Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Stuff around the web

RogerSimon discusses the Hollywood hack
the emails aren't pc...they only pretend to be pc so they can hate others. But not so PC that they might look modern day terrorism in the eye and put it in their movies.

and this factoid from one of the comments about a very  non PC comic:

While I certainly sympathize in the general Schadenfreude, I've got to wonder Mel Brooks and Cleavon Little might not have made similar jokes at one time.
5 hours ago  Like (0) Link To Comment
Few people remember it nowadays, but Mel Brooks served in the US Army during World War II, in an engineering unit that specialized in clearing landmines. I don't think much has frightened him since.
4 hours ago  Like (1) Link To Comment
You know that "French Mistake" song that he loves playing in his movies?
He does that because back in WWII, he wired up a giant propaganda sound system to blare that at the Nazis.
3 hours ago  Like (0) Link To Comment
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The Sydney "hostage" crisis turns out to be an Iranian (shiite? why the ISIL flag?) who was out on bail after molesting 50 people
and suspicion he was behind the murder of his ex wife.

His lawyer says he was a "victim" for being mistreated in jail after a previous arrest, so he did this because his feelings were hurt.

But why was he out on bail in the first place?

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another danger to the west is the failure to notice how bioethicists are pushing the envelope. First abortion, then starving the brain damaged, now infanticide is now being "debated".

these ideas go back to the 1970's, and many of the same ethical ideas are associated with death panels medical rationing for the elderly and handicapped who don't meet their criteria for meaningful life.

and the next time someone tells you that this is needed because "modern medicine" keeps these people alive too long, tell them that Plato said the same thing (400 bc). That is nonsense, because in the past (or here in the third world) we have plenty of middle aged people who are crippled, are arthritic, have strokes, etc. Modern medicine only moves the bar of disability to an older age.

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David Warren's essay tries to explain the difference between sinners who manipulate to get a free pass for their sin, and true repentance.
For they are helping people to compound their sins — they are doing their bit to ice the slide to Hell for these people. That is not merciful. That is flat-out Evil.Perhaps the most contemptible — among those who happen to rise like scum in the hierarchy — said, he wouldn’t use Communion “as a weapon,” compounding this with the lie that the Church had never done so. You bet Communion is a weapon, Cardinal Wuerl: the weapon with which we fight our way to Heaven. For it is the very flesh and blood of Christ, the ultimate weapon against the Gates of Hell
Ah yes: Cardinal Wuerl, who never bothered to stop the local priests (including those from our nearby diocese) openly cruising the local gay bars, and who ordered the local schools to give a sex ed class over the objections of many parents. More rumors HERE.

yes, right no I am feeling very homophobic, but never mind the reason. 
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Related item:

eichman's not so banal evil

I always thought the banal part was that to other folks around him he seemed like an average guy, not that he was an average guy.

Of course, sociopaths manipulate the message, providing a smoke screen so you can't see they are evil.





Monday, December 15, 2014

Family news

Flat in bed with stomach flu.

Lolo's okay.

Chano took the weekend off.


Sunday, December 14, 2014

Stuff around the web

I think awhile back I linked to an article about how "zero" was first used in Cambodia.

Smithsonian magazine has a long article about it  HERE.

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The UKMail has an article with lots of photos on Thorne's miniature models of rooms from all over the world.


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YUM! Eels!

Tastes during the Middle Ages varied greatly from today’s tastes. Typical of what was pleasing to the medieval palate were: lamprey, eel, peacock, swan, partridge and other assorted small songbirds. Apart from perhaps eel, none of the above items feature in today’s culinary offerings. Dairy products were often perceived as the province of the peasant class. Sausages were seldom found on the tables of the wealthy. The reason for this? Sausages were preserved. Since the wealthy had ample access to fresh meats, they saw no need in eating something that was preserved. Although household account books indicate that fruits were consumed, they do not feature prominently in the cookbooks of the time.

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Blame Global warming?

Floods in Rome and the plague in 589

Severe weather during Charlemagne's time. (800AD)

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Musical interlude of the day



Plough discusses the story of Pau Casals and includes the lyrics of the Catalan carol:

A star rose in the sky
and glory from on high
did fill the night with splendor.
Came birds with joyful voice
to carol and rejoice with
songs so sweet and tender.
The eagle then did rise,
went flying through the skies,
to tell the wondrous story,
sang: Jesus, born is he,
who comes to set us free,
he brings us joy and glory.
The sparrow with delight
said: This is Christmas night,
our happiness revealing.
The sky with praises rang,
as finch and robin sang
their songs of glad rejoicing.
The lark upon the wing
said: Now it seems like spring,
no more is winter pressing;
for now a flower is born
whose fragrance on this morn
to earth brings heaven’s blessing.
Sang magpie, thrush, and jay,
It seems the month of May
in answer to our yearning.
The trees again are green
and blossoms now are seen,
it is the spring returning!
The cuckoo sang: Come, come,
And celebrate the dawn
this glorious aurora.
The raven from his throat
then trilled a festive note
to the unexcelled SeƱora.
The partridge then confessed,
I want to build my nest
beneath that very gable
where I may see the Child
and watch whene’er he smiles
with Mary in that stable.

Friday, December 12, 2014

Craft item of the day

How to make a Philippine Christmas star can be found at Instructables.


Or you could make one from plastic bottles.


Family news

Again went shopping: a little more Christmas decorations. I would like a Parol, a Christmas star, but the price was too high so I bought a wreath and a small star...the star was made of lights, and needless to say after one day half the string went out. Oh well.

I am having the cabinets in the dining room refurbished. I paid for supplies and our handy man to do it, but he disappeared for two weeks. His step father has cancer, so he was busy with his family visiting etc.

Sad.

But now they are being covered with new veneer, and by next week the dining room should look a bit better.
Now all we have to do is arrange for someone to put tiles on the concrete floor where the outdoor kitchen is, so it is easier to keep clean.

In the meanwhile, Chano has hired some kids to weed the garden. We already hired an older lady, a friend of our cook, to do this so they are helping. Also they trimmed the loose branches of the palm trees so they don't fall on anyone. Usually someone comes and offers to take down the ripe coconuts for us in exchange for keeping half to sell as buko juice.

In other words, the place, which has not been repaired for the last year because we were pinching pennies, might actually look half decent by Christmas.

Rant of the day: Would Jesus defend himself?

Do reporters ignore the truth and slant stories to fit the narrative?

DUH.

It’s absolutely true that we don’t have a wave of outright fabrication-out-of-whole-cloth. But what we have is much worse. We have a tsunami of inaccuracy that is generally tolerated, embraced and even celebrated so long as it serves the right political and cultural goals.

The meme this year is the war on women, so you search out a story that fits the narrative, and bump into a hysterical woman who is exaggerating to get attention. Duh. Ironically, the story was debunked by the local staff of the WaPost (not the national staff). In other words, if the enterprising reporter had picked on the Univ Alabama etc. she would have gotten away with it because no one would have read the investigation in the small local papers.

Presumably the next meme will be "torture".

Duh.

If you didn't know this was going on, you live in Cloud Cuckoo land. It keeps you safe, but it's not PC to say this. Now that the threats are being ignored in the news, it is open season on the ones who bent the law to keep you safe.

Expect this report to be used to bash Republicans (without noting that President Obama doesn't allow the capture and torture of suspected terrorists: he merely kills the bad guys with drones instead). True pacifists know this, and complain.

How can you tell a true pacifist from a fake one? If they only bash the US and the west, they are fake.

War is hell, as one General said, and the dirty little secret is that often trying to make wars more humane merely leads to the next war because you didn't kill enough bad guys, so they regroup and attack again.

Threats continue even when they aren't in the news.

We are expecting the Pope to visit, meaning that Manila will shut down. It will be more of a crowd problem than the annual "Black Nazarene" procession or the frequent Iglesia NiCristo or ElShaddai rallies which attract one million plus members.

So will the terrorists strike?

So what does this have to do with torture?

Well, When JP2 visited the Philippines in the early 1990's, a hotplate blew up and caused a fire, and the local firemen and cops noted bomb making equipment. The main guy escaped, but one of his minions was caught and interrogated, and revealed two plans: One, to bomb the Pope when he traveled through the crowded Manila streets, and Two: early plans to hijack several airplanes and use them as bombs.

As a result of the "enhanced interrogation", the Pope was helicoptered to the venue to say mass, and he remained safe. The US however ignored the second "headsup" because it was obtained by torture and sounded too crazy to be true.

No, as a Christian, I don't support enhanced interrogation, but know that if I knew lives were at stake, I might do it.

 It's nice to claim one is a pacifist while living in a safe suburban enclave in the US, has never faced war or violence at first hand, so you can feel self righteous without facing the cost or seeing the casualties of your righteousness.

So go ahead and feel self righteous blocking traffic with your "die ins", but could I ask you, where are you on Friday night when the casualties of these thugs (both innocent and not so innocent) are brought into the emergency rooms?

The dirty little secret is that bad guys exist. And the latest meme by Obama's minions to destroy police morale by painting police as evil racists will lead to police being less willing to put their lives on the line protecting you, and thus more innocent people killed in the gang wars... and more ordinary Americans buying guns to defend themselves because the police will be seen as too timid and ineffective to do so.

What would Jesus do?

No, Jesus didn't have a weapon, but Peter did, a sword, presumably for safety when they traveled on the isolated parts of the Jericho road. And Peter obviously knew how to use it, taking off the ear of one who came to arrest Jesus, (who then said put it away because those arresting were authorities, not bandits).

Thursday, December 11, 2014

Busy Busy

It finally stopped raining.

Went to the mall to buy Lolo's medicine and some other supplies this morning, and to the local supermarket to get juice and instant coffee.

Lolo is okay...got his hair cut yesterday (here) but didn't have enough energy to go to the mall. One of these days I'll have to get him there for new glasses...his are okay but scratched badly.

Tuesday, December 09, 2014

rain rain rain rain

the slow moving typhoon is south of here, and it's been cool and rainy all night.

I have a bad cold and am in a bad mood from sleeping badly. To make things worse, I had to turn away one of the regular beggars because I don't have any change left, and that always makes me feel bad, even though I know a lot of the money she gets ends up taken by her husband to buy beer and gamble. Sigh.

Lolo is well.

Monday, December 08, 2014

Kristin Lavransdatter

David Warren has an essay about Kristin Lavrensdatter, the novel of being a woman in medieval Norway and one of my favorite books.

Although he pans the Nunnally translation, if you are easily put off by formal prose, I would read it first, because the book is long and this translation is easier to read.

but like him, I prefer the older version, since I read that one first.

He brings up the fact that, unlike more modern novels, it stresses motherhood and marriage, not making the women into the feminist type we see in so many novels, who are really pseudomen in their thinking and rarely have children they worry about.

But I enjoyed the novel because Kristin is NOT a modern woman: too often, historical novels have women thinking and acting like a 20th century elite American  or European woman, with a good education, who was independent and wealthy, and who rarely worries about getting pregnant every year and facing death in childbirth...no Jane Austin women in modern novels, whose lives depend on finding the right man to be happy.

Well, having lived in many countries, I know from experience that people simply don't think or act the same. And the past is another country. Modern American fiction often has lost it's moral and intellectual vocabulary to even realize this, despite all the talk of "multiculturalism" (which is usually a keyword to push nihilism and to deny that right and wrong exist).

Kristin doesn't act like a modern woman, not because the author was not a modern woman and a feminist,(she was) but because she was well aware of medieval culture. So people eat porridge, sleep in cupboards, draw up baths, face hunger when the crops go bad, and get sick: the medical aspects are explained in detail, from childbirth to fevers to the black plague. Kristin is taught herbs by Erland's aunt, who is in exile for the suspected murder of her husband but wasn't executed because she was of high rank...and she is a good herbalist, who teaches this to Kristin, including a lot of things that were frowned upon by the church.

And like her, Kristin is not above using witchcraft to cure when ordinary herbs won't do. At the end of the book, Kristin saves a child from being sacrificed to stop the plague because she recognized what an overheard comment about Hel meant...

People in those days died of infected wounds, accidents, scarlet fever, childbirth, etc. and these illnesses/accidents are part of the plot.  Indeed, the long labor of Kristin's first child was used in a medical book for students to understand how to think about the societal aspects of illness.

One more thing: Don't see the movie. The movie is boring and the cinematography is ugly, but the main problem is that Kristin and others are made out to be full of sexual hangups (she isn't: she later felt guilt for losing her honor, shaming her family, and helping to kill her husband's paramour in order to marry the one she loved).

And the casting is bad: The sexy, charming and clintonesque Erland is played by a plain looking and nerdy guy, where the loving, faithful but fat country bumpkin suitor that Kristin rejects is played by a handsome young man. Her father is shown to be a troll, not a man beloved by everyone for his hard work and bravery, and Erland's Aunt, who is described as still lovely as an old lady, is played by a plain looking woman.

I'd love to see someone make a miniseries of the book, or a movie trilogy that is faithful to the non modern point of views and the characters.

finally, for those interested in how daily life was lived in those days, this could be an eyeopener. As Warren points out:

Undset was a formidable mediaevalist. Her father was a reputable archaeologist, and both her parents historically learned. From childhood she had heard this peculiar aesthetic call, and succumbed to the true historian’s fascination with what lies under things. In that field and from her eventual home of BjerkebƦk at Lillehammer — living surrounded by the landscape in which Kristin Lavransdatter is set, described with such a crisp poetical exactness — she was entirely on her own turf. Scholars to this day acknowledge her as genuinely expert: there are details in her XIVth-century reconstructions that were speculative, at the time she was writing, but have since borne out. She knew, as it were, where the old, pre-Reformation Norway was buried. For this alone, the trilogy — and the tetralogy that followed it, called The Master of Hestviken — is a pleasurable education.

Art post of the week

Picturing Mary...an exhibit


Lippi's madonna

short films on other masterpieces HERE



Stuff around the web

No links: I am lazy (with a cold) and the internet is on and off (From the typhoon).

Attention survivalists: Brown rice goes bad faster than white rice. LINK...although we know this, and have to constantly keep an eye on our rice in stores so it is removed after a certain date (also because tiny bug eggs that get through the packing process start to hatch. Packing process: Sift over a screen, and quickly touch the rice with a blowtorch).

I had always read about Vitamin B deficiency from white rice, so that many countries made it too expensive to force the poor to eat the brown, less milled, version. But there is oil in the bran and kernel that goes rancid if stored too long, so the shelf life is shorter.

so if you are a survivalist, keep white rice only, or buy Uncle Bens or other rice that is processed to keep the vitamins in.

Or add soba noodles, made from buckwheat, into your diet. (see post below).
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Cardinal Pell was put in charge of Vatican finances and found a lot of the offices had money hidden in secret accounts. These were slush funds that could be used without all that paper work, for good causes, of course (/s).

Maybe I shouldn't be sarcastic: "black hole" money like this, along with money from the CIA and American unions, might have brought down the Soviet Union by keeping the solidarity union alive LINK

And two bankers of the Vatican Bank are being prosecuted for shady real estate deals.

This is going on all over, of course: I think the "dead banker" list is up to 36. And China's corruption, including their bank and real estate shennanigans, is a big "if" for the New World Order.

But there is a real danger to the Pope here if he allows a clean up. As for the bad guys in the Vatican Bureaucracy: this time they won't find a dumb bishop from Chicago to be the fall guy (which was Anderew Greeleys' take on a bishop blamed for an earlier scandal).

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Israel bombed Damascus?

rumors were that Syria was sending weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon, to terrorize Israel in the near future.

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The Ebola czar just quit.

Guess it's not in the headlines anymore, since only black Africans are dying.

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Throw away people: Unclaimed bodies in California.

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I've heard of electric eels, but electric bacteria?


With one end buried in the sulphur-rich sediment and the other towards the surface of the mud, the bacteria is able to make a connection between its hydrogen sulfide food source found in the sediment and the oxygen it needs to survive - found on the surface of the mud.
"Instead of waiting for the hydrogen sulfide to meet the oxygen, they actually move electrons which is what we do in our body except on a much shorter scale," he said. "This provides them with their energy."

HeadsupDaveBarry


Typhoon update

The typhoon is south of Manila, has lost most of it's wind and is mainly a danger of rain.

So the main danger is passed, but flooding remains a problem, especially in Manila. We are upstream, so not too worried. (we flood when the typhoons hit north of here in the mountains and add their water to the drenched ground and swollen rivers/canals).

Sunday, December 07, 2014

Uh Oh

Big Waves Ahead of Typhoon More than 600,000 people fled Philippine villages and the military went on full alert on Saturday to brace Typhoon Hagupit, for a powerful storm only hours away from the country's eastern coast.


we are now signal one....and the typhoon is slowly moving NW... *we are north of Manila


because it's moving slowly, flooding is the main danger. We are on high ground and far from the river and ocean so should be okay.

Stuff around the web

StrategyPage article on medical innovations saving lives. And it includes the discovery that concussions/mild brain trauma can make it post traumatic stress syndrome worse. A quarter million vets suffer from this, and they are now recognizing it as a source of civilian disability.

Maybe we should go back to using the old term "Shell Shock"...

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Ruby's textbook on ancient history/archeology includes the Indus civilization, which wasn't in textbooks 50 years ago.

That civilization fell about the time of the fall of the old empire in Egypt.

This article discusses various theories behind it's fall, climate change, economic changes, war, migration in and out, new crops, etc. Probably all of the above, and sounding ominiously similar to the Bronze age collapse a millenium later or the fall of Rome and China 1500 years after that.

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And American raid to get a hostage held by terrorists ended up by his murder, but here in the Philippines, a Swiss birdwatcher held captive for 2 years managed to escape his captors despite being shot by them when the military raided his camp.

It's illegal to pay ransom here, since it enriches the terrorists and leads to more kidnappings and murders, but often it is paid by families, or by foreign governments.

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 Superconductivity at room temperature?

For later reading.

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Khoisan genome study... genetically they are not diverse, and not related to other groups. The question is why.

No intermarriage? Well, actually there is: But most seem to be evidence that women  married into other tribes...

LINK
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Rant of the day

No typhoon. Not even a cloud or rain (so far...it may change by this evening since the typhoon is moving very slowly).

I expected heavy rain so told the cook she didn't need to come in early to go to church with me at 530 am (she usually arrives at 545 to cook). Then when I woke up, no rain.

Well, maybe it's for the better, since Lolo was up by 615 and wanting to eat breakfast, and since tomorrow is a feast day of the Virgin Mary (AKA "Mama Mary"), so probably they will start celebrating in today's mass, meaning crowds and no seats.

Dec 7 is Pearl Harbor day in the US,  and was on a Sunday morning when most people were in church, but in the Philippines, the attack was December 8, when everyone was in church for the feast day. Despite all the hype, the world has gone 70 years without a major war (something we as kids would not have believed, since most people thought there would be a nuclear war by 1960). So thanks to God for the peace.

James Dunnigan at StrategyPage notes:

 Wars continue to decline in number and intensity. Those that still exist get lots of publicity because that’s what the media does. But overall there are more conflicts ending (via negotiation, mutual exhaustion or one side actually winning) than new ones getting started. And new wars are more frequently quickly addressed with peacekeeping efforts. This is all a post-Cold War trend that has been going on for over two decades now. Let us hope it continues.
It's better to light a candle than curse the darkness, but what bleeds leads, and it's come to the point that the hysteria of the press is resulting in less people listening.

For example, all that hype about "climate change" may or may not be true, and it may or may not be due to pollution (which is terrible, and needs to be controlled for itself, not as part of a larger agenda to take over the world), but a lot of folks are planning to dump money into the third world to help "victims" ignore that a lot of money will end up in the pockets of the corrupt (The UN estimates only 17% but in many countries it will be higher). And exactly how what it their plan? To give airconditioners to Africans who live in huts?

Well, why not? Most of my poor patients in Oklahoma had them. But of course, the first thing the third world poor do is replace the hut with a concrete house, which keeps out bugs, snakes, and doesn't get eaten by termites. But the new houses with tin roofs are often very hot, whereas the Nipa huts are naturally cool.

I am always cynical about these things. Today's facebook five minute hate suggested that all the homeless could be housed in abandoned homes. Yes, but most homeless quickly find a place to live, often with family. I worked in poor areas, and many folks had relatives or friends staying with them when they needed a place to stay...the others alas are often too drugged up, drunk, mentally ill, mentally incapacitated or otherwise incompetent and the end result would be a destroyed home? Most abandoned homes are waiting to be sold, and what is the real shame is that they are not rented out to those who left because they couldn't afford the mortgage payments. And other homes are in areas that no one wants to live, because there are no jobs (Detroit, Appalachia).

So I posted a link to Habitat for Humanity on my facebook page and suggested it is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness in a facebook campaign.

Finally, although in the US Christmas is associated with oodles of presents, in many countries presents are given out on Saint Nicholas day (Dec 6).

I was surprised to learn St. Nicholas was the patron saint of sailers when I visited Split 

This explains why he is the patron of protecting children.

And David Warren has an essay on the good fella...who was no slouch, and was imprisoned in the bad old days before Constantine, and afterward, he was imprisoned again after decking Arius for insulting Jesus. Heh.

Saturday, December 06, 2014

Medical stuff

I'm a bit busy so not posting, but I have a few reports on my medical blog.

Shakespeare and the Great Pox

hot tub good, mercury whoops.

HIV evolving?


Arsenic poisoning by accident

 found in ancient mummies in Chile

peacekeeper sick

luckily only malaria

Counterfeit drugs


those deaths at the "sterlization camps" in India may have been because the antibiotics given to the ladies weren't.

silly stories

anti tetanus shot rumors.

these have seen been proven false.

Factoid of the day

Read them the riot act? Where does that phrase come from?

While looking up poems, I ran across this at Archive.org

The Riot Act was passed by the British Parliament in 1714, the first year of the reign of George I, and came into effect in August 1715. This was a time of widespread social disturbance, as the preamble describes; the Act sought to put an end to this. A group of twelve or more people, “being unlawfully, riotously and tumultuously assembled”, would be read a proclamation; they must disperse within an hour, on pain of death. The same fate would befall anyone preventing the reading of the proclamation, or damaging buildings while on a riot. If the law enforcement officers happened to injure or kill a rioter, they were immune from prosecution. The reading of the proclamation, the wording of which is detailed in the Act, was the necessary first step before action could be taken against the rioters. This gave us the phrase “to read the riot act”, to give a stern warning or rebuke. The Act was repealed in Britain in 1973, but had long since fallen into disuse there. A version is still in force in Canada. 

Family news

Joy and Ruby got back at 3 am (traveling late at night is common, both to avoid traffic and avoid the heat).
Lolo woke up about 2 30 am and took a shower.

I have been up since then. I fed the dogs, let in Ruby's teacher and the maid who just arrived from shopping, fed the dogs, cats and fish with leftovers and now I'm back in bed.

Friday, December 05, 2014

Family news

Joy and Ruby went to Manila this morning with the driver and helper to deliver rice. There is also a Christmas party for one of her Business group, but she might not attend because she has a mild case of the flu. She also will visit her sister.

Lolo is okay and eating better now, with no fever.

Chano is designing so stayed home. He hates meetings.

Me? No problem. I'm retired.

Thursday, December 04, 2014

Food factoid of the day

Buckwheat article on wikipedia here says it is related to sorrels, not wheat.

Most people only know about it from buckwheat pancakes or in some cuisines, eating Blinz or groats.

And is used in Asia e.g. soba noodles.
it was often used to counteract the vitamin B deficiencies from eating only white rice.

and since buckwheat is gluten free, it can be used by those on a gluten free diet.

but if you eat too many, you could develop a light sensitivity rash.

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.

Wednesday, December 03, 2014

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.

Tuesday, December 02, 2014

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. 34:14Heb. 12:291 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.

Monday, December 01, 2014

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." ThatdĆ©sespoir des lendemains de fĆŖte 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