Math probblem of the week

from Wired:

Could Tauriel shoot an orc arrow out of the air?

With this estimate, Tauriel is just 5 meters from the orc and about 9 meters from Legolas. In order to hit the arrow fired from the orc, I would estimate that Tauriel would have to fire AFTER the orc fired. Suppose she has lightning fast reaction time and can aim and fire in just 0.05 seconds. This would mean that her arrow has to travel 9 meters in just 0.05 seconds giving it a speed of 180 m/s. Yes, that’s fast. Right now, real humans are trying to break the 400 fps arrow speed (121 m/s). Ok, but she’s an elf. I guess she’s better than modern humans.

more about arrows in flight HERE.

and Outdoor life discusses arrow speeds of compound bows, which commonly shoot 300 fps.

Is 400 Possible?
Yet the question remains: Can a compound bow shooting at the current IBO standards push an arrow to 400 fps? Mathematically, we’re told, the answer is yes. We’ll leave out most of the complicated math tossed at us by egghead engineers, but the bottom line is that while IBO standards place a limit on the maximum amount of energy a fully drawn compound bow can store and potentially release into an arrow, it’s theoretically possible for a 70-pound bow set at a 30-inch draw length to propel a 350-grain arrow at 400 fps....
Unless you’re one of those guys who names his biceps, you must first acknowledge that the compound bow isn’t powered by an engine, but instead is a hand-drawn machine—and at some point, the output from any hand-drawn device will max out.

Tauriel does not have a compound bow, but does have a recurved bow, which is usually made of several componants glued together and more powerful than a plain wooden bow.

So she must have some pretty good biceps to get that type of speed (duh)

Factoid of the day

The ancient Cerne Abbas giant is often touted as a stone age pagan symbol, but actually it is of much later date.

 Much ink has been shed explicating the figure, who draws on Classical images of Hercules. In the context though, it is surely a Celtic fertility god.
Well, no. Scholar Ronald Hutton points out that the figure is not even referred to before the late 17th century, unlike other authentic monuments like Stonehenge, which had intrigued travelers through the Middle Ages. By far the most likely conclusion is that this impressive figure, with his giant phallus and club, is meant to depict not Hercules but... Oliver Cromwell. The local landowner in the 1650s was a Royalist Anglican who loathed Cromwell's Puritan regime. In internal exile on his estate, he whiled away his time ordering the construction of a savage chalk-cut cartoon of the dictator, with the large club indicating the regime's total lack of legitimacy.
Cerne Abbas isn't a pagan idol, it's a dirty joke.

No I won't paste a picture...this is a PG rated blog.

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more on dating problems here.

these figures would disappear if not continually dug out, making dating more complicated. So the giant might have been there but not very easy to see, but was changed to ridicule Cromwell.

The link also has an article on identifying ancient disease by DNA sampling.

Another day, another typhoon

Actually, this year our area has not been hit badly by typhoons, and now most of the rice crop is in.

But now a typhoon has us in it's sights...

it should hit south of here: In the Visayas, where people are still recovering from last year's typhoon.''---

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Ruby and I are planning to buy and put up our Christmas lights. Actually we have plenty, but they don't work.

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Yesterday, when sitting outside with Lolo, a brand new police car drove by. A sedan. Guess the mayor is busy finding criminals...except of course the criminal who funded all the shootings of her father's political enemies.

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What goes around comes around

Hollywood has made heroes of those who hacked US state secrets in the past.

So now, mad at a canceled interview with their beloved president, North Korea has hacked Hollywood.

And no, so far no naked pictures of starlets or report on payoffs of women "raped" on the casting couch. Just medical records and Social security numbers.

Buckwheat!

There is a surge in buckwheat buying in Russia, because of an anticipated shortage.

The government – which reportedly considered tapping strategicbuckwheat reserves this week to stop the rampant increase in buckwheat prices – says there is no quantifiable reason for the trend. Yes, the weather in Russia’s top buckwheat-producing region may have been bad, but there is more than enough of a crop to feed the Russian appetite this year, officials say.
Analysts in Russian media have just one explanation for the buckwheat phenomenon: panic and public hysteria, caused by news of the bad weather in Altai.
Yet the buckwheat panic isn’t happening in a vacuum.
As one of the world's largest producers of buckwheat, it’s safe to assume that Russia’s grechka problems are home-grown. But at the market, shoppers are also suffering the effects of Russia’s changed food import policies due to measures put in place this summer to ban almost all American and European produce, dairy, fish and meat products from entering the country. The move was in response to sanctions the West introduced against Russia over its involvement in the Ukraine conflict.

The shortage has happened before (a similar weather related problem occured in 2010) but this is only one problem for Russia, along with the freefall of the ruble and the fall of the price of petroleum and being hit by western sanctions.

Austin Bay on the background of all of this LINK
Is fracking and allowing the US export of LPG gas enabling Poland and eastern Europe to ignore pressure from Russia?
is the Saudi refusal to stop pumping oil despite the drop in prices a way to make the price so low that fracking will not be profitable?

Remember: WWII started partly because of oil sanctions against Japan, because of their invasion of China...so Japan decided to invade SEAsia to get their oil and of course rubber. The Philippines, alas, was in their way.

as for buckwheat: more background on that grain here. in a BBC article about Buckwheat in Russia and how sanctions are affecting the average person there.

Legend has it that, 1,000 years ago, when Greek monks spread Christianity to Russia, they brought with them more than just the Bible. They brought a grain, a seed, so magical, nutritious and delicious that it struck an instant chord with the Slavic soul - and the Russian stomach.

Stories below the fold

OK: Did Edward III's wife cheat on him?

DNA analysis of Richard III's skeleton points to confusion in the DNA of those who fought the War on the Roses. A long complicated article, especially considering it is from the UKMail website which usually carries stories of Hollywood bimbos or news about a rock resembling President Obama that has recently been found on Mars.


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Hobbit arrives in Manila on Dec 12th but the early reviews are  good, and linked to at TORN LINK

Spengler essay here (for later reading).

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Yes, Sherlock fans, there is a Reichenbach falls...in Switzerland.

Photo by Andrew Bowden on Flickr | Copyright: Creative Commons

Photos at Atlas Obscura

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When I married Lolo, he promised me that when we lived in the Philippines that I would always have enough rice to eat.

Well, that might not be true if you live in NYCity and there is a major emergency.as stories of the Sandy experience suggest.

(headsup TYWKIWDBI)

which makes me woder what would happen if "the big one" hit Manila, with ten million people left homeless and foodless.

cyberwar and oil war and racism and rants

I was reading yesterday about the head of the EU who just resigned after five years. Heh. I never heard of him, which says a lot about the coverage of that organization. Apparently he is one of those pushing the oil war on Russia, along with President Obama.

Summary: Iran and Russia sell oil and now the US is fracking and so doesn't need to import a lot of oil. That means countries can sell oil to other countries cheaply, and so Iran and Russia will see a fall in their export profits. Other sanctions cause Iran's oil price to be a bit higher, and China and India buy it, but if the price difference is too much, they might not.

Belmont club has more here.
But the Red/Green campaign availed not. Daniel Yergin writes in the Wall Street Journal that Putin is being crushed by politically incorrect America. “The decision by members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countrieson Thursday not to cut production reflects a profound shift in the world oil market. The demand for oil—by China and other emerging economies—is no longer the dominant factor. Instead, the surge in U.S. oil production, bolstered by additional new supply from Canada, is decisive. This surge is on a scale that most oil exporters had not anticipated. The turmoil in prices, with spasmodic plunges over the past few days, will likely continue.” Technological advances mean North American oil might be viable right down to $50 a barrel.

that is good news for us: Low LPG means less pressure on the poor to cook using wood, and more profit for farmers using handplows etc and more profit for tricycle drivers and more profit for companies that ship goods around.

another EU story is about pressure on one high official to resign: His problem? His country Luxemburg allowed companies to move there to reduce taxes.

If I remember correctly, the recent film about Grace Kelley had this as the "crisis" for the plot, since Monaco was doing the same thing.

Come to think of it, South Dakota has been doing this for years for the financial sector, and of course the Cayman Islands and other small countries do a lot of this. In Asia, it is Malaysian banks that hold the dictator's money, and a lot of the Hong Kong protests have the subplot of China wanting to move their banks and banking profits to the mainland where .rule of law isn't as strong

A lot of this is not covered in the news, although they do cover it on the BBC and the financial news.

So if the US is in a price war with Russia.

Also not reported: The cyber war of Russia and China vs the US and Europe, and the cyberwar of the US and Israel against Iran.

StrategyPage on Russian hackers.

Remember when Russian hackers blew Climate change out of the water by releasing records suggesting it was a scam and the CC folks were cooking numbers? It works both ways...

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FilAm Fernandez at Belmont club also notes the people left out of the Fuerguson narrative: Industrious immigrants.

 The Times of India notes: “the hotel industry in the United States, particularly the budget hotels segment, is dominated by people of Indian origin. Some 60 per cent of all budget hotels, typically called motels, are owned by Indians. Their predominance has led to the term ”Potel Motels” because they are usually run by Gujaratis with the last name Patel.”  So whenever a night motel clerk is robbed or a convenience store is looted in a low income neighborhood the guy at the losing end was probably called something like Patel.

Yes, and I've seen discussions here on the Korean English language TV about anti Korean discrimination in the USA... much of it is about their stores not being protected against thugs. Similarly, the South Philly riots never occured because the thugs beating up the Asian students (mainly Chinese) weren't punished. In both cases, usually the perpetrator gets a hand slap and the innocent being robbed or beaten is ordered to go to reeducation classes to be more sympathetic to local culture.

what is not included in the agenda: Teaching students skills that help them to get jobs: Honesty, politeness, correct language, promptness, and cultural clues and body language that tell others you are a responsible person. Sort of like "To Sir with Love" lessons.

Ironically, fast food jobs do this: the pay is lousy, but if you work for a year at McD etc you have a good chance to get a job elsewhere, because those employing you know you are neat, clean, polite, and come to work on time.

Ironically, the left's war against low wages will only result in these jobs being replaced by robots.

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also not in the narrative except on right wing sites: why is the black murder rate is so high.

No, it's not a racial or a cultural trait: it's because of gangs
So when the president insists that cops and "racial profiling" are the problem, he is ignoring that gangs are the ones doing most of the murders. And they victimize the good people in the neighborhood: lots of pressure on good kids who "act white" (i.e. study a lot, dress neatly, and attend church).

But no one has asked if gangs have anything to do with Feurguson.

Well I was perusing the extreme right wing news (and archeology stores) at FR,  a man posted an article suggesting the victim was once involved in a crip gang related killing. The story was promptly contradicted by commenters saying, no way: he was shown in photos wearing read and flashing "blood" gang signs. (the crips and the bloods are enemies).

The "victim" was a gang sympathizer? I didn't read this in the press.

But never mind. It doesn't mean he belonged to a gang: Maybe he was an innocent trying to blend into the woodwork and not get beaten up by "acting white".

In other words, amnesty is to keep Hispanics on the Democratic side, and Fueguson kerfuffle is to keep the black community from noticing their kids can't find jobs because they are filled by immigrants.

Censorship of these stories because it is politically incorrect means that people will rely on extreme sites and conspiracy shows to get their information. And that is a real danger, because they lack perspective.

Family news

Lolo is stable. His fever is down but he has no energy. I changed his BP medicine due to his low kidney tests, so that might be making him tired until he gets used to it.

Ruby is doing lots of stuff in her church group. Chano is okay. Lots of deliveries in Manila, and we will have to deliver Christmas gifts in the next few weeks so everyone is busy (except for me).

I got my laptop back, so can read books on my tablet again. I also use it for  music and to surf the web, but usually surf on my regular computer which is easier to type.

Enoch and angels and Grendel, oh my

I enjoy downloading lectures from videos on archeology etc. (PennMuseum is a good place to start).  A lot of stuff has been rewritten since I studied ancient Greek history in college 40 years ago, and this includes a dramatic retelling of the history of the Americas.

There are a lot of nonsense and conspiracy stuff pretending to be history/archeology there, especially about UFO's and spirits marrying men, and weird powers, that I tend to avoid. This is especially notorious when the press picks up this stuff, mainly the latest theories of Jesus that have been touted as new but actually date back to the early heresies rejected by the mainstream churches (Catholic, orthodox, etc).

Those old gnostic heresies are back in force nowadays among the elites, who are all busy evolving to a higher power to get rich, but actually are ancient: I just listened to a history lecture by Prof Vaughn atUHouston that explained these ideas and quickly pointed out the consequences of the ideas,(gnostics allow everyone their own beliefs, meaning they become dissipated proud individuals, not a community of believers, so their churches petered out. This also has implications for logic and science, which rely on the idea that there is truth that man can discern,  but that is another lecture course altogether, from Prof Raia at Berkeley)

Lots of nonsense out there, and lots of hostility against traditional beliefs, as Philip Jenkins pointed out, probably so they can pretend they have found newfangled ideas and get praised but in reality they are only touting stuff scholars have known for years.

I mean, when one eminent professor started his speech to the national press club or some other secular organization, he began by saying in his classes, he always told the students to write down the name of all the books in the bible, and when they couldn't, he ridiculed them. Well, duh. This is like asking a chemist to name every element on the periodic table. But knowing trivia is not the same as knowledge in context. Needless to say, I didn't listen to the rest of the lecture: his bias was silly and unscientific, and I can't abide nonsense in my old age.

I have two history books on the early church controversies by Philip Jenkins, and was delighted to find others can be read on Scribd.

but anyway, right now he is posting short items about the ancient book of Enoch, which was influential in the very early church (and included in the bible of Orthodox Ethiopians) but was dropped by 400 ad. LINK

the book's ideas of angels etc is big in the armageddon conspiracy pages of C2C etc. but like many of the "lost gospels" it's ideas floated around in folk literature of the early church (as did stories of Mary and Jesus's childhoods that are known to Catholics but not considered bible truth).

So anyway, one of Jenkins essays on this points out that it may have influenced Beowulf.

1 Enoch also circulated in the British Isles, in Ireland and Anglo-Saxon England. Modern scholars have found memories of the book in many incidental references from the early Middle Ages, and in artistic depictions...In England, in fact, Enoch had a curious and lasting cultural impact. 

The poem Beowulf appears to depict a primitive pagan world. This great poem tells of a village besieged by a terrifying monster called Grendel. The mighty hero Beowulf defeats Grendel, only to find that he must then combat a still more alarming enemy in Grendel’s mother.
But let’s look at those names. “Grendel” makes some sense in terms of a thing that grinds, that crushes with its ferocious teeth, but logically the Anglo-Saxon name should be something like “Grendr.” So where did the “-el” part come from? Forty years ago, medieval scholars offered a surprising answer. Whoever composed Beowulf drew heavily on the Hebrew Bible, and more specifically, on 1 Enoch.
Genesis reports the sons of God mating with the daughters of men, and those monstrous hybrids fascinated later writers. In 1 Enoch, they become cannibals and giants, who sound very much like Grendel’s horrible family.

Jenkins links to a column at realclearreligion
if you need more information.

Just for nice

The Hubble image of the week

his little spiral, known as NGC 4102, has a different kind of appeal, with its tightly-wound spiral arms and understated, but charming, appearance.

Heh sounds like the article was written by a fashion writer.

Image: ESA/Hubble, NASA and S. Smartt (Queen’s University Belfast); Acknowledgement: Renaud Houdinet

Facctoid of the day

The Australia's longest and straightest road is the Eyre Highway 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nullarbor_warning_signs,_2012.jpg

  Eyre Highway, the road that connects Western Australia to Southern Australia via the Nullarbor Plain, a flat and treeless, giant bed of limestone 200,000 square kilometres in area. With no hills or lakes to obstruct, the highway was laid down as a straight road that runs for 1,675 km from Port Augusta in the east to Norseman in the west, and includes what is said to be the longest straight stretch of road in the worldAustralia: 145.6 kilometres, between the small roadhouse communities of Balladonia and Caiguna (the longest straight road in the world is Highway 10 in Saudi Arabia, which is 162 miles long).

Headsup Presurfer

For later reading

David Warren 
on Father Delp in  prison and his mother's 70 year argument with the silence of God.

 from thePrison Notebooks of the Jesuit martyr, Alfred Delp (executed in Berlin, the 2nd of February, 1945)...

"...Life only begins when the whole framework is shaken. There can be no proper preparation without this. It is precisely the shock of rousing while he is still deep in the helpless, semi-conscious state, in the pitiable weakness of that borderland between sleep and waking, that man finds the golden thread which binds earth to heaven and gives the benighted soul some inkling of the fullness it is capable of realizing and is called upon to realize."

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Writer Brian Sibley posts a similar quote about Advent

“A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes…and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent.”
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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Waiting for GodotToLeaveBlog points out this is the eros of God

Of course the answer is not reverent liturgy alone.  But whether we're talking liturgy or art or music or any other great thing - and especially when we're talking love, the aspect of love calledEros (that face of love that makes Catholics extremely uncomfortable) - we are not made for safety, comfort, mere contentment, constraint.
We are made - God has made us - to "o'erflow the measure".  Antony & Cleopatra - sinners that they were - "overflowed the measure", and something mysterious and glorious is revealed to us in their story.

more here:

if we try to achieve perfect selfless Agape in everything we do, we are also sinning.  Eros is the passionate part of love, the part of love that has a vested interest in the object it loves or that it's pursuing.  Eros gives a damn.  Eros cares.
Take away Eros, as I said before, and you end up with Unreality, with weirdness, with love without blood, with, what Chesterton called an "airy, disinterested lust" - in fact, you end up with Christianity without the Cross, for the suffering of Christ is a passion in more ways than one.  Our God is a jealous God and a consuming fire - and our God is love (Ex. 34:14, Heb. 12:29, 1 John 4:8 & 16).

heh. Sounds like the old GermanShepherd's encyclical on Love:

The one God in whom Israel believes, on the other hand, loves with a personal love. His love, moreover, is an elective love: among all the nations he chooses Israel and loves her—but he does so precisely with a view to healing the whole human race. God loves, and his love may certainly be called eros, yet it is also totally agape.[7]

A lot of this is the underlying theme in Andrew Greeley's X rated novels, where God often interferes with the comfortable life of his characters by hitting them with erotic love that messes up their lives and brings them back to Him, or in the writings of JP2 about the theology of the body...

and yes it is in the message of Francis, if you actually read everything he says. The "good news" of the gospel is that God cares: that the universe is not an impersonal force, but "the love that moves the sun and other stars", and that the huge God of the universe cares for the least person on earth.

as I said: for later reading.

I'm waiting for Lolo to wake up and am using my laptop half asleep to check the web, but will read the stuff later on my tablet, where it is easier to read.

quote of the day

from Fountain of Elias

Many people struggle with loneliness during this season of the year. Here are some words from the great Benedictine Dom Hubert van Zeller: 

After sin, the three evils most to be dreaded are doubt, fear and loneliness. Of these, loneliness is the worst. Loneliness can give rise to doubt and fear, while if a man knows he is not alone he can fight his doubt, and disguise- which is half the battle- his fear. We can force ourselves to laugh at our doubts and fears, but loneliness forbids laughter. Loneliness is an echoing ache in the soul, it hollows out the heart and scoops away at our reserves. It even communicates itself to the senses, and all the outer world seems indifferent and hostile. We must have something with which to meet this evil. We must find something which will turn it into good....

This is where we need to have faith. This is where we pull ourselves up and cry "It's a mood. It will pass. It is only a mood." Thatdésespoir des lendemains de fête will melt away in time, giving place to color and light and normality and, finally, joy.

~ Dom Hubert van Zeller's We Die Standing, pp.62-63

Ebola: We are prepared

Ebola is out of the news thanks to the scheduled riots in Fergueson (yes, there is black anger, but this has been coopted by various forces with other agendas: Why else would this be morphing into a blocking of Walmart, where working class and poor folk buy most of their food and supplies?). I even read one article claiming that the "ebola crisis" was made up by the Republicans to get votes. Sheesh.

However, the bad news is that it is still a problem in West Africa, despite the silence in the media. The scientists delivered a "fast" test (to distinguish early Ebola from other common diseases such as malaria that have similar symptoms) and are working on a vaccine, but the real danger is still simmering.

So I was amused to see an "ebola suit" on the shelf in the ER of GoodSam hospital, where Lolo got checked.

Oh yes: Phil health has also announced that they will cover Ebola under their policies.

Now all we have to worry about is MERS (in Saudi) Bird Flu (sporadic cases all over Asia), Bubonic Plagues (which has broken out in Madagascar), and of course the usual cases of influenza, Dengue fever and Chinungunya virus.

Stuff around the net

BrianSibley again links to the BBC radio program on the once and future king. Today's link: Sir Lancelot.

White's take on the heroic French knight was a radically revisionist one: accepting – as is told in many versions of the Arthur myth – that it was Lancelot's illicit love for the King's wife, Guenever that eventually initiated the destruction of Arthur's chivalric dream, the author sets out with the determination of a modern novelist, rather than a myth-maker, to explore the human complexities of the triangular relationship between the Knight, the King and the Queen.

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TeaAtTrianon links to a WSJ article on Irish cheese: how entrepeneurs devised "Gourmet" cheeses to sell.

heh. Wonder if Erap's waterbuffalo milk dairies could do the same.
they already sell the milk and cheese locally...we drink the milk, mainly in our coffee: It is very high in fat.

Altogether now:



Yes, we have two, which we mainly use for plowing fields etc. too far from the road to use our truck, and also in our veggie project.

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rewrite the history books: Tibetan locals were growing barley and wheat at 2500 meters:  3500 years ago.

heh. Wonder if they also made beer with it?

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TORN reports that scientists are using THE EYE OF SAURON galaxy to measure distances in space.

"NGC 4151" by X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/J.Wang et al.; Optical: Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, La Palma/Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope, Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA - http://www.chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2011/n4151/. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

not to be confused with The Eye of God Nebula.

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Factoid of the day (from Wired):

The Teen Brain “Shuts Down” When It Hears Mom’s Criticism

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Family news

Lolo saw the hemotologist and refused the suggested tests (bone marrow).

We suspect a certain disease that has a good prognosis untreated, so he won't take treatment.

He also has weak kidneys from his blood pressure. Sigh.

He is depressed right now but his strength is normal for him.

Benny arrived and left us fruit and food. Chona arrives today or tomorrow.

Chano's company finally got the check from the government for last year's Christmas gifts. That should help a bit, although most of it is being repaid to Lolo or me for money he had to borrow to harvest the rice. It is raining right now from a low pressure area, but the harvest has been good this year.

Cat item of the day

Why do dogs make a bigger mess drinking water than cats?

From ABC(Aus)

The research team previously found that felines drink via a two-part process consisting of an elegant plunge and pull, in which a cat gently places its tongue on the water's surface and then rapidly withdraws it, creating a column of water underneath the cat's retracting tongue.
"When we started this project, we thought that dogs drink similarly to cats," says Sunny Jung, an assistant professor at Virginia Tech.
"But it turns out that it's different, because dogs smash their tongues on the water surface—they make lots of splashing -- but a cat never does that."

Government regulations/Medical rationing and Orwell

George Orwell died of TB despite the fact that streptomycin was being used in the US.

Why not in the UK? Not permitted to buy it under currency regulations.

`Before anything else I must tell you something that Dr Dick has said to me. He says that I am getting on quite well, but slowly, and it would speed recovery if one had some streptomycin (STREPTOMYCIN). This is obtainable in the USA, and because of the dollars the B[oard] O[f] T[rade] (or whatever it is) won't normally grant a licence. He suggested that you with your American connections might arrange to buy it and I could pay you... for it is a considerable sum and of course the hospital can't pay it...'2Orwell followed up later with an urgent telegram to David Astor, who responded promptly. Astor contacted Orwell's specialist and urged him to ignore Orwell's scruples about money and to deal directly with him (Astor).2 Astor also contacted the Minister of Health, Aneurin Bevan (who had been Orwell's former editor at the socialist magazine The Tribune), to make sure that there would be no political or licensing problems.2 A bank account in the USA containing the proceeds of the sale of Animal Farm there provided the dollars. It only took Orwell a few weeks to get the streptomycin. Thus it was that Orwell became the first person in Scotland to be offered the opportunity to try streptomycin.6

and when he finally received the drug. he developed a severe allergy, so it had to be stopped. And PAS was given but that is a weak drug and didn't stop the disease.

He eventually died of hemoptysis, where the cavities from the disease erode into a blood vessel and you die of bleeding.

article here.

Lolo got TB and got some streptomycin somewhere and gave himself the shots. It cured the TB but left him with a hearing loss. I'm not sure when: Probably about 1950.

family news

my husband has been sick and will see the specialist today. Keep him in your prayers.

Benghazi : I know nothing...NOTHING

Yes, it took several days for the State Department to figure out that the Benghazi attack was by terrorists, so don't blame them.

The dog that didn't bark:
Yet why did the gamers know an attack was coming at noon US time but no help was sent?

the "dog" is not mentioned, because one doubts that Smith told this to his fellow gamers but not to those in charge.

Presumably his emails/request for protection will be found in the future, right next to Lois Learner's redacted emails.

Immigration? We haz that

Most of my Filipino relatives manage to get work visas and jobs as nurses etc in the USA, then bring over mom to help baby sit as a visitor, which soon morphs into a green card. Florinda's husband not only got a green card but got his CABG paid for.

Yet my Colombian son, who decided he didn't want to get US citizenship so moved back there and lost his green card, can't even get a visitor visa to visit his brother and family. They fear he will stay and get a job.

So much for playing by the rules.

Of course folks will quickly try to get to the USA with this. If the Philippines was closer, half of the young folks in Nueva Ecija would be going there for jobs. Thanks to corruption it is hard to run a business (we are still waiting for payment from government orders from last year...originally it was probably because we didn't bribe the right folks, and now the excuse is that they have to do oodles of paperwork to check it was a legal order at a good price. Can't win either way).

One result is that there are ads all over for nursing school or other schools touting the ability to get a US/Canadian/Australian job if they study. And lots of ads for caretakers/workers/drivers in Saudi etc. or for factory jobs in Korea etc. (Korean language schools advertise too).
This destroys families, but better to have dad or mom working overseas to pay for your food and school fees than stay in the cycle of poverty.

The US is the gold standard, but we also have relatives in England, Germany, Italy, and Canada. Lots of Filipinos illegally in the US so Obama's immigration deal will be welcomed here, and the good news is that Filipinos are pretty well assimilated so rarely questioned by LaMigra.

So how good is "la migra"? Well, when my youngest lost his driver's license, he used his brother's to get a job driving a truck and was picked up and jailed. But it works both ways: When he was visiting Colombia, he was also picked up in a press gang (i.e. cops pick up young men and check if they did their national service, and if not, you are drafted into the military). Luckily, his cousin is a cop so they allowed him to get his US passport and he was released: and immediately deported since his US visa was expired. He is a dual citizen, but if he wanted to use his US passport, he had to follow those rules.

My youngest could always get a job, and many assumed he was illegal with a stolen identity since he does not have a Hispanic name. Being illegal is common, and normal Americans don't report them. Alas, it also means that some people will exploit them, not pay them, etc. For example, when my son was told to work overtime without time and a half pay, he objected, and was told if he complained he would be reported.

And of course, in construction, often the day workers salaries aren't reported nor are the taxes paid, but they will teach you how to do the job if you are willing and able. He's done a lot of this type of work too, and got enough experience that his Americorp job was teaching summer volunteers to repair houses in Appalachia.

And that part about doing jobs "Americans won't do" is right. In Idaho, one of our neighbors, being LDS, worked in the harvest and was one of the few white women there, even though we had lots of poor whites on welfare, who of course got paid for not working so why work? Ditto for the meat packing factories in Iowa, who after being targeted had to lay off their Mexican illegal workers and hire locals. They brought down Somali immigrants from Minnesota, and promptly ran into problems about time off for prayer etc.

Notice they were immigrants too? Work ethic is the key, not race.

So yes, allow illegals who hold jobs to get amnesty. But also make it easier for folks like my son to get his green card back.

Ann Althouse analyzes the legal aspects here.

My main problem: Is it stretching the law? I mean, this is not an emergency, and for four years,President Obama had a Democratic lock on congress, and even after that, could have worked bilaterally to get a similar law passed. But he is not willing to compromise and prefers to see the Republicans as the enemies, not as the loyal opposition, even those in the leadership who would work with him.

As a result, there is open revolt among the more conservative types. One Hispanic Republican even quoted Cicero (and gets mocked for it by CNN...nope no press bias here).

Well, Cicero was talking about the Catalinarian conspiracy, which in today's world would be a Republican revolt by the middle class over the rich.

A closer parallel to what President Obama is doing would be the Gracchi brother's attempt to get justice for the lower classes by trying to get around the rule of law. And that didn't turn out well for either them nor the Roman republic.

But nobody studies history anymore so why worry?

Self help, facebook, and the Ukraine

StrategyPage has an article on how facebook is helping anti Russian civilians in the Ukraine help their military.

The volunteers developed some very effective techniques to get things done and done quickly. For example they would often collect funds and then put that on credit cards so that it was easier to buy things overseas like protective vests, Kevlar helmets, night vision goggles, laser rangefinders and so on. Since some of this equipment was “restricted” to military or police organizations there were volunteers with connections overseas to deal with the restrictions.
Closer to home volunteers, especially in the major cities, were able to collect soap, shaving gear and food (even if just snacks) and quickly transport it to the troops. Using social media like Facebook and local radio and press volunteers could quickly act on a request from front line units. Volunteers came to know commanders and many individual troops and many requests could be filled within 24 hours. Given the corruption that was prevalent in Ukraine, the social networks and personal networks ensured that there was very little theft occurring when volunteers were involved.

Several thoughts on this.

One: When there were tornadoes in Oklahoma or hurricane floods in Louisiana, our locals would pack up supplies and folks in their pickup trucks and vans and travel to help.

Some of this help is designated groups (e.g. national guard, EMT's,), and a lot  are church groups, but some are just folks saying: Hey there are floods near Aunt Louise's house, so let's go and help.

Two: Most of this is ignored in the press, as the PopMech article on the Katrina rescue noted.

Even here in the Philippines, many people in last year's typhoons (including the one the press ignored that hit us a week before Yolanda devestated the Visayas) were not housed by the UN or even by the gov't, but took refuge in neighbors and relative's houses. Our relatives who live closer to the river had lots sleeping in their houses, and since we had a generator, many neighbors came here for recharging cellphones and flashlights, or to get spare clothing or blankets.

Some people in Manila packed up stuff and drove down to their relative's places, and others, like us, just sent money so relatives could quickly rebuild. (One of the scandals of Yolanda is that there is so much red tape that many have not received needed aid to rebuild, and of course, a lot of aid was diverted into people's pockets).

Three: too often people are trained in socialism to wait for gov't rescue (one of the problems in Katrina, where the schoolbuses sat flooded because some regulation stopped them from being used to evacuate, the governor refused troops to help and insisted she'd wait for aid from FEMA, which took days).

What is interesting about this is that ordinary folks in the Ukraine have "thought outside the box" and helped on their own, bypassing the bulky and corrupt bureaucracy to do so. Hmm...maybe they do belong to the western world.

Family news

Rice harvest is in full swing. We should get a decent crop this year, and might recover financially after losing last year's main harvest and some buildings to the typhoon.
The maid is not keeping up with the work (lazy) and so Dita recommended one of her friends to help with the work as a day job.

Stuff below the fold

Watership Down, the lectures at Mythgard continues.

no, I didn't bring my copy with me to the Philippines, and only vaguely remember the story, but found the audiobook on Youtube. And like the other Mythgard series, they discuss the book, not the movies, which sometimes are different.

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PopehatBlog gets poetic on modern femifascist censorship:

Then out spake prim Horatius,The Censor of the Gate:"To every persyn upon this earthBut*hurt cometh soon or late.And how can we do betterWhen facing fearful speech,Than shut down all discussion,And stop the crimethink's reach?

The problem is that I doubt any students know the story of Horatio's stand, or the famous "Lays of Rome", because their themes are patriotism and honor, and of course, they are "bad poetry".

FYI: A snip from the original poem, 

Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the gate:
“To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his gods

nah, can't have such things taught in our schools.

But the ideas are found in modern juvi lit: Percy Jackson, anyone? And then there is Katnis, Harry, and Bilbo, all of whom hold the honorable idea to sacrifice self for their friends...even the wimpy Bella sacrifices herself for her child...

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Improbable research suggests this leisurely book for your reading pleasure:

you can find a cope at internet Archives.

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Science article of the day is also from Improbable research:

“A randomised crossover trial of the acute effects of a deep-fried Mars bar or porridge on the cerebral vasculature,” William G. Dunn, and Matthew R. Walters, Scottish Medical Journal, epub 2014..... 

Conclusion Ingestion of a bolus of sugar and fat caused no overall difference in cerebrovascular reactivity, but there was a modest decrease in males. Impaired cerebrovascular reactivity is associated with increased stroke risk, and therefore deep-fried Mars bar ingestion may acutely contribute to cerebral hypoperfusion in men.

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science news you can use:

Kissing transfers 80 million bacteria.

but not all kissing: French kissing for ten seconds was the criteria used.

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Instapundit plugs his relatives' site for Nollywood movies.

Yes. And there are a lot of them on Youtube too...

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and the headline of the day:

UK's first 'poo bus' goes into service between Bristol and Bath

The 40-seat "Bio-Bus" runs on biomethane gas generated through the treatment of sewage and food waste

Family news

Chano and family arrived home 3am Sunday morning. They were in Davao for a conference on organic rice, got home Friday but stayed overnight with Joys sister.

I should note that Manila has "color coding" meaning you can only drive there on designated days, and often it is easier to drive home in the middle of the night when traffic is lighter and it is cooler.

Joy's sister is stable, but we are awiting tests next week to see if the chemo is starting to work.

Chano brought some Davao citrus fruit with him, but no Durian (They won't let Durian on the airplane...)

Ruby got her hair cut  shoulder length and shaped by a professional and looks like a young lady. Before her hair was getting long and a bit straggly, but the locals didn't cut it right. Yes. I found problems getting my fine, gray hair cut right, even at the expensive place at the mall...but one of the hairdressers at at a salon near the palenke does it correctly.

The internet is on and off. On Saturday, there was a small explosion in one of the transformers nearby, so we lost electricity and internet. They fixed the electricity, and then Sunday the electricity was off for four hours, probably from having to replace the damaged transformer. I turned on the generator, but then of the gas lines burst so we had to call one of our drivers to fix it.

Internet is still iffy on and off and slow, but it will post slowly, although too slow for downloads.

Calling Admiral Yi

The story of the "samurai" invasion of Korea is one the west doesn't know, but Admiral Yi already had his own Korean miniseries drama and now will be in a movie.




Professor Bulliet, from Columbia Univ, whose history lectures are on youtube, tells the story of a Korean student telling him that he was studying film making so he could tell the world the history of Korea, which is usually overlooked in the west.

Well, the Korean Teledramas of their history are big hits here in Asia, and now there is this movie.

Bulliet also notes that westerners cry about the "religious" wars causing many deaths, but ignore that the Japanese invasion of Japan killed just as many people. Well, western history tends to ignore Asian history, and the radical anti religion types would prefer not to know that atheists killed more people in the 16th century than the wars of religion back then sort of ruins their argument.

True. Just like Americans "remember" those killed in Hiroshima, but not those who died in the "rape of Manila".

Happy story of the week

in the Christian Science Monitor: How twin girls, separated at birth, found each other

"Get out the smelling salts" hyperbole of the day

It's bad enough that a feminist reporter changed the story of one of the greatest scientific achievements  of the decade into the story of her emotional trauma from seeing a "sexist shirt".

This is sexist? The gal is good looking but fully clothed.I was expecting JessicaRabbit...

from the UKMail:

Dr Matt Taylor, Rosetta Project Scientist (pictured)  is one of the most important members of the team at Esa and made history by helping to land Philae on comet 67P yesterday. However, his sister has claimed that the scientist is not good at making small everyday life decisions or parking - and finding - his car in carparks

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2832965/He-land-probe-comet-t-park-car-Sister-tattooed-Rosetta-scientist-Dr-Matt-Parker-reveals-poor-driving-skills.html#ixzz3J69VHggf
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

But the hyperbole continues: This one from a writer at the Washington Post:

Scientist apologizes for his sexist shirt, but the Internet still wants women to shut up and die

no, the "internet" is telling women to die: They are only telling the original bullying reporter not have the vapors over a joke.
I missed the original report, but if you are wondering what kind of reporter would write this second headline, the answer is: a feminist whose background is "environmental science" (a degree that  usually requires only a few freshman level courses in hard science or math) .

Which is why her personal web page brags about her articles on complicated  scientific items such as:

Finally, an algorithm for picking the perfect bra June 10, 2014
QUANTIFIED BABY Parents, don’t cover your baby in tracking devices, no matter how paranoid you might be May 28, 2014
BREAKING THE MOLD We thought trees and fungi were socialist, but they’re actually capitalist May 26, 2014
Even white icing has artificial color in it May 22, 2014
AND EVERYTHING ELSE Your fitness tracker could soon control your home’s lights, heat, and music May 16, 2014
FOLLOW THAT CAB A language app is getting Brazil’s taxi drivers in shape for the World Cup May 16, 2014
FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS If you switch from the iPhone, your texts might get lost in Apple’s cloud May 15, 2014

wonder what she and the original complainer would have made of Richard Feynman, who used to use a topless bar as an office away from home?


this is also from the UK Mail and illustrates the actual scientific achievement:

Rosetta has chased comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko through space for more than ten years in what has been described as 'the sexiest, most fantastic mission ever'. After a four billion mile (6.5 billion km) journey, it is now positioned in an orbit 19 miles (30 km) away from 67P

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2832965/He-land-probe-comet-t-park-car-Sister-tattooed-Rosetta-scientist-Dr-Matt-Parker-reveals-poor-driving-skills.html#ixzz3J6AEnVU3
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

It's an awesome achievement, and the guy has some really awesome tatoos...I placed a copy on my goth granddaughter's facebook page.


Best comment on the kerfuffle is from Instapundit:

YEAH, WELL, I DON’T REALLY CARE WHAT YOU THINK, SINCE YOU’VE NEVER ACTUALLY DONE ANYTHING OF CONSEQUENCE EXCEPT COMPLAIN: I don’t care if you landed a spacecraft on a comet, your shirt is sexist and ostracizing.Landing on a comet is a big deal. Complaining about men isn’t... This is just another sad effort on the part of losers to inject themselves into matters that are actually relevant, but in which they are unqualified to take part.

Family news

Chano and family are back from their meeting, but stayed overnight in Manila to visit Joy's sister.

Everyone here is busy with the harvest.

Headlines below the fold

NYTIMES: Dreaming of the departed is common.

the article notes 60 percent have dreams about the departed, but another study show that about the same number of spouses see, hear, or detect the presence of their dead spouse after death.

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the pope's visit to the Philippines will include a side visit to Tacloban.

CAT ITEM OF THE DAY

French police downgrade tiger hunt to cat chase

PARIS - Police scaled back a massive tiger hunt east of Paris on Friday after experts said the animal that triggered the deployment of hundreds of emergency services workers, animal-trackers and a helicopter was probably little more than a large cat or lynx....

Never bring a knife...

The original quote is never bring a knife to a gun fight.

But one of the comments on this Instapundit post on "Gamergate" notes:

Sisyphus ReduxThat's what happens when you bring a knife to a +3 sword fight...
3 hours ago  Like (25) Link To Comment

If you don't understand that, ask your grandson what it means.

Apparantly the PC were trying to take over the gaming industry in the same way they took over science fiction (read Hoyt for her problems getting published) and a lot of academia.

But apparently gamers are fighting back, and even have dared to expose that those most vocal are hypocrites and have done naughty things in the past.

I am not a gamer, so haven't been following the fight, but the full article about the kerfuffle is here.

War on (African) women

CFam actually asked the UNICEF folks about the HCG in tetanus rumor, and it was denied.

the manufacturer? Elder: The vaccines were sourced from the Serum Institute of India. A WHO pre-qualified manufacturer.

CFam also notes that Obama has increased the money to sterilize women in poor countries. Well, duh. And those women who died in a mass sterilization clinic? Well when there are incentives and quotas, you have to hurry things along and may cut corners. And note: This is India, with a free press, not China.

When I worked in Africa, our hospital got private funding from Oxfam to fund village health workers to give out WHORehydration fluid and monitor for malnutrition in young kids. We also were given an ambulance (LandRover with 4wd) that used too much gasoline, so we sold it and bought a smaller truck and used the leftover money for a well digging program so there would be safer water in the dry season.

But hey, every village had a "pill lady" to give out contraceptives. Priorities I guess.

And I confess I trolled someone yesterday: while surfing around, I ran into one of those fluffy home birth is easy type self proclaimed midwives who bragged about going around having wonderful experiences, including her wonderful experiences at an affluent Philippine birth center near Manila.

Yes, it was not about helping women survive childbirth, nor was she working in a rural area where midwives were not available, but about how the experience expanded her ego.

Wonder who paid for the trip?

The entire article lauded the traditional birth attendants, never mind that this is the reason for the high death rate among our mothers.

So as Doctor Bossy,  I pointed this out, and suggested what the moms need is not fluffy self trained "midwives" but trained midwives who could recognize transverse lie, handle a post partum hemorrhage, and monitor women so they didn't die of toxemia.

I didn't add "and who don't insist on an expensive 'gift' to do the 'free' delivery as a government midwife"

 (We lost a neighboring farmer's wife to eclampsia because she couldn't afford the gift, and figured she'd just pay a hilot when she went into labor. Unfortunately, she was expecting twins and her blood pressure soared. Joy was at our farm and arranged the local ambulance, and they did a C section when she arrived at the hospital, but she died from the brain damage from the seizure. All preventable, of course, and Dr. Angi was angry that no one picked up the problem when she started swelling up...probably because the hilot wasn't aware of it and the patient didn't have money for the government midwife's "gift")

When I worked in Liberia, JFK hospital in Monrovia had a program to train these women, and a program by Johns Hopkins to do this has lowered birth mortality in Afghanistan in recent years.

But when I worked in Zimbabwe, births were done by relatives, not regular midwives, so getting nurses to run small clinics in rural areas to do the births made more sense.

When I worked in Idaho, we had these home birth types: One was fairly good, but almost lost a patient from hemorrhage because she didn't diagnose twins which caused the flacid uterus post delivery, and the other was dumb and killed a sluggish baby by doing cpr wrong and rupturing it's liver...

One reason that I enjoyed "Call the Midwife" is that they actually run into these complications, and what lowered the death rate was that the NIH funded an ambulance to get there in a hurry when things went wrong (AKA "flying squad").

Science meets Smaug

Wired article discussing the physics of the black arrow.

Bad news: it shouldn't have enough speed to kill the dragon.


But my question is: What if the arrow is lighter, i.e. mithril arrow? In fan discussions, mithril is assumed to be aluminum or titanium....because it is hard, I always backed titanium.

The main argument against the black arrow being of mithril is that is that mitril is silver, and the arrow is black..similar to Turin's black blade Gurthang This sword was reforged from Anglachel, which was meteorite meta; in origin but stronger than earthen steel.

Turin used Gurthang to kill the dragon Glaurung...so if the black arrow was made from a similar metal, it would indeed be able to kill Smaug.

a discussion of meteorite weapons can be found at strangehistory.
and at wikipedia.

Movie event for Christmas

the Vatican Museums, in 3D High definition for your viewing pleasure.



actually probably you'll have a better view than if you visit them in person, since the museums tend to be poorly lit and you often see the murals from a distance.