I had the maid clean up Lolo's grave last week, and today we went to visit.
Undas is tomorrow, but we went early: tomorrow there will be crowds and we wouldn't be able to not drive to the grave, and I am too old to walk (especially since it is raining on and off).
The old cemetary where Lolo's mother and some relatives are buried is free to visit, but his grave is in the newer area so there is a maintenance fee that we had to pay before they would let us in.
After the visit, we went to McDonalds to eat breakfast, and to buy a heater for the shower head in the guest room
Lolo's grandkids are vitisting in a week, and the original plan was for them to stay in Kuya's apartment, but the typhoon blew out his windows and some damage, so we will put them in the guest room, which doesn't have a shower head heater (we moved it to Joy's bathroom when hers burnt out).
So we went to the hardware store and bought one for 100 dollars. The one in my bathroom was twice that price, but I got a heavy duty one that hopefully will last more than five years.
It is overcast, and we'll probably have showers later today, which is bad for the rice which is only 80 percent dry, but tomorrow is supposed to be sunny.
The tropical storm hit south of here, with the eye going thru Bulacan.
The problem wasn't so much the winds (the last one was much much worse, with a lot of destruction from the winds) but the flooding.
The ground is still saturated from the previous typhoon, and there were people killed in landslides. Many evacuated, but the problem is that with crime being rampant, often one person stays at the house to prevent looting, and the cops etc. are too busy with saving folk to worry about theft.
A lot of the flooding and landslide are from deforestation, which is from illegal logging (corruption means you can give a small gift and the authorities will ignore what you are doing, and hey, the local folk need the jobs).
And some is from the rivers clogged with trash and also from silting (deforestation also leads to more soil being washed into rivers).
The electricity was turned off during the storm to prevent fires etc. and came back on in the early AM.
But I wonderedd why it was turned off early yesterday morning, and now we find the reason was that the men putting up the Christmas lights in the area of the Plaza had an accident and one man was electrocuted when something fell over and touched a live wire. Sigh.
The house survived, but the temporary patches of the roof blew off, so the living room/dining room area was flooded, so I have the maid and her brother cleaning up that area now. I haven't seen Kuya to see if his apartment upstairs was damaged, but we are having visitors next week and the plan was that they would stay in his apartment and he would bed down in the office. Alas, thanks to the first storm blowing out his windows and now more rain damage, that plan has changed so we will probably bed them in the BNB area of the business compound (which hasn't been used thanks to covid ). So we will have to clean up that area later this week.
Undas is coming, (Nov 1, all Saints day) and although I did have Lolo's grave cleaned up, we will have to check if there is more debris blown into the area. However, the city said no cleaning until after Undas because the guys who collect the debris will be too busy cleaning up after the visits (where people bring flowers, light a candle, have a snack and sit around and talk...).
I doubt I will get there today with flowers, because the streets still are wet. So I will have to go tomorrow or Tuesday, which means fighting the crowds. Usually due to the crowds, you aren't allowed to drive to the actual grave site, but as an elder, usually they will let me in if I come in a tricycle. Elders are respected here, and I have the grey hair to prove my age.
I was going to link to a video, but hey you've seen this type of news film lots of time, and it really doesn't give you the idea of the reality.
Due to hit Manila and our region late tonite and early tomorrow morning. We are signal 3.
As of now, Paeng still packs maximum sustained winds of 95 kilometers per hour (kph) and gustiness of up to 130 kph.
The winds are not that bad but the rains mean flooding.
Metro Manila floods all the time (it's the sewer system: inadequate and often clogged with trash). But Joy has a trade fair there today but hey, typhoons and street floods happen all the time, so no problem. (/s).
But since it will probably hit south of here, it means we don't have to worry about being downstream from the rain. (when the rain runoff from the moutains north of here is huge, often the irrigation dams have to drain water to prevent overtopping, which then causes flooding down stream. Luckily usually the dams survive the problem: I only remember one minor dam that collapsed and cause minor flooding here since we moved here).
We did get the rice harvested, so that is good (although not a good harvest because of the last typhoon) but whether we can get it dry is another thing. If you don't dry the rice properly, it will get fungus growing and it will spoil the rice.
Sigh.
In the meanwhile, my backup generator is at the farm and the large generator still has problems, so hopefully we won't have another prolonged brownout.
Ah, life in a tropical paradise!
Sigh.
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update: The maid just came and said they are planning to open the irrigation dam (to prevent overtopping and collapse), so are evacuating the neighborhood near the river where it often floods.
We are on high ground, and have a second story so should be okay.
-------------------
update: No electricity all day but it came back on at 11 pm.
I have not blogged here because I have been posting on my medical blog.
LINK is about the poor public health response to Monkey pox: Because publicizing it was being spread in gay gatherings, or actually shutting down raves etc was not done for fear of spreading homophobia.
And the outreach to the black community was dismal.
Joy is at a business conference, and Kuya is busy harvesing the rice. Unlike when we moved here, when the staff would take off to harvest their rice by hand and we had our own thresher to process it, they now use a harvester/thresher to do this.
The mayor's office will supply it for free for the small farmers, but there is a long line and you have to take your turn, so Kuya is renting one... alas it broke down and they are fising it, and it is due to rain tonite, and another tropical distrubance that might turn into a typhoon is due to hit here over the weekend, so it is vital to get the rice cut and dried before the rains start again.
(update: They were criticized and retracted the statement within 24 hours, showing their obedience to the mob and/or lack of integrity. Heck, I'm old enough to remember when the left was anti war and ignored atrocities by communists because of political correctness).
Russian bots? Disinformation? Well, maybe. But please stop the war before the MIddle East (who require wheat from the Ukraine to eat) start starving and war breaks out there again.
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LegalInsurrection asks: Where is James Gordon Meeks? former ABC reporter had a military like raid on his apartment but only Rolling Stone seems willing to publish the story.
Why so many quasi military raids on people unlikely to shoot intruders?
First they came for Roger Stone, then they came for Prolife leaders...
And why the hyperventillation about secret documents? Anyone remember the Pentagon papers?
Back in the winter of 1999/2000 we had an epidemic when I was working in rural New Mexico: We were full and a lot of the kids needed PICU but those beds in our usual referral hopitals were full and we had to spend a lot of time on the phone finding a bed for transfer.
Actually it is a frightening disease and we have an epidemic of it here: one or two parents a day come for money to help them pay the hospital visit with their kids with "broncho" as our cook says. She lost two kids of "broncho" so is sympathetic to them.
Covid however is not a problem: oodles of cases, presumably, but few are getting routine tests because hey, the harvest is going on and people are busy cleaning up debris from the typhoon....
the newest strain reported in Singapore is not increasing hospitalizations and numbers here are stable and low:
StrategyPage has a summary of how Starlink helped the Ukraine by providing internet communications.
When Russia invaded Ukraine before dawn on February 24th, the Ukrainian minister of digital transformation contacted Musk for help in dealing with Russian efforts to cut Ukrainian access to the Internet....
Musk agreed to help and within four days hundreds of Starlink satellites were moved into position to provide Ukraine with high-speed Internet service using hundreds of Starlink user kits Musk sent to Ukraine.
Musk ultimately supplied Ukraine with nearly 2,000 terminals and managed to persuade countries supplying military aid for Ukraine to include Ukrainian requests for more Starlink terminals, especially the more expensive, and capable commercial models. In this way Ukraine was able to obtain over 25,000 terminals so far. ... about 500 terminals are month are lost to Russian attacks. These have to be replaced and most, if not all, of the replacements are paid for by military aid for Ukraine. The Starlink replacement terminals cost about a million dollars a month.
But apparently Musk is paying for the cost of keeping the statellites running, and this includes fighting Russian hacking of the system.
notice that unlike certain Europeans nearby, who hesitated in sending in help, Musk started helping within days of the Russian invasion, and that being a private company didn't have to fight the sluggish redtape etc of government help.
But also note this:
Yet for some reason the U.S. government refuses to make Starlink service part of its multi-billion-dollar military aid effort for Ukraine.
After weeks of this Musk ended the discussion by openly agreeing to keep paying for the Ukrainian Starlink service. While Musk is the world’s richest man, there are limits to his resources and the enormous costs of maintaining Starlink for Ukraine in wartime is unprecedented and not sustainable at its current level. Musk is returning to private discussions with the American government over the issue.
There is a lot of suspicion on conspiracy pages that a lot of the aid money being sent to the Ukraine is being siphoned off to private folks, or even circled back to bribe American officials, but never mind. Corruption? WTF?
and the conspiracy sites hint that US regulatory state is doing it's best to destroy Musk and his ventures, because they can't control him... (twitter anyone?) Or if you are really paranoid, maybe China is pressuring certain folks to use the US bureaucrats to slow down or stop Musk here. (no link: just wondering).
So why not offer to help pay Musk to keep the internet in the Ukraine open?
I think the idea was for him to stop the internet service and voila, the MSM can paint him as the bad guy. Alternative scenerio: Make him go broke so he can't fix twitter.
and of course, Musk's threat to stop paying for the Ukraine's internet this will be quoted out of context to destroy Musk, who dared to propose a way to make peace....
Peace in our time? Or maybe just common sense.
This is being protrayed as a threat to the Ukraine of course, (who never really owned the Crimea, which used to belong to the Ottoman Empire before Russia took it over);
So would letting Russia keep the Crimea, which was never part of the Ukraine, be wrong?
well if you are making oodles of money selling weapons, or receiving bribes and kickbacks or stealing aid money, the answer is yes. Heck, even NPR is worried about the corruption.
Actually I hope the Ukraine wins: But excuse my cynicism here. The Philippine joke is that with corruption here, bribes are given under the table, over the table, and with the table. And that would be true for the Ukraine, Russia, and China...
There are other countries who would like to destroy Musk and Starlink: China (and Russia) are trying to get their own system in place, you can see why some folks might want to destroy an already completed satellite network that proves it can deliver the goods.
here is a WSJ video that mentions Chinese propaganda against Starlink:
this would be a godsend to those in the mountains north of here. And would keep up connectivity when disaster strikes: Our Globe phone and internet was okay during the last typhoon, but Joy's business internet with Huawei was out for ten days.
That is a small local disruption. But a very real problem is that a lot of internet cables run near Taiwan and are vulnerable to attack/
So if China decides to cut the internet cables near Taiwan to isolate them, and/or threaten nearby countries to do this if they "interfere" or object to this aggression, Starlink could change their ability to do so.
Taiwan is a major global player in the electronics and IT sectors, which naturally requires the island to rely on internet connectivity for its economy. The Taiwanese government had declared its internet connectivity as a concern of national security. Currently, Taiwan relies on sea-based cable lines to connect itself to the rest of the world. This week, a Wall Street Journal article explained many regions around the island in which China has been conducting military exercises overlap areas of major undersea internet cables. For example, a Japanese ship was unable to repair a damaged cable line between Japan and Taiwan due to the Chinese military exercises.
In defense of its internet connectivity, Taiwan is starting to build an internet infrastructure based on the Starlink constellation.
here is a discussion about Starlink in the Ukraine, and notes the US government trying to stop Musk on several levels:
State and federal governments have poured billions into Elon Musk's science and business ventures and offered the tech CEO lucrative and exclusive government contracts over the past 20 years. But some officials now worry Musk holds too much influence in foreign affairs and are seeking to curb his influence in Washington by funding his business competitors, according to a Washington Post report.
SCMP (used to be independent but now Chinese government controlled:
Biden officials uncomfortable with Elon Musk’s threat to stop supplying the Starlink satellite service to Ukraine, ‘Russia-friendly’ tweets and Twitter deal
The US$44 billion Twitter deal could trigger a security review as it includes foreign investors such as Saudi’s Binance Holdings run by a Chinese national
The ecoreligion (that is even being pushed by the Pope's minions) keep pushing old fashioned living aka sustainable development: that supposedly we should go back to living in the same simple ways as our ancestors: which to anyone familiar with the rural poverty in the third world means hard work, not enough food, etc.
So the elites have an answer to this: Bugs!
A quick google will show oodles of academic articles pushing the idea (under the religion of the great reset).
we are assured: that bugs have long been a source of protein since ancient times.
But notice: often the articles have language equating the huge numbers of societies eating bugs (broad use) as if it was the same thing as these societies eating bugs all the time as a major source of calories and protein.
Dirty little secret: Often the bugs were eaten once in awhile: but they were not a major source of protein and calories. But reading the articles published by worshipers of bug eating you might not realize that.
I won't swear that hungry farmers won't eat them during the "hunger season" shortly before the harvest, but you know, they also eat dogs. Hungry people will eat anything, which is why the Chinese markets are reported to sell all sorts of strange animals for rich city folk to eat because they are nostalgic for the good old days on the farms when they ate anything that moved so they wouldn't starve to death.
This is not a spontaneous thing: a quick google will show this idea is being pushed by academics who are prosyletizing the Green Religion.
Nearly all of them start the same: blaming covid for disrupting the food supply chain (uh, it wasn't covid: it was the economic shut down, but never mind)...and then saying we need to eat bugs instead (uh, this would require building this industry almost from scratch, which will take years, but never mind).
So the articles almost identically push this line of propaganda to deceive readers into thinking this was once and should again be the normal diet.
so eat bugs or else sinner!
and maybe that is the point: it is a way to humiliate you and shame you, not because it is acutally a solution to world hunger.
The biggest problem with eating bugs is the "yuck factor".
But notice something? You still have to buy the bugs from suppliers (who feed the growing bugs with robots). And then buy them after they were highly processed (or do all that work yourself).
and don't'believe the propaganda about spoiled westerners not wanting to eat bugs, so we will have to force them encourage them to do so.
Food aversion is a big problem all over the world: Those of us who worked in public health knew we had to use foods that locals would eat: and this meant knowing about local preferences, taboos, and if the food was similar to what they were used to eating. (place MRE joke here).
We ran into this in our nutrition village, where moms were taught how to grow high vitamin veggies and raise high protein animals (mainly chickens for eggs) to supplement the diet of their children who were developing malnutrition.
I remember one article touting using fish powder in the local porridge, which sounded great until the authors admitted no one would eat it.
However, high protein non alcoholic beer using yeast powder was a cheap way to supplement protein for toddlers in our area. It was simliar to the local beers of the local folks, so it was accepted, and the moms could make it by putting a small amount of the powder into bottles and then waiting a day or two for it to brew.
Which brings me to another question:
Why all the hype about edible insects but none about lowly yeast?
Article about yeast as a cheap protein source has a long discussion about this option. LINK.
Yeast protein biomass (single cell protein, SCP) is a bioavailable product which is obtained when primarily using as a culture medium inexpensive various waste substrates including agricultural and industrial wastes.
With the growing population, yeast protein seems to be an attractive alternative to traditional protein sources such as plants and meat.
Moreover, yeast protein biomass also contains trace minerals and vitamins including B-group. Thus, using yeast in the production of protein provides both valuable nutrients and enhances purification of wastes. In conclusion, nutritional yeast protein biomass may be the best option for human and animal nutrition with a low environmental footprint.
Yes.
and we know westerners will eat yeast extract which is added to may foods , and even eaten directly as Marmite in the UK....
or if you are from the Land Down Under, a Vegemite sandwich
First they came for the HCQ/Ivermectin pushers, then they came for Dr. C and the BMJ. And now Youtube/google is warning you not to listen to Catholic websites that oppose abortion.
From EWTN News:
...
Social media giant, YouTube, has added a warning to content from many Catholic and pro-life organizations. The labels appear beneath the video with a link to so-called "abortion health information." The warning even appears on some videos of Pope Francis. Senior Tech Columnist at The Federalist and Policy Director at the Conservative Partnership, Rachel Bovard, joins to tell us about these warnings.
YouTube is even placing abortion information on videos about vandalism at pro-life pregnancy centers. Bovard explains why YouTube is doing this and what effect she thinks it is having. Bovard shares what so-called abortion information is in the link provided by YouTube.
On another note, the US Supreme Court is set to hear 2 cases on Section 230 and Big Tech. Bovard discusses these cases, why they are so important and how she sees this playing out.
Speaking of Dr. C:
;Dr, Campbell has a video today asking if the covid statistics are accurate...
and this is in the UK: I can assure you that the figures are no accurate here, especially now that we have the weaker version going around, and hey, it's harvest season and people are busy cleaning up after the typhoon and harvesting the rice that wasn't destroyed by the storm.
FYI: Dr C's commetary on today's video notes the rules of Youtube that he has to obey:
YT Guidelines
COVID-19 medical misinformation policy
Prevention misinformation:
Content that promotes prevention methods that contradict local health authorities or WHO.
Vaccine safety: content alleging that vaccines cause chronic side effects, outside of rare side effects that are recognized by health authorities
Efficacy of vaccines: content claiming that vaccines do not reduce transmission or contraction of disease
Ingredients in vaccines: content misrepresenting the substances contained in vaccines
the problem? by censoring the nut jobs who exaggerate problems, they are also censoring discussion of the problems, where the problems are put into perspective of pros and cons.
The result is that the nut cases actually get more credibility, especially for those who already suspect problems of reporting by the MSM/ubermedia giants.
speaking of covid: There is a new strain going around Asia that was found to be epidemic in Singapore and has now been identified in the Philippines. However, it is no worse than previous strains and isn't killing a lot of people because it is weak like the previous omicron varient.
however, there have been quite a few people with sick toddlers asking for help with medicine or to go to the hospital. I suspect it is RSV, which news reports say is surging in toddlers in the USA.
So now, the UK Mail reports that hey, don't wait for China to develop the next dangerous virus by doing gain of function research when scientists in Boston can do it.
Boston University scientists were today condemned for 'playing with fire' after it emerged they had created a lethal new Covid strain in a laboratory.
DailyMail.com revealed the team had made a hybrid virus — combining Omicron and the original Wuhan strain — that killed 80 per cent of mice in a study.
the UK Mail, a tabloid whose articles make it easy to read although they do tend to emphasize the dramatic part of the story, nevertheless has a good explanation of what is gain of function research, and what the scientists were looking for.
DISCUSSION
203 This study provides important insights into Omicron pathogenicity. We show that spike, the
204 single most mutated protein in Omicron, has an incomplete role in Omicron attenuation. In in vitro
205 infection assays, the Omicron spike-bearing ancestral SARS-CoV-2 (Omi-S) exhibits much higher
206 replication efficiency compared with Omicron. Similarly, in K18-hACE2 mice, Omi-S contrasts with
207 non-fatal Omicron and causes a severe disease leading to around 80% mortality. This suggests
208 that mutations outside of spike are major determinants of the attenuated pathogenicity of Omicron
209 in K18-hACE2 mice. Further studies are needed to identify those mutations and decipher their
210 mechanisms of action.
Here is the story with the scientists pretending that this was not a problem because, hey, we need to know this and we all know that labs are safe.... and toward the end she congratulates her fellow docs for getting rid of Monkey pox quickly, ignoring that basic public health practices (isolation, closing high risk meetings, outreach to the non Caucasian community) was not done very much.
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I always thought that the mixture of cartoon characters and live action started in Mary Poppins, but apparently it was in this film, back in 1947.
the film is almost banned due to the racist stereotypes, but you can find it here.
Ironically, the tales told by Uncle Remus were based on African folk tales.
Brer Rabbit was a "trickster" character, an archetype found in many folk tales in West Africa
Some scholars suggest that the tales were popular because it shows how a powerless person can get back on the ones who harmed him, or as Wikipedia notes:
Some scholars have suggested that in his American incarnation, Br'er Rabbit represented the enslaved Africans who used their wits to overcome adversity and to exact revenge on their adversaries,
Tricksters can be evil, but most are a mixture of good and evil.
The reason the god Loki is in some ways more popular than Thor (who had trickster elements in Norse mythology but became a good guy in the comics) is that Loki is an evil lying SOB but sometimes he is the only one who can save the earth.
DiviantArt webpage discusses the modern tricksters....quoting contributor WaConnor as saying that in the past, tricksters sowed chaos to help society advance, but nowadays, they are the ones who rebel against society to regain individual freedom.
Tricksters are often heroes who use their wit to win: as in Ulysses and the Trojan horse, or in today's pop culture, Captain Kirk, who resemble Ulysses in his romances and wit and ability to get out of hopeless situations by original thinking:
..
In the past, children were taught folk tales, including tales in the Bible or the myths of Greek literature. Are they still taught in school? Percy Jackson has introcduced many kids to Greek and Roman mythology, but so far no one outside of staid Christian publishing has bothered to romanticize the stories of Sampson or David vs Goliath, or retold some of the stories that Jesus told to the delight of his listeners. (Render to Caesar is not just good political advice, but it was also an example of using wit to not be trapped by a question where yes and no would have gotten him into trouble).
Such stories seem to be fantasy, but often carry lessons to remind people of reality.
For example, am I the only one to think that the story of tar baby is a warning to politicians who want to get countries involved in war, thinking it will be an easy win?
and of course, the modern day equivalet of the trickster is Trumpie boy, who has been attacked by all and sundry plots, yet his enemies find he is tarbaby and only get themselves in trouble as their lies and plans finally are being noticed.
the next plan is for the J6 committee to force Trumpieboy to testify: and he will, but only if it is televised.
Hmmm... a guy who starred in a reality TV show for a couple years testifying before dull self-righteous politicians. What could go wrong?
The US was founded by people seeking religious freedom.narrow minded bigots and similarlly people who object to the newfangled religion of trans and sexual freedom being promulgated in schools has the Feds sicced on them, and the press labled them narrow minded bigots.
But these groamers religious zealots who teach children the trans religion are getting pushback, not just from narrow minded Christian white bigots, but by pious Muslim parents too.
Maybe someone needs to sue the schools to remove this from school, in the same way that a famous atheist sued to get the (Protestant King James version) bible reading from being pushed on atheist, Catholic and non Christian children.
Religious beliefs and their conservative mindset also have another side effect: On recruiting for the military. Not only is the military recovering their self esteem after the debacle of leaving Afghanistan, but the covid epidemic increased obesity and lack of fitness... and then there is this:
Not mentioned are the many desirable young people who do not even consider enlisting because of the military’s new social justice regulations and lectures.
Finally, a Canadian film about the Chinese persecution of the Falun Gong sect is not available on line yet, but is winning awards.
The latest crime of the FG? hacking Chinese TV...
Ah, but China already persecutes their Muslim Uighurs, and of course, democracy advocate Cardinal Zen of Hong Kong is under arrest, so this is not just targeting a Buddist sect.
But as I noted in my last post, the Technocrats are joining in on censorship: according to the VOA
, Paypal has just canceled the account of a Pro Democracy group there.
"Unfortunately, upon review of your account we have determined there to be excessive risks involved. Therefore, we will no longer be able to provide our services to you. While we wish you the best of success in your future business endeavors, we respectfully ask that you seek another payment solution to process transactions on your behalf,” part of the email read.
Founded in 2006, the League of Social Democrats is one of the last functioning activist organizations in Hong Kong. Over the years, several of its core members have served jail terms after pressure from authorities over the group’s ideology and activism.
There is a long history of states controlling religion, and religion that is not controlled by the state is a danger to the power of the state.
Indeed, world history is full of stories of the powerless joining a religion and then their group will rebel against tyranny. Not all were successful, and not all who succeeded in throwing out the old managed to make a better government, but these things come in cycles, as China knows, and their oppression of non controlled religious groups has a logical reason behind it: The problem being, of course, that the cycle of heaven still will catch up to them, and delay in reform will only mean that violence will result.
so the ultimate way to stop this is.... democracy...
I stopped using paypal a couple years ago when they attempted to bully North Carolina into letting men into women's rooms if the men claimed they are women
(Note; A true trans looks and acts like a women, so who would know? But having this policy essentially tells perverts they can peep in on women and expose themselves claiming they are trans, which is quite another thing altogether).
But I was having trouble having my Scribd account renewed because none of my credit cards were accepted. Hence, paypal.
But now I am being told that if Paypal discovers I hold the wrong opinions, they will fine me $2500. That is my monthly Social Security income. WTF?
I am waiting to see if they change this policy, or I'll cancel them again.
And do wrong opinions include medical opinions based on 12 years of medical training and 40 years of clinical experience, but that disagree with the unknown experts of some social media company?
Who knows.
However, I am wondering if my blog is already being censored in some way:
For awhile I was averaging 50 hits on each post, but about two months ago this fell to 10 or less.
But in the last week or so, I am averaging two hits a day. Hmm... I have more relatives than that reading my site so I don't know what is going on.
But my blog was originally a way to communicate with my brother and give him a heads up on weird stuff in the news.
however, since they just canceled the account of a Human Rights organization backing Hong Kong Dissadents among others, one really doesn't know what is true here.
the tropical cyclone off the coast has sort of just been sitting there, but is scheduled to wend it's way through here today and tomorrow. The winds are down so it's no longer a cyclone just a LPA (Low pressure area) meaning heavy rains.
Not good for those who haven't fixed their roofs yet and it will postpone the rice harvest for a few days.
Sigh.
A lot of what I read seems to be confusing and I know from living overseas that you can't get a good perspective on US news on the media.
But behind the headlines, there are indications of problems causing lack of trust in those controlling the news: Not by q or conspiracy sites, but from mainstream people.
Dr. C as a nurse educator with expertise in public health has an excellent site that analyzes the data in plain English.
Recently he has been warned by Youtube that he would be censored for commenting on data that they say is not true. So now he just quotes the medical and public health literature, and tells us he is being careful so he doesn't upset the experts of the social media.
It might not work: Here he analyzes an article on the BMJ (British Medical Journal) which ironically has been warned for what it says. Now, I have disagreed with medical journals in the past, but you know; That is how we docs work. Indeed, we used to have journal clubs where we discussed articles and analyzed them, including pointing out where we thought they made mistakes. But threatening shutting down their ability to communicate by someone who is unknown sounds more like political censorship than science. But hey, that's just me.,,,
here is Dr. C: asking who checks the fact checkers
....of course, there is a question if you should trust the journals and experts. Has this been corrupted by the profit motive? Again he quotes the BMJ...
..............
,,,,,
I worry when there appears to be a cover up of the side effects of the vaccines, where the risk/benefit ratio is wonderful for those of us who are high risk, but for the young, who rarely die from Covid (especially omicron variens) the risk might not outweigh the benefit.
Are public health authorities doing their job, or have I missed something?
We see a similar willingness to compromise basic public health practices for PC groups. Hence the scandal of "public health" authorities who encouraged violent protests against racism, but forbad private gatherings.
And indeed, we see a similar absurd approach to monkey pox by the same medical community that mandated masks and face shields and isolation to stop the spread of covid, but when confronted with a disease that is known to be spread by close contact including sexual contact , there was a refusal to do what was always done when similar epidemics exploded in the past: stop high risk activity by closing places where it happens...
Why? Because in today's world, promiscuity and sexual expression are rights that are more important than public health.
It is fairly simple to stop the spread of monkey pox, which needs skin to skin contact and either thin skin (as in infants) or tiny abraisions that let the virus enter.
And the prevention is fairly straightforward:
Quarantine and immunization have been known to stop the spread of small pox back in the days when Washington ordered his army to get vaccinated.
But now, that part about avoiding risky meetings where certain behavior known to spread monkey pox has been ignored...Instead, immunizations, which take 7 to ten days to work, were offered but no attempt to stop massive rave parties where it could spread, This shows either an ignorance of what goes on in these gatherings, or else it shows that medicine/public health authorities are rejecting science by ignoring behavior that can affect one's physical health for political reasons.
A similar blindness to the consequences of newfangled "reforms" that the PC are pushing can be suspected about Pope Francis and his beloved "synodality on synod" nonsense.: it reminds me of the manipulation of encounter groups we were forced to attend in the 1960s, which was supposed to be about bearing our souls honestly but was actually just a way to manipulate people to go along with the group leader.
This idea that sexual promiscuity is a harmless activity that should never be limited ignores three thousand years of Biblical ethics, and also ethics of many non Christian societies. Even non believers have to realize that such rules survived because they pragmatically encoded thousands of years of human experience into what works to make a viable society.
Yet we are seeing the promoting of sexual sin as a risk free and morality free activity in many modern churches (and an attempt by liberal German bishops to impose this on the Catholic church).
Yet this ignores the danger to the spiritual health of the soul: ignoring that the sexual revolution has caused the meltdown of the family in the west, which has terrible effects on children.
But it also ignores the health problems of promiscuity on the individual.
California makes it illegal for doctors to disagree with politicians
Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed California Assembly Bill 2098, making it the first state to attempt to censor what physicians can say about COVID-19 to their patients. This is a dangerous, and likely unconstitutional, effort that other states must resist.
read the entire article.
So will the AMA and other medical societies who have been taken over by activists (which is why I quit them years ago) and pretend to represent docs condemn this? Who knows...
And unanswered is the question: Who makes the rules?
The statute does not specify who is the arbiter of “contemporary scientific consensus” on COVID.
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more here about twitter blocking Florida's recommendation that young men not get covid shots because of the risk of myocarditis.
Myocarditis was more common in patients who received the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine as compared to the non-mRNA vaccine and was also higher in patients who received the second dose of the vaccine.
it seems to be seen after a second shot, or if you have had covid in the past, after your first shot.. But the risk is higher from just getting covid of course.
We are signal one: not a typhoon but just a tropical depression (that could turn into a typhoon) that will bring rain and gusts of wind up to 45 km per hour.
for fishermen an those by the ocean, it could be a problem... for us the main danger is rain and flooding. We haven't recovered from the (signal 4) typhoon two weeks ago, so heavy rain could be a problem for those still fixing their houses or where the soaked ground and sewer/drainage system clogged with debris won't be able to drain heavy rain.
Some of the schools closed, just in case: I went to the bank, and our tricycle driver had his daughter with him because her high school was closed...he left her here (with his mom, our cook) while he drove us around for bank and errands.
The Philippines is essentially open for tourists now.
We are looking forward to Ruby and friend, and two American cousins, who plan to visit in November.
in the Philippines in 2022, country health authorities report 160,594 cumulative cases through September 10, a 189 percent increase over the number of cases reported during the same period in 2021 (55,650).
but since mild cases don't go to the doctor, I suspect numbers are higher.
and the cook reports that in the barangay there is a virus going around in kids, who have a fever and rash. She thinks it is dengue, but with a lot of kids not getting their regular shots, I wonder if it could be measles or rubella etc.
A total of 450 measles and rubella cases were recorded from January 1 to September 17, 2022, which was 153% higher than those recorded during the same period last year, the Department of Health (DOH) said Wednesday.
In other words, lots of stuff out there that is dangereous, not just covid, which at the present time seems to be over and except for masks in malls, shops and banks, no one seems to be worried about it.
Tired of reading romances where a fiesty (and beautiful of course) lady finds true love (and never worries about who pays the bill)?
Tired of SciFi/fantasy books with superheroes/heroines who beat every monster in the universe without breaking a nail or getting her hair mussed?
Tired of books by bitter women who fight the evil world by destroying the patriarchy (but never ask what happens when they destroy civilization?)
Tired of religion in novels being portrayed as crazy, and believers as stupid or evil people, or (worse) "religious" novels portraying believers as two dimensional characters spouting cliches whose struggles seem to have nothing to do with real life?
Well, I have a book for you. And it's not what you think.
The Sisters of Mokama relates the story of some Kentucky nuns who started a hospital in an isolated area of India in the confusing days following Indian independence.
No, not a treachly book about white saviors, nor a pseudo inspirational book about pushing Christianity on the heathens, but a realistic story of women who had the willingness and expertise to start a hospital from scratch, and gradually expand it into a regional center with a nursing school.
And it is also the story of the Indian girls who, against many odds, joined them and became nurses: written by the daughter of one of these nurses, who later immigrated to the US.
It is the story of idealism and hard work. It is a feminist story, where women use their skills to help others. And the background of the struggles of India to become a nation, a story that is not well known in the west, is part of the story.
New York Times editor Jyoti Thottam’s mother was part of an extraordinary group of Indian women. Born in 1946, a time when few women dared to leave their house without the protection of a man, she left home by herself at just fifteen years old and traveled to Bihar—an impoverished and isolated state in northern India that had been one of the bloodiest regions of Partition—in order to train to be a nurse under the tutelage of the determined and resourceful Appalachian nuns who ran Nazareth Hospital...
Fascinated by her mother’s story, Thottam set out to discover the full story of Nazareth Hospital, which had been established in 1947 by six nuns from Kentucky. With no knowledge of Hindi, and the awareness that they would likely never see their families again, the sisters had traveled to the small town of Mokama determined to live up to the pioneer spirit of their order, founded in the rough hills of the Kentucky frontier. A year later, they opened the doors of the hospital; soon they began taking in young Indian women as nursing students, offering them an opportunity that would change their lives. One of those women, of course, was Thottam’s mother......
an excellent well written book if you are interested in feminism, biography, the history of medicine/nursing, India, the history of partition in India, and even a short lesson on the logistics of setting up a hospital from scratch.
I give it a four out of four stars.
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By the way: the religion part in the book is shown by what these women do: having the courage to face the challenges and overcome them, This is true not just for the nuns, but in the stories of the Indian girls who saw this as an opportunity to help the patients but also a way to improve not only the lives of their patients, but the lives of their families, in a changing India.
Catholic hospitals (and schools and other outreaches) is not about preaching, but service: It's sort of the feeling that God gave you these gifts, and it is your responsibility to use them to help others: because they are your brother or sister and need help. Behind this is the belief in God. It is time taken out of a busy day for prayer that gives you the strength to go on another day and to keep things into perspective.
Helping people without regard for their beliefs is part of the culture of Catholicism, and one of the things I like about Pope Francis is that he is stressing this aspect of the faith.
