Stuff from around the net

Top Ten Viking movies.

Number one? The 13th Warrior, based on a mixture of Beowulf and the (true) report on Rus Vikings by an Arab visitor.

Two more movies in the list are also Beowulf...an ANGLO SAXON poem based on a Danish story, 300 years before the big Viking push, but hey, some of those mentioned in Beowulf are mentioned as killing their rivals and raiding peaceful people so I guess it's okay.

and a link to an interview with Bernard Cornwell on the new miniseries The Last Kingdom.

more about Vikings HERE.

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Big Brother alert:
want to change behavior? Nudge people.

Full Report at the White House site HERE.

Your tax dollars at work.

It works for young folks, But I am glad to say that it didn't work for docs.

Not mentioned: who is behind the daily two minute hate posts  on Facebook.

Well, it works for me: I avoid facebook...

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The "heretic Pharoah" is revered by many as an idealist, but previous studies showed the common people working there suffered from malnutrition, and now we see skeletons from those executed were also suffering from overwork and malnutrition.

Gretchen Dabbs of Southern Illinois University thinks that the wounds may have been inflicted with a spear from behind as part of a physical punishment of 100 lashes and five wounds that is described in an ancient wall carving and other texts. The skeletons also show signs of joint disease and malnutrition. 

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Dark age history is being rewritten:. SP reviews a new book on Theodoric.

Prof. Arnold (Tulsa) argues that Theoderic largely revived many old imperial institutions and practices to the extent that his kingdom was almost a “restored” version of the Roman Empire in the west. While doing this, Arnold also reminds us that Late Antiquity still suffers from the negative “Dark Ages” created by Renaissance and Enlightenment scholars obsessed with the perceived glories of the Classical era. He points out how the image of the king acquired Roman trappings, royal legislation protecting Roman institutions and even strengthening them, and particularly the regularization of relations between the Gothic and Roman elements of the kingdom.

or you can just listen to this older one, a Librivox recording on Youtube...

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bbc laments that the US hasn't eliminated the Black Plague.

Well, can you imagine the outcry by the city born Greens if you suggested we kill a couple hundred thousand cute Prairie dogs to save the lives of a couple of Navajos? (/s)

If you work on the Navajo reservation, you expect to see a couple cases a year. And they do trace the vectors. Tony Hillerman's book The First Eagle uses this as the basis for his book

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The latest press manipulation at the "Family" synod in Rome is this post of the day about a kid who took half the host and gave it to his father, who was not allowed to receive because he had been divorced.

the news reports that all the bishops were in tears over the story. Really? So where are the tears about the boys whose lives were destroyed by Danneels and his ilk....

If you believe this was "spontaneous", I have a bridge in Brookyn to sell you.

And don't blame the believers:  Blame St. Paul. It's biblical.


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Backstory on the "spontaneous" attacks by Israelis who dare to fight back against those who attack them

Iran's proxy Hamas complains that the Palestinian run government on the west Bank has arrested some of their troublemaking terrorists.

in other words, the new Palestinian uprising is not about the Palestinians, but a way to demonize the Israelis in the press, discourage the Saudis from pushing peace with Israel, encourage Iran to restrart sending them money and weapons and also to help overthrow the Palestinian authority and let Hamas take over.

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another day, another typhoon...

PAGASA: MANILA BULLETIN

it will hit north of us...we are signal 2:

the real danger is that we are downstream from the mountains where it will hit, so expect flooding over the next few days. And it's harvest time.

No rain yet, but cloudy outside.

No, it's not global warming: it's normal. But if you want to send a couple million dollars of aid, our crooked politicians will thank you: next year is election year, and they need money to buy votes.

Family news

Joy has been in Manila with Ruby for the last few days. Presumably she will be home today, since a typhoon is due to hit.

I don't know if the typhoon will affect the harvest, since Kuya took over all of the farm and won't let me or Joy know what is going on.

Dita was staying late, but last night she slept here for my safety.

Yes, because a 90 pound 4 foot 11, 70 year old cook makes a great body guard.

Actually, since she is related to half the taxi drivers in town, no one would dare hurt her, for fear of payback. Me, no problem.

Sigh. I gotta get a gun....

Combat Barbie call your office and other military stuff

The good news: The military is hiring more women, meaning women will get the educational advantages that the military offers to lower middle class Americans.

The bad news: The "Draft women" meme is about equality, not about military preparedness.

Women will eventually have to register for the draft if "true and pure equality" is to be realized in the U.S. military, Army Secretary John McHugh said Monday.
"If your objective is true and pure equality then you have to look at all aspects" of the roles of women in the military, McHugh said, and registration for the draft "will be one of those things. That will have to be considered."

silly me. The objective of the military is not "true and pure equality": the real objective of the military was about war.

But you wouldn't know it from articles like this analysis, that assumes women are male carbon copies, and leaves out minor problems like would you think it's equality for women to be killed or injured in combat? And it ignores biologically related items like inter unit romance, menstruation, pregnancy, rape (especially if captured), and of course upper body strength.

There is a real problem in the US, in that the elites no longer join the military, and tend to look down on the type of Americans who do. It is also a problem because it means that few veterans are in Congress, and many "elites" don't even know anyone who has served, meaning they miss the little details that are obvious to those serving but left out in "expert" analysis.

It says a lot that Combat Barbie was British:

The dirty little secret is that war is about killing bad guys, and in modern warfare, to do it more efficiently and quietly so that the MSM doesn't call you a murderer.

as Jim Webb discovered

“In fact, seeing the reaction to my father’s story in recent days has highlighted for me the almost stunning level of ignorance that the general public has about war. CNN introduced him as a ‘war hero,’ and yet people were surprised and even uncomfortable when they were given a glimpse of what that might have entailed. . . . This country has been at war for almost 15 years, and as I think about the ridicule leveled at my father in the past 24 hours, I can’t help but imagine what these same people must think about the service of my own generation. In their eyes, did we simply spend some kind of twisted ‘semester abroad’ in a place with plenty of sand, but no ocean? Or conversely, do they ignorantly dismiss our experiences, as they have my father, as those of cold callous killers?”

StrategyPage notes that women are in the military, but that there are practical reasons they are not in certain combat roles:  (think biology related problems, especially the high injury rate) and they sarcastically note that those in charge of pushing the meme are not combat veterans.

StrategyPage's essay here will fill in the blanks...and read this one. and this one.

But when civilians with little hands on military experience push quotas etc. reality will push back.

StrategyPage: reality:

A lot of the combat operations experienced by women in Iraq involved base security or guard duty. Female troops performed well in that. These were jobs that required alertness, attention to detail, and ability to quickly use your weapons when needed. Carrying a heavy load was not required. In convoy operations women have also done well, especially when it comes to spotting, and dealing with, IEDs (roadside bombs and ambushes). Going into the 21st century, warfare is becoming more automated and less dependent on muscle and testosterone. That gives women an edge, and they exploit it, just as they have done in so many other fields.

But the draft? No that is silly, not just for women but for men:  because modern war requires brains and expertise, not bodies to be sent home in body bags. What are they thinking of? Pickett's charge?

 Going into the 21st century, warfare is becoming more automated and less dependent on muscle and testosterone. 


Another item not being discussed:
Most of the military support services (cooking, cleaning, laundry, nursing), was outsourced to military draftees during the days of the draft because it was cheaper than hiring civilians  and many women in the military joined these support units.

Nowadays, you can just farm it out to civilians, by subcontracting Americans, hiring locals or just import Filipinos etc to do the cooking and driving.

In the "good old days" people who did this were called "Camp followers", and their use is often not noticed in official histories except as footnotes about the "supplies" being captured and destroyed by the enemies.

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news you can use: Gizmodo: How many laser pointers would you need to kill a human? No, it's not a very efficient home made weapon: you would need 20,000 laser pointers to do it.


laser weapons are being worked  on to kill satellites etc. but the way to go is actually to use an EMP type weapon.

and yes, you can make one of them at home. link2




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some compare the civil war in Syria to the Civil war in Spain in the 1930's. Back then, the elites cheered on the communists, but usually ignored or covered up the atrocities done by their pet commies: Orwell pointed some of these out, but even he hated Franco, whose atrocities were well known.

So what would have happened if the communist side won?

EdDriscoll points out that such a victory would have had larger implications in the following decades, linking to two articles that discuss the "what if's"....

For example the Hitler Stalin pact would have allowed Hitler to get Gibraltar...which would have cut off supplies to the British army in North Africa defending the Suez canal....

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Cyberwar for Dummies

...

some of this sounds like the DieHard film where all the infrastructure was shut down by hackers.

Lots more at StrategyPage. Their most recent stuff:

LINK
Russian hackers know where you live

LINK
Americans got lots of stuff on ISIS bad guys because they don't use secure computers..

and China etc. doesn't worry because there is little push back for stealing.

my federal records were among those stolen, and so I now have "insurance" just in case they steal my money.

And of course, this doesn't include the problem that anyone with half a brain can go to our family page on Facebook and find that Lolo graduated from Frostbite Falls High school.

You want something scary? Look at your "history" of searching or viewing and remember someone can find them all.



PBS is due to have a special on it. Since we don't get PBS, and it takes a couple of years for NOVA to get on youtube, it means I will have to illegally download it or try to watch it on a streaming site (which here go on and off thanks to lousy connectivity).

Except there are rumors about that Pacific trade agreement which could stop illegal downloads (which merely means we have to buy new movies, straight from the Chinese pirates, at the Palenke for fifty pesos)

Podcast of the week

Improable Research has a podcast 


this week:

Podcast #33: Make sure colonoscopy patients will not explode

cites this article:

 / “Colonic Gas Explosion During Therapeutic Colonoscopy with Electrocautery,” Spiros D Ladas, George Karamanolis, Emmanuel Ben-Soussan,World Journal of Gastroenterology, vol. 13, no. 40, October 2007, pp. 5295–8. / 

Here comes... the paramedic

From the CSMonitor:

Paramedic goes to help family hurt in an accident on the way to her wedding.

Marcy Martin Photography via AP

CLARKSVILLE, TENN. — When Sarah Ray's father and grandparents were in a car crash on the way to her wedding reception, the off-duty Tennessee paramedic rushed to the scene in her wedding dress."My dad called my husband and said there had been an accident," Sarah Ray said. "All he told him was there had been a wreck, and the car was totaled. We didn't know anything about injuries."...... "I just hate that everyone uses the word 'hero,' " she told the Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle. "It's not heroic. That's just what we do every day, and it was family. I believe any other first responder would do the same thing. It just happened that I was in a wedding dress."

More HERE. 

It's a weird world after all

The Other McCain keeps an eye on the absurdities among the neurotics in feminism, and reveals to us that the term mental illness, chemical imbalance, or neurosis are out: The new term is "neruodivergent".

and, being a common sense male chauvanist pig, he comments:

 Here, let’s consult Wikipedia:

There is a neurodiversity movement, which is an international civil rights movement that has the autism rights movement as its most influential submovement. This movement frames autism, bipolarity and other neurotypes as a natural human variation rather than a pathology or disorder, and its advocates reject the idea that neurological differences need to be (or can be) cured, as they believe them to be authentic forms of human diversity, self-expression, and being.

In order words, these people aren’t crazy, they’re just “diverse,” and it isoppressive — a violation of their civil rights — to expect these kooks to behave like normal people. They are certified Special Snowflakes™ and how dare you judge them? Society must accept these “authentic forms of human diversity,” and if their “self-expression” takes the form of becoming tattoo-covered bisexual prostitutes posting nude selfies all over their Tumblr blog, only a hateful and intolerant bigot would criticize this “neurodivergent” behavior.

reminds me of Orwell's observation

...here is the horrible —- the really disquieting —- prevalence of cranks wherever Socialists are gathered together. One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.

Come to think of it, StPaul said something to the effect to watch out for these types.

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update: Read the complete essay by Orwell, who brings up how socialism meant different things to different folks:

To the ordinary working man, the sort you would meet in any pub on Saturday night, Socialism does not mean much more thanbetter wages and shorter hours and nobody bossing you about.

he then notes the people looking for a cause who join these movements:

-the kind of people I have been discussing; the foaming denouncers of the bourgeoisie, and the more-water-in-your-beer reformers of whom Shaw is the prototype, and the astute young social-literary climbers who are Communists now, as they will be Fascists five years hence, because it is all the go, and all that dreary tribe of high-minded women and sandal-wearers and bearded fruit-juice drinkers who come flocking towards the smell of ‘progress’ like bluebottles to a dead cat. The ordinary decent person, who is in sympathy with the essential aims of Socialism, is given the impression that there is no room for his kind in any Socialist party that means business. 

and here is the part that the Democratic party needs to note:

. The ordinary man may not flinch from a dictatorship of the proletariat, if you offer it tactfully; offer him a dictatorship of the prigs, and he gets ready to fight...

hmmm...maybe we should bring back the monasteries. Flannery O'Connor once quipped that the problem with the (Fundamentalist) Christians in the US was that they left their true believers in charge, whereas the Catholics isolated them in monasteries and convents, so they could leave ordinary people alone.

The joke about Catholics is that our rules are strict, but we don't always follow them, figuring God's mercy (or Mama Mary) would get us into heaven after awhile in purgatory.

Bifur loses his ax

TORN reviews the Hobbit 3 extended edition.

Bifur finally loses the axe in his head when he head butts a small Troll, and they get stuck together. Several others come to try and pry them apart, and it’s not until Bombur throws in his weight that not only do we get Bifur and the Troll separated, but the Axe Head has come out. Bombur tries to return it, but we finally hear Bifur speak, about how he wants nothing to do with the Axe Head. Brilliant little way to resolve that issue.

and it includes Thorin's funeral...

A few good scenes, but most of the "extended" part is gore and battle scenes.

Guess I'll save my money.

Mark Your Calenders

October 14th is Winnie the Pooh's 89th birthday.

Brian Sibley reports on Winnie's influence in his life, and links to his podcast (which is on Soundcloud)

The "WAGD" stuff is SOOOO last year

This year's meme is:

https://tysonadams.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/science-the-shit-out-of-this.jpg

No the movie hasn't opened here yet, but I read the book. When faced with certain death, you find a solution. It's a theme as old as the Odyssey...


It's like an article today lamenting that if "we" don't do X to stop global warming, all these cities will be under water.

Well, there are other solutions then to de-industrialize the world into the 17th century and give lots of money to corrupt third world politicians poor countries to stop the damage.

One is reminded of the Ehrlich vs Julian Simon wager.

In 1968, Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, which argued that mankind was facing a demographic catastrophe with the rate of population growth quickly outstripping growth in the supply of food and resources. Simon was highly skeptical of such claims, so proposed a wager, telling Ehrlich to select any raw material he wanted and select "any date more than a year away," and Simon would bet that the commodity's price on that date would be lower than what it was at the time of the wager.....
Between 1980 and 1990, the world's population grew by more than 800 million, the largest increase in one decade in all of history. But by September 1990, the price of each of Ehrlich's selected metals had fallen. Chromium, which had sold for $3.90 a pound in 1980, was down to $3.70 in 1990. Tin, which was $8.72 a pound in 1980, was down to $3.88 a decade later.^[4]As a result, in October 1990, Paul Ehrlich mailed Julian Simon a check for $576.07 to settle the wager in Simon's favor.

and if President Obama wants to move America into the 17th century with his green policies, well China is waiting in the wings to take over.

And yes, I am against pollution (a big problem in China) but as my husband reminded me: You can't eat the scenery.

Once a country is a bit more affluent, and a bit more moral (Pope Francis take note) you enable industry to thrive and NOT pollute.

Or is this too complicated for a country obsessed by the Kardashians and their two minute hates on facebook?

Good news about the NWO

USAToday editorial by General Petreus and Micheal O'Hanlan of the Brookings Institute remind us that the US Military only was a moat to defend the castle, but allowed the western democracies to flourish and pretty well eliminate poverty in the world.

A few basic realities about the modern world need to be remembered. The post-World War II international order set up by U.S. and other key world leaders 70 years agoproduced more economic growth in more places on earth, benefiting a far higher percentage of the human race, than had any previous global order in any period in history for which we have data.

As policymakers and leaders establish priorities for 2016 and beyond, attention to economic fundamentals should play as big a role in their thinking as crisis management and domestic political maneuvering.

and they conclude with this:

It is all too easy to conflate the temporarily important with the truly significant issues in today's political discourse. It is also easy to view the latest crisis as the be all and end all. But attention to our economy and its core foundations will probably be the most important legacy of political leaders today — as has often been the case in the past. We would do well not to lose sight of this historical truth.

Mike Duncan's podcast on the French Revolution emphasizes the economic problems behind the collapse of the monarchy there, for example.

The Russian economy, which was actually starting to thrive at the time, collapsed due to WWI, allowing a communist take over. And of course the depressions of 1923 and 1930's were behind the Nazi/fascism takeovers.

And as China has embraced the NWO and this has led to it's economic strength, and it's economic imperialism might be a good sign for Africans, whose economies have been stifled by socialism and green do gooders who kept out the green revolution so locals could remain "traditional" i.e. in poverty.

Someone tell Pope Francis. Heck, someone tell Glenn Beck.

Not everything in the NWO is evil.

from the Atlantic:

If the Pope really wanted to help people out of poverty, he'd not only strengthen the family but condemn corruption and drugs, both of which are fueling a lot of the violence in the world.

What, you didn't know that Drugs were funding the Taliban, and smuggling oil and antiquities is funding ISIS and others behind the war in the middle East? Or that corruption is the major problem in China that threatens the stability of that country?

The real question here is if China will take over the Philippines, or just bribe politicians to let them take over our resources.

and of course Africa is being pushed into the modern world by China.

and then there is this:



yeah, along with Africans, even the Chinese are sending missionaries to Europe to convert the heathens.

Cat Item of the day

How to weaponize your cat to steal your neighbor's WIFI passwords.

During a three hour trip through the neighbourhood, his pet cat Coco mapped 23 unique wi.fi networks, including four routers that used an old, easily-broken encryption and four routers that were left unprotected entirely 

more HERE. at Wired

Coco, modeling the WarKitteh collar.  Gene Bransfield

it's a 2014 story, linked from Instapundit.

Oil ignorance

one blog I read (which shall be nameless) linked to a left wing magazine that is quite famours (which I refuse to link to) that printed an article that complained the US has not intervened against Boko Harum because they are black and attack people in a country without oil.

This follows the meme: Racist Americans don't care about black people  and evil Republican don't care about any country without oil (uh, silly me. I thought President Obama was a Democrat but then what do I know?)

Except....

Nigeria is one of the major oil producers in the world.

WIKIPEDIA lists them as number 13, just below Kuwait. And if they could control the corruption, they will increase production.

(and guess who is the world's number one oil producer? The USA...followed by Saudi and then Russia.)

And although the headlines shout about each terror kidnapping, actually there is a lot going on there, especially since the new, less corrupt Muslim president took over.

StrategyPage articles on Nigeria.

their latest report is slightly optimistic.


The reason I quote StrategyPage is because it is usually correct in it's assessment of what is actually going on in places that you rarely read about except in headlines.

you know that part I quoted above about the US now being the world's largest oil producer?

StrategyPage reports that it has caused problems for Iran. They will get a lot of money with sanctions being lifted, but it might not counter the loss of oil revenue since US exports mean the price of oil is low.

Family rant. Just ignore.

 This Reuters report compares Catholics who hold to tradition as the same as hard line communists, and Pope Frances as Gorbechev, who is trying to open a moribund institution to new ideas.


The essay mentions the problem of polygamy in Africa, but the way we approached it in Africa was the same as the pre Vatican II catholics approached divorce: You keep going to church and keeping the commandments and rely on the mercy of God.

Or to put it more cynically, as Madam De Montespan once quipped when someone said how could she fast during Lent when being the King's mistress: Well, just because I break one commandment doesn't mean I will break all of them.

Same here.

Just ignore the innocent victims of divorce, because parents are supposed to be free to do their thing. A lot of marriages break up because of financial problems, but more do so from immaturity where drink/drugs/adultery is considered okay by one spouse, while the other spouse tries to keep the kids safe.

Now, if I could only convince that "who am I to judge" doesn't mean it isn't a sin to give Lolo's hard earned money to a conniving mariposo instead of his wife of 20 years...but never mind.

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update: Archbishop Chaput reminds the Vatican (and MSM):

n mastering nature for the purpose of human development, we human beings have wounded our oceans and the air we breathe. We’ve poisoned the human body with contraceptives. And we’ve scrambled the understanding of our own sexuality. In the name of individual fulfillment, we’ve busied ourselves with creating a new Babel of tyranny that feeds our desires but starves the soul.
Paragraphs 7-10 of the Instrumentum did a good job of describing the condition of today’s families. But overall, the text engenders a subtle hopelessness. This leads to a spirit of compromise with certain sinful patterns of life and the reduction of Christian truths about marriage and sexuality to a set of beautiful ideals — which then leads to surrendering the redemptive mission of the Church.
The work of this synod needs to show much more confidence in the Word of God, the transformative power of grace, and the ability of people to actually live what the Church believes. And it should honor the heroism of abandoned spouses who remain faithful to their vows and the teaching of the Church. …
We need to call people to perseverance in grace and to trust in the greatness God intended for them — not confirm them in their errors. Marriage embodies Christian hope – hope made flesh and sealed permanently in the love of a man and a woman.
This synod needs to preach that truth more clearly with the radical passion of the Cross and Resurrection.

bloggers vs Dan Rather

The lawyer who saw the font problems with the Dan Rather pushed memo is interviewed here.

ah but the movie pretends otherwise. Fiction.

The point here is that the internet caught the minor problem with the fonts (a technical point) which quickly was discussed and other people with expertise pointed out more technical problems with the so called memo.

One interesting thing here is that a group of people with different areas of arcane expertise could discuss and detect problems with the memo.

Back then I posted on my blog that a similar dicussion on line was needed for medical papers.

Often we doctors had something called "journal rounds" where we discussed journal articles, often picking out problems in the studies and noting other articles that agreed or disagreed with what was printed.

Yet to get these things pointed out, it meant writing a letter to the editor and waiting six weeks to see IF it would be published.

Yes, nowadays on line letters to the editor are faster, but unlike blogs you don't discuss the article because you don't go back and get a ping that someone answered you or agreed with you.

and to make things worse, often these journals are behind a firewall: no subscription, no reading the details. So you only have a news report and/or maybe access to a summary on the journal webpage.

So why isn't the internet being utilized for peer review of medical articles? Because we dumb GP's don't know anything...just like why should a dumb lawyer know more about fonts than Dan Rather?

Maybe if we docs could discuss things on line this way, more problems would be found faster, and more side effects of drugs be noted.

Mark your calenders

October 15 is Global Handwashing day

more HERE

and then there is this:

Hygiene refers to acts that can lead to good health and cleanliness, such as frequent handwashing, face washing, and bathing with soap and water. Keeping hands clean is one of the most important ways to prevent the spread of infection and illness. However, in many areas of the world, practicing personal hygiene is difficult due to lack of resources such as clean water and soap. Many diseases (including diarrheal diseases) can be spread when hands, face, and body are not washed appropriately at the key times.

one of the outreach works we did in Africa 40 years ago was to provide (shallow) wells for villages, so that during the dry season moms did not have to walk a mile to get water.

of course, to have safe drinking water, you need a filter or a deep well.

But that is another story...

Conspiracies below the fold

Instapundit links to the Dengue epidemic in India.

It's not just India: We have an epidemic here, and now influenza is going around.

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The Bishop's meeting is often discussed in political terms in the MSM. Yet the real discussion goes beyond the memes, nor is it just one in the Catholic church.

GetReligion discusses how the UKTimes discusses the similar problems of the Anglican churches, and prints this letter to the editor which tries to correct them.

Sir:

Your leader ("Church at Bay," ...) offers a flawed analysis of the crisis besetting Anglicanism. It is unhelpfully patronising to African Anglicans. Your assumption of post-colonial resentment and prejudice fails to account for why so many American, Australian and English Anglicans share their views.

A better analysis would be to take into account the tension between a faith that recognises the integrity of the Bible in a way that saves it from the colonialism of passing cultures (nothing to do with literalism), and a secularized faith which prefers so-called "progressive" values antithetic to the faith. The present ominious decline of progressive CofE Anglicans in relation to the flourishing of orthodox traditional Anglicans demonstrates the difference.

The archbishop is to be wished well in his attempts to reconcile the irreconcilable. But for as long as the Church of England chooses to prefer the Marxist meme of "egalitarianism" to the countercultural values of the gospels, it risks both the collapse it presently faces and the bringing into being in England of an alternative, renewed Anglican orthodoxy, which stands with the majority of Anglicans across the globe.

written by the Queen's chaplain.

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semi related item:

Is the St Gallen's Mafia trying to take over the synod?

 the “St. Gallen mafia”, the name Cardinal Danneels recently used to describe his club of senior clerics who plotted to undermine the theological work of the JPII-BXVI papacies.

a longer article on this group at Lifesitenews. (lots of dirt there)  but the story comes from Danneels biography.

one need not be a "right wing ultraconservative" to be upset that Danneels is behind this. SNAP sees his pedophile coverups as a bit problematic too...

Conspiracy theories about evil cliques in the Catholic church? Dan Brown call your office.

On the other hand, since the opening of the KGB files, most of the "communist conspiracy theories) of the 1950's, which were dismissed as nonsense by the powers that be, have turned out to be true. The lastest? The communists did try to influence us in Hollywood.

heh.

one wonders if Obama's presidency will in the future be found similarly to be a left wing conspiracy to dismantle the Pax Americana (which was, of course, devised by the Anglo American conpiracies that one can find discussed all over the web).

 Belmont Club  discusses Nial Fergueson's article  in the WSJ:

The second discovery Ferguson made was that Obama was not out to merely repudiate Bush, but to deliberately undo Ronald Reagan, indeed dismantle the entire postwar edifice from Harry Truman onward.

He had a vision of restoring the world to its paradisal state before Western meddling:“to create the international coalition and atmosphere in which people across sectarian lines are willing to compromise and are willing to work together in order to provide the next generation a fighting chance for a better future.”  Some would regard this approach as risky.  Hence it buried beneath layers of misdirection.

Ferguson describes the moment when the scales dropped from his eyes:

I now see, however, that there is more to it than that.
The president always intended to repudiate more than George W. Bush’s foreign policy. In a 2012 presidential debate with Mitt Romney, Mr. Obama made clear that he was turning away from Ronald Reagan, too. “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back,” he jeered, “because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”

The third point Ferguson makes is that while Obama succeeded in carrying out his real doctrine under the breezy banner of we “don’t do stupid sh–” the results were the opposite of his expectations.  Instead of Paradise Lost it was a case of Hades Found.

So if HG Wells and Carroll Quigley are the authors of the NWO, then Chomsky's talking points are the basis of Obama's policies.

The Deep State Conspiracy Theory.

Don't ask me: I'm a doctor, not a politician.

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Social Science: NOT based on scientific data.

again the link via Instapundit.

Yeah, and one of these days the MSM will discover much of Freud's reports were fiction, and that Kinsey based his theories on reports from pedophiles.

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Lady Panc Ashash call your office

I posted awhile back about putting personalities into robots, as was seen in the film Chappie  and in the classic short story The Dead Lady of Clown Town

A therapist named Elaine becomes involved with a group of fugitive underpeople, living in a maze of drab service corridors jokingly dubbed "Clown Town", who are being helped by Lady Panc Ashash (a personality recording of a deceased Lady of the Instrumentality, hence the eponymous "Dead Lady") and a telepath called The Hunter. Panc Ashash had predicted Elaine's coming, and how she would help the dog-girl D'joan create history.

Unlike Chappie, where it is assumed the dead characters can be uploaded and live (as does Chappie) by putthing them into a robot brain, Lady Panc Ashash is dead: but a robot has her memories.

But the modern trend is to freeze the brain, so that "you" could be ressurrected in a new, biological brain, not a robot.

Transhumanists who posit such things might lead to immortality might better examine this NYT essay by Doctor Miller who discusses if by freezing your brain, will future scientists be able to rebuild "you" into a new (biological) brain:

Neuroscience is progressing rapidly, but the distance to go in understanding brain function is enormous. It will almost certainly be a very long time before we can hope to preserve a brain in sufficient detail and for sufficient time that some civilization much farther in the future, perhaps thousands or even millions of years from now, might have the technological capacity to “upload” and recreate that individual’s mind.

of course, the real question is why some future scientist would want to do this. I mean, reviving the memories/thoughts/personalities of past celebrities like ______ (fill in blanks with your favorite rich/powerful or even saintly person's name) might sound nice, but would you actually want them running around the world today?



via WSmith who points out this is a religious discussion.

 Yes it is...and variations of it have been pondered in numerous sci fi stories. HERE is a discussion if using the transporter system in Star Trek kills you.

Factoid of the day: Caterpillars take two

I got interrupted when I posted below about the huge ugly caterpillar.

The photo of the moth reminded me of the huge Atlas Moth that we have here in the Philippines.

Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, Chicago, Illinois.

Their caterpillars aren't quite as ugly as the one cited below, but they are pretty ugly...

http://www.cambstimes.co.uk/giant_atlas_moth_caterpillars_by_matthew_usher_1_930273

This Singapore website has more information...They are related to silk worm moths.

While the Silkworm Moth (Bombyx mori, which belongs to a different but related family) which makes its cocoon out of one unbroken silk strand, the Atlas Moth caterpillar makes it out of broken strands of silk. Nevertheless, Atlas Moth cocoons are used to make a durable silk called Fagara Silk, in northern India. In Taiwan, their cocoons are made into pocket purses!

more on Fagara silk HERE

and  HERE. at Univ MS

The silk from Attacus atlas is various shades of brown and tan, depending on the foodplant used for the caterpillars.  The woven fabric is always the natural brown and beige colors; we have not seen any examples where it has been dyed.  Some of the products for atlas and Cricula silk include purses, shoes, jackets, shirts, lampshades, and scarves.  The “attacus silk,” as it is called in Indonesia, is also exported to Japan to make obis.  An obi is a wide and very long belt worn with a kimono. 

Jennifer Seltzer's page at UnivMississippi has a table listing quite a few silk producing insects LINK 

wild silk and regular silk could be cultivated here (and is, in small amounts) but lacking money to build up the industry, it is easier for mountain farmers to grow marijuana alas.

more about the Philippine silk industry HERE.  and here.

Back to the 70's: Encounter groups

PJMedia posts a memo from Ashton Carter at the Defense Dept saying that all personnel will have to meet monthly and "SHARE" experiences and advice on problems.

Memohere

Duh.

I remember the late 1960s/early 1970's when we were required to do this sort of thing in medical school, and later in our family practice residency training.

I am sorry, but I am a private person, and so made up a lot of "revealations" about myself. I also arranged for the nurses to page me out about halfway through the session, so I could leave and claim a patient had a problem, instead of just walking out in protest, which would have resulted in a black mark against me.

Another problem with these groups is that they scapegoat outsiders. I had a nerdy roommate who was in a group in our medical school (More nerdy than me, if you would believe it). Guess who was their scapegoat. Oh it was subtle, but she always came back half in tears...

in other words, it is a way for the aggressive to take control and destroy the ones they dislike: you know, like most of the men, ("male privilege) and women who are smarter or better looking than they are (been there, done that).

and since this is the military, it means that if you try to fight back against the bullying, you will be the one punished for being uncooperative.

Mr Carson gets wed

Yes, Downton Abbey is back for it's last season 6.

and the big romance is... the wedding of the Butler?

Oh well...

presumably it will end with the depression, the place going bankrupt,  and the father dropping dead of a heart attack.

Factoids: Caterpillars

Giant Caterpillar gets a story in the UK press, but they are actually common in the southern USA.

Youtube via UKMirror

wikipedia commons

(via DaveBarry)

WTF headline of the day

Gateway Pundit links to a report that Israel will provide targets of bad buys for the Russians to bomb.

Way to go, Barry...

A thought to ponder

Factoid of the day

Elephants rarely get cancer. Scientists are trying to find out why.

The researchers found that elephants have a more aggressive internal mechanism for killing damaged cells that are at risk for becoming cancerous.

and the naked mole rat NEVER gets cancer. 

Misnomer: The naked mole rat is not naked, is not a mole, and is not a rat (Source: Roman Klementschitz/Wikimedia Commons)

They are vegetarians (mostly), acid doesn't give them pain, and they live 30 years.

but unlike the elephant, who replace bad cells quickly, the naked mole rats don't grow a lot of new cells

 They don't get cancer. Cancers account for about 10 to 15 per cent of all human deaths, and about 90 per cent of all mice and rat deaths — providing they can avoid cats and the like. Naked mole rats — zero cancer deaths. They simply don't get any cancers.
We've found several different pathways or adaptations they use to avoid cancer. One is called early contact inhibition. The 'contact' refers to cells touching or contacting each other. Normally the cells in your body are always dying and always regenerating. And normally they regenerate and grow to a certain stage. Once they have replaced what was there originally they stop growing. Cancer cells do not stop growing in most animals. But they do in the naked mole rat.

mp3 discussion

and for you Disney channel fans: one even is a co star in the KimPossible series, the pet of Ron, whose father had severe allergies and required a hairless pet.

Rufus: yes, even naked mole rats can be made cute in Disney's world.

Manipulating the press

StategyPage article on how the Arab propaganda machine has a double standard against Israel, and how the left is picking up the meme.

Far more Palestinians are killed by other Palestinians (and other Arabs) than by Israelis. For example nearly 3,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Syrian Civil War since 2011. Hundreds were tortured to death and more than that were executed, often in gruesome ways, for being on the wrong side or for “blasphemy”. In Gaza hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in factional fighting or executed by Hamas for various offenses (like disagreeing with Hamas rule.) In the last half century more far more Palestinians have been killed by Arabs than by Israelis.
 The current situation becomes more embarrassing when you look at the reaction of Arabs and their supporters in the West to all this. The Palestinian accusations, and willful ignorance of Palestinians killed by Arabs has been increasingly supported in the West, especially among leftist political groups, who automatically agree with the Palestinians. This justifies accusations that Israel must be doing something wrong. Israel points out that their Arab and Western critics would, and do, respond as Israel does when attacked by nearby terrorists but that fact is ignored. Well, not completely. Many Arabs, especially Arab diplomats who know a lot about Israel and the Palestinians privately agree with the Israelis. But to openly point out the reality of the situation in the Moslem world will get you death threats, or worse.
 In the West it’s safer to point out the obvious although in leftist political circles the pro-Palestinian supporters can be loud and even a little violent at times. In Europe this has led to more tolerance of anti-Semitic violence and more European Jews moving to Israel (and elsewhere).

again, read the whole thing, which includes explanation why the Iranian funded Hezbollah from Lebanon doesn't want to fight in Syria and why the Golan Heights might be a new area for fighting (oil).

This page, and other strategic/war related sites are pointing out the new weapons stuff that goes over my head, but will have an influence on the war. Such as the Russian fighters scared away the Turks and the Israeli planes...

"This is reality, Greg"

Elliot: He's a man from outer space and we're taking him to his spaceship.
Greg: Well, can't he just beam up?
Elliot: This is *reality*, Greg.
ET

I have said in the past that when I read Chomsky, I was impressed....but then realized his worldview was pretty and exciting but did not correspond to reality as I had observed it. A similar distortion of course can be found in conspiracy sites, of course, but remember: Alex Jones doesn't run the White House, but the left wing ideologues do.

By obeying the meme and talking points without comparing it to reality, eventually reality bites back.

So although I support the Russians defending the innocent from their ISIS murderers, there is fall out from this, and a lot of it can be laid at the coterie around the President Obama, who are too busy following the talking points and theories without bothering to see reality. Of course, as I have noted before, it is sort of a choice between Stalin and Hitler, and in this case Stalin represents Iran, who is evil but a little less so: They might fund terrorists locally but won't fly airplanes into your office.

Ah but there is fallout.

Belmont Club notes that this could be seen as a blood feud between macho man Putin and metrosexual wimp Obama, who has gone out of his way to ignore anyone outside of his circle and is reaping the consequences. I mean, does anyone think this would be happening if Romney (or even Hillary with her husband advising her) was President?

But formerspook notes this has implications in the "Great Game" that go beyone an incompetent president's popularity in the polls.

LINK2

"Putin is making his move in Syria now, says Tony Badran, research fellow at Foundation for Defense of Democracies, “because he understands not only that Obama would never intervene militarily in Syria, but also because the [deal with Iran] means that the White House wouldn’t challenge Iranian, and by extension Russian, holdings in the region. Moreover, Putin saw that Obama continued to disregard the concerns of his traditional allies, both on the Iranian nuclear program and Syria, when they sought a more active policy to bring down Assad.     

StrategyPage's take HERE.

October 7, 2015: The Russian intervention in Syria has caused Iraq to openly accuse the United States of being ineffective and unwilling to do what it takes to defeat ISIL (al Qaeda in Iraq and the Levant). Iraqi leaders pointed out that over a year ago the U.S. and its Arab allies promised sufficient air support and other military assistance to defeat ISIL. That has not worked. Iraq believes the United States lacks the will to get the job done while Iran and Russia do have what it takes. Iraq also announced that it had established an intelligence sharing arrangement with Iran, Syria and Russia and invited the United States to join. Finally Iraq was considering asking Russia to extend its bombing campaign to attacks on ISIL in western Iraq and Mosul. This would involve allowing Russia to operate from Iraqi air bases.

read the whole thing....

another note:

What is meant here but not being said is that Iraq disagrees with the American ROE (Rules of Engagement) which puts more emphasis on protecting civilians than in destroying the enemy. ISIL uses lots of human shields to protect its men and facilities from air attack. Russia and Arab air forces will bomb a target even if there are human shields present. 

 So do you kill a few civilians to get a lot of bad guys killed? If you do, the outsiders who follow the meme ("america and it's allies are evil") will point fingers. Look at the 'doctors without frontiers" (Founded by a left wing murderer) hyperventillating about war crimes right now because local troops asked the US to bomb a hospital where the bad guys were being treated for wounds, and lots of bad guys hiding around and possibly inside the hospital.

Remember that if you don't kill the bad guys hiding among civilians, these same bad guys go out and bomb and kill dozens if not hundreds of innocent civilians...the locals figure it is a good strategy to kill them, but for those following the meme and whose families won't be killed, it's better to follow the lawyer's advice and let them get away.

Our Lady of Victory

October 7 was once called the feast of our Lady of Victory but in the PC days after Vatican II it was renamed Our Lady of the Rosary.

Why?

The Battle of Lepanto. More HERE

Military history report with factoids about the battle can be found here.

Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, was there, and it was the last battle using galleys.

At the Battle of Lepanto, the Holy League lost 50 galleys and suffered approximately 13,000 casualties. This was offset by the freeing of a similar number of Christian slaves from the Ottoman ships.

...Coming at what was seen as a crisis point for Christianity, the victory at Lepanto stemmed Ottoman expansion in the Mediterranean and prevented their influence from spreading west.

 but churches and legends and common law are ways that people remember the past, so David Warren points out

For long before the secular historians, the Church, through her faithful, did understand what was at stake: the preservation of Christendom. And long after the historians have decided that remembering the Victory is politically incorrect, the Church will recall it in her Mass. For she understood, and understands, that the issue hinged on an Act of Faith. And that our fate will always hinge on that.

So the victory a century later over the Turks in the Seige of Vienna also is remembered on Sept 12 as the feast of the holy name of Mary. LINK

yes, and a lot of us thought that Sept 11 was chosen randomly by the hijackers...

Podcast of the week: What is past is prologue

New Books webpage has interviews about new books (I listen to the ones on history). List of recent interviews HERE.

This week's book is 1177BC the year the world ended.

the sea peoples on the move, earthquake storm, climate change, or all of the above?

One of history's great mysteries.

and when listening to one of Professor Bulliet's lectures on world history he mentions that during the medieval warm period, there was snow in Baghdad. So possibly Iraq and Persia were partially  depopulated by the time that Genghis Khan came through.

Brian Fagan's book on the Great warming probably discusses this, but I'm still working through on the book Elixir, on Scribd...

A lot of these Bronze age civilizations relied on dams... as do many countries today....drought made the dams low (like what happens here resulting in brownouts) and then nomads fleeing drought in the steppes invade, and destroy the dams/channels...again and again.

Professor TeofiloRuiz lectures  at UCLA are now locked, but I downloaded them before this was done...his history on Medieval Spain point this out, that when the north conquered southern Spain, and many fled, that the depopulated area was filled with northern peasants who didn't know how to run irrigation so it collapsed. So the next time, they encouraged the peasants to stay, with all sorts of guarantees.

What is past is prologue, and as StrategyPage points out such as in their book How To Make War, often history points to what will happen in the future. LINK

ISIL espouses an “end of days” doctrine (every religion has one) in which the faithful must mobilize and convert the entire world to Islam so that ultimate purpose of Islam (world domination) can be achieved. The Shia have their own (less devastating) version with Shia in charge. The Sunni have the edge in numbers, as over 80 percent of Moslems are Sunni. But in the Middle East the Shia have an advantage as this is where most Shia live and the Shia are led by Iran. That’s important because for thousands of years the more enterprising and inventive Iranians have been the regional superpower. The Arabs know that, the Iranians know that and some other former superpowers in the area (like Russia and Turkey) know that as well. Everyone should not forget that.

So ISIS killing Christians is not a big story in the news, says GetReligion, and perhaps Russia and other orthodox news sources are better at telling what is going on than what you are reading. Take this WAPO discussion of Russia bombing Syrian ISIS rebels.

Cold war? Check. Nasty anti gay war loving fundies in Orthodoxy. Check. The WAPO "history" goes all the way back to Catherine the Great, and they seem to think Kiev is in the Crimea:

 As WorldViews discussed earlier, Crimea is where, in the 10th century, one of the first great Slavic princes is said to have shed his pagan beliefs for the Orthodox Christianity of the Byzantine Empire. I

Attention WAPO: Wikipedia is your friend.


What about the traditional Russian protection of other orthodox from the Turks in Serbia? The long history of the massacres by Genghis Khan or the Golden hoarde, or of the Slave trade that preyed on Slavic Christians that lasted for millenia but is rarely discussed except in passing? The implications for Chechnya, where Russia put down fundamentalist uprising with lots of deaths there, and terrorist attacks on Russians in retaliation ( the Belsen school massacre anyone?)

Maybe the Russkis have a reason to oppose aggressive Islam in history, but you won't find it explained to you in the WAPO...

Audiobook of the week

another "end of the world" prediction has come and gone. Nothing new about that: I've been hearing that since I was a kid (and it was a lot more dangerous back then, with Stalin going nuts, or more nutty than usual before someone finally poisoned him).

The "left behind" series is the classic end times book for Christians, but tends to be flat and preachy... I made it through number one, but hey, after being a missionary in Africa I am sceptical that although Africans and Asians and Arabs have and will in the future suffer for their faith, but never mind because affluent American believers will be wisked away to nirvana. Right. Such nonsense is enough to make one an atheist.

But for Catholics, the classic book is Father Elijah, and it is now available on you tube. (or at least part of it). I have it and several other books that are loosely connected with the story, about a family in NWCanada in modern times...




Probably only part of the book is there, and will be removed by the copyright cops, so check it out quickly.

and if you want the book about end times that Pope Francis once mentioned in a talk, try this oldie but goodie:

Lord of the World...

Headline update

I am two weeks behind in the news (believe me, nothing much on TV here: CNN is clueless and anti American, with all these multiracials with a British accent trying to explain the US.)

BBC is better, but hard to follow with the time change.

So I usually get my news on the internet, and after reading headlines I check the blogosphere to find the back story and the blogs pointing out the spin.

So nothing new folks. Just move along.

Family news

Internet is now working!

It seems that the wires weren't connected to the plugs correctly.

Joy is at another meeting.

Tomorrow, Ruby has a school meeting and the driver will get the oil etc. changed while they are in Manila. I'll stay home.

They are widening the drainage ditches around the house (the street in front of the Palenke floods when it rains heavily, because it flows past us to the river. Lolo put in one foot wide ditches when he built the house 30 years ago, but the pipes under the streets get clogged. So they are putting in 18 to 24 inch ditches and pipes, and covering them (to stop mosquito breeding in the low flow times), and replacing the pipes with larger pipes.

The bad news: The plants in front of our wall, mainly cactuses and other plants with thorns, have all gone, since the pipe will now be 6 inches from the wall instead of 18 inches.

That is on the south and west side. So far no work on the east side, and the north side has neighbors and doesn't face the street.

I usually try to give the guys 50 pesos for snacks every day. On the days I was away, the cook gave them free ice water and coffee.

The bad news is that the dirt had broken glass in it, and George the killer Lab cut his foot on it and it got infected. Usually you can buy medicine without prescription, but now the best pharmacy won't give me antibiotics without checking my medical licenses, which I have changed to "retired".

After ten years of no practice, I won't practice medicine again, and so let the licenses go into hibernation.

As for cats: Now that all three dogs sleep in the room, I am keeping cats out...which is okay because they are all strays and hiss at you if you get too close. We have two black cats (and a third black male visitor sometimes), and two semi black kittens, and two yellow kittens that George sniffed out in the local vacant lot.  The kitties are getting to the wandering stage, so usually at that point they leave or get killed by the dogs (sigh).  One of the yellow ones has a half tail, a genetic problem we see in some of our yellow strays.

When the internet was off, I just read a couple of my books (I have a library of about 200 books.

I went back on and the headlines haven't change in two weeks, so I guess the world didn't end.

Family news

Latest typhoon only signal two with rain. We are fine...only a few palm branches torn off. But I haven't gotten a report from the farm

My MOHS surgery (Plastic surgery) is healing well...scar is small and easily covered.

Joy is giving business talks to a Chritian business group.
Ruby is playing two secondary parts at a play being given by her homeschool base....they are doing Hairspray...
No, they didn't censor it a lot because the double meanings went over the heads of most locals.

But she has to go to Manila one day a week for practice.

The internet is still out

Family news. please ignore.

I still have
modem problems...stuff that has caused problems before, and yet himself ignores me when I mention the way to fix it. Twice he has fixed "the network"...but the network isn't connected to the internet. DUH

I am now at a cafe to post.

The good news is that I had MOHS surgery for my facial lesion, and it took 2 excisions to get the whole thing, but it is now removed, an the scar is minimum.

But now I am broke until this month SS check clears (It is deposited in the US, and takes a month to clear).