Malala Yousafzai: Portrait of the girl blogger

from the BBC:

a girl blogs about living under the Taliban, and they try to kill her to silence her.
excerpt:

Do not wear colourful dresses - 5 January 2009
"I was getting ready for school and about to wear my uniform when I remembered that our principal had told us not to wear uniforms and come to school wearing normal clothes instead.
"So I decided to wear my favourite pink dress. Other girls in school were also wearing colourful dresses. During the morning assembly we were told not to wear colourful clothes as the Taliban would object to it."

more facts:

• Began blogging for BBC Urdu in 2009 under pen name Gul Makai aged 11
• Campaigned for girls' right to education
• Shot on way home from school in Mingora, main town in Swat Valley
• Doctors removed bullet from her head
• Pakistani Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility, saying she was anti-Taliban and secular

• Pakistan girl surgery 'a success'

Malala Yusufzai spoke to BBC Urdu in November 2011

"Malala was the lone voice in that wilderness," writes Feryal Gauhar in the local Express Tribune.
"Hers was the voice which made us consider that indeed, there can be alternatives, and there can be resistance to all forms of tyranny. Today, the attempt to silence that voice shall only make her stronger; the blood stains on her school uniform shall only feed the conviction that as long as there is breath and life, there shall be struggle."

How to share a soft drink with your friends

video




your email of the day from Col Updraft

Spanish lesson of the day

The word for cat in Taglog is Pusa...

more languages here.

Rupus Fears on Egypt

the late historian Rupus Fears saw what is going on through the eyes of history, and he wasn't very optimistic.

video one


Video two

Food for thought.

Good news of the day

The Supreme Court here has temporarily stopped enforcement of the new Cybercrime law...


so I can now follow Downton Abbey without getting arrested.

Email donations? Potential for fraud high

Now the daily beast is reporting about email solititations for the Obama campaign from those living overseas but who may not be citizens.

Campaigns that aggressively raise money online are soliciting donations from people around the world—whether they intend to or not. People repost campaign solicitations on blogs that send them sprawling around the globe like digital kudzu. For example, an Obama campaign official posting ended up on Arabic Facebook, complete with a hyperlink to a donation page. In another instance, someone posted videos on Latin American websites featuring Sen. Marco Rubio, and included embedded advertisements asking for campaign donations.

In addition, people around the world are being asked for donations by the campaigns themselves, simply because they signed up for information on campaign websites. The problem: candidate webpages don’t ask visitors from foreign IP addresses to enter a military ID or passport number. Instead, the websites use auto-responder email systems that simply gather up email addresses and automatically spit out solicitations.

(refer to below and my BNN rant about Lolo, a registered Republican, being asked to send money ...typical email:

We cannot let that happen. Thank you for everything you've done to move this campaign forward, but now I hope you'll take one step further. Please donate $5 or more today:

https://donate.barackobama.com/Stand-With-Me

Thanks. It means a lot to know you've got my back.)

My problem is not just that scammers from China know how to bundle donations to hide that they are actually laundered money from big businesses in China, but that there is no way for me to know if the email is true, or if I open the email I'll find my computer infected with a virus, or find that the webpage link goes to a scamster busy stealing money.

Medical Stuff below the fold

Fancy new tricorder medicine?

Ah, but don't forget the bedside manner.

Dr. Heineken fills his teaching days with similar lessons, which can mean struggling upstream against a current of technology. Through his career, he has seen the advent of CT scans, ultrasounds, M.R.I.’s and countless new lab tests. He has watched peers turn their backs on patients while struggling with a new computer system, or rush patients through their appointments while forgetting the most fundamental tools — their eyes and ears.

For these reasons, he makes a point of requiring something old-fashioned of his trainees.

“I tell them that their first reflex should be to look at the patient, not the computer,” Dr. Heineken said. And he tells the team to return to each patient’s bedside at day’s end. “I say, ‘Don’t go to a computer; go back to the room, sit down and listen to them. And don’t look like you’re in a hurry.’ ”

yes. Tell that to the ones who insist we be "efficient" and not waste time on the patient.

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On the other hand, maybe we need to supply birthing packs for Manila rapid transit:

14 babies born on LRT-1 since Year 2000, says LRTA

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When Big Bird was started, all kids had to watch were second rate cartoons and soap operas. now we have alternatives.

Mitt Romney is not as big of a threat to Big Bird as for-profit rivals such as "Yo Gabba Gabba" and "Dora the Explorer."

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

Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded to Quantum Physicists Serge Haroche and David Wineland

While Wineland used light to measure the quantum state of atoms, Haroche used as a sensitive probe of light particles trapped in a cavity. Both of these techniques have been applied to investigate the fundamentals of quantum mechanics, and might lead to the development of quantum computers or incredibly precise atomic clocks.

 
-------------------------------
The "WAGD" post of the day: SARS at the Haj?

Severe Respiratory Illness Associated with a Novel Coronavirus — Saudi Arabia and Qatar, 2012

if you plan to attend the Haj, check out the CDC webpage HERE.

-------------------------------------------
Could a vaccine eliminate celiac disease from gluten intolerance?

But the experimental vaccine, which is about to go into human trials after being successfully tested in the laboratory, could be a major breakthrough.
Named NexVax2, it works by ‘reprogramming’ the body’s immune system so that it does not attack the gut in response to gluten in the diet.

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Move over Sandusky: The BBC now has their own "sex abuse" scandal...
-----------------------\

YUM!

Vintage Potato Chip Bra

Cat item of the day

Enough with the headlines: It's time for kitties!

Professor Rufus Fears RIP

Professor Rufus Fears, a teacher at the University of Oklahoma, has died.

his lecture on Churchill at CSPAN here.

 a few of his lectures are are about modern events, and the importance of putting today's headlines in the perspective of the past:

Chavez pulls a Marcos

FilAm blogger at Belmont club says what I thought when I heard about the Chavez win: Sounds like Marcos.

alas, the church there is busy promoting peace, not democracy as Archbishop Sin did when Cory "lost"...so don't hold your breath....


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Michelle praises Native American tribes for "adding healthy, traditional foods like buffalo meat into school lunches.”
Yes, because all American Indians ate buffalo:

  video here:

actually, the tribes have long been involved with nutrition outreach: first, encouraging commodities to stop malnutrition and now by promoting good diets for quite awhile (I ate buffalo stew when I worked a stint
at the IHS 40 years ago...but it may not have been for nutrition, but because the hospital was so underfunded that the tribe used to donate meat from their older buffalo to help).

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Colombus day and the PC are busy. But the dirty little secret is that disease, not the Europeans, destroyed the population: something that should be a message to all of us.

Charles C Mann's books 1491 and 1493 explore the issue of how the Americas existed before Colombus and what happened after the Colombian exchange of germs and plants and animals happened.

Charles C. Mann “Living in the Homogenocene" from The Long Now Foundation on FORA.tv

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

Headlines below the fold

Not in the headlines for some reason, but if you scan lower down you will find that the Nobel Prize in Medicine has been awarded to the scientists who devised a way to make adult stem cells act like embryonic stem cells.

Japanese press story HERE.

Probably not in the reports: check NYTimes 2007 story about Yamanaka's decision to stop destroying embryos:

Dr. Yamanaka was an assistant professor of pharmacology doing research involving embryonic stem cells when he made the social call to the clinic about eight years ago. At the friend’s invitation, he looked down the microscope at one of the human embryos stored at the clinic. The glimpse changed his scientific career.
“When I saw the embryo, I suddenly realized there was such a small difference between it and my daughters,” said Dr. Yamanaka, 45, a father of two and now a professor at the Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences at Kyoto University. “I thought, we can’t keep destroying embryos for our research. There must be another way.”

-------------------------------------------
StrategyPage report on the Philippines peace deal

Well, when even Binay and the Manila Bulletin (i.e. the business community) are praising him, it means this is a big deal. The indigenous groups, who predate the Moros, also are supportive.

(hint: The extremists will try to destroy it, so everyone is waiting for a few bombs to go off).

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For the last two days I have been hearing prop planes and helicopters flying low overhead, meaning the AFP are training the Yanks in jungle warfare at nearby Ft Magsaysay again. And no: I haven't spotted any Harriers yet.

This would ordinarily be good news for the local working gals, but after the Subic rape case kerfuffle, the Marines are probably told local gals are now off limits.

One difference this year: I can't find reports of the left protesting the visit. Even the left hates China more than the US...but officials reassure China the fact the USS Bonhomme Richard is parked at Subic has nothing to do with China...

------------------
Related item: China's economic problems might affect the economic growth of Asia.
more HERE.

------------------------------
Strategy page keeps pointing out why there will be no peace with the Middle East: Two generations of hate propaganda in the media there.

Michael Totten links to this article in Arab news pointing out the same thing: Ignoring the Arab on Arab atrocities...

StrategyPage also report on the keystone cops infighting in the administration about the deaths at Benghazi.  Some of the post attack coverup it to keep sources from being outed, of course, but the key question:

That said, it's still unclear why the ambassador chose to spend September 11^th (a day many Islamic terror groups liked to attack Americans on) in such a vulnerable place (Benghazi, noted for its many Islamic radical groups and in a lightly guarded consular compound, rather than the heavily guarded embassy back in Tripoli.)

Well, it was an open secret that the place was indefensible and going to be attacked: every gamer has known this since VileRat said goodbye on line.

--------------------------
  Mrs. Gay Caswell again blogs to correct a recently published book that whitewashes the history of "the ultimate mole" in the Canadian government...

Who do you believe, that nice elite writer who is "one of us", or the files from the KGB?

----------------------------------
Bookmarked for later reading: Camille Paglia and Ricochet on the demise of the arts.

----------------------------------------
MoJo has an article on everything you ever wanted to know (not) on fecal therapy.


-----------------------
Could Africa become the bread basket of the world?

yes:  they need to copy Zimbabwe, where farmers grow wheat in the winter/dry season with the help of irrigation.

 (and if they get rid of the tsetse fly and start irrigating, you'd see wheat field where NatGeo only sees lion habitat ) 

Gift item of the day

from ThinkGeek:

A JarJarBinks Whoopie cushion

It's Monday...get back to work

Is Facebook giving out email to the Obama campaign?

Lolo gets two or three fundraising emails every day from the Obama campaign at his email address.

Who gave them this email address?

Lolo is a Republican but like most Filipinos he has a Hispanic name. We also used to get Spanish phone calls from the Democrats at our unlisted number when we lived in the states.

rant moved to BNN...and I suspect they got the email either from comments to articles (I sign into Discus via Facebook) or because someone was checking out Facebook entries from Minnesota and thought he might be Democrat because he has a Hispanic name.
-------------------------
Update: Gizmodo  has published an article on this here, and links to several Mother Jones exposes on it.

Stories below the fold

Why does the BBC call a group that murders Christians and educated Muslims a "militant" group, but AlJezeerah calls them "terrorists"?

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Aquino announces a peace deal with the MILF

Third time's the charm?
Malaysia sponsored the talks.

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400 000 people in Haiti still live in tent cities.


how much of this is from the inefficiency of the UN?

The report also recognizes that the 5.5 billion dollars in aid pledged at the conference in March 2010 held at the United Nations, just under half (2570000000) was received. Of the 5.78 billion dollars from bilateral and multilateral donors for humanitarian activities in the period 2010-2012, only 10 percent (556 million euro) was submitted to the government

actually, that number is going down: a January report said 600 000 lived in tents.

------------------------------
There is an ongoing case of a Muslim clergyman who accused a girl in Pakistan of defacing the Koran...the case blew up in his face, when it turned out that she was retarded and illiterate, and was hoping to grab her family's land after they fled.

Well, the same thing is happening in Egypt.
the children were illiterate, and later released, but the problem with these cases is "spontaneous" violence...and of course no one connects the dots when the families flee and their houses and land gets grabbed.

It's not religion: It's con men using religion to get rich.

-----------------------------------------------
It's not just Korans getting defaced:
Mark Rothko painting at Tate Modern 'defaced

uh, how could they tell?

Craft item of the day take two

Downton Abby Paper dolls

here are four sets of Downton Abbey paper dolls created by Kyle Hilton. You may not be able to watch new episodes for a while, but you sure can cut these dolls out and make up your own story lines

pdf at link

Craft item of the day

Comes from Librivox:

Wings and the Child

by E. (Edith) Nesbit (1858 - 1924)

"This lovely book describes the practicalities of building cities (or forts, secret bases and fairytale palaces) out of household odds-and-ends. It also goes much further to speak of the importance of developing a child's imagination and other aspects of Education beyond simple instruction. Nesbit may not have realised how multicultural her own Britain was, let alone ours now, or that the wider world might be interested in this book, so please forgive some rather dated phrasing in places." -- Cori Samuel 

Factoid of the day

From the CarTalk guys: The Top 10 Presidential cars. 

Yes, Clinton had a Mustang, but did you know McKinley had a Stanley Steamer?

Musical interlude of the day

LINK

Why Some Countries are corrupt

StrategyPage has a dicsussion on the Shiite/Sunni divide in Iraq, but has this observation on corruption that explains why third world politicians tend to steal everything in sight:

The problem in Iraq is that the forces of darkness are more pervasive and persistent than the forces of light. This accounts for a continued reliance on family and tribe for essential services (security, justice and survival in general). Thus government officials are expected to steal all they can and share it with family and tribe, as these are the only people you can rely on in the end. In short there is no "civic spirit" (or "civil society") that Westerners take for granted.

------------------------------
Rubin points out that supporting the clan first is one reason for the Middle East's problems:

The key element for this article is this: when solidarity along group lines takes priority and the line is that all of “us” must unite against the “other” no matter what truth, logic, or justice dictates, then that means serious trouble.

----------------------------------
Related item item: The headline of today's Manila Bulletin:

Dynasties Defended

Public Service Not Based On Name But Qualifications – Palace

 

Heh. He should talk, as this Malaya editorial by Nestor Mata notes.

These dynastic families are known to have spawned elitist 500 public officials in high government levels, including presidents and vice presidents, senators and congressmen, and in local governments. As shown by a recent survey by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, about two-thirds of members of both the Senate and the House of Representatives come from political dynasties. And it said that “the members of political families will tend to legislative in favor of their own interests to the detriment of the majority.

 

------------------------
So we never have such problems in America, do we... except for the Romney, Clinton, Bush and Kennedy clans...

Musical Interlude of the day

LINK

turn up speakers and enjoy!

Hobbit stuff

New but strange movie banners on the studio's facebook site

----------------------------
Dr Ted Sherman is posting his college classes on LOTR and on Shakespeare...



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

 PhilStuffofDoom has started posting The Return of the King.






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

Mythgard Institute sometimes posts longer lectures on Tolkien, Lewis or Rowlings.


and the Tolkien Professor's website has lots of podcasts, including his college course on Tolkien, discussing Fairie and Fantasy and the Simarillion...and now the Riddles in the Dark podcast, discussing the new movie...

he is also on iTunes but my links there never seem to post new podcasts, so I use the rss feed...

-----------------------------------------
Father Roderick has several good podcasts at SQPN, including Secrets of the Hobbit, and Secrets of Harry Potter.

both of these are also on iTunes, and no, they aren't religion in stealth, just geekdom discussions.

-----------------------------------------
if you want reviews with a religious take, try Hollywood Jesus...
not podcasts alas, but old fashioned essays.

they review films, tv and comics, but have a HobbitHole to discuss the upcoming film.
--------------------- update: 75 reasons why you should read the Hobbit before you see the film.

Feeling snarky today

Obama's foreign policy crisis decision tree

via senseofevents

Courtesy Diogenes:

------------------------------
and several blogs posted this from the New Yorker.

However, the British press is still cheering for an Obama Landslide,

one blogger at the Telegraph even predicts the Republicans will start a shooting war when they lose.

The pinko, Marxist, Obama-loving side of me can’t wait for the fireworks to begin. But there’s another part of me that’s quite disheartened at the thought of the last few moderate elements of a once great political party vanishing beneath a tidal wave of post-election Tea Party hysteria. The majesty of Lincoln, boundless optimism of Reagan, dignity of McCain – swept from the pages of history by a bunch of moon-colonising, carnivorous chicken-touting, hurricane-summoning fruit loops.

Presumably he means the carnivorous chicken eating Americans who trounced the Brits in 1776 and in 1815 New Orleans and saved their butts in two world wars.

actually, what the European press is saying is tame next to their hysteria when Reagan was running back in 1980, and they insisted he would start World War III...

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

There is an RIP VileRat facebook page

and video



and SomethingAwful remembers him and the others who died:

Please remember those killed, Ambassador Chris Stevens and security agents Glen A. Doherty and Tyrone S. Woods, as well as those Libyans who fought and died to protect the consulate.

I am not sure why Obama is so stupid in getting the real story out. politics? Coverup of major security problems?

We'll find out the real story after the election...

Stuff below the fold

Removing garbage in Ancient Egypt:

From fairly basic public health practices, such as the removal of trash to peripheral locations, to reasonably sophisticated theories on the origin of disease and the widespread promulgation of preventive practices, ancient Egypt shows that even in pre-scientific complex societies an awareness of the social context of health and disease existed.

Why yes. Anyone reading the Old Testament probably suspects this and wonders if if Moses knew about it  when "he" wrote Deuteronomy...

----------------------------------
Dr. E. describes her work keeping Tehran green and clean, despite sanctions.

Among the major projects involved is a large anerobic digester in Abe Ali in the eastern suburbs of Tehran. This complex will generate 2-4 megawatt/hr of electricity with 300 tons of waste every day. The power generator will go online in a few weeks.

-----------------------------------------
extraterrestrial mummy found?

Link

nonsense of course...just a child with hydrocephalus who nevertheless was loved enough by his parents to pay for him to be made a mummy...

Peter Singer take note...

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DANGER! DANGER!

Beware of exploding wash machines!

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

Europe falling apart? Spain could fall apart if the Catalans and Basques get their way, and Scotland has been mulling over leaving the UK, but now there are similar sentiments in... Venice?

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

OH NO!  now there is an l illegal underground maple syrup economy!

----------------------
Dave Barry reports:

M&M's-crazed bees make blue and green honey

---------------------------------------
Never say that your expensive degree in useless subjects won't get you a job:

Mr Fox graduated from Bangor University with a degree in music and English, and now works as a human scarecrow by strumming his ukelele...

--------------------------------- 



Cowabunga!

Or maybe I should say Dogabunga!

 

Picture: JOE KLAMAR/AFP/Getty Images

Huntington Beach has it's dog surfing contest.

More Stories below the fold

Time travel? A newly released film leads to this discussion. 

Fahri related a story about reading a paper by a physicist at Princeton, Richard Gott, who proposed a time machine. The paper showed that if you had a certain dense collection of matter and the parts were moving quickly—in effect a machine that was moving very fast—if it encircled itself, it would come back before it left because of a strong warping effect. Farhi and some of his colleagues wondered if you could actually build the machine. With a premise of not violating the laws of physics, they were able to show that if you wanted to build this machine you would have to assemble at least half of the mass of the universe. Ha! So much for that.
 

(Headsup ColUpdraft)
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Living in a connected world: One third of Filipinos can't live without their cellphones.

as for the internet: the new bill is worse than SOPA.

Our new cybercrime law not only covers spilling the beans on corrupt politicians libel and downloading songs by Justin Bieber, but it outlaws cybersex and cam girls...


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

Meat: It's what's for dinner.

"Meat eating has always been considered one of the things that made us human, with the protein contributing to the growth of our brains," said Charles Musiba, Ph.D., associate professor of anthropology at the University of Colorado Denver, who helped make the discovery. "Our work shows that 1.5 million years ago we were not opportunistic meat eaters, we were actively hunting and eating meat."

not mentioned: raw meat is hard to eat and chew, so the use of fire by ancient man was one reason he was able to utilize meat protein to make the brain grow...

----------------------------------------
The post american world:

the West African countries (ECOWAS) are making plans to get the Al qaeda type rebels out of Mali, and this time even Algeria might approve. The west might help but is waiting for the UN, but the locals don't need the UN either...so this might mean Africa too sees their future in their own hands, not bowing to the dithering Europeans in the UN...

In the meanwhile, Turkey has been fuming over the war in Syria, and might just start pushing back.

Turkey's PM has said his country has no intention of starting a war, after parliament in Ankara authorised military action inside Syria.

since Turkey is a member of NATO, this could involve the US and Europe...in a proxy war between Iran and Saudi...

So it might not take Israel to bomb Iran to start a major middle eastern war.

Luckily, the US can rely on North Dakota to supply them with oil and natural gas.


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

Don't ask me about the debates: when we turned on CNN to hear the results, they showed two seconds of Romney before switching to a world shaking story of a kidnapped young white girl, and the BBC has the Democratic talking points.

---------------------------
In our prayers: Landslide kills at least 18 students in China.
and 38  killed in a Hong Kong ferry accident.

------------------------------
While North Korea is suffering another major famine, National Geographic posts a propaganda photo of chubby happy North Korean tots lifting barbells...

.Photograph by David Guttenfelder, AP
Presumably, Leni Riefenstahl wasn't available....

Although the comment part does note;

according to a 2012 UN report, nearly a third of North Korea's children under five suffer from malnutrition. (Pictures: "Escape From North Korea.")

Yes, which is why you shouldn't be promoting propaganda for the bad guys...

They also have a photo of happy palestinian skateboarders with that nasty Israeli fence in the background.
Hmm...wonder if the next suicide bomber planning to blow up Pizza parlors full of Pinay caretakers will get over the fence with a skateboard...

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Uncle Orson reads a bio of Churchill and wonders if Obama is our Chamberlain...

and no,Card is not a Republican but, like me, a old fashioned Democrat of the Hubert Humphrey branch of the party that alas no longer exists.

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

Card also mentions how annoying it is to read a book by someone who makes major mistakes or has an agenda they think you won't notice.

Yup...I was reading a bio of the Queen Mum...(the mother of the present Queen of England).
No, I won't link to it, but it is not as good as Kitty Kelley's expose, which is more lurid but more charitable...


The author seems to think his readers are too stupid to pick up his lies..
...For example, the author denies the "Chinese dossier", rumors that Wallace learned X rated secrets while living in China, by saying the Queen Mum made it all up. He defends Wallace by saying she was too racist (!) to talk to the local Chinese let alone Chinese hookers....
Come on now: Everyone knows the high class hookers in China of the late 1920's were White Russian gals....
and the author, of course, doesn't even bother to mention Edward's little problem with the Nazis. 
film HERE

The author also ridicules QM for being large and wearing fluffy dresses and huge hats...ironically, if you look at the photos from back then, her dresses still look pretty good today, (slightly "frumpy" but in a comfortable sort of way) where photos of the stylish Wallace show a lady whose stylish dresses are now so out of date that she looks like a skeleton in drag. 

Luckily, the King's speech will probably remain to remind us there is another side of the story, not the propaganda film directed by Madonna which disappeared as soon as it was released.

Philippine news etc.

Good news of the week: the pro Business newspaper here, the Manila Bulletin's headline:

GMA Arrested Anew
 Police Start Hunting Down 9 Co-Accused In P366-M Plunder Suit

first you remove the crooked judges, then you start arresting those at the top instead of the scapegoats.

But don't hold your breath: witnesses tend to disappear, and all the suspects have relatives working in the government.

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

After much negotiating, Saudi agrees to pay their Filipina maids a little more.

the average monthly pay is $200 a month, and now they have agreed to pay $400 a month.

Many of the women working in Saudi are from very poor families who support their relatives back home. In the Philippines, there is a long tradition for older girls to work before they marry, but many of the maids are married with kids, who are cared for by the grandparents. Usually they send home pay which is used for school fees, luxuries (TV's etc) and sometimes to build a decent house or help relatives set up a small business.

Here, nursing school  is about getting a job overseas. The gold standard is going to the US, but Canada and the UK and Australia are also good choices. Those who pass nursing but not the US test often go to the Middle East. Those who don't pass the nursing exam usually go as high end caregivers or nannies for "yuppies" in Hong Kong and Malaysia...there are also factory jobs in Korea advertised...and Korean language schools are available to help you get a job there.

Factoid of the day: A lot of Koreans come to the Philippines to learn English (especially in Baguio, which is up in the mountains and cooler), and many English teachers in Korea are Filippino...

We pay our maids about $200 a month (part of that is in room and food not money) which is why they come and go so quickly.
Minimum wage is 300 pesos a day (about 8 dollars) in Manila...here the pay is 200 pesos a day.

But most people help each other. The extended families help each other, and often the maids and cook take off to harvest their family fields...and people eat their own rice. The bad news is that the poorest farmers sell the rice for expenses (e.g. school fees, medicine) and so there tends to be a "hunger season" right before harvest, when they run out of the money and rice from the previous harvest. We have two harvests a year: The main one, which is being harvested now, where people carefully plant seedling, and a "winter harvest" which requires irrigation and is planted with seeds only, and is usually smaller.

Our cook gets even less, because her family has worked for Lolo's family for years and he hasn't given her a raise in five years...she is paid the old fashioned way: She skims money off the top of the food budget, she gets a lot of "gifts" and I pay the school fees for her grandkids, which means she probably ends up getting more than the maids or even the drivers.

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

The "Blame China" post of the day

Global warming: it's China's fault.


No, not today: the China of the Han Dynasty.

A period covering the heyday of both the Roman Empire and China's Han dynasty saw a big rise in greenhouse gases, according to a new study... Methane was probably released during deforestation to clear land for farming and from the use of charcoal as fuel, for instance to smelt metal to make weapons, says lead author Celia Sapart of Utrecht University in the Netherlands...

I'm not sure I believe her: if for no other reason that the high death rate of the Black plague and reforestation didn't cause the climate to become colder: in Europe, at least, the high mortality was because the climate had already started to get colder and there were a lot of local famines before the Black death hit Europe...

True,some articles proclaimed the depopulation by Genghis Khan destroying 40 million folks in China and the middle East caused global cooling because the land reforested itself after those inconvenient polluting homo sapiens died off...but I'm not sure they are right either: That assumes the depopulated areas reverted to forests...
 
What happened was the green irrigated lands became deserts...and the climate change was the cause of the Mongols invasion of China, not the result of it.

But rice paddies do produce a lot of methane, so maybe this is the real reason.

But the article hardly discusses rice paddies, probably because the author doesn't know much about rice growing, let alone much about Asian history...

Happy St Francis day

Actually the photo came with one of the "cute kitten emails that go around the world" from Eng Hamid.


St Francis of Assisi once preached to the birds when the people wouldn't listen, and once, when a town wanted to go out and kill a predator wolf, he talked to the wolf and made an agreement he wouldn't kill their sheep if they left food out for him.

So he is the patron saint of Treehuggers.

Stuff below the fold

TPM Barnett has a short map and link about the fall of fertility in modern Arab lands, and he predicts that as more Middle Eastern Countries become globalized, that their fertility will fall too.

My take here on my Africa blog ... if I can find time to rewrite a few more times I will pot it on BNN...

--------------------------------------------------
A warm and fuzzy death ray?

Strategypage says the main problem with the non lethal microwave weapon is fear of being accused of using a death ray...

---------------------------------------------
Bahrain has allowed the Christians there to build a new church.

Yeah. which is why so many Pinoys  such as my relatives preferred working in the small independent Gulf states rather than Saudi..
and the article includes a bit of history that is usually overlooked in the MSM...

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

UKMail cites a study showing one out of eight women have "depression" in early pregnancy.
Quite a good article, even though the Mail is best known for their trashy pictures.

The depression is usually hormone related, and nowadays, some women, not realizing this, rush into an abortion that they regret later.

We docs in the good old days used to reassure our patients this panic/depression was normal and would pass with time. Usually other women in their family would then tell them their own "horror stories", of how they went through the same thing...Usually family support was a big help...Nowadays, they have medicines that help too...and you also have to watch for post partum depression.

-----------------------------------
Belmont club discusses NYTimes article on doctors, cash payments and why students are not choosing primary care.

Mainly  bookmarked for later reading...
--------------------------

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No, we didn't watch the debates

But yesterday, Sense of Event put up a prediction of the post debate poll:

Right now we are watching Mr. Bean on the Disney channel instead...

...100 years from now, nobody will remember the candidates but they will remember Bean.
(Don't believe me? Quick: Who was president when this film was made? ).

UPdate:
I laughed at Sarah Hoyt;s link:

LOW BLOW TWEET OF THE NIGHT: and yet funny.

Stuff below the fold

What can be cuter than baby Gorillas, lovingly cared for by keepers paid by rich Europeans and Americans?

yeah, because rescuing a "rare" cute animal is much more important to rich animal lovers than helping the 750 000 poor refugees nearby...

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Here it is, Conspiracy Lovers: Atlas Obscura reports on HAARP:

From a distance, it looks like a parking lot filled with over-sized television antennae. In actually it is the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program or HAARP, a government research facility focused on physical and electrical properties of the earth's ionosphere. Set in the the beautiful Alaskan forest, HAARP is, to certain conspiracy theorists, neither a research program nor a TV antennae, but a weather control device, space weapon, or even a death ray.
Funded by DARPA, the United States Air Force, and the Navy, HAARP's projects involve superheating the ionosphere with high-frequency radio waves. This incited the suspicions of physicist Bernard Eastlund and a small group of other scientists in the 1990s, who expressed concern about HAARP's possible future use as a weapon. Russia also expressed concern and criticized HAARP as a "new integral geophysical weapon." The Russian government now operates a very similar facility known as the Sura Ionospheric Heating Facility.

I had always understood it was about changing weather systems so that soldiers would have better fighting weather, but never mind.   You can find lots of conspiracy theories about it on the internet...

 

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The Dancing Inmates of Cebu: Gangnam style!

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We couldn't harvest yesterday from rain ( a low pressure area off the coast) but today it is merely overcast, and they are going to the farm again, but I'm not sure if it is harvesting rice or planting organic veggies or drying the rice already harvested...

the internet however is going off and on, probably from storms yesterday.

More Tolkien links

Tea at Trianon: discusses reading Tolkien and includes links
more here;

LINK

LINK

Factoid of the day

I have seen (but not read) advertisements on a book that claimed China discovered the world in the early 1400's.

well, it's fake.

ScienceNotes says:

Gavin Menzies has a number of dubious hypotheses about historical events. One is that the Chinese explored large parts of the world in the fifteenth century. He suggests that Ferdinand Magellan, Vasco da Gama, Christopher Columbus, and others followed Chinese maps. Others have taken Menzies’ idea and run with it.
In 2006, Paul Chiasson published a book, Island of the Seven Cities, explaining how the Chinese settled in Nova Scotia in 1421. As evidence, he shows an aerial photograph that he says was taken in the 1920s, showing traces of roads and foundations.
This web site, The ’1421′ Myth Exposed, takes on those myths.

here is one example of how science destroys the mythmaking:

Almost all scholars – except Mr Menzies and his team – agree that there was no connection between the Red and Mediterranean Seas in the 15th century. Remnants of a connection that may have been open in the early 12th century remained. But even that connection was shallow and relatively narrow. For even supposing it to have maintained the width of the 6th century BCE canal of Darius (sufficient for two triremes to row past each other), that would not entail a width of greater than 100’. One can see that from the dimensions of the reconstruction trireme, the Olympias, as recounted in J. S. Morrison, J. F. Coates, N. B. Rankov, The Athenian Trireme: The History and Reconstruction of an Ancient Greek Warship, 2nd ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, p.270 . Each trireme with oars extended would have taken up about 12m of width. Two passing, allowing a close but generous shave, would have taken up 30m or 100’. That’s 50’ narrower than the 1869 Suez Canal and 80’ narrower than the beam of Zheng He’s treasure ships as propounded by Mr Menzies.

The following drawing assumes, however, that miraculously in 1432 Arab engineers completed a canal that was as wide and deep as the one Ferdinand de Lesseps was to complete with more primitive western industrial technology 437 years later. De Lesseps’ 1869 Suez Canal (cross section in red) is shown below with a typical early-19th century wooden warship of the largest size in the middle and around it a cross section of putative Zheng He baochuan to the Ming Shih dimensions uncritically taken by Mr Menzies to be exact measurements.

But like the "aliens built the pyramid" stories, calculating facts is too hard on the brain: better to believe in magic.

but in this case, it could be dangerous propaganda fake history, since China is busy trying to claim every area of the world that they can, and they could use this to claim Australia as once part of China (something they are also starting to do with the Philippines)...

Stuff below the fold

the everybody loves Caffeine post of the day!

The Black tea of Cahokia...was made from the Yaupon Holly leaves, a plant related to the plant used for Yerba mate in South America, and the Kuding tea of China...

and the author mentions he has a book explaining how the Maya see a 250 year cycle of civilizations, perhaps based on the solar cycles...

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Wired has an article on the lowly Horseshoe Crab, a survivor of the Cambrian extinction.

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Ten World Changing Innovators from PopMech:

actually, more than ten people (some worked as a team) who changed the world for the better but didn't get one ten thousandth of the publicity we give to Justin Bieber.



Headsup Instapundit.

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GM Cow produces allergy free milk.

Ah, but the real problem is not "allergies" but the lactase, which cannot be digested by those who are not Northern Europeans, some Ugandans, or Masai...

It doesn't stop the milk companies from advertising here though...

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science headline of the week:

Spermless mozzies not a turnoff for females

Mozzie is Aussie for mosquitoes, and actually, this is good news for controlling malaria.

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Can a creativity cap help you think better?

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HeirsOfDurin blog updates what is written in Bilbo's contract.

whoops...he did break his contract by taking the Arkenstone...

WETA is releasing it's own copy

the Noble Collection is offering its own version just appeared on TORn, and with it an extremely helpful high-res image of much of the document (which you will be able to order this month for around $40).

heh. as Yogurt says: Merchandising! merchandising!

and talking about Merchandizing: this podcast discusses the Disneyfication of the LOTR franchise, among other things;

Did you know that J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs were both released in 1937? Coincidence? Or not? Join Professor Olsen and Trish Lambert in a conversation about these two works and the men who made them in a new Tolkien Chat format called "Pipeweed on the Porch."

Media files LambertAug2012.mp3

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ByeBye Downton Abby

No, the BBC is not stopping the series, but the new Philippine "internet" law will make p2p downloads illegal.

Since we only get the BBC news, not BBC or PBS, that means we won't be able to watch year 3.

(so let me know if Edith ever marries). Sigh.

On the other hand, some old movies and masterpiece theatre type shows are posted on youtube (often removed when they are noticed), and if there is a really juicy Coast to coast AM, someone will post it there as a video.

Oh yes: It also means if I "libel" a politician, I can be fined.

So I'm not allowed to say the name of the murderous SOB who killed our nephew, and ask why the election folks are allowing his wife to run for mayor...presumably so she can steal money from the city funds to bribe someone to keep her husband out of jail.

Synchronized metronomes

Synchronized Metronomes.


video link



Heh...we still have our ancientclockwork style metronome here in the Philippines (for Ruby, our grandchild, to use to practice piano).

your headsup of the day from Col Updraft.

Trash podcast of the week

well, not a podcast but a book at Librivox about trash: The World's Lumber Room by Selina Gaye (1840 - 1914)

If this book were written today, it would be called "The Story of the World's Rubbish". That may not sound a promising subject for a book, but we are taken on a journey all over the world (and beyond) to explain the many varieties of dust and refuse - animal, vegetable and mineral - how it is made both by man and by nature, what happens to it, and why we need it. We find that recycling is nothing new: man has been doing it for centuries, and nature has been doing it for billions of years. As every schoolboy knows, 'matter is neither created nor destroyed', so it stands to reason that every particle of it must be somewhere.

The WTF headline of the day

coverup? Obama?

Let's see...according to Wired, VileRat posted a goodbye on his fellow gamers at 12:54 PM (?what time zone? EVE Universe has many offices, but their US office in Eastern Standard time). because of a "guard" taking photos (interpreted as helping plan an attack), and predicted he might die. and the article said the attack started 2 hours later, which would make it 2 pm EST.. Today's Wall Street Journal said Obama's phone call was 5 pm (EST)

update; Belmont club says the White House learned about the attack 90 minutes after it started.

The White House knew the consulate was under seige 90 minutes after it started. The WSJ says the administration then made the decision to ask the Libyans for help.

So I figure VileRat's gaming friends knew of the problem before the White House.

And an early Reuters report said that a lot more Americans were at the safe house to be evacuated than expected, i.e. over 20 when they expected less than ten, and that the Libyan rescuers were coordinating with US military who flew in in helicopters.

Later articles all seem to be ignoring these early stories, and I wonder if it is to the fact the early stories were false, or a coverup of a major attack on a CIA intelligence gathering group that was ignored by the administration. Just wondering.

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Mittani has a post on  Sean Smith, the person behind the persona Vile rat: 

If you play this stupid game, you may not realize it, but you play in a galaxy created in large part by Vile Rat’s talent as a diplomat. No one focused as relentlessly on using diplomacy as a strategic tool as VR. Mercenary Coalition flipped sides in the Great War in large part because of Vile Rat’s influence, and if that hadn’t happened GSF probably would have never taken out BoB. Jabberlon5? VR made it. You may not even know what Jabberlon5 is, but it’s the smoke-filled jabber room where every nullsec personage of note hangs out and makes deals. Goonswarm has succeeded over the years in large part because of VR’s emphasis on diplomacy, to the point of creating an entire section with a staff of 10+ called Corps Diplomatique, something no other alliance has. He had the vision and the understanding to see three steps ahead of everyone else - in the game, on the CSM, and when giving real-world advice.

Since gamers will run the world of the future, his influence might be more than the talking heads of the present...



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How cellphones change things:

the Taliban is hostile to education and cell phones (especially the ones that can access the Internet, and most can). Any Afghan who becomes literate and gets a cell phone soon discovers there is a huge world out there, and it is different. 

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a successful CIA fight against the Pakistanis selling the bomb

but one doubts that Hollywood will make a film of it...although I wonder if Tom Clancy has written or will write about it in a novelized form.

Film of the week

quick, before the copyright cops find it's there: The Horse Whisperer....

Musical interlude of the day

Turn up speakers and DANCE!

Hey FruitOfTheLoom guys:

Fruit of the loom guys:

The UK Turner Prize is considering giving it to these guys dressed as vegetables: 

No the photo won't post, but they are  ugly...presumably a beautiful piece of modern art won't get a prize.


from DaveBarry

Why Math?

from Ruby's facebook page

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related item: The math of Bad Piggies.

If the result is indeed significant, this would mean the Bad Piggies pigs are 83% the size of the pigs in Angry Birds. Maybe they are teenager pigs instead of adult pigs.

Rants about Stuff below the fold

Fishageddon? Mother Jones warns about the drop in fishing sustainability.
Climate change and overfishing seem to be the cause.

Actually , this has been going on for awhile, and is probably partly due to "factory ships" that suck up all the fish in the ocean.

One reason for the "200 mile economic zone" off the coasts was put into law was because of Europeans overfishing the grand banks off of the USA and Canada...

As for their praise of China, this ignores that one reason the Philippines is worried about their grab of the West Philippine Sea (within our Economic zone borders)  is because they are harassing our fishermen while sending their trawling fleet, protected by their navy, to suck up all the fish in the area.

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I download a lot of library podcasts, and I enjoy them because they usually have a wide range of books that are reviewed...

 but the PFL podcasts are getting to the point of the absurd: only fiction by gay immigrants lauding freedom and topical authors who are to the left of NPR...and they now lauding Naomi Wolfe for "Wolf turns her exacting eye to the science and cultural history of the vagina, reframing our understanding of womanhood."

"our" understanding of womanhood?  no, not "us" but the faddish gals of "sex and the city" (who are now aging and bitter divorcees) who live in the posh areas of Manhattan, or the Society Hill, abd who like to be o top of the latest fad...

Excuse me: Wolfe claims she had a dangerous, expensive back fusion to give her orgasms, which as a doc sounds to me as malpractice/quackery: if she had pudendal neuropathy, she would have had other symptoms (i.e.chronic pelvic pain and/or pooping and peeing in her pants)...

As for her orgasms: A simple shot of Depo Testosterone would have done that, and it would have been a lot cheaper.

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  According to a recent Japanese study, research subjects are notably able to finish productive tasks after viewing pictures of little fuzzy kittens and other baby animals. 

Headline via Instapundit.

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 How Bald Guys Can Look More Manly and Dominant.

“In three experiments, researcher Albert Mannes, a lecturer at the Wharton School at U. Penn — and a balding man himself — found that guys with shaved heads are not only perceived by others as more manly and dominant than other men, but also taller, stronger and having greater potential as leaders.”

Also from Instapundit: who adds: Mr. Clean was unavailable for comment.

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ZDNET asks: 

If the head of Homeland Security refuses to use email, is she a Luddite?

he answers no:

Napolitano is a politician and a bureaucrat. Email skills are not a job requirement.

Uh: Wouldn't an expert in how to keep the country be secure be a  better choice as head of Homeland security?

I mean, when the White House has it's military office hacked, maybe they need someone who knows something about the internet to run the country...

the article also reminds us that our email is not really private or safe. Yes, and somewhere deep in the bowels of the bureaucracy has records of my dangerous emails of the kittie of the day:

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speaking of Kitties of the day:no, not kitties: Seahorses...via eng Hamid...
.

Headlines below the fold

Kenyans with local gov't troops have chased the bad guys out of their base in Kismayo...this will make it harder for them to get supplies and money to fund more terror on the locals.
The bad news is that the bad guys are in the countryside terrorizing folks, or else hiding among civilians,while the locals are looting everything that isn't tied down.

and piracy is down, but not out.

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Here in the Philippines, Americans and Canadians have been warned to be cautious attending outings of large groups in Manila, because of the danger of a terrorist attack.

We have terrorists among the Moro nationalists in the south, but the main worry is Tagalog born folks from the Manila area who were "converted" while working in Saudi, some of whom have also been recruited to support or initiate terror. Unlike the Moro, they know the area, the language, and can "blend in"...

Here, the main danger is not the Muslims but kidnapping for money...which is why I rarely go outside alone, but with the cook or her daughter (who are realted to half the tricycle drivers in town).

We no longer have guns (which need a special permit) But we have a machete and crowbar in our bedroom, and every day I take a walk with the killer Lab George just to show we have protection.

Of course, the real danger is ordinary things, such as typhoons, floods, earthquakes, ordinary car accidents and Dengue fever.

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someone tell Borat:


Saks has opened a new store in Kazakhstan....

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The "WAGD" post of the day: Space Junk is a comin' your way.
.

...Getting hit by an object 100mm (4 inch wide), if it’s coming from the opposite direction in orbit, results in an explosion equivalent to 20 kg (66 pounds) of TNT. ...After over half a century of humans putting objects into orbit there is a lot of junk circling the planet. There are nearly 18,000 objects 100mm (4 inches) or larger.

 there is a proposal to send up a laser to zap them into smaller pieces, but that could be used for warfare, so it hasn't been done yet.

Of course, they could always send in MegaMaid:



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Will probiotics help those with IBS? 
Probably for some, as will cutting lactose/milk from your diet.

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Sounds about right:

Only 9% of sampled households gave an answer to pollsters in 2012:
It has become increasingly difficult to contact potential respondents and to persuade them to participate. The percentage of households in a sample that are successfully interviewed – the response rate – has fallen dramatically. At Pew Research, the response rate of a typical telephone survey was 36% in 1997 and is just 9% today.

One reason might be that a lot of what claim to be polls are actually trying to sell you something, get a contribution or your credit card information over the phone, or are fake political campaigns where they tell  you "facts" and then ask loaded questions that are really trying to make you change your mind.

and my observations are similar to those commenting on the post.


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