Stuff around the web

Sarah Hoyt suggests that the lilliputin blogs have broken the monopolies that control the hoi polloi.

It was a time of transparency. Real transparency, quite unlike the foolish promises of previous politicians blinded by their narcissism, and nothing like the rotten assurances of the decrepit Gray Lady who had, in her time, turned ablind eye to the Holocaust and hidden the horrors of Holodomor, the depravity of the Gulags to praise collectivist systems that devoured people and dreams and spit out nothing but misery and dehumanization and a boot stepping on a human face forever.
Now, suddenly, they couldn’t make their picked man, their chosen one into theharbinger of that great collectivist future.  They couldn’t snigger behind their hands at the unwashed people who’d never know of his faux pas. Oh, they did what they could, that guard of journalistic castrati protecting the corpse of a corrupt and bloated bureaucracy. But enough slipped through the cracks that most people knew something was wrong: the Summer of Recovery that resided in some unspecified future conditional; the idea that his face would appease Islam’s irate warriors was undone by the beheadings the Jihadists insisted on posting on Youtube; the way the Light Bringer seemed to be in the dark when bereft of a teleprompter.

via Instapundit 

Well, Rush and others have been pointing out stuff that people didn't dare to say, and if you think Rush is bigoted, you haven't been listening to him (or the really scary voices out there).

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And the boycott of those who dare to say that traditional marriage is....traditional in places like churches are showing that the blacklist exists, but not it's not against those who posit to overthrow the gov't to impose a tyranny but those who are quietly working hard for a living and helping others to do so.


which is why I don't use firefox.

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and while you were sleeping, the terrorists took over the Sahara.

and China is taking over the sea lanes to Japan and the traditional fishing grounds of the Philippines (and the petroleum there), with little opposition except for nasty letters from Europe, who assure the Philippines that they will back them if they also post a nasty letter to the international organizations who, if they judge this, will also send a nasty letter. Sigh.

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Most folks who know veterans of the Pacific in WWII know that an invasion of Japan would have been a blood bath for all involved, and that the Bomb actually saved a couple million lives. But the left has rewritten history to paint the US as the bad guys (ignoring that more people were killed in the "rape of Manila" than in Hiroshima).

StrategyPage links to the classic article that gives estimates of casualties expected if the invasion had taken place. PDF

My cousin, who was back in the US after his ship had been hit by a kamikazi, figured he would die in the invasion, so when on leave, went out and got drunk....and when he woke up confused, he "walked" out a second story window, breaking his leg...as a result he was with my mom when VJ day was announced.

As for the Philippines, the locals here were chasing the Japanese through the mountains...a horrible story that has never been told, that includes cannibalism because the locals wouldn't help feed the Japanese but would kill or poison their food. This is mentioned as the cause of despression/PTSS  in one of Endo's short stories, and there is a Japanese film about it but I can't remember the name of the film.

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I don't have the link, but China just posted a story that if locals voted to become part of China, they would accept and help those areas to seceed against their government.

No, I don't think this is aimed at the Philippines, where China is hated, nor about Taiwan (ditto) s, but at Siberia. Putin better watch his back door.

In other words, ignore the pundits that see a conspiracy between Russia and China against the west.
However, Russia will oppose the US helping the Sunnis in Syria, because of blowback in Chechnya. In this fight, I back Iran, and I wish the President would explain that some bad guys are worse than others, and admit that Saudi is behind a lot more terrorism than Iran.

And, unlike Saudi, Iran does allow Christian churches to exist (But not open conversions).Dirty little secret: Without their overseas workers, Saudi would implode. That is not true of Iran,

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A female politician cries sexual harassment, but no, they weren't hitting on her for sex: actually the problem was that some pols pointed out that she was...fat.

So is calling the NJ governor "porky" now called sexual harassment?

and if I warn my patients they are overweight, can I be accused of sexual harassment?

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Cat Steven claims Islam is for peace, but GetReligion checked the wayback machine and found Stevens was backing violence way back then...

 On reading the Post, one, who called herself "Gloria2," posted a link to a 1989 articlein the New York Times:

The musician known as Cat Stevens said in a British television program to be broadcast next week that rather than go to a demonstration to burn an effigy of the author Salman Rushdie, ''I would have hoped that it'd be the real thing.''

so, will he disavow his previous opinions in public, and condemn the violence against heretics and infidels now?

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FYI: Another day, another volcanic eruption.

No Mayon volcano is far from here, but I've visited there and it is a beautiful sight.

Family news

Joy's sister will have a liver biopsy later this week.

keep her in your prayers: She's getting sicker by the day.

Lolo's retirement papers need another trip to Manila with more papers to fill out.

It keeps the bureaucrats busy to make lots of regulations like this...and although it is mainly a way to stop fraud, I suspect that if Joy gave them a "thank you" gift, they'd approve it in two minutes. But she is a Christian and doesn't do that.

Stuff around the web

A great scroll illustration of the Hobbit 3

via torn

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The pope marries some people, including those who are living together, not in a trial marriage but as a common law marriage, and a person who was divorced but had an annulment.

So what's to report? Even that simple action is twisted by the so called MSM.

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a discussion of dress codes in schools. link2

puritanism, or emphsizing "dress for success"?

given this photo of a girl in a tanktop, I suggest that she does need the fashion police, since her outfit is ugly and not becoming to her...it makes her look fat and frumpy.

I should talk: I dress frumpy,mainly because it's hard to buy clothes that fit properly here... and even when I wear something well fitting and beautiful I look frumpy.

But when teenaged girls came in looking frumpy, it often meant poor self esteem, and I would advise them on dress and makeup. And get the boygs to use acne medicine.

Here in the Philippines, kids wear uniforms.

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International law? We don't need no international law 

more here.

and Here.

We are the weakest link, and solidarity from Europe is worth a bucket of spit (to use Gardner's phrase).

another casualty of having a weak president in the USA.
and don't expect the environmentalists to notice the destruction of the reef ecosystems. They love China and Momjones believes every pro ecology talking point put out by that gov't. (ignore the riots against pollution)...

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the WAGD post of the week (which I mentioned as a "headsup" yesterday)

Wired story on the up coming Ebola epidemic.

Given the number of Pinoy health care workers all over the world, we'll be on the front lines.

And don't forget: The Haj is coming..

I wonder why they are still taking sick folks to hospitals? When we had cholera, they treated all these patients in school rooms so that the hospital would be safe for non cholera patients. A similar plan was in place in 2001 for a possible Smallpox epidemic. Schools usually have running water, chairs (patients are put on the ground on mats) and are near villages, so you don't have to transport the patients far.

Which is why I laughed when I read of a "100 bed hospital" of tents being sent to Africa. WTF?

Of course, you could do what the Africans did in the olden days: Put sick patients in huts/houses on the outskirts of town, and bring food/water etc. to the doorways every day. If no one emerges in ten days, burn the huts and the dead folks inside. No nursing means a higher rate of death, but in the long run, fewer caregivers would catch the disease and spread it to others...

One reason for the Native American depopulation was that unlike Africans, they had little experience with epidemics, so tended to nurse their dying.

And, of course, this is why the black death killed most of the good priests/nuns/etc. who did the nursing in medieval days...

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for later reading

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htlead/20140916.aspx

SP parses no boots on the ground

and notes the propaganda lies behind the hatrd of Israel...something ignored by dem pundits who blasted Cruz..who spoke to a "christian solidarity" conference with ties to Hamas...

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htlead/20140915.aspx

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another sign that the end of the world is nigh

The NYTimes notices that the emperor has no clothes.

 Full commentary by Belmont club

and to make things worse:

EBOLA PANDEMIC! 1 to 2 million dead?

yes, the calculations come from a rabid right wing website, but I usually peruse it because a lot of lurkers have expertise in a lot of area and those threads make up for the many nutty comments.

and my thought here was: hmm..wonder if it is biowarfare to lower the unwanted excess population.

Which is why some Africans on the extreme left think so.

Sorry...I gotta get a second cup of coffee

Family news

Joy is going to Manila for deliveries and also to accompany her sister to her doctor. I figure the next step is a needle biopsy of her liver nodules, but we'll wait for him to decide. Chano is restless, but okay. Usually he gets this way right before he gets creative. Lolo is fine. We took him to get fingerprinted so that they will resume his Philippine veteran pension (to prove he is still alive). Joy will deliver the papers in Manila to their office. We are still waiting for the check for the huge Christmas gift order from a gov't office: She'll check on that too...I suspect someone is waiting for a "thank you" gift" before they release the check, but Joy and Chano are too Christian to do such things. Nono is over to finish cleaning up the garden etc. He bought a bunch of small birds to eat. I'd call them prarie chickens but don't know the real name. We put them in the empty bird cage to keep them safe from the cats until it's time to eat them.

another day, another typhoon

So we got hit by the edge of a typhoon: signal two here because it hit north of here. The streets are flooded, and our roof leaked via the skylight ventilation holes all over our living/dining area. It's okay, because we no longer have a rug there, and the concrete tiled floor is easy to clean up. The gutters draining the roof also overflowed so we had a minor flood in our room, which filled only three towels (it has hardwood floors). The streets are full of water, but our house is on high ground so it's okay. Joy was going to get some papers for Lolo to verify he is alive, so he can get his Philippine veterans pension, but the streets are flooded so it will have to wait. Tuesday she has deliveries in Manila and will go to the doctor with her sister, maybe. Manila didn't get hit as badly as we did, but today we worry about the irrigation dams and the water from upstream causing flooding on top of our mild flooding.

Gift Advice for cat lovers

Isaac newton invented the flap cat door...

from theoatmeal

Piracy

Talk like a pirate day is coming.

If you are interested how piracy fits into history, try this course at the University of Houston.

Cat item of the day

from CIC on StrategyPage

Lincoln liked cats, and often fed them at the table, to the horror of his wife.

Reportedly, during dinner at the White House one evening, Lincoln used a gold fork from the presidential service to feed a cat named “Tabby.”
Mrs. Lincoln asked, perhaps rhetorically, “Don’t you think it’s shameful for Mr. Lincoln to feed Tabby with a gold fork?”
The President replied, “If the gold fork was good enough for former President James Buchanan, I think it is good enough for Tabby.”

more here at famouscats webpage

and no, I have no idea if this is a photoshop.

Stuff around the web

Mainly bookmarked for later reading

Lady Imans? We haz that.

and they go back 300 years.

In Henan, along with a few Hui Muslim enclaves in northwestern China, women-run mosques are counterparts to the houses of worship for men; female mosques serve as community centers for women. Within them, female imams do nearly everything their male equivalents do, apart from officiating over weddings and funerals. Technically, they’re not allowed to stand at the front of the mosque to lead prayers, a symbolic gesture. Instead, the women lead prayers facing in the same direction as their flock, rather than facing out toward them as would the leader of a mosque for men.

Headsup GetReligion.

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Philip Jenkins has a series on Mary in Revealation (the Apocalypse). He is a (non catholic) historian of religion, not a dogmatist.

From today's discussion:
*In the earliest Christian writings, the Epistles and Mark’s gospel, Mary scarcely appears, and certainly not in any leadership role.
*Towards the end of the first century, Mary’s role becomes vastly more important, most dramatically in Luke-Acts. The Magnificat in Luke 1 is a prime example.

so devotion to Mary started 50 years after Jesus's death?

*No later than the mid-second century, devotion to Mary is so intense as to inspire major apocryphal writings like the Protevangelium, which present her almost as a parallel Christ figure. Early Fathers like Justin Martyr and Irenaeus are writing about Mary as a kind of anti-Eve, who reverses the Fall. ...
So why do we have this process of exaltation, which begins relatively late, but which then takes off at amazing speed between say 90 and 150?...

discussion follows (and if you want in depth discussion, check his other posts on the subject).

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Waiting for Godot to leave has two posts discussing the film Calvary. LINK LINK

I can't decide if I like the film, mainly because the parishoners are not real people, although the priest is.
The film is full of the parishoners ridiculing the priest with all sorts of anti church blasphemies while he tries to do his job counseling and helping sinners. My problem? These same folks then go to communion on Sunday. Huh?

The plot is easier to understand if you realize that the press and media in Ireland was spouting anti Catholic propaganda for the last 40 years, because the elites decided that the only thing that stood in the way of Ireland becoming a modern country was the church. So the scandal of "pedophile priests" was a godsend to these folks (albeit a real scandal).

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But it wasn't just priests, and the Rotherham scandal and the BBC scandal in the UK show. But never mind.

I'd be less cynical about the bishops if I didn't remember my medical school classes that suggested that if we removed these hangups we would no longer have mentally ill people, since all mental illness was from sexual repression. ..and the idea in 1970 was that sexual abuse of young kids usually didn't harm them, but taking them to court to testify would be a greater harm to the child, and lead to the jailing or the often gentle and well liked perpetrator who didn't really mean to harm the child.. (he would, of course, get a lot less sympathy from jail inmates than he did from psychiatrists, so why jail him).

I am not defending the bishops: When I worked in Appalachia, the bishop bragged that he had eliminated abuse in the diocese, yet a nurse cried on my shoulder that her husband was asked to intercede with the family of an abused 12 year old not to accuse the nice priest who had raped him. The priest was new in the diocese, and was a very "nice" man, so why put him in jail. Was he a serial rapist? We'll never know. How bad was the diocese? Well when one of the young priests ran away with a catechism teacher, the older, wiser pastor sighed and said cynically: Well, at least it was with a woman.

But abuse occurs all over the place...When I was in a small town practice, I saw about one girl a month for sexual abuse check...half were not real, but some were. Most were simple touching and didn't go to court, but a few were not touching but serial rape, usually by babysitters or mom's boyfriend, but one case by a father.

This doesn't include the cases I didn't treat but know about personally, including incest by a father,abuse in foster homes, and harm by a female baby sitter.

 And when I worked on "The Rez", I only saw a few cases, but one of our nurses said a lot of the men in AA were drinking because of sexual abuse as children. Some might have been in boarding school, but the area didn't use boarding schools, so I suspect relatives being the problem. LINK

To put things into perspective:  CDC survey of US high school kids on health habits, which lists sexual abuse, rape and assault along with not eating your veggies. (must be non judgemental I guess).

Had First Sexual Intercourse Before Age 13 Years
Nationwide, 6.2% of students had had sexual intercourse for the first time before age 13 years (Table 63). Overall, the prevalence of having had sexual intercourse before age 13 years was higher among male (9.0%) than female (3.4%) students; higher among white male (5.2%), black male (21.1%), and Hispanic male (11.1%) than white female (2.6%), black female (7.0%), and Hispanic female (2.9%) students, respectively; and higher among 9th-grade male (13.3%), 10th-grade male (8.6%), 11th-grade male (6.8%), and 12th-grade male (6.2%) than 9th-grade female (4.1%), 10th-grade female (3.9%), 11th-grade female (3.0%), and 12th-grade female (2.2%) students, respectively. Overall, the prevalence of having had sexual intercourse before age 13 years was higher among black (13.9%) and Hispanic (7.1%) than white (3.9%) students; higher among black (13.9%) than Hispanic (7.1%) students; higher hisamong black female (7.0%) than white female (2.6%) and Hispanic female (2.9%) students; higher among black male (21.2%) and Hispanic male (11.1%) than white male (5.2%) students; and higher among black male (21.2%) than Hispanic male (11.1%) students. Overall, the prevalence of having had sexual intercourse before age 13 years was higher among 9th-grade (8.8%) than 10th-grade (6.3%), 11th-grade (4.9%), and 12th-grade (4.2%) students;

 why do the numbers go down when older kids answer the question? Maybe they are in denial. I doubt it's because five years earlier the rates were lower.

end rant
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Some American politician named Cruz got into trouble for giving a speech to Arab Christians in the US saying that they needed also to remember Israel is being persecuted. It didn't go over well, since some Palestinians who fled Israel in 1948 were Christians, but he brought up a point: Keeping hatred alive is not going to stop those who are killing now.

StrategyPage constantly notes how Arab propaganda has brain washed locals into Israel hatred as a scapegoat (to point hatred away from their corruption/ stealing everything in sight which leads to local poverty). Now that propaganda is biting back.

September 12, 2014: Israel was not asked to join the international coalition against ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant). This was because the ten Arab members of this twenty country coalition are still trapped by decades of their own “Israel must be destroyed” propaganda and rhetoric...

.
yeah, but the western press don't bother to mention such things.

 Hamas deliberately stored rockets in residential neighborhoods, often in schools, hospitals and mosques. Yet only about half the dead Palestinians could be termed “innocent civilians”. The rest were Hamas men handling the rocket, mortar and gunfire attacks on Israel. Oddly, according to most media Israel gets no credit for minimizing civilian casualties and Hamas no blame for trying to get civilians killed

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  despite this, SP says that most American Muslims are...American. and they go on to explain it in detail.

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A longer essay about the philosophical problem of Islam here

is God beyond good and evil? Is evil bad because it's evil, or because God says so? Catholic christianity insists that man finds god via Faith and reason, but Islam (and some protestant sects) deny this.

 Understanding the differences in belief is essential for Catholics so that we can also use reason to think rightly about God. This has become a real challenge in the West, with many holding that metaphysics is a part of religion instead of philosophy. Pope John Paul II fought against this in his encyclical Fides et Ratio and Pope Benedict had this in mind in his Regensburg Lecture when he spoke of “disturbing pathologies of religion and reason which necessarily erupt when reason is so reduced that questions of religion and ethics no longer concern it.” He saw this pathology not only in placing violence within God’s nature, but also in the secularized West.

I'll have to read it in detail later, since philosophy is not my strong point.

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water clouds in space.

and a solar flare is due to hit today.

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BBC factoids of the week:

sharks kill more men than women

Pele was named for Thomas Edison

and Noah's ark was a coracle made with a rope?

Sigh

yo ho ho and a bottle of rum

don't mess with Grace O'Malley

Grainne Uaile, also known as Grace O’ Malley, was accused of piracy and lived from 1530 – 1603. She inherited her father’s shipping company when he died and became a very wealthy woman. Legend has it that she cut off all her hair because her father refused to allow her to sail with him. He claimed her hair was too long and would get caught in the ropes of the ship. At this time, it was also considered bad luck to have a woman onboard at sea. Grainne’s drastic response earned her the nickname, “Grainne Mhaol” maol, meaning bald; the name stuck and eventually became “Graineuaile”. She was known for her battle prowess and cut throat fighting tactics at sea and also known by her nickname, “The Sea Queen of Connacht”. Grainne even met Queen Elizabeth I to petition for the release of her sons and her half brother.

and soon to be a movie...



and remember: September 19 is International Talk Like a Pirate Day

While you were sleeping

While the US press was busy doing their thing, ISIS and Putin weren't the only ones who noticed that the watchdog was asleep Podcast from strategypage HERE.

more essays about china here.

they note a lot of the bigshots are talking big, partly because they are isolated and don't understand other cultures, and partly because they would like to expand to a "Greater Middle Kingdom" and that would distract those complaining about lack of freedom, the financial bubble, pollution and corruption problems.

 China's grab of the tiny scholls in the west Philippine sea and elsewhere. has
been pretty well ignored by the west.

The latest is that first, they chain off the sea inside the small reefs and islets so the locals can't fish, and then start building on them by pouring concrete...and now they are planning to build towns or military bases there.

You'd think that the eco types would complain, but they are too left to notice anyone outside the west destroying the environment. I got lots of nasty feedback after noting on MomJones that their claims of green initiatives in China is based on Chinese government claims, and they lie. I mean, it's nice to claim they will push solar energy, but if you surf the net, you will notice pollution problems near the towns where they build them.

As for local scandals, I have fallen behind. Old leftie, retired Archbishop Cruz says it hasn't changed that much.

The concerned citizens are exasperated. So much public funds go to private pockets in the same way that so much private funds pay for so many public utilities – all of which are the incarnations of gross graft and corrupt practices. So many people suffering from want of food, shelter and clothing. So much taxes for so many things under so many reasons are paid from birth to death. So many heinous crimes committed day in and day out. So many men and women willing to expose the lives and limbs to danger just to earn a living overseas. So man women and girls become buy-and-sell materials. Marijuana, gambling, thievery have become part of life

yeah...another drug raid on a nearby house last week.

well well

After I upgraded my firefox about a year ago, I lost the ability to use delicious for my bookmarks.

However, I just found I can use them surfing the net.

the bad news is that Ruby has my new computer, and the old one is on it's last leg (the cord won't attach all the time, so either it's broken or the electrical system box is bad...if I or the cat touches the cord, it  stops). It also has no battery and a dvd drive that doesn't always work, and I get the "BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH" about once a week.

I figure fixing all these things would cost almost as much as a new computer, but Ruby has pretty well taken over my new computer, and I use my tablet. Maybe in another few months I might invest in another computer and send this one to Dell in Manila to get fixed.

Family news

We are having thunderstorms every afternoon, so I turn off the computer and don't blog. Usually I surf the headlines in the morning with my tablet, but can't do much writing with a tiny keyboard.

Lolo is fine.

Joy is in Manila today with deliveries, and she hopes to nag the office for the check owed to us for eight months for a huge Christmas rice/gift package delivery. Sigh. Harvest is soon, so we could use the money for harvest expesnse (extra men, thresher, bags, transport, plastic to dry the rice or gasoline to dry it in our new drier if it rains).

Joy's sister had an eye taken out a year ago for melanoma, and was doing well, but her last scan showed nodules in her liver. She sees the doctor next week. Keep her and Joy in your prayers.

Ruby is busy busy with her (Pentecostal) church with leading singing at church worship (at least she is now too old for the dancing team of young girls. I loathe "liturgical dance" but it keeps the youn'un's happy, so WTF).

Lolo's too frail to go to church with me and it's quite hot still, so I started attending the 530 am mass instead of the 7 am. At least I don't faint in church, but it's usually more crowded with folks who have to work on Sunday.

Lots of beggars coming around with wheezing kids. I don't know if it's the weather, which is overcast, or a virus. I'm coughing and wheezing too, so it must be going around.

There is a clinic for kids that is free, if your kid gets sick during the day, but if you need medicine or get sick when it's closed, they hit the rich folks for help. If they need expensive medicine, they hit the city and get a certificate saying they are indeed poor. Of course I've shut the door on a few who come around with old papers (especially when I've already "donated"). Some of them are professional beggars, and a scam. One very poor lady hit me for her daughter's high school graduation party a few days after she claimed poverty so they are not destitute. The usual gift is a peso, but I tend to give 20 pesos (about 50 cents) and more if the cook assures me it's not a scam. Lots of time I don't have any change or money left over to give, so we say not to the "regulars", or if it's an emergency send them down the street to the new Mayor's house. We figure she has plenty if she's like her father and skimming the books.

for later reading

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140909192038.htm

heh, if you analyze studies, a lot of them don't say what is claimed.

Yes. We docs know this because we analyze the nonsense in journal clubs. But it won't stop them from using these flawed studies to decide your care under Obamacare..

________________

When I wasn't looking, they started a brain initiative to map the brain and cure mental illnesses.

what could go wrong?
http://gizmodo.com/darpas-spending-70-million-on-a-brain-chip-for-mental-1452375660

Stay Young

HOW TO STAY YOUNG

1.  Try everything twice.

On one woman's tombstone she said she wanted this epitaph:

"Tried everything twice. Loved it both times!"

2.  Keep only cheerful friends.

The grouches pull you down. (Keep this in mind if you are one of those grouches!) 

3. Keep learning:

Learn more about the computer, crafts, gardening, whatever...Never let the brain get idle. 'An idle mind is the devil's workshop.  

4. Enjoy the simple things.

5. Laugh often, long and loud.

Laugh until you gasp for breath. And if you have a friend who makes you laugh, spend lots and lots of time with HIM /HER.

6. The tears happen:

Endure, grieve, and move on. The only person who is with us our entire life, is ourselves.    LIVE while you are alive.

7. Surround yourself with what you love:

Whether it's family, pets, keepsakes, music, plants, hobbies, whatever. Your home is your refuge.

8. Cherish your health:

If it is good, preserve it. If it is unstable, improve it. If it is beyond what you can improve, get help.

9. Don't take guilt trips.

Take a trip to the mall, even to the next city, state, or another country, but NOT to where the guilt is.

10. Tell the people you love that you love them, at every opportunity.

I love you, my special friend.

11. Forgive now those who made you cry.

You might not get a second chance.

And if you don't send this to at least 4 people - who cares?

But do share this with someone.

Remember! Lost time can never be found. 

\--------------
your email of the day from TiaMaria

What's that in the river?

no," it's not an elephant: it's a hippopotamus"

From Toxel:

Wooden hippopotamus made by talented Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman can be spotted floating down the river Thames in London, England.

the quote is Flanders and Swan, and yes, there is a song for it:

Stuff around the net

via Boingboing: The Deep math of folded pizza

 Gauss’s remarkable theorem assures us that one direction of the slice must always remain flat — no matter how you bend it, the pizza must retain a trace of its original flatness. When the slice flops over, the flat direction is pointed sideways, which isn’t helpful for eating it. But by folding the pizza slice sideways, you’re forcing it to become flat in the other direction – the one that points towards your mouth. Theorema egregium, indeed.

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Via Tea At Trianon:

the history of Hamburger.
excerpt:

The groundwork for the ground-beef sandwich was laid with the domestication of cattle (in Mesopotamia around 10,000 years ago), and with the growth of Hamburg, Germany, as an independent trading city in the 12th century. Jump ahead to 1848, when political revolutions shook the 39 states of the German Confederation, spurring an increase in German immigration to the United States. With German people came German food: beer gardens flourished in American cities, while butchers offered a panoply of traditional meat preparations. Because Hamburg was known as an exporter of high-quality beef, restaurants began offering a “Hamburg-style” chopped steak.

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ViaSenseOfEvents:

the theology behind the reason why gay marriage will never be approved by some christian churches.

The story Christians have been telling for 2,000 years goes something like this: The God who made the Universe is also, by his very nature, Love, and he made human beings with a very lofty vocation. Humans are meant to reflect His glory in the world; to be like God, that is to say, to be lovers and creators. Everything in the Universe has been put here to be used by God's children to reflect his loving glory — and to teach them about God's love. This is particularly true, or so the story goes, of the unique sexual complementarity between men and women. The sexual act is meant to reflect God's love by fostering a union at once bodily and spiritual — and creates new life. The complementarity of the persons in a marriage reflects the complementarity of the Persons of the Trinity, and the bliss of marital union is an inkling of the bliss of the union of the Persons of the Trinity. The fruitfulness of the marriage act reflects that God is a creator and has charged man to be an agent of his ongoing work of creation. And, finally, if God's love means total self-giving unto death on a Cross, then man and wife must give themselves to each other totally — no pettiness, no adultery, no polygamy, no divorce, and no nonmarital sexual acts. According to the story that Christianity has been telling for 2,000 years, Christianity's view of sexuality isn't some encrusted holdover from a socially conditioned patriarchal era on its way out, but is instead deeply connected to its understanding of who God is and what human beings exist for.

naah: Too complicated and nuanced for a sound bite, so don't expect this in the MSM

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also from SenseOfEvents:

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RIP: Russian Space Geckos have gone to the great lizard lounge in the sky

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One of the few G rated postings on GrouchyOldcrippleBlog:

when Venn met the lost webpages of the internet.

Stuff around the net

What did the simple folk eat (in the Dark Ages)? Podcast link

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Yum! Tomatoes

30 recipes here.
including how to peel and seed tomatoes

actually, we eat locally and our local tomatoes are Roma variations: Small, pear shaped/oval and a bit sweet.

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Great Dane one, Socks 43.5

Reminds me of the ongoing joke on Joe Morelli's dog in the Stephanie Plum series

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It's good to be the king (but the queen, not so much...)

Poor Berengaria: Her famous husband was busy fighting and she had to chase him around the Mediterranean...and when the crusades stopped, things got worse.

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from Freelance history writer, via TeaAtTrianon

Margaret of Austria..

.Charles was not particularly attractive. He was thin, under-grown with a hollow chest, crooked legs and a head that was too big for his body. But Margaret was three and probably didn’t notice his appearance. The next day, the marriage was consecrated.Margaret lived in the beautiful castle of Amboise. Louis died shortly after her marriage and Anne de Beaujeu was regent for the new King Charles VIII. Anne appointed Madame de Segré as Margaret’s governess. Margaret’s time at Amboise was pleasant. She studied, played with dolls, and performed official duties, all dressed in dignified and tasteful clothes. She was taught the fine arts like drawing, painting, singing and how to play the lute, dancing and embroidery. All in all, it was a happy childhood for Margaret, full of warm affection. 

wed three times, refused the 4th marriage.

musical download of the week

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My granddaughter was once a Barney fan. But there is hope: Now she's into Marilyn Manson.

;-)

Insomnia download of the week

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and yes, TFIOS is there too.

Family news

Lolo is feeling better, but not getting out much due to wheezing (it's cloudy out and a lot of people are here asking for help paying for medicine for wheezing kids).

 I keep the aircon on all the time, on "fan" to filter the air when it's cool outside, and that helps.

 The "drier" motor died yesterday. Here, washing is done by hand by most folks but we have a wash machine. However, washer's here don't have a "spin" cycle, so you have to buy another machine, a "drier", that spins. The help comes and goes so quickly here that the new help tends to overload and the belts break and finally the motors burn out. Our laundry is done on the roof, the better to dry the clothing in the wind. 

The last time the washer died, I bought a new washer  for Leila to do our laundry downstairs.

She is our cook's daughter, and cleans the room and does the laundry for us two days a week. The good news is that she is "family", like the cook (whose family works for our family for years). The bad news is that I am always being hit for extra money for medicine, school fees etc. which we give because she and her mom are "family".

 This explains two things: one, why salaries are so low (they make up for it by "gifts") and why Chano and Joy have trouble keeping help (they figure you should work for the amount of money usually paid in our area as their salary, which is too low, but if you ask for money, they take it out of your next paycheck. Everything clear and exact. Locals figure they can earn more elsewhere and often disappear after a few months for better paying jobs).

 Well, anyway, I ended up buying a washer/drier (two tubs) instead of just a drier. The good news is that we now don't have to worry about our old washer dying, the bad news is that the drier is small so only will take one bedsheet at a time. Which is fine, since usually the wash is wrung out by hand and mainly it is the towels and bedsheets and jeans that need to be spun dry before hanging them up.

 Leila suggested keeping it downstairs, so they can do the wash in the side kitchen that we only use for parties/events. That way the cook or our maid can supervise it's use. She hangs clothing in our yard, but now we have laundry lines in the spare kitchen to hang up stuff when it is raining, such as now.

The windows are open, and this makes it easy to dry clothing, except for the 100 percent humidity that prevents stuff from getting dry. The answer for this is to iron clothes. And luckily the "gift" that came with the washer/drier was a dry iron, meaning Leila doesn't have to wait til the upstair iron is not being used before she dries our clothing (mainly tee shirts and cotton underware that doesn't dry well).

 I should explain we live in Lolo's old house, a one story ranch style house with a garden in front. Chano lives in an apartment over the meeting room, and the spare storage rooms are used for ironing upstairs, along with the offices, guest rooms etc. The rice packing is down downstairs in our old office, which is spearate from the kitchen areas and next to the meeting room.

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 I should also add that Ruby bought Persuasion and the Giver to read. She is on a Jane Austen kick. she also has my LOTR book, but I suspect that will take awhile to get through.

Wait til he reads Heinlein

I ran across a comment about this item that claims modern "young adult" novels (and films?) promote right wing ideas.

YA dystopias teach children to submit to the free market, not fight authority

The Hunger Games, The Giver and Divergent all depict rebellions against the state, and promote a tacit right-wing libertarianism. 

and lower down it notes:

What marks these dystopias out from previous ones is that, almost without exception, the bad guys are not the corporations but the state and those well-meaning liberal leftists who want to make the world a better place. Books such as The Giver, Divergent and the Hunger Games trilogy are, whether intentionally or not, substantial attacks on many of the foundational projects and aims of the left: big government, the welfare state, progress, social planning and equality. They support one of the key ideologies that the left has been battling against for a century: the idea that human nature, rather than nurture, determines how we act and live. These books propose a laissez-faire existence, with heroic individuals who are guided by the innate forces of human nature against evil social planners.

 Yeah. It complains it's not like the "good old days" when HGWells supported Stalin, and influenced the SciFi writers to posit left wing ideas and take over the sci fi establishment.

Hoyt has a lot of complaints about the difficulty of publishing such sci fi on her blog and how the trade associations dislike those who oppose their line of thought. 

She is an immigrant from Europe and recognizes this as a way that the experts control their population: How dare they criticize the experts!

They’ve – by which I mean the cultural establishment – tried to bring the same here.  I’ve railed here before about how cozies were – in effect – blacklisted by the publishing establishment because “amateurs can’t be better than the professionals.”  And how my books couldn’t have funny policemen because “Policemen are professionals and must be respected.”  And I’ve talked about how shocked I was when a bunch of high school kids came to beat me on my blogbecause I’d criticized their teacher (I actually hadn’t.  I’d criticized the curriculum which is is not teacher set, but they lacked the semantic ability to distinguish these) and how dare I?  She’s a TEACHER.  I’m supposed to respect her.  (She also was considerably less educated than I, much younger and I have reason to believe she sent the kids over to harass me – the harassment stopped when I threatened to scan in some of her (outrageous) grading handiwork and post it. – which leaves me in doubt of her moral character.)
While these things annoy me and shock me, as does anyone preventing my questioning him by saying “I’m the expert” – it is still new here.

and how does one learnabout American culture? She says by reading Heinlein.