeover of the British church, but also has roots in the investiture conflict (1076) which was about if kings or the Pope could appoint bishops and direct the church.

As for the German bishop's attempt to change the Catholic church into a church of what's happening now, well, one is sort of reminded of all those bishops of late antiquity against Athanasius .

sigh.

.........


GetReligion BLog on the dating app story.


Lots of concern that this liar was caught because his app was hacked.

Sheesh. Years before the Altoona diocese scandal broke, all the laypeople knew which priests were sneaking out to tha gay bars in Pittsburgh  ,(or being seduced by sex starved ladies). In other words, if the average church lady knew whatwas going on, why were the bishops blind to openly sinning priests?

But the important part of the article is that it points out how the promiscuous and the predators got away witg it...because the bishops were vulnerable to blackmail.

This is a claim Ann Barnhart has made in the past...like the National Enquirer, a lot of her most radical claims about the church have come true. She is however still paranoid when she discusses vaccines...at least I hope its just paranoia

End sarcasm

----------------

update: A history of why China is afraid of outside religions: It dates back 1500 years.


Friday, July 16, 2021

yup


 

Film of the week

 quick before the copyright cops find it and remove it:


.....--------

 ignore the ugly remake on Netflix: they wanted to make it more "realistic" so made her ugly and everyone else mean, as if meanness and ugliness was more "Real"than telling the story. 

 There is a place near the end of "Saving Mr Banks" where the Disney character, played by Tom Hanks, explains that their job as writers/creators is to retell the story and redeem their memories, so that they can give hope to others who watch their stories. 


that is what Montgomery did in her stories: retell the struggles she faced being brought up by her strict aunt after her mother died and her father could not care for her.

so she recast the story in a way to give hope to her readers.

It is this melding of fantasy life and reality that makes the story meaningful even after 100 years. My mother read it, and later I read it as a child, and many years later my adopted sons watched it (one of their favorite films: They watched it several times because we taped in our our VHS machine). They were adopted and faced difficulties in adjustment as did Anne. And like their other favorites, WWF Wrestling (!), Pinocchio and Star Wars, the film gave them hope.

Thursday, July 15, 2021

catching up on the news

 Joy is flat in bed with a cold and fever symptoms. I put her on zithromax and tylenol... I had severe aches and asthma/uri symptoms yesterday but no fever so took prednisone and feel better today. The maid is sick with the same symptoms and probably gave it to us, but Joy runs around with business so might not have the same thing.

The internet is back on after Kuya changed the modem (a yearly problem:? cheap Chinese made modem or is it from the thunderstorm related surges we get all the time).

Asthma and diarrhea are going around too, and some ask for money to take their kids to the hospital ER. Public hospital is free, but not the medicine or tricycle fare. But many prefer to be treated in the private hospitals/clinics because of the crowded waiting rooms and danger of catching Covid.

Our family has had one shot so have partial immunity. Second shot due in August.

In the meanwhile, the news is crazy. 

forget Godzilla: THE CAT IS COMING!



Wednesday, July 14, 2021

Move over Elon Musk and Brason

Before we had this: ..

....we had this... discussion here


Thanks to President Obama for letting the millionaires try to beat China to colonize Mars:


......

I spoke too soon: the gov't is trying to shut them down, using the usual environmentalist nonsense.



This revelation from FAA officials is most interestingly timed, coming on the same day as this garbage article about the terrible environmental damages some activists imagine SpaceX’s launch facility might someday cause. .....


Nor was this the only such attack article in the past two days. Here is just a sampling:

While the last two op-eds above are partly in response to Richard Branson’s suborbital flight on July 11th, their timing and linkage to the FAA’s revelation yesterday is no accident. Forces in and out of government that are strongly hostile to private enterprise and its ability to get things done are working together hard to squelch the new renaissance in commercial space, precisely because it shows how successful capitalism and freedom are compared to the bloated, wasteful, inefficient government-run space programs that we have been saddled with for decades and have gotten us nowhere during that time.



Family news

lots of thunderstorms, meaning the internet modem (or the local internet provider wires) are going bad: the connection goes on and off, and when it is on it is slow.

we had a small party (Cakes and ice cream) for our cook's birthday: She is in her early 70s but refuses to retire, maybe because she is supporting loads of kids and grandkids. No, not from her tiny salary, but because I am paying some of their school fees, and of course, she is given a budget so when there is not a lot of staff eating here, she can pocket the unused money and food.

We are in partial shutdown, with spacing and masks and often a face shield required if you go inside. But the streets are fairly busy, and lots o new outdoor kiosks back in business.

Ruby is busy doing classes in bible word and literary form analysis, as part of her teaching degree while on vacation she needs to take a tutoring class on how to present and organize classes and her minor degree is to be English. 

Joy is busy as usual, as is Kuya. It's early in the growing season and we have deliveries to Manila as that area opens up.



Friday, July 09, 2021

Musical interlude of the day

 

yup. just move along folks

 and this is how you get homophobia:

ThePG rated version of the story can be found on PJMedia.

 x rated version  LINK 

A joke? (so just ignore the double entendres)

The singers insist the song is all about tolerance, so who dare to object unless one is a evil right wing bigot (or a parent who objects to the toxic sexual waste that is being pushed onto their children by the cultural elites).

those charming singers would never really harm your child. It's a satire, right? so don't be a bigot and object.

this is a song glorifying the fact that the American culture is busy normalizing any and all sexual activity, and is teaching indoctrinating children into sexuality at an early age.


First you remove the taboo in discussing it, then you hint it's okay, then you print propaganda stories making it sympathetic, then you decriminalize it as "consensual", then you stigmatize those who criticize it as bigots.

Got it.

Update Daily Wire via Tea At Trionon points out how the sex education trends are leading to children being sexualized and easily recruited, and suspects the porn epidemic is part of the reason.

Ballard noted that by exposing children to sexualized materials, government schools are employing the same tactics as traffickers.

“Candace and I talked about teachers who are now teaching children to masturbate and to learn terms like ‘clitoris’ and ‘erection.’ As I said to Candace, this is exactly what the traffickers are trying to do to children. If they can get access, they will try to desensitize them by showing them sexual things. Now they have teachers doing it for them… you’re just softening up these children and making them ripe for victimhood.”

“Or, you teach them that sexuality is so okay that a fourteen-year-old on Instagram is showing as much skin as they can,” he continued. “If you’re paying attention, there are traffickers commenting under the photos. ‘Hey, you’re so beautiful, why don’t you come to a photoshoot?’ That’s how they’re recruiting kids into trafficking.”

“Anyone that’s pushing that mentality — especially in public education — the reader can decide who’s doing that,” remarked Ballard. “Whoever’s doing that is on the wrong side of history.” (Read more.)



I am old enough to remember when Germany's green party attempted to legalize sex with children by lowering the age of consent.... and Johns Hopkins had a clinic where two prominent physicians insisted that folks having sex with children needed to be treated, not jailed (1992 article here).

and this idea is undergoing a renaissance today....

The idea is if a type of sexual activity is being done by some folks, then hey, don't be judgemental. 

And the dirty little secret is that there is something attractive about the pubescent innocent (of both sexes, but especially of pubescent boys in the gay community) that attracts some people, so some argue since this is a fact, we should tolerate such behavior.

And hey, the kids like it (so a Project Sigma report in 1993 said 35 percent of male gays had intercourse below age 15, including ten percent under age 10 but hey, that didn't mess them us psychologically so stop worrying.. and one suspects the numbers are much higher nowadays, since fatherless boys are now more common in society and fatherless boys are especially vulnerable to being groomed).

That was the story we were taught in medical school back in the early 1970s. Freudian theory and Kinsey affirmed it. 

... until the victims grew up and blew the whistle

italics mine.

Summary here does note that the statistics might be too low because most cases of sexual abuse are not reported. From shame, from denial, or because they are told that their reality isn't true.


New Yorker article about the problem.( the link can be found with other links on the subject HERE.)

When monsters roam free, we assume that people in positions of authority ought to be able to catch them if only they did their jobs. But that might be wishful thinking. A pedophile... is someone adept not just at preying on children but at confusing, deceiving, and charming the adults responsible for those children.


So am I a bigot to worry that this song is just another MSM and internet manipulation to desensitize you?

Too many examples out there, but mostly on right wing sites like the Washington Post editorial who says hey, letting kids see the perverts acting out sexually during a parade is okay, or the LATimes spins a story as transphobia in their report that Antifa is attacking women who object to a pervert exposing himself in a woman's spa by pretending to be a lady, or good morning America and other MSM outlets promoting gay child drag queens on stage.

you know, a lot of us opposed the sexualization of little girls on stage and screen, something the Ramsey murder brought to our attention. So how is this good for children?

the full court press to ridicule the traditional morals of the world (not just Christians, but Confucian ethics, Islamic ethics, and the ethics of many traditional religions oppose this type of behavior).

So we see stuff like the "football is gay" meme being lauded in the MSM as something to be celebrated, which made me think: Uh, Joe Paterno?

ah yes, poor Joe.

His family insisted he just didn't understand the issue: but even USAToday noted the similarity with the lack of understanding that this was abuse that needed to be reported with the moral collapse of the catholic church in Pennsylvania.

And I thought WTF, until I remembered how the local Altoona diocese in the 1990s and early 2000s promoted gay friendly policies: the psychologist who screened our seminarians told the State College school board that the gay agenda was not a problem, and we had lots of articles supporting the gay agenda in the diocesan newspaper ....  LINK..., and fired priests who objected. Penn State is located within that diocese, and it's gay friendly outreach might have led to the failure of Catholics at Penn State to ignore the Sandusky incident in 2002.

Sigh.

As this column in the NYPost notes that minorities who are traditional Democratic voters are pushing back the agenda of the elites (who now run the Democratic party and who are fighting the Trumpieboy led populist takeover of that party).

and all of this might be the reason behind the uberreaction of the snowflakes about "micro aggression", which is often pushback after these folks have been gaslighted by authority figures. (and alas sometimes it is fantasy or attention getting behavior or suffering from low self esteem and adjustment issues so are exaggerating their experiences to fit into the latest social fad).

So we see kids, especially celebrity's kids go from proclaiming they are gay to proclaiming they are "pansexual" to proclaiming they are transgender... and now they claim they are "Demisexual".

Demisexual people only feel sexually attracted to someone when they have an emotional bond with the person. They can be gay, straight, bisexual, or pansexual, and may have any gender identity. ..

Demisexual people do not feel primary attraction — the attraction you feel to someone when you first meet them. They only feel secondary attraction — the type of attraction that happens after knowing someone for a while.

In other words, if you don't immediately see a person as a sexual object and feel you have to jump into bed with them, you now have your own psychiatric desription.

And I'm old enough to remember when that was normal.

);

 



Thursday, July 08, 2021

Catsup post of the day

 here, we can get several versions of tomato catsup: regular, sweet, and hot/spicy.

But we also have Banana catsup, which is a bit cheaper.


and it has an interesting history.


Musical post of the day

 turn up speakers and dance!

Sunday, July 04, 2021

the Firefighter's prayer

 we live in Asia, so tend to watch a lot of Korean dramas: romance, ghosts, class vs class, etc.

So there we were watching an old (2010) K drama The Secret Garden, where an uberrich guy switches souls with a lower class lady stuntman. There are usually historical reasons for these things in K dramas: and it turns out that the lady's father rescued the guy from a fire and when the fireman realized he wouldn't make it, told the rich guy to take care of his daughter, but the rich guy developed PTSS and blocked out the memory, so the father's ghost brought them together years late to do this.

Silly, but hey, it's a drama.

But in the midst of the story, there is a flashback to the man's rescue, and the narrator, presumably the fireman is saying the Fireman's prayer as they search for survivors. (49 minutes into the drama):


..

This surprised me for two reasons;

One, because American dramas censor any reference to God, but in a secular Korea, the shamans and priests and religious icons are just part of the cultural background in these dramas.

The second reason it surprised me is that the Fireman's Prayer is known in Korea: the history of that prayer can be read here..

https://www.eldoradocountyfire.com/last-alarm/firemans-prayer/

Sigh.

On 9-11, over 300 firemen and police lost their lives trying to rescue survivors. One does not hear about that type of thing nowadays, because of the political push to make Americans hate each other, especially to hate police, firemen, security guards, military personnel, etc. who work to protect folks' lives and property.


Police like Captain Dorn.




..
..sigh.

years ago we were taught:
That we were put on earth to Know, love and serve God in this world. 
And that every action in our ordinary life, done with love, is a prayer.

I was lucky enough to be a physician, and knew that doing this was in imitation of Jesus the Healer, but in the world, any job done for love of God is also a prayer that heals us and those around us.


That we were his hands here in the world. And that all of us: Artists, mothers and fathers, retired old ladies, doctors, cops, office workers, farmers, street cleaners,  shop keepers, etc. are part of his work."

Because what we do for the "least of our Brethren" is the same as doing it for Jesus.

painter: Joey Velasco.

________

Update. Fireman finds young daughter's body in ruins of condo collapse.

https://nypost.com/2021/07/02/firefighter-finds-daughter-in-rubble-at-florida-condo-collapse/

Saturday, July 03, 2021

Why Blood clots? genetic problems, vaccine, and IV administration

 technical discussion about the blood clot problem from some of the covid vaccines: is it partly from inadvertent IV injection?


this is about the adenovirus vaccine, (UK/Astrozeneca) vaccine, not the mRNA vaccine.



....
mainly posted so I can watch it later on my tablet.

Dr. C summarizes:

Thrombocytopenia has been consistently reported following the administration of adenoviral gene transfer vectors. The virus activates platelets and induces platelet-leukocyte aggregate formation. Polyethylene glycol modification of adenovirus reduces platelet activation, endothelial cell activation, and thrombocytopenia, (Human gene therapy, 2007)


Recently a rare and novel complication of SARS-CoV-2 targeted adenovirus vaccines has emerged: thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS). TTS is characterized by low platelet counts, clot formation at unusual anatomic sites and platelet-activating PF4-polyanion antibodies reminiscent of heparin-induced thrombocytopenia. Here, we employ in vitro and in vivo models to characterize the possible mechanisms of this platelet-targeted autoimmunity. We show that intravenous but not intramuscular injection of ChAdOx1 nCov-19 triggers platelet-adenovirus aggregate formation and platelet activation. After intravenous injection, these aggregates are phagocytosed by macrophages in the spleen and platelet remnants are found in the marginal zone and follicles. This is followed by a pronounced B-cell response with the emergence of circulating antibodies binding to platelets. Our work contributes to the understanding of TTS and highlights accidental intravenous injection as potential mechanism for post-vaccination TTS. Hence, safe intramuscular injection, with aspiration prior to injection, could be a potential preventive measure when administering adenovirus-based vaccines.


and there are genetic reasons for thrombocytopenia: LINK 

it seems to be a problem from the adenovirus part of the vaccine. This has implications for other vaccines using the adenovirus template.


for all the kerfuffle about the vaccines, it still comes to a risk benefit ratio. 

For we elders, the risk is smaller than dying from covid or complications related to covid.

We have had some cases in town, but in the last three weeks we have had quite a few elders die, and lots of people asking for help because they have asthma. The overcast from the monsoon is making my asthma worse, and of course it means more mold in house. But I wonder if there is a covid related problem in the area. Most have no fever, so probably not.

article on how to tell the difference between covid and allergies.

fever and general body aches and pains are one way to tell.

________________

From above link about platelet clumping...

We conclude that Adenovirus-induced thrombocytopenia: (the role of von Willebrand factor and P-selectin in mediating accelerated platelet clearance)  are critically involved in a complex platelet-leukocyte-endothelial interplay, resulting in platelet activation and accelerated platelet clearance following adenovirus administration.

Wikipedia article about vWF here. 

Thursday, July 01, 2021

volcano alert

Taal volcano, south of Manila is threatening an eruption. 
The government is starting evacuations

The ashes could hit Manila.

Keep us in yr prayers

Sit back and smile

 There is so much angst and hysteria on line that I thought I'd link to Minnesota nice.

Garrison Keillor's essay today is about returning home and just having supper with friends.


It was a jovial two hours and because I am fifty years older than either of them, I did not natter. There was no nattering, no reminiscence about the Swinging Sixties back when pop songs made sense.
I asked them questions about their lives and it was illuminatory and inspiring, to hear about real things. Two hours, during which we did not spend one minute talking about the issues and crises that newspaper columnists have been agonizing over for the past five years. The political fortunes of Vlad the Impaler did not occupy us for five seconds.
She is heading into the business of listening to troubled people and he is managing a venue for punk bands and stand-up comics and both are doing well and this makes me happy: young people avoiding the many dark corridors available and pursuing what makes them happy. This gives me hope for the future, which I have much less of than they, that friendship will see us through whatever happens.

For awhile Keillor was in a bitter period but now he's back to being the mellow fellow who gives you hope.

and his Writer's Almanac podcast is now on Youtube:

 




podcasts of the Prairie home Companion and some of his books are on line at internet archives LINK

Saving the Union: Gettysburg July 1-3, 1863

 If Lee had won the Battle of Gettysburg, he would be able to surround Washington D.C. and probably would have won the war.


...yes. the actor doing an exellent job portraying Lee is a Mexican American.


This uses images from Ted Turner's film Gettysburg to illustrate the lecture. Based on Michael Shaara's book the Killer Angels, it used Civil War reenacters to play the soldiers: These groups reenact the fight of their ancestors as a way to remember their heritage.

I visited the battlefield several times with my sons, and it's impressive.

And Lincoln explains the importance of the Union in his memorial speech.