Trolls

No, not the cute Disney ones, or the bumbling idiots in the Hobbit: The ones who stalk you on line.



TeaAtTrianonBlog's writer is an author of historical fiction, and for years her blog has been trolled and her books have received sarcastic reviews including personal attacks from the same troll.

Now she is being threatened with a lawsuit for simply checking with the college if the professor has a history of violence against women.

this is not, alas, new (see Computerworld article from 2007) but is becoming epidemic.

most of the bloggers reporting this type of bullying/cyberstalking tend to be political, whereas Ms Vidal's books and blogs are not.

Her sin? being sympathetic to Marie Antoinette, who most modern historians point out does not deserve her bad press, and  being sympathetic to the religious beliefs of her characters.

But their main problem with her writings is she doesn't have oodles of college degrees.

Quell Horrors!

Well, living in the Philippines and having a limited budget, I have only read one of her books (on Scribd), which included the Cathars as background to the young heroine's struggles to find love.

It was a routine historical romance, meaning that it was a painless way to learn about history while enjoying a nice uncomplicated story about nice people (even the bad guys, or in this case, the religious fanatics including the Lady of the Manor and her ilk, were nice).

Historical romances and detective stories are dismissed by academians, but for the rest of us peons  who read romances or detective stories, well, we sort of enjoy the story, and if we learn about history too, well that is a good "side effect". Think Tony Hillerman, or Laura Rowland, or Ellis Peters, or SergeanneGolan, or Janet Evanovich (I added this since blue collar NJ seems to be a foreign culture to the elites).

The past is another country, and people think differently, but often there is a "modern" thinking character to bridge the gap, and they give help to understand what goes on in other cultures, and how those people interact.

And afterward, sometimes you actually dig into the history to find out more about that time and place.

So why are the trolls after her?

Because they can.

Sigh.

Nerd joke of the day

Hollywood is sick.

a Phantom thread is about a guy who verbally abuses his girlfriend, and then falls in love with her when she poisons him.

but the bimbo in the grey series is even kinkier:
50 shades got married, and the feministas are in tears.

What began as a leather-bound power struggle between two lovers in a wealthy dominant's sex lair, has now dissolved in a cold Long Island Iced tea, as our two stars trot towards domestic bliss.

which is just as believable as the dream of HarliQuin's about domestic bliss with the joker.

but for you nerds who don't like violence, a freeper put up this joke on how to torture your girlfriend:

Big brother is reading your romantic texting

the most absurd part of all the smoking guns in the various scandals, has no one noticed that you can't commit have a simple affair with a co worker without big brother finding out about it?

Actually, I believe this started with a hit job against General Petreus' by snooping in on his email, but now the snooping has gotten a lot worse.

Reminds me of the "good old days" of the FBI when JEdgarHoover had bugs in the hotel rooms of Martin Luther King...

what has changed now is that "big brother" will publicize your secrets, shaming you, your paramour, your spouses and kids, on the front page of the WaPost and NYTimes, whereas in the past you just risked a story in the back pages of the National Enquirer.

the justification is supposed to be "terrorism", but when they snoop in on love affairs, while ignoring warnings from officials in Russia (about the Boston marathon bombers) and the Philippines (about AlQaeda's plan to fly airplanes into buildings), well, it does make you wonder about their priorities.

Pain

A reminder to those who dismiss the use of opioids for pain as unneeded, while ignoring that all those stories of people "addicted" after their docs gave them a mild narcotic for pain were probably exaggerating their pain to get the narcotic in the first place.

and most of the overdose deaths were from Fentanyl,

The drug is still legally prescribed for rare cases of severe pain, but most of thedeaths are tied to illicit forms of the drug coming from China and Mexico. 

and this doesn't note overdoses from medicine stolen from those needing pain pills.

When I worked in Minnesota, we had two such deaths: One, a drug abuser who stole her cousin's MSContin, another a teenager at a party given morphine by another teen who took it from her grandmother's morphine syrup for breakthrough pain.

Those who need narcotic pain relief can be managed on a stable dosage, and function normally. Get rid of the pain and you can wean them off.

Those who take it to get high keep increasing the dosage until they get a bigger high, and often have social dysfunction. They don't just take opioids, but often had problems controlling their use of alcohol, marijuana, and tranquillizers, but if opioids are available, they are the drug of choice because they give you such a nice "high".

This article discusses the subtle difference (subtle because we sometimes treat people who have chronic pain and addiction problems).

Addiction is a biological and psychological condition that compels a person to satisfy their need for a particular stimulus and to keep satisfying it, no matter what.

It is a compulsive behavior that demands more and more drugs, regardless of the consequences that lead to dysfunction. A person who is addicted to opioids has a disease that undermines optimal function and drives one to compulsively use a drug, despite the negative consequences.

The pain patient who is effectively treated with opioids finds life restored-even if he is dependent on them. With the pain muted by stable and steady controlled use of long-acting opioids, a patient can reclaim his life, go back to work, return to family life, and pursue favorite pastimes.

Dependence is a physical state that occurs when the lack of a drug causes the body to have a reaction. Physical dependence is solely a physical state indicating that the body has grown so adapted to having the drug present that sudden removal of it will lead to negative consequences such as a withdrawal reaction..

.The difference between a patient with opioid addiction and a patient who is dependent on opioids for chronic pain is simple. The opioid-dependent patient with chronic pain has improved function with his use of the drugs and the patient with opioid addiction does not.

------------------
Update:

LATimes article on alcohol, opioids and suicide deaths.

mainly in rural whites, laid off because they live in areas where jobs have decreased.

the secret life of Andy Warhol

remembering the many faces of pop art icon, a Pittsburgh native

from Biography:

Warhol's life and work simultaneously satirized and celebrated materiality and celebrity. On the one hand, his paintings of distorted brand images and celebrity faces could be read as a critique of what he viewed as a culture obsessed with money and celebrity. On the other hand, Warhol's focus on consumer goods and pop-culture icons, as well as his own taste for money and fame, suggest a life in celebration of the very aspects of American culture that his work criticized. Warhol spoke to this apparent contradiction between his life and work in his book

 via Father Z:  the Vatican Museum will hold an exhibition of his paintings.

The Catholic Herald discusses the tension between his art, his art world, his same sex attraction, and his religion.

 On April 1, 1987, the most popular artists, actors, fashion designers, writers and musicians in America converged on St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. Liza Minnelli showed up, along with Calvin Klein, Tom Wolfe and George Plimpton. Yoko Ono arrived a bit early; she was giving a speech.

One could have easily mistaken Andy Warhol’s memorial service for a society event rather than a religious one, were it not for the eulogy given by the artist’s friend John Richardson.

He spoke of Warhol’s “secret piety”, which “inevitably changes our perception of an artist who fooled the world into believing his only obsessions were money, fame and glamour, and that he was cool to the point of callousness. Never take Andy at face value.” It is this secret piety that the Vatican Museums hope to uncover in their major exhibition of his work next year. Indeed, the Catholic faith is the only constant theme in his strange life.

summary: his faith helped keep him grounded in the chaos of the 1960s... and not just a vague mushy spirituality either:

Religion kept Warhol from going over the brink. He attended Mass almost daily. Other days he would just slip into St Vincent Ferrer on Lexington Avenue, drop into the back pew and pray. He spent his Thanksgivings, Christmases and Easters volunteering at a soup kitchen, and befriended the homeless and poor whom he served. He put his nephew through seminary. Though openly gay, he endeavoured to remain celibate throughout his life.

another article here: from Artsy: Ten Reasons Andy Warhol matters.

outlander

two speeches by the author to the Library of Congress. Enjoy!
  --------------
an earlier speech:



bio at wikipedia.

Cat Video of the week

a wonderful film,

Over the Sea to Skye

Outlander fans are familiar with this song:

....

what I didn't know is that the origianl lyrics were about the Battle of Culloden: 

Wikipedia had the original lyrics:

which remember the flight of Bonny Prince Charles from the British, and the brutal highland clearances.

Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing,Onward! the sailors cry;Carry the lad that's born to be KingOver the sea to Skye

Loud the winds howl, loud the waves roar,Thunderclaps rend the air;Baffled, our foes stand by the shore,Follow they will not dare....

[Chorus]
Many's the lad fought on that day,Well the claymore could wield,When the night came, silently layDead on Culloden's field.
[Chorus]
Burned are their homes, exile and deathScatter the loyal men;Yet ere the sword cool in the sheathCharlie will come again.

that pretty well describes the background of the Outlander saga.

But the song's lyrics were rewritten by Robert Louis Stevenson, and those are the lyrics that are used for the show: and here are the first and last verses that are sung for the TV show:

 [Chorus:] Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,Say, could that lad be I?Merry of soul he sailed on a dayOver the sea to Skye...

Billow and breeze, islands and seas,Mountains of rain and sun,All that was good, all that was fair,All that was me is gone.

Stevenson's lyrics hint at another aspect of the Island of Skye: the realm of Faerie:


TeaAtTrianon links to the AlishSinclair blog post about Skye:

lots of lovely photos, and it includes this about Dunvegan Castle:

Displayed inside the castle, so no photos, is the ancient and tattered Fairy Flag. There are many stories and traditions surrounding this relic and its origins. The tale favoured in the information provided to visitors is the one in which the Chief of Clan Macleod marries a fairy. The couple have a child together but the fairy knows she has to return to her people in Fairyland. She leaves the magical flag, imbued with protective powers, wrapped round the baby, and this she does a few miles away at the Fairy Bridge:

Dunvegan Castle
from wikipedia commons

wikipedia also has a post on the fairy flag there:

the Fairy Flag was entrusted to a family of hereditary standard bearers. Only the eldest male of this family was ever allowed to unfurl the flag; the first such hereditary standard bearer was given the honour of being buried inside the tomb of the chiefs, on the sacred isle of Iona. Tradition states that the flag was unfurled at several clan battles in the 15th and 16th centuries; the flag's magical powers are said to have won at least one of them. Another 19th-century tradition linked the flag to a prophecy which foretold the downfall of Clan MacLeod; but it also prophesied that, in the "far distant future", the clan would regain its power and raise its honour higher than ever before...

and Skye is located here:

 GNU Free Documentation License.

Dunvegan Castle website discusses the flag.


and no, although Trump's mom was a MacLeod, she wasn't born on Skye, but on the Island of Lewis, nearby.

hmm.. what was that about "in the "far distant future", the clan would regain its power and raise its honour higher than ever before"?

50 ways to kill your lover: From Grey to Mushrooms

The probably have been deaths from people "inspired" by fifty shades of grey, but now we have pushback:

2017's Hottest Trend: Poisoning Your Man With Mushrooms

in one film it was deliberate attempt to kill, but in the second one, she just wanted to make him sick so she can nurse him/have power over him, and the second time he agrees, so it is an erotic trick in a sick relationship where he abuses her verbally for most of the movie.

The Mushroom used seems to be the Cortinarius species.

From Brittanica: a list of poisonous mushrooms, including the one that was used in the film.

The two species of webcap, the deadly webcap (Cortinarius rubellus) and the fool’s webcap (Cortinarius orellanus), are very similar in appearance to both each other and to a number of edible varieties. These mushrooms feature a poison known as orellanin, which initially causes symptoms similar to the common flu. Orellanin has an insidiously long latency period and may take 2 days to 3 weeks to cause symptoms, often leading to a misdiagnosis.

then you see this:

The toxin ultimately causes kidney failure and death if left untreated. In 2008, English author Nicholas Evans mistakenly collected and served webcap mushrooms to his relatives, resulting in hospitalization for four of them. He, his wife, and his brother-in-law all required kidney transplants as a result of the poisoning.

so not an immediate onset of symptoms as with the poisoning in the film.

Mushroom expert has a long discussion of how to identify the bad versions from the ones you can eat.

However, several other (white coloured) mushrooms, mainly the "death cap" mushroom, aka Amanita Phalloides, does lead to the onset of GI symptoms within hours of being eaten and is the most common cause of fatalities.

The clinical course of amatoxin poisoning is described in three phases: delayed gastroenteritis with significant body fluid volume loss (after a postingestion latency of 6–24 hours), symptomatic recovery (24–36 hours after ingestion), and fulminant hepatic and multiorgan failure (typically 3–5 days after the ingestion) 

Maggy Wassilieff, 'Poisonous plants and fungi - Poisonous fungi', Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/photograph/9791/death-cap-mushroom (accessed 9 February 2018)

this got in the news a couple years ago when a bunch of people in the San Francisco area picked and ate some mushrooms, not realizing they were poisonous.

and they are responsible for most mushroom poisonings throughout the world.

Yes. I saw two cases of this when I worked in Africa, and it was not pleasant.

and from the University of Bath: a very funny podcast:

  Garden poisonings mp3.

or try this book:

Colors look different in space

LiveScience article explaining why the new Tesla in space looks so fake.

Spacex

 This Tesla sure looks fake, but that's because of the way colors appear in space....

Even Elon Musk thinks his space-cruising midnight-cherry Tesla Roadster looks weird. "It looks so ridiculous and impossible," the SpaceX CEO told reporters after the Falcon Heavy megarocket launched the car into space yesterday (Feb. 6). "You can tell it's real because it looks so fake, honestly." Musk went on to say that colors, in general, look strange in space, because "there's no atmospheric occlusion. Everything's too crisp," he said.

see also:The 18 Biggest Unsolved Mysteries in Physics

Romani, traditional tribes and assimilation

I ran across an article where the SJW were upset that a "white" woman was cast as Esmerelda in the play Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Presumably they think gypsies are black.

However, a quick google shows that they are not "egyptian" (where the name Gypsy derives) but from northwestern India, a fact confirmed by both DNA and linguistic evidence.

the Wikipedia article mentions lots of "genocidal" stuff, but aside from the Nazis, who saw them as "untermensch" along with the Jews and Slavs, much of the "persecution" can be seen as a reaction to travelers who stole a lot of stuff in a time when poverty meant theft of food or animals or money could lead to death or starvation of the victims, and in days when prisons were few and justice was rare, it was easier just to kill everyone who threatened the wellbeing of the community.

No, I am not defending this, any more than I am defending the "Extrajudicial killing" by the cops or NPA here. I am, however, explaining what happens when "rule of law" is weak and there is no justice for ordinary folks.

A lot of the "persecution" seems to be countries trying to assimilate these folks who live in severe poverty at the margin of society and often a source of petty crimes against the community. Again, a lot of moderns get their knickers in a knot about "destroying" a culture, but then one asks: do you prefer malnutrition, a high maternal child mortality, no education, a culture who disdains working hard at a job, and a population who thinks stealing from strangers is okay? And to complicate things: Some itinerant groups are blamed for the drug problems.

How do you reeducate people to assimilate into modernity? And should you? And will education destroy their traditional culture?

Again, the same question can be asked of lots of other groups, mainly aboriginal groups, but also entire countries like Tibet (which is being modernized by China) or places in Africa, where colonial powers intervened. The traditional life has a lot of good things, and the change from traditional to modern ways is fraught with danger of complete assimilation and despair, but do you really want to work hard from dawn to dusk like women in traditional societies?

in checking out the Romani, I found a lot of other "iternerant" travelers were wandering around Europe.

• Indigenous Norwegian Travellers
• Irish Travellers
• Lom people
• Itinerant groups in Europe
• Nomadic tribes in India
• Lyuli
• Narikurava
• Zott
• Nawar (Syria)
• Romani people

here in the southern Philippines, we have the "sea gypsies", who are slowly being pushed out of their traditional ways, and the Aeta, the original dwellers here who have similar problems with losing their traditional lands and being pressured into assimilation.

we saw a lot of Aeta begging after Mt Pinatubo erupted, and they still migrate to town begging during fiestas.

Rappler article on their plight:

For the Pinatubo Aetas, the 1991 volcanic eruption that killed more than 600 people only made their plight worse.Deprived of their farms as well as game to hunt, about 35,000 Aetas moved to shelters clustered close to the main towns, according to government data.Many never left, with families reduced to begging on the roadsides."They also started to adopt the values of the lowlanders, they buy junk food, eat all these processed food and acquire the illnesses of lowlanders like high blood pressure and diabetes," Zayas said.Getting formal titles to their ancestral lands is not enough and Aetas must learn new skills by going to school, said Adaci of the ancestral domains office."If they embrace the mainstream they should have more stability, but that means they will no longer be able to roam," he added.

Dog post of the day

https://holidappy.com/holidays/Printable-Dog-Templates-Kid-Crafts-for-Chinese-New-Year

next week is Chinese new year, and it will be the Year of the Dog:

with the secondary characteristic of the Earth.

These Dogs are stubborn and never give up. They aren’t very connected with the world and society. Though stubborn, they respect other perspectives. They believe that as long as they work hard, they’ll make it.

Businessmen in Asia take astrology very seriously, and alas the various Asian sites either say this is good or this is bad for the stockmarkets.

ABS-CBN warns of "dog days" around the new year but the Standard is more optimistic.

"It's not a year for metals to bark so don't expect much more than a whimper from banks and financials - we expect both to underperform from the previous two years," the index said.

It expects telecommunication, internet and utility stocks to perform well but casinos and transport may not get a leg up until October.

The Hong Kong-based brokerage expects a great beginning for the lunar year, when the "Earth Dog jumps out of the kennel and tosses the Fire Rooster back to the barn," sending the HSI skyward.

The local equity market may welcome "a most auspicious day" on February 28 and take a tumble in March, the index predicts. It cautions investors to be wary of a summer of discontent, though construction and resources stocks will flourish at that time.

From November to January, the "Earth Dog spots the ball and gathers speed, pushing the HSI to a high note and the Hong Kong Tracker Fund will also ride the tailwinds."

No, I don't believe in astrology, western or Chinese, but many here in Asia do, and these predictions could easily contribute to a stock market problem in Asia.

=================
And here is a small factoid for dog lovers:

...dogs are the most hated animals by the devil and the demons because they are the closest and most helpful animal to mankind.

Source.

heh.

Trixie, call your office, Dean Koontz is on the line...

Do low attendence mean you are umpopular?

College football attendance has slowly decreased over the last six years.

NFL attendence is also down,

So is viewership, but it's not due to Trumpie boy because it started a few years ago also.

Well what about all those movies? Yup. Down. Slowly declining since 1964.

But not because of boring superheroes/special effects/violent films (albeit they still get an audience overseas because you don't have to understand the dialogue). Or you also can go to a PC themed films that despises you.

Never mind: It's just too much trouble to go and spend all that money when you have a big TV at home.

So what do you make of this?

At the general audience on January 31, Pope Francis scored the lowest-ever attendance at a Wednesday audience...
 John Paul II had an average attendance of 32,000 people and Benedict XVI of 33,000. From January 2015 to December 2017 Francis averaged only 9,041. Vatican News edited the footage of the last audience showing only the first block of those present.

well, he wasn't a hit in Chile. Even Cardinal O'Malley was upset at a few of his remarks (O'Malley had to clean up Cardinal Law's mess)...

the history of the 4th amendment

Bookwormroom:

it started in a fight against smuggling:

The government in London responded in 1760 with “writs of assistance.” There will not be a test, but it will help you interpret contemporary events if you understand “writs of assistance.” These writs were open-ended search warrants authorizing a government agent to search private property — anywhere, at anytime — for contraband without ever having to show to a Court that the agent reasonably believed the search would actually yield contraband. 

and then of course the warrentless searches for stuff that had been smuggled was abused, not just so those doing the searching could get rich, but against political opponant of the king:

This abuse came to a head in London (and was, at the time, a cause célèbre throughout the colonies) when King George III authorized a general warrant against a political opponent, John Wilkes, in the hope that searching Wilkes’ home would produce evidence of something — anything — the Crown could use to pin a crime on Wilkes. ”
British agents, having rooted through Wilkes’ private writings, found nothing worse than a truly bawdy poem. They seized the poem and proceeded to create a crime by surreptitiously publishing it as if Wilkes had done so himself – that being a necessary element of the crime of blasphemy in the U.K. of 1760 – and then charging Wilkes with the crime. Wilkes was then expelled from Parliament and fled to France.

In other words, the more things change, the more things stay the same.

the link has a lot more about this, but don't worry:

Forbes reports that the US Congress just passed another authorization for spying on nasty foreign terrorists, and not American citizens.

The U.S. House of Representatives voted 256-164 to renew the controversial Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). This section of the Act allows U.S. intelligence agencies to listen in on phone calls, to read emails and more of non-U.S. citizens.

It’s controversial because the National Security Agency (NSA) and other agencies also listen in on an unknown number of communications from American citizens—something the Fourth Amendment was written to keep the government from doing unless it first obtains a warrant from a court....

Before approving a six-year extension of the law, the House voted 233 to 183 to kill an amendment designed to protect Americans civil liberties. This amendment would have required officials to get warrants in most cases before intercepting and reading emails and more of U.S. citizens. This amendment was proposed by Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich)...

in other words, if you talk to a foreigner, you can be spied on.

A 2015 article from PBS Frontline program that discusses this:




and FYI: This is what the 4th amendment actually says:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Falcon Heavy is go

DavidReneke says SpaceX Falcon Heavy just made it into space.

SpaceX’s big new rocket has blasted off on its first test flight, carrying a red sports car on an endless space journey. The Falcon Heavy rocket rose this morning from the same Florida launch pad used by NASA to send men to the moon. With liftoff, the Heavy became the most powerful rocket in use today. The three boosters and 27 engines roared to life at Kennedy Space Center, as thousands jammed surrounding beaches, bridges, and roads to watch the rocket soar, delayed more than two hours by high wind.

----
live news conference going on now. LINK

CarAndDriver reports

The Falcon Heavy was the actual star of the February 6 launch, but interest in the rocket faded to mainstream viewers relative to the Tesla Roadster, which SpaceX positioned within a capsule in the rocket’s nose. ... A few clever Easter eggs were scattered throughout the Tesla, too, from the touchscreen display reading “Don’t Panic!” (a reference to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) to a tiny Tesla Roadster Hot Wheels model—complete with its own tiny Starman—set atop the dashboard.

Headlines below the fold

LINK

Two people died and at least 114 were injured after a 6.4-magnitude earthquake hit off the coast of eastern Taiwan.
A hotel and at least three other buildings collapsed in the city of Hualien as a result of the quake that struck early Wednesday, the National Fire Agency said. 

in our prayers.

LINK small quake south of Manila preceded that quake

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

related item: China continues to start grabbing more of our areas in the nearby sea, this one east of the Philippines.

They are only investigating currents, of course (/s)

update: discussed on StrategyPage.

The rise is a rich fishing area but also may have underwater oil and gas deposits. China has never made a claim on the Benham Rise but that could change if the payoff were large enough. China had asked permission to send a research ship to study the area and at first the Philippines agreed. But the public reaction was hostile to that, given the Chinese aggression off the west coast in the South China Sea. So the government withdrew that permission and banned any foreign research vessels from studying the Philippines Rise unless they received specific permission. Foreign fishing vessels are banned from the Philippines Rise as well.

At the same time the Philippines repeated that war was not an option in the South China Sea where the Chinese have declared the area an integral part of China and is trying to force foreign ships, especially warships, to ask permission before passing through what had always been considered international waters. Meanwhile China continues to dredge up sand at reefs and created artificial islands which are turned into military bases. China says the new artificial islands will have commercial uses (tourism, recreation). 

-------------
another related item: US is again willing to sell Taiwan weapons.

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

unrelated item: Iran tells Turkey to stop killing Kurds in Syria.
that puts them on the same side as the US...

Space and stuff

David Reneke links to an article in the Economist that has an article about a space elevator.

FOR DECADES engineers and science-fiction writers have dreamed of lifts capable of carrying things into orbit. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a Russian scientist, suggested the idea in 1895, inspired by the Eiffel Tower. And in 1979 Arthur C. Clarke wrote an entire novel, “The Fountains of Paradise”, about the construction of such a space elevator.

here is a detailed film about the concept:

the history of bread

The "WAGD" post of the week

T Rex in Colombia

Since I have relatives in Colombia, I was interested in Tillerson's visit to that area, scheduled for next Tuesday.

The very unpopular FARC ex head is running for president, ELF is busy bombing people, including FARCites who came in from the cold, and there has been a reversal (i.e increase) in cocaine growing, meaning more money for bad guys to push around elected officials and poor farmers.

and the drug gangs have moved to the Venezuela border area, while hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have skedaddled to Colombia's border as refugees, or just cross the border to shop for groceries (hmm...the same thing happened when Mugabe wrecked the economy of Zimbabwe: lots of folks took a bus and shopped in Botswana).

Sigh.

Alas, it's not easy to find what is actually being discussed.


Fake news: Headline: Reporters prevented from seeing Tillerson on horseback. (LATimes)

real news? Sputniknews: a summary of what T Rex is doing on his trip in Latin America.

Headline: Venezuela Crisis Tops Tillerson's Agenda on Tour of Latin America

I don't usually read Russian fake news, but in this case they do add more information than I found elsewhere.

After stopping in Peru to meet officials Tillerson in Columbia on Tuesday will meet with counterparts and the president to discuss the surge in coca cultivation and cocaine production, including a growing refugee population in the country. The US Secretary of State will stop in Jamaica before heading back to Washingon.

Since this is a Russian news organization, the story comes complete with whining that TRex is warning them against Russia

Although the US aims to pursue its own interests in the region, Tillerson appeared to suggest that Washington was worried that rival powers, including Russia, had the audacity to do the same.

BBC says TRex says Venezuela may face a military coup, (but is not advocating one).

well, there is an election coming up there, and it's not like the CIA (and China and Russia and Cuba) doesn't try to influence elections behind the scenes.

StrategyPage has a small paragraph on Venezuela and drugs on their essay about the ten largest threats to peace in the world:

This country has the largest oil reserves of any nation on the planet. But it also has one of the most corrupt, ineffective, lawless and clueless governments in the world. Venezuela has become a home base for drug cartels, Iranian Islamic terrorists and Chinese investors seeking a long term relationship.

Drug gangs already exercise considerable power in Venezuela and that may increase if major creditors (China, Russia, Iran) do not intervene. The neighbors do not want to intervene as that is not the accepted way of handing these things. However the neighbors are faced with a choice of either intervening to deal with the chaos and violence or do nothing and wait for the chaos and violence to come visit.

AlJ essentially notes the same problem of the Venezuela "crisis" fueling crime in nearby countries.


more at ColombiaReports,

While officials in both countries say Colombia’s peace process tops the agenda for US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s upcoming brief trip to Bogota, there are major differences of opinion on how to accomplish that.
In remarks Thursday in advance of his six-country tour of Latin America, Tillerson focused on reducing cocaine production as the key to securing Colombia’s peace.
“We continue to support [Colombia’s] sustainable peace, but challenges do remain. Colombia is the world’s largest producer of cocaine—the source of 92% of the cocaine seized in the United States,” Tillerson said in a Texas speech outlining his goals for this week’s trip.

an "independent" news site. Part of the article is good, but since they spend half the article bashing Trump and saying Tillerson gets all his Latin American information from Fox news, you can probably guess their point of view.

TRex gets his news from Fox? You must be joking (or think your readers only believe the party line).

Hello: TRex ran Exxon, who has business in Colombia, so I think maybe he has other sources for information of what is going on there than Fox News, or even the US State Department.

and the small but lucrative oil industry there has taken a hit by the drop in oil prices.

The peace process with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) finally got underway on 6 December following a new peace agreement, after the previous attempt was dramatically rejected in a referendum in October. As thousands of FARC fighters move to disarmament zones and camps to turn in their weapons and become civilians, Colombia hopes it can quickly seize economic benefits of peace in rural oil-rich areas.

However, it may be too late for a new Colombian oil boom. .... Production fell to 846,000 bpd by October 2016 and oil exports and oil derivatives have fallen a staggering 46.9% in a month-to-month comparison between January 2015 and 2016. After the oil prices plummeted in 2015, the amount of public revenue the commodity brought fell from 20% to zero.

weak oil reserves, poor roads and inadequate pipelines have cut the profit. and the article notes the locals are restless and could go back to picking up their rifles and killing oil workers again if things don't improve.

My son lives in the South, and FARC and cocaine growing was big in the lower altitude areas nearby, and as I have mentioned in previous posts, we had relatives both in the police/army and in FARC.

Most of the oil comes from the northern areas of Colombia, but the Putumaya area is not that far away as the crow flies (that is, a rocky dangerous road to get down there: Landslides anyone?) and if developed, could be a source of work for people in that area of Colombia.


could shale/fracking come to the rescue?


In other words, the US Shale oil production has hurt dictators like Venezuela and Iran but also friends like Saudi and Colombia.

sigh.

and then there is this: trade practices and tariffs might hurt some Latin American countries.

It's not just oil that we are talking about:
AlJ reports that Argentina's biofuel may face tariffs. there was something in the news awhile back about Brazil putting Tariffs on US ethanol too.
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HERE is an article complaining about the Chinese investment in oil production in Colombia... but they are improving the infrastructure too.

Just a reminder we live in a multinational world.
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Colombian embassy notes what is to be discussed is the peace agreement.

Dallas article on Tillerson's background here.

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the "Greens" are all hip about getting rid of oil, which I agree. But in the third world, getting rid of oil means stopping development.

Here, every 50 centavo (one US cent) increase in LPG or diesel makes a headline, because it lowers the income. It lowers the income of the tricycle drivers, and increases the fares for those using this cheap form of transport. And for out local farmers, it means an increased expenses for fertilizer, rototillers/handplows, threshers, and of course transporting rice to the markets, not to mention cooking your food without the hazard and asthma inducing smoke of an open fire.

Right now, I can sit outside my house and watch all the trucks carrying "palay", recently harvested rice, to the rice dealers. We had a good winter season harvest that is going on now, and with the increase in wealth in our area (partly from local jobs and partly from OFW sending money home), we had to make the main street one way, and so the alternative route goes by our house.

Reawaken manhood, not nag

Archbishop Chaput has a long thoughtful opinion on what is going on with the sexual hysteria in today's culture.

 “In a lot of men, that kind of hectoring will merely breed nominal repentance and inner resentment. A man’s actions and words change only when his heart changes for the better. And his heart only changes for the better when he discovers something to believe in that transforms and gives meaning to his life; something that directs all of his reasoning and desires.”...

“Men need a challenge. Men need to test and prove their worth. Men feel most alive when they’re giving themselves to some purpose higher than their own comfort. This is why young men join the Marines or Rangers or SEALs,” he said. “They do it not despite it being hard, but exactly because it’s hard; because it hurts; because they want to be the best and earn a place among brothers who are also the very best.”

and then he dares to point out the core problem of an American society:

“Christian equality is based not in political ideology but in the reality of the differences and mutual dependencies of real men and women,” said Chaput. “As creatures we’re designed to need each other, not replicate each other. And this, by the way, is a key reason why modern culture is so conflicted about the body.”

grounhog day

Audiobook of the week

...

.or you can go back to the original stoic,,,you know, the old Emperor in the fictional film Gladiator:
..................

related audiobook: Mortimer Adler on How to read a book.

Spy vs Spy

gee, the deep state/FBI/CIA/NSA etc etc did "wiretap" Trumpie boy. Who wudda thot?

Anne Althouse discusses and parses the issue from a legal standpoint and links to the document that has resulted in the Democratic party with their knickers in a knot. They are saying releasing this information will result in a disaster, because it will shame those white hat spies at the FBI/CIA/whatever.

and one WAPO columnist essentially said don't shame the FBI by exposing their corruption or they will get back at you...

WTF? does he mean don't persecute the FBI for doing their job, or does he mean if you expose wrongdoing you are toast?

Guess they need to refilm The Post, when whistle-blowing on government shenanigans was considered a good thing.

I am so old that I remember when the Democrats were heroic for exposing the uberkill spying by the spooks at the CIA etc.

A 2015 article from the Brookings site:

Chaired by Senator Frank Church (D-ID), the committee held a series of hearings and published 14 reports as it investigated the legality of intelligence operations by the CIA, NSA, and FBI, including attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, spying on Martin Luther King, Jr., and monitoring the political activities of other U.S. citizens. Today, the reforms put in place following the Church Committee hearings are up for discussion in the wake of the Edward Snowden intelligence leaks and the revelation of how much data the government, especially the NSA, was collecting on U.S. citizens.
Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow Stuart Taylor, Jr. detailed the history of U.S. government surveillance programs, and the Church Committee’s response, in his Brookings Essay, “The Big Snoop: Life, liberty, and the Pursuit of Terrorists,” 

so is Snowdon a bad guy (he is in Russia today so he won't get arrested) or a good guy?

Of course, the Church reforms are blamed for the US not knowing about the 911 plot, but hey, everyone in the Philippines knew they were discussing this years earlier, after our spies picked up these bozos who at the time were planning to kill the Pope, but were foiled when their hot plate caused a fire. (we also knew rumors about the Philippine link to the OKC bombing but that's another story that is probably just a conspiracy theory,)

But never mind. But 911 did make the public more sympathetic to the need to spy on people. Again from the Brookings paper.

After the terrorist attacks on 9/11, and the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, attitudes toward government surveillance changed.

“The emergence of this new menace to America and its allies,” Taylor wrote in his essay, “brought an upsurge in political and public support for aggressive surveillance of potential terrorists, and a muting of the concerns that had arisen in the 1970s about the past sins and excessive zeal of U.S. intelligence agencies.”

so there you have it. Trumpie boy was a potential terrorist working for the evil Russians, so he and his minions deserved to be spied on.

and if you believe that spying on Trumpie was wrong, then you are wrong.

Uh it's one thing to spy on innocent civilians who happen to be friends with anti war protesters in the 1970's, (been there, done that, took the guy spying on us a cup of coffee).

but it's another thing to use information from the political party in power to use the powers of the intelligence community to get dirt on their political opponent.

Wasn't that what Watergate was about?

Scandal in the 7th Fleet

WaPost has a long article about corruption invading the USNavy fleet in Asia.

Between 2006 and 2013, Francis doled out illicit gifts, hosted epicurean feasts and sponsored sex parties for Blue Ridge personnel on at least 45 occasions, according to federal court records and Navy documents obtained by The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act. Officers from the Blue Ridge consumed or pocketed about $1 million in gourmet meals, liquor, cash, vacations, airline tickets, tailored suits, Cuban cigars, luxury watches, cases of beef, designer handbags, antique furniture and concert tickets — and reveled in the attention of an armada of prostitutes, records show.

there is a lot of detail in the article.

and yes, way down in the article there is a report of an orgy in Manila (in 2007).

So why is this only now being reported, years later>

via Drudge

musical interlude of the day

The "WAGD" post of the day

from NewsAustralia:


THE Earth’s magnetic poles could be about to flip, sparking chaos and making large parts of the planet uninhabitable, it has emerged.

Experts have warned that the change is extremely likely, with the magnetic field weakening by 15 per cent over 200 years, The Sun reports.

According to a report by online science magazine Undark, the flip could cause “devastating streams of particles from the sun, galactic cosmic rays, and enhanced ultraviolet B rays from a radiation”.

The report warned that satellite timing systems that govern electric grids could fail, causing a ripple effect that would shut off lights, computers and phones.

Even flushing the toilet could become impossible.

oh no: NOT THE TOILETS

 more here:

Discussing the real questions, not the memes

Trumpie boys' state of the union showed he was a JFK Democrat.

as for the latest Kennedy Scion who gave the rebuttal: I have no idea what he said, since the twittersphere is too busy wondering about his lip balm.

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The Parking space dilmemma 

do you take the risk that there is a parking place for you, or do you obediently stand in line and take the inconvenient bus because it is safer? And does your safe choice deprive you of the possibility that there are better ways to do things?

As I listened to his story, it reminded me of a meeting I had the prior year with some Navy colleagues. We were trying to resolve a training problem regarding a new technology. As I listened to the young officers and chief petty officers brain storm, I kept hearing them say things like, “We can’t do that. It will cost too much money,” or “It would take too many people” in response to training approaches which required additional resources. They had fallen victim to a scarcity mentality. Perhaps unwittingly, but the scarcity mentality was so powerful they were preemptively going to deprive their bosses of some of their best ideas. They confined their creative thinking to a box—a box not imposed on them by leadership, but by the scarcity mentality. For roughly 50 years we have been told to think outside the box, perhaps now cliché, but there is wisdom in this philosophy.

I remember having an argument where a bureaucrat instructed us that our mandate was to "Treat the (Native American) patients within the limit of our budgetary restraints"

I reminded him that our mandate was to treat them, period.
Yes, we had "rationing" of non essential stuff, but when we were confronted with a huge expense (e.g. heart transplant, rehab for a paraplegic), we searched around to find the funds, and found them.

The box mentality ignores that sometimes a third way will solve your problem, but unless you are given the freedom to do this you won't see it.

for example, the Kobiyashi Maru solution, or the Cobrimite maneuver: Not Chess but Poker...

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forget TrumpieBoy vs Obamacare.

here comes Amazon.

Warren Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, likened America’s mushrooming healthcare costs to “a hungry tapeworm on the American economy.” How the (Amazon) venture will provide less pricy healthcare to the 1.2 million employees of the participating companies isn’t yet clear.

The new company will leverage “technology solutions” that provide “simplified, high-quality and transparent healthcare at a reasonable cost.” Not much else, including the name of the company, is known.

here is one place to start: From Forbes:

Doctors Wasting Over Two-Thirds Of Their Time Doing Paperwork

The study confirmed what many physicians have already observed (such as James Sanders, MD in this 2005 editorial for Family Practice Management): the amount of paperwork that doctors have to do is out of control. Led by Christine Sinsky, MD, at the American Medical Association, the study followed 57 U.S. physicians in family medicine, internal medicine, cardiology and orthopedics for a total of 430 hours. In addition, 21 physicians completed after-hours diaries.

The results? Physicians spent 27% of their time in their offices seeing patients and 49.2% of their time doing paperwork, which includes using the electric health record (EHR) system.

Even when the doctors were in the examination room with patients, they were spending only 52.9% of the time talking to or examining the patients and 37.0% doing...you guessed it... paperwork. Moreover, the doctors who completed the after-hours diaries indicated that they were spending one to two hours each night doing -- drum roll please -- paperwork (or the EHR).

been there, done that. One reason I was happy to retire.
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David Warren
discusses a BBC article where someone counters the reporter's hatred of an uncouth Trump by pointing out: When you want to clean the rats out the restaurant, you don't care if the guy you hire is uncouth, you just care if he can get the rats out.

he then goes on to observe what Trumpie boy is able to do: He's a salesman and entrepeneur who can fix things.

A very large part of human enterprise is founded on morale. One might call it a confidence game; but some of these games are better than others.
The parties of managed decline, and political correctness, in America and across Europe, cannot understand this. To them, an economy is based on economic factors, and the government’s job is to control them.

But morale is not an economic factor. It is a spiritual factor. Winning does not start with getting the right assistance; it starts with wanting to win. And it depends on the most inscrutable enthusiasms, such as that for putting the rats out.

he then goes on to point out the "blind spot" of these elite observers:

As our correspondent discovered, in Tony’s Original Restaurant, the town contains many “anti-abortion, low-tax” people — black as well as white. These are the sort of “deplorables” upon whom progressive Democrats (and Liberals and Labourites and Social Democrats) heap their anathemas and slurs. What he perhaps missed is that pro-life extends beyond unborn babies, to all kinds of deplorable activities, such as earning a living and supporting a family and building a community. It is very likely to include involvement in a church.

=================

AnneAlthouse comments on the Jathi controversy in the New Yorker (see earlier posts) and emphasizes this quote:

"I think that the people who have done the deep and conceptual thinking about brain death are people with high I.Q.s, who tremendously value their cognitive abilities...."

Yup. They want to judge if you deserve to live, and it goes way beyond brain death and IQ.

see my previous posts on this LINK LINK2

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Jordan Peterson's lectures are on line, Maps of Meaning series.

 and include this series where he uses bible stories to explain life dilemmas:




like a lot of Peterson's lectures, dense with ideas.
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First White pants suits, and now ....

AFLAC!




from the UK Mail via AnneAlthouse

Never forget

The Holocaust is known in the west, but this is interesting:

Newsweek: SAUDI ARABIA MUSLIM LEADER SLAMS HOLOCAUST DENIAL, SAYS KILLING JEWS WAS WORST ATROCITY EVER COMMITTED

The Holocaust is among the worst human atrocities ever committed, and no one in their right mind would deny it, declared the leader of a major Muslim religious institution in Saudi Arabia in a letter to the director of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

“True Islam is against these crimes. It classifies them in the highest degree of penal sanctions and among the worst human atrocities ever,” wrote Dr. Mohammad Alissa, secretary general of the Muslim World League. “One would ask, who in his right mind would accept, sympathize, or even diminish the extent of this brutal crime?"

trying to get rid of their crazies and go back to the true roots of Islam.

headsup from John Bachelor, mentioned in this podcast

Useless degree of the week

Why stay up all night studying nuclear physics or microbiology?

It's a lot easier to just get a degree in... yodeling.

The Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (Luasa) will run a three-year bachelor's degree and a two-year master's. The courses will begin in the 2018-19 academic year.

Yodelling is a form of singing which involves wobbling the voice up and down in a rapid change of pitch. It was traditionally used by Swiss herdsmen to communicate in the mountains, but later adopted by musicians for its entertainment potential.

FYI: how to yodel:

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headsup Dave Barry

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related item: How to yodel: