Free Speech and Limericks

Peter Hitchens (the liberal brother of the famous athiest/communist writer) has an essay in the UKMail about the decline of free speech in that country and the demonization and even threats to the loyal opposition. Much of it is about local politics, but some of it can apply to many countries, where PC culture is regulating religious speech.

He covers several subject in his essay, and ends it with the scandal of the Bishop of Chichester, who didn't allow a fellow clergyperson accused of abuse to get a proper legal defense and now is in deep dodoo for going along with the kangaroo court instead of seeking the truth.

Again, local politics, of which I know nothing.

However, the article reminds me of the X rated limerick about the Bishop of Chichester.

Well, this is a PG blog, but here is the PG rated version:

A pious young lady of Chichester
Made all the pale saints in their niches stir.
And each morning at matin
Her breast in pink satin
Made the bishop of Chichester's breeches stir.

I found that in an essay about Limericks and similar poems.

The essay includes this factoid:

1225—Saint Thomas Aquinas may have written the first limerick: a prayer in Latin!

huh? Yup. it's true, but the poem wasn't funny. But like a lot of limericks, it was R Rated (and maybe inspired by that time his mama kidnapped him from the cloister and asked a local lovely lady to... well, never mind... this is a PG rated blog.)

Sit vitiorum meorum evacuatio
Concupiscentae et libidinis exterminatio,
Caritatis et patientiae,
Humilitatis et obedientiae,
Omniumque virtutum augmentatio. 

More HERE and it has several different translations into English, including this one:

Another Version

by Robin Kay WilloughbyThis limerick’s for purging my sin,
Ousting lust and desire from within,
Which leaves oodles of space
For agape and grace,
Plus humility, virtue, and gin.

and if you go to the link, there are many similar limericks and other short poems for your enjoyment. '



so where are today's jesters? A joke is worth a thousand preaching words.

Stories below the fold

PhysOrg: the Dead Sea is dying: too much water is being diverted into irrigation etc. so it has been shrinking.

So now there is a plan to build a canal to divert sea water into that lake to restore it.

After years of studies, the $1.1 billion Red Sea "Peace Conduit" deal was signed by Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian authorities in 2013. The project, located entirely on Jordanian territory, includes a desalination plant near Aqaba. After producing drinking water, the remaining highly saline liquid will be sent by pipeline to fill the Dead Sea, powering two hydroelectric plants along the way.

Yes, you read that right: It is a deal between Israel, Jordan and Palestine.

paid for by the US and Japan and maybe EU loans to Jordan.

what is that saying? Dogs and cats living together?

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(Italian) retired cop has vision of Mary in southern Germany. Hundreds due to attend to the next scheduled visit today.

These visions pop up all over the world: A few are genuine, some are "failed" (because the visionary gets proud, or because those around them are nuts). But from a Jungian standpoint, artists and sensitive people tend to "sense" something going on, and proclaim it... heck, you can hear these types nearly every night on Coast to Coast Am or similar programs about the weird.

or maybe it is Mama Mary giving the liberal German bishops, who seem to be more interested in making their church politically correct than preaching the gospel, a headsup that God, not they, are in charge.
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as I posted before: The Beeapocolypse is one of the latest "WAGD" scares.

But don't worry: you will still have tofu:
Monsanto announces self pollinating soy beans.

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why hasn't anyone mentioned that the reason high school students are out marching against guns is not politics, but because marching and feeling self righteous is fun? And it gets you out of class...


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another Manila Casino/hotel fire.

the dead seem to be employees working in security... hmm...

in our prayers. A robbery cover up, carelessness, or terrorism? Developing...

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Manila schools are shut today because of a transportation strike against laws "modernizing" (i.e. getting rid of) local jeepneys: i.e. small buses that carry people on short trips, because progressive leaders want to replace them with new "EJeepneys".

This will improve the air quality in Manila, but will mainly benefit the larger transportation businesses, and destroy a lot of small jeepney owners and hurt the Poor.

so what do you want: to be able to breathe, or to be able to afford to go to work?

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not all space deaths are astonauts: Remembering the 1980 explosion in Russia that killed 48 near the launch pad.

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a Conservative Blue Dog pro life Democrat got elected in western Pennsylvania, where people "cling to their guns and religion".

Is this a "headsup" to the establishment Republicans, who favor big business and the global agenda? Or is it a "headup" to the Democrats, who hate guns, love welfare (and taxing hard working stiffs) and celebrated abortion as the best thing invented since sliced bread?

A lot of pundits are saying it was anti Trumpyboy, but since his position is closer to Trump (or to Bill Clinton for that matter), I suspect the pundits are out of touch.

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Attention Paddington Bear: The Penrith Marmalade festival celebrates this condiment.

Translation problems

Sometimes things get lost in translation, especially acroynymns.

Not only do we have a militant Islamic group named "MILF" and another one named "BIFF", but now a church in the Philippines made the Twittersphere by telling people they need to
"F-A-P" every day in Lent. (fasting- almsgiving-prayer).

This is a PG rated blog, but if you don't get the joke, ask your grandkids.

All your face are belong to us

Introducing Face Recognition For More Features

on my facebook page today:

 Hi
we’re always working to make Facebook better, so we're adding more ways to use face recognition besides just suggesting tags. 

For example, face recognition technology can do things like: 
 • Find photos you're in but haven't been tagged 
• Help protect you from strangers using your photo 
• Tell people with visual impairments who's in your photo or video You control face recognition. 
This setting is on, but you can turn it off any time, which applies to features we may add later. -The Facebook Team

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it's not just facebook:

here is how it is being used in 7-11s in Thailand. (FTimes)

The ubiquitous retailer, whose Thai stores are operated by a unit of the Bangkok-based conglomerate Charoen Pokphand (CP), is to work with Remark Holdings, a Nasdaq-listed AI company with operations in China and the US. Remark will deploy its KanKan technology, which uses gesture recognition to collect and analyse data points on traffic in stores, staff activities, how long customers linger at specific shelves and even their emotions as they pass through stores.

this article is about China's use of face recognition. (venture beat).

As China’s Lunar New Year approaches, citizens and tourists will spot the country’s police force with facial recognition glasses. These glasses will help officials use real-time ID verification to fight crimes during the celebrations around this year’s event. But interestingly, such facial recognition technologies are not new to the people of China. In the past, the country has relied heavily on cardless identification. The “Smile to Pay” feature, launched by Alibaba’s Ant Financial affiliate, lets users take a grinning selfie to authenticate a digital payment. Facial recognition in China also allows students to enter university halls, travelers to board planes, and employees to enter office premises with ease and no ID cards. In 2015, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security announced it was looking to implement an “omnipresent, completely connected, always on and fully controllable” network using facial recognition systems and CCTV hardware.

Survival Times has six ways to fool face recognition.



and facial recognition is not just for people: They now can ID cows.

Students at MIT are busy trying to fool it too.



 so what could go wrong?

UK Guardian reports.

everyone has the information:  the FBI, for example.

but then you read this:

He mentioned FindFace, for example, the Russian company that made an app that could . The app was supposed to be for finding friends, but members of the online messaging board Dvach started using it to and spam their families with the news of their discovery.

the idea is being sold under the guise of "convenience", and of course, as a way to fight fraud and catch criminals.

Ah, but what happens when people with the wrong ideas are declared to be criminals?

And Technology Review notes the technology is getting so sophisticated that it could pick up clues if you are gay, your IQ, your political leanings, or if you have criminal tendencies.

what could go wrong?

what about those of us who just don't want people snooping into our lives? (uh, remember that nasty 4th Amendment that limits the government from snooping in on you?).

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.

the problem is, of course, you signed up and gave Facebook, Twitter, your IPhone etc. all that nice information voluntarily, and they are not the government.

But how many folks realize that they sell this information to a lot of people, and that the gov't snoops in and finds out what you say anyway.

I don't have an IPhone (but my stepson and his wife do, as does my granddaughter). Not because of privacy issued, but because the print is too small to read, and my house has lousy cellphone reception thanks to the house being basalt and surrounded by concrete walls.

IF they want to call me, they call the cook or the gardener, both of whom have ordinary cellphones.

As for Facebook: I avoid posting my photo there, but probably they have me on someone else's post. Sigh. 

And if the gov't wants me, no problem: I'm on the Philippine gov't data base for my visa (and they do use facial recognition software at the airport)...

as for the US, I am already on the US gov't data base because I worked for the Feds (IHS).

Heck, my OPM personnel file was one of several million hacked by China a couple years ago, so China probably knows me too.

Family news

The harvest is almost finished. A good harvest.

It is getting hot, and there was a report two local kids drowned while swimming in the irrigation canal: which is forbidden, since the sides are steep, and the current is swift. Sigh.

It is also time for kite flying: Gusty winds in the late afternoon, so all the kids are out with their kites.

After church, the dog was chasing cats and had a nose bleed. He had one earlier this week, and so I figured it was a cat scratch, but when it didn't stop we went to the vet who said it was coming from inside, and put in some medicine and we applied cold compresses.

Blood work tomorrow. This is our watchdog, a labrador, but he is 11 years old, and getting frail. Sigh.

The dog in the business side of the compound just had three puppies. So far they are all okay.

Church was crowded for the 5:30 mass: Lent, getting toward Easter. So I left early.

The church that meets in our meeting center is going strong: Halleluyah! mostly young folks and Pentecostal.

Jordan is planning to get married in May in Borachay: but Duterte is planning to clean up the place (drugs, prostitution, and illegal houses) so he may have to marry closer to home. We are invited, and the place is beautiful: the best beaches in the Philippines. But I probably won't go, because I hate to travel.

they got beez in their bonnets

Bloomberg has an article debunking the population bomb hysteria:
It seems that as people get more wealthy (and kids don't die), they decide they don't need 6 kids to make sure someone is there to care for you in your old age.

And yes, even Muslims and Africans are limiting their offspring. Even here in the Catholic Philippines, where birth control was not supplied free to women, the average number of kids fell from 6 to slightly over 2 in the last 20 years.

and something else happened to stop the mass starvation predicted by these honored globalists: Norman Bourlag and the green revoution.

but hey, the population bomb went putz, so now it is global warming, aka climate change.

and of course, those pushing this also include pollution (not just nasty pollution but GM crops, pesticides and artificial fertilizers, along with chicken farms for poor people to eat chicken and eggs, and feed lots to produce cheap beef)

The latest hysteria: Bee Apocolypse.

My granddaughter Ruby at a PC NWO school in Canada has to read an R book about this: not just full of propaganda but a couple of perverted X rated scenes to make things interesting.

We grow organic rice, and I see no problem: it is healthier. But it is also more expensive and has a smaller crop. The government here and the Catholic church love organic foods, and thanks to the growing middle class here in Asia, there is indeed a market for our product.

But the dirty little secret is that without modern farming techniques, including hybrid seeds (and now GM seeds), fertilizer and pesiticides, you wouldn't have enough food for the large urban poor population: or if there was enough food, the poor wouldn't be able to afford it.

so essentially we are gourmet food producers, for the growing middle class, but import our cheaper rice from China, Thailand, and Vietnam, where they use chemicals galore, and have larger harvests.

Ah, but the author doesn't seem to be in favor of such things.

The book starts out with Chinese post apocoplypse farmers pollinating fruit trees by hand.

Well, they already do this in China,  to improve the apple and pear harvest, but one wonders why: to make money of course. Not because people would starve without those fruits.

so what's the alternative when there are no more honeybees (aside from, maybe breeding GM bees who don't die from mites, which are why they are dying off)?

Heck, even MotherEarth News has an article pointing out that there are self pollinating apple trees available out there, and it only took two seconds of googling to find where to buy self pollinating pear trees.

Duh. Guess a book starting with Chinese farmers planting and harvesting self pollinating fruit trees just wouldn't have the same propaganda value.

And of course, it reminds one of the stupid agricultural shennanigans ordered on Chinese communes during the Great Leap forward: inefficient and mainly not helping the poor farmers, who often overworked doing stupid stuff while starving to death.

But never mind. This is a book in the latest genre of post climate change apocolypse fiction.

silly me. when I was growing up, the meme was post nuclear war fiction: but I guess that is out of date now.

of course, the Atlantic insists the depressing book does have a solution:

Lunde leaves open the possibility of a way of life that values the collective over the individual.  

heh.

Can you say "socialism" people? New World Order dictatorship?

Sigh. Maybe my granddaughter's father was right (he opposed sending her there), but on the other hand, the X rated shennanigans going on here was the reason I helped her mother finance the move. (she got a full scholarship but we paid the plane ticket etc)...

But you know, when a school charges 30 thousand dollars a year tuition for high school, you do expect the kid to get a decent education, and learn to think.

That is what reading the classics and learning philosophy was all about, at least in the old days.

On the other hand, questioning stupidity is why they killed Socrates...

Mortimer Adler call your office. Homer and Luo Guanzhong are now banned as obsolete white men.

who am I to judge?

Professor Leon Podles, who wrote a book about the terrible abuse of boys and young men in the US Catholic church, comments about the crisis in the UK Anglican church, which has recently admitted it had a similar problem.

Asked by Fiona Scolding QC, lead counsel to the Anglican investigation, whether attitudes towards homosexuality affected the way Ball was treated, he said that church figures didn’t want to be “seen to be judgmental about people’s sexual activities”.

 and then the good professor notes:

 And, in case anyone has not noticed, Pope Francis, despite his rhetoric, has been much more tolerant of sexual abusers and their enablers than Pope Benedict was.After all, Francis’ most quoted quip is “Who am I to judge?”

The problem is not the temptation, but that, given a "green light" by society, people will act on their impulses, rather than refrain and play by the rules.

This non judgemental approach is mainly giving a green light to sexual predators, but it could apply to other sins.

I noted this in my previous post about the increase in "pay back" killings in the Philippines, because folks who couldn't get justice figured they now had permission to commit a similar crime to get "justice".

similarly, one reason that corruption is so common here is that "everyone does it" and no one actually gets condemned for it (either in public opinion or by the civil authorities.)

As for the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic church: having lived in the Altoona area where abuse was covered up, and after reading numerous articles in our local Catholic newspaper  on the wonderfulness of the church's openess to the gay lifestyle, it made me wonder if the Sandusky horrors at Penn State were overlooked out of a similar compassion.

from bishop's accountability org:

Testifying before the public school board in State College [Penn.], he (i.e."Dr. David J. Brown, a clinical psychologist who screens candidates for the Diocese of Altoona) argued on spiritual grounds for legitimizing homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle in the public schools there.

Brown told the board that he was ‘appalled’ that the school district had excluded known militant homosexual speakers from Penn State University from making presentations to teachers at in-service day workshops. Brown was referring to speakers who are on record as promoting homosexuality as an ‘alternative lifestyle’ and who are either homosexuals themselves or homosexual advocates."

in that case, like the scandal of the local bishops, it was a  local lady attorney who pushed the case, which was delayed by politics but eventually went to court.

The point is that, if you know of a crime, do you report your friend for it? Yes, if you think it is serious.

but of course, it's easier to just go along with public opinion and not stick your neck out and maybe get fired or worse, go to jail for a "process crime".

If the church you attend, and the people around you think what was done wasn't a big crime, or that the actions should be forgiven/overlooked/not prosecuted because the perpetrator is such a nice guy and he did so many good things in his life, it sends a message to society that sins/crimes against the innocent are not a big deal.

I am most familiar with the US scandals, but rumors say a lot of churches here have a similar ticking time bomb waiting to go off,  including here in the Philippines.

Some estimates show 2 percent of priests are pedophiles, but most "abuse cases" are actually homosexual activity with teenaged boys, as was shown and romanticized by a recent Hollywood film.

This isn't just about those nice friendly priests who hit on altar boys, but about Bill Clinton, Trumpie boy, Hillary, half of the Hollywood elite, and of course Teddy Kennedy.

true, if you point fingers, you will find it is a common "sin", but my point is that there is a difference between a person who falls and repents his actions and tries not to repeat the offense, or a person who pretends he did nothing wrong and continues to do the same thing to the next victim.

Heck,in our family we have a guy who periodically goes manic and molests the male staff, and defends his actions by saying it was consensual, not workplace sexual harassment, and anyway, God made him that way, so who am I to judge?

Well, thanks, Pope Francis.

I'm okay, you're okay, and the real sin is destroying the environment by using airconditioners. Right.

Maria Goretti, call the office and explain to the Pope: #me too.

Philippine update: thou shalt not kill druggies, hit men or terrorists

The Philippines are in the news again, with Duterte telling the "international criminal court" where to go.

Yes, they get upset about the drug war, but not about the much larger numbers of murders by drug cartels in Mexico, because... well, because the MSM hasn't noticed those deaths, or put 2+2 together to figure out that the opposite of an aggressive anti drug war is not sweetness and light, but anarchy.

And in our area, anarchy means the politicians continuing to kill each other, drug gangs killing each other, politicians killing their rivals so they can control the local loot, people being murdered by druggies hopped up on shabu who invade the homes of the elderly.

 Our local newspaper notes a couple more hit jobs this week.the headline being: 2 arrested for murder of gov's aide, one other surrenders.

presumably the death rate by cops is 4000 since Duterte took over, but the SJW here count it as higher, some as high as 12000 deaths as "drug related", meaning including gangs who kill snitches, families who order hits because they couldn't get justice, and killing politicians who either took bribes or didn't take bribes (to punishe them) or by their rivals who want their share of the loot and figure it's cheaper to kill their rival than to buy votes.

StrategyPage has a long report on the various wars here: not just the drug was, but the NPA, and the Islamic terror types.
here is their take on the drug war, which sounds about right:

March 14, 2018: President Duterte announced that the Philippines was withdrawing from the ICC (International Criminal Court), a process that takes a year to become final. This is in response to UN members persuading the ICC to investigate the Philippines for its war on drugs and what some UN members are calling crimes against humanity.

Filipino critics of the war on drugs back the continued ICC investigation and possible prosecution of senior government officials, including Duterte.

Since the war on drugs began in mid-2016 some 4,100 drug trade operatives have been killed according to official police count. ICC supporters insist the true death toll is three times that. That is because during the same period police reported another 16,000 homicides with possible drug connections. At the same time there have been nearly 120,000 drug related arrests and 1.3 million people have voluntarily surrendered.

Many suspected leaders of drug gangs have been arrested and then released because of “insufficient evidence” (plus lots of lawyers and possibly bribes). 

Italics mine. This is rarely mentioned in the meme pushed by the MSM of the world, of course. I wonder why? (/sarcasm).

we refrained from paying for a hit man to get justice for our nephew's death, and the guy died in his bed ten years later, thanks to lawyers, bribery and hiding in plain sight. But not everyone is so patient. So now, the drug war has essentially given a "green light" to people to do their own vigilante justice. How common is this? I have no idea, but it is something well known by locals but not usually mentioned in the MSM who prefers the "evil Duterte" theme.

how bad (i.e. biased) is the meme of evil Duterte's drug war? SP, which is apolitical, notes:

Meanwhile the majority of Filipinos support the war on drugs and have from the beginning. It is unclear if the ICC is going after any of those supporters as well.

yes. (/sarcasm)

there is a lot of stuff there about China and the various wars, which seem to be going well, against the NPA, and less well against the Muslim terrorists.

But the main problem is, of course, corruption, and it is almost impossible to convict a big shot for corruption.

The government has been less successful dealing with the endemic corruption. This is the enemy within that is really the root cause of most political and economic problems the Philippines suffers from.

excuse me if I am sarcastic about the local bishops, who are big at condemning the drug war, but quite quiet about the corrupt politicians in their circle. A quick google finds Tagle (who is running for Pope) did condemn generic corruption to an international meeting in January 2016.

of course, he could openly name names of corrupt politicians, or work for justice for the little guys, but that could get you killed.

Wikipedia has a list, but like most lists it only includes those suspected killed by gov't hit squads (and notice it didn't start with Duterte), ignoring those killed by "militants".

so our cousin's murder was ordered by a local politician who got some ex NPA members to shoot his rival's family. Was that a "government hit squad" or a government related murder? Or since the hit men were ex NPA, can we blame the wicked commies?

again from the SP article: unemployed militants become gangsters.

These former leftist rebels report that morale is poor throughout the organization and that the only factions likely to continue operating are those that have basically become gangsters whose members don’t care what their political label is as long as they are making money.

again, this week's (feb 15) NEJ news notes:

Hired gun arrested in San Antonio

A suspected member of a robbery and gun-for-hire syndicate was arrested by combined elements of the Nueva Ecija Criminal Investigation and Detection Group and local police after a search of his house in San Antonio yielded two unlicensed pistols last February 8..... He was tagged as a member of the Orizar cime group allegedly engaged in gun-for-hire, robbery-holdup and carnapping.

Archbishop Romero, call your office.

Lessons learned: How to oppose SJW tyranny (1970 style)

The USNavalInstitute Blog discusses how the US Navy ROTC prevented the SJW of the 1970's from shutting down their program.

Full Story HERE

under the guise of anti war protests, activists in New England were pressuring the shut down of ROTC at many colleges there.

At Holy Cross, they did not succeed. why?

the activists were pressuring the faculty, and the "student vote" was not really representative of the campus, and often students only heard one side (the strident side) of the debate.

Based on this assessment, the midshipmen concluded the generally centrist beliefs of the student body could work to the advantage of ROTC if the student vote truly were representative.

The Inter-House Congress (part of the student government) arranged for a student vote to be held 30 September and 1 October that would offer three options: support the majority report, support the minority report, or support neither.

The Navy midshipmen and Air Force cadets organized down to the level of dormitory corridors, posted and distributed flyers advocating support for the minority report, and engaged in extensive personal contact with friends and fellow students.

Supplemented by position papers distributed through campus mail and an information table in the Campus Center, this “get-out-the-vote” campaign emphasized not letting a small minority of students dictate to everyone...

 The results of the vote were decisive: with 55 percent student turnout (the largest in memory), 55 percent supported the minority report; 38 percent supported the majority report; and 7 percent (both pro- and anti-ROTC) supported neither. Shortly after the results were announced, the RSU, through the chairman of the Inter-House Congress, requested a public forum with ROTC advocates be held immediately before the scheduled Faculty-Student Assembly vote on 5 October. The midshipmen declined to participate.

there is a saying: One man with courage is a majority.

These tyrants feel self righteous, but you know, in 35 years of working with the marginalized of society, I didn't run into many of them actually getting their hands dirty helping the victims of their activism (one exception: Those who were religous pacifists, who opposed all wars).

and just as Magsaysay wrote the book on how to stop an "insurgency" by communist "insurgents" in SEAsia, the lessons of the past can point out how the tyranny of the SJW in the USA can be opposed, so as not to allow them to take over the universities.

the pox is coming the pox is coming

CDC reports on outbreaks of monkeypox in several African countries.

several reasons for this: deforestation, "bush meat" trade (i.e. eating monkey meat), and because smallpox vaccination gave people protection, but now that Smallpox has been eliminated and the vaccination stopped, people no longer have this immunity.

the mortality is ten percent, but many cases occur in areas with suboptimal health care, so the real extent is not known.

The Vatican needs to learn how to photoshop

The Vatican released a letter that seemed to say Pope Benedict read and approved of some books of theology written by Pope Francis.

Lots of discussion about this on the alt/r Catholic blogosphere on this.

But the AP now reports: Whoops.

 The Vatican admitted to The Associated Press on Wednesday that it blurred the two final lines of the first page where Benedict begins to explain that he didn’t actually read the books in question...

The missing content significantly altered the meaning of the quotes the Vatican chose to highlight, which were widely picked up by the media....

what caught them up was they didn't know how to photoshop the letter properly, so got caught:

Most independent news media, including The Associated Press, follow strict standards that forbid digital manipulation of photos.

headsup FatherH, who summarizes the original letter thus:

it provides agreeable evidence that Ratzinger's old, deft, feline wit has not deserted the dear old man.

Briefly summarised by me, his Letter says (and I've put into square brackets the section the spin-doctors didn't want you to see):

"Thank you for inviting me to write a page about the little books you sent me. I think they are splendid little books about my splendid successor. [Sadly, however, I haven't read them and I don't intend to do so. And I never comment on books I haven't read, so I won't be sending you a page.]"

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update: It's even worse than censoring a single paragraph.
more Father Z notes:

Just as a side note, I would like to mention my surprise at the fact that the authors also include Professor Hünermann, who during my pontificate put himself in the spotlight by heading anti-papal initiatives. He participated to a significant extent in the promulgation of the “Kölner Erklärung,” which, in relation to the encyclical “Veritatis Splendor,” attacked in a virulent manner the magisterial authority of the pope especially on questions of moral theology. The Europäische Theologengesellschaft, which he founded, also was initially designed by him as an organization in opposition to the papal magisterium. Afterward, the ecclesial sentiment of many theologians blocked this tendency, making that organization a normal instrument of encounter among theologians.

I am certain that you will have understanding for my declination, and I cordially greet you.

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David Warren on Cardinal Sarah's disccussion of Silence

Are we to be defined by our technological gadgetry, or defined in silence? Are we to be empty or full? Most came expecting to hear that, and were not disappointed.

Silence can’t be spoken with a loud voice. It is the still and small one, of which Sarah speaks.

I doubt anyone, knowing of the speaker, came expecting a pep talk. I (and perhaps several others) could not help noticing what a good pope he would make: one who doesn’t speak unless he has something necessary to say; who is not trying to surprise us. One whose comfort is in the Sacraments and Doctrine, and not in novelties; a spokesman for Jesus Christ, and for no other cause. A man whose voice echoes twenty centuries. Even through the noise of the contemporary world, serious people are drawn to that.

yeah. blame docs for the work of the drug cartels.

a picture is worth a thousand words:''

some of the overdoses are from "natural and semi synthetic" opiods, i.e.  prescribed pain killers, either accidental overdoses, suicide attempts, or lying to the doc to get the drugs.

or pills bought on the street, from legal or extralegal sources.

and of course, stealing the narcs from people dying of cancer.

But the real increase is in heroin or Fentanyl, both drugs bought and sold on the street.

(fentanyl is prescribed in pain patches, or used IV to induce anesthesia.. and heroin is illegal).

notice the spike since 2010?

That isn't docs: that was street drugs. The drug dealers knew Marijuana was being legalized, so were switching their product. And since they already catered to folks who like to get high, guess what happened?

I posted a longer version on my medical blog
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more articles from my medical blog:

everything costs more. Why does US medicine cost so much? High prices and high administrative costs.
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Steven Hawkings, Disability doesn't mean inability.

remember: He was given 2 years to live many many years ago.

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perfumes: Bah Humbug

so you get a runny nose from strong perfumes? that's now a disease.

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it's the placenta stupid.

Chromosones affect not only the baby but the placenta, and are the reason for many kids being stillborn or miscarrying.
and I note that viruses/drugs/toxins similarly cause congenital problems, for which docs were often sued.

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Transgender problems.

a lot of medical/psychiatric studies show the meme is wrong, and the politization might be making things worse, because there is now pressure to "transition" when maybe it is not the answer to the person's problem.

even the Pope is worried.

this is not a big thing here in the Philippines, because gays and transgenders are part of the family, so they have social support no matter what, beyond the activists who pressure them merely as a side issue to destroy the patriarchy.

I hope this doesn't get me thrown off of blogspot.

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 pushing non narcotics is fake news.

I posted this earlier on this blog too, but didn't have a chance to rewrite/correct it.

But essentially I was pointing out technical problems with the study:

the placebo problem, and the self selection of obsessive compulsive types willing to enter such a study, and the irony if you take pills correctly, before the pain is so bad you can't stand it, you might not need narcotics to relieve the pain.

Things you are not allowed to say

and you wonder why this bozo gets so many SJW to get hystrical?

If you’re operating within a capitalist environment like let’s say the executives and management of Qantas, who are being paid disproportionately well, you don’t also get to be a social radical. And you don’t get to salve your conscience for receiving a pay cheque that’s 300 times the pay cheque of the average worker by pretending you’re a social revolutionary. It’s an appalling sleight of hand.

yes, the overpay of executives is mainly complained at in Mother Jones, but noticing that will make the right hysterical.

but the reason SJW hate him can be found in his next remark:

...If you are naive enough to think that the demand of the radicals for the transformation of your company is going to end with a few requests for language transformation then you’re a complete bloody fool. 

Via Instapundit:

Family news

Emie is better, but still weak after her high blood pressure problem. Luckily she didn't have a stroke, but does have some kidney damage, which the docs hope will stablize on a proper diet and control of blood pressure and diabetes.

Sigh.

Our cook, who is thin, has also been diagnosed with diabetes. Her husband died years ago from high blood pressure. Sigh.

It's getting to be hot, so deaths from these problems will go up. Sigh.

In other news, the (winter) rice harvest is almost over, and the crop was good.

We have two harvests: summer, which is rain fed (and can be destroyed if typhoons or heavy storms hit at harvest), and winter, which requires irrigation (i.e. more expensive and we can't use our high fields for a second crop).

As for me: everyone is busy so I sit at home most of the time, with the help and the dogs to keep me company.

Pickling brains for fun and profit

AnnAlthouse links to an article where a start up will kill you and pickle your brain. And it will be legal since they will get away with it as a form of "assisted suicide".

she notes:

It doesn't need actually to work. The benefit is realized at the point of entering death with the belief that you are not really dying.

in other words, it will encourage suicide of those who feel they are useless eaters (and the dirty little secret is that feeling you are a burden on others, and being helpless or handicapped is a major reason for "assisted suicide", not pain).

of course, the philosophical question is if the soul/consciousness is the same as the brain (i.e. Descarte's "ghost in the shell").

and the scientific problem is that there is no proof that you could be revived. Even if there is a scientific breakthrough, you might be merely a clone of yourself, meaning you are dead but your twin will be revived.

But the bigger philosophical problem is the denial of death.

Sigh.

Ironically, the best satire on this is the start of the film "Sleepers", by Woody Allen. bad youtube rip here.

Stuff below the fold

OK, Sherlock fans. 

Here are photos of the Adaman Island penal colony, now abandoned.

NeedaVerlangi

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

for later reading: Trump blocks Qualcomm

see also:

Earlier this year, Chinese telecoms giant Huawei said it had not been able to strike a deal to sell its new smartphone via a US carrier, widely believed to be AT&T.The US also recently blocked the $1.2bn sale of money transfer firm Moneygram to China's Ant Financial, the digital payments arm of Alibaba.

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

remembering Givinchy

remember the famous little black dress:

Placebo

link

Google devours the world

Tim Berners-Lee: We need a ‘legal or regulatory framework’ to save the Web from dominant tech platforms

World Wide Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee believes we need to regulate technology companies to help preserve the Web as we know it.

The British computer scientist issued an open letter today, 29 years to the day after he first proposed his idea for the online information management system that would later become known as the Web. In the letter, he outlined what he thinks we need to do to save the Web from the concentration of power of a “few dominant platforms” that has “made it possible to weaponize the Web at scale.”

via Instapundit who advises:

keep getting your news from friendly bloggers instead of from soulless algorithms developed by gazillion-dollar tech giants.

NICE STORIES BELOW THE FOLD

DavidWarren notes the importance of the Saudi prince's visit to Egypt, reported in the Arab media but ignored in the MSM.

A photo op with the Coptic Pope. Blame Trump Kushner.

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

for International Women's day, the BBC posted a photo article on 5 women having babies.

CARLOTA GUERRERO

as opposed to modern feminism's  Madea complex

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

hidden penguins


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

what hath Queen Matilda wrought? dirty pictures?



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

migration has resulted in weird ethnic enclaves all over the place:




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

speaking of ethnic enclaves: Filipinos in the USA.

and notes the Mexican connection.

Lecture of the week

when the Cananites/semites took over Egypt...

the teacher is Dr David Nieman, who has quite a few snps from his lectures on his youtube channel

for later reading: Xi's power grab

StrategyPage lecture for later reading.

a power grab as a way to get rid of corruption, but what will happen to the multinational corporations who invest in China?

and will he start a little war to stay popular? (see "WagThe Dog")

The nationalism is the most dangerous angle and it has already put China into conflict with the United States (over free access to the South China Sea which China now claims as sovereign territory) and with India over where the Tibet border should be. All Chinese neighbors are nervous about this revival of traditional imperialism. 

 and this is something everyone knows, but only Trumpie boy is bold enough to note it:

The government tolerated, and even encouraged, theft of foreign technology and tolerating Chinese firms using corrupt practices to cheat foreign business partners. This not only bothers the aggrieved and threatened foreigners but successful Chinese entrepreneurs and businesses as well.

in the meanwhile, the US MSM is making Duterte a bad guy for trying to get rid of a incompetent judge on the Supreme court, link2
Link3.

don't ask me: the local hearings are in Tagalog, and one suspects she has enough connections with important people to get away with her bullying and disregard for constitutional law.

Dog Vs Leopard

A story about how Mumbai might cut their feral dog population by letting leopards live in the city.

a reminder that feral dog populations are dangerous, and that rabies still exists.

Of course, not noted: will leopards kill babies too?

When I lived in Africa, they caught and vaccinated all the dogs in an area, and painted their backs, and then sent in sharpshooters to kill those who had no paint on them.

Won't work in cities, alas, but the next time you read a sob story about countries that are cruel to dogs, remember this story.

Sorry Oprah

Oprah is being pushed by her employer to run for president so she can "heal" the country.

One big push is the newly released movie "A Wrinkle in Time", which is based on a classic Scifi/fantasy juvie type book.

Whoops: Ain'tItCoolNews, a geek site that rarely gives a bad review to monster/scifi/fantasy/horror films, hated it: and not because of it's themes but because it was technically a bad film, with irregularities and gaps in the story line, bad editing and weird cinematography.

Sigh. Too bad.

This is a "Disney' remake (they did an earlier version for TV, which was also pretty awful). And the previews all stress Oprah is the star.

Too bad: these films can be done well: look at LOTR and Harry Potter.

But the story has to be a story about a person, and in the book it is about Meg's character arc: accepting her limitations and what she considers her faults (i.e. stubborness: she doesn't get along in school due to stubborness, but the stubborness makes her be able to resist the "it" character's brainwashing).

audiobook here:




book 2 A Wind in the Door

Book 3 A swiftly tilting planet

quick: Download or listen to them before the copyright cops find they are there.

Note: I brought the books with me to the Philippines, and have many of L'Engle's books of essays with me too..

best book of essays: The Summer of the Great Grandmother...

Stories below the fold

the important stories being ignored in the press

AmericanThinker (conservative site) summarizes the importance of a visit to Egypt by the crown prince from Saudi.

Egypt has traditionally been a center for Muslim intellectuals, and this is one step to counter the extremism that has taken over that religion.

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

Immigration with or without papers is a world wide problem: but most of the finger pointing is against Trump. In contrast, it was okay for Obama to deport 2.7 million illegal migrants during his time in office, because his heart was pure.

Saudi had an amnesty for illegal foreigners, and is now busy deporting them: 700 thousand left during the amnesty, and 670 thousand since the amnesty ended.
the main problem is deporting OFW's often lets their employers get away with not paying their salaries etc.

according to Wikipedia, guess which country has the most illegal immigrants living there? India...
and the Philippines has 100 thousand illegal Chinese immigrants...

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SP has an essay on China's Xi's takeover of the gov't.

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BabyTrudeau's courts have not only allowed a broad range of killing of patients, but they will prosecute docs if they refuse to cooperate, meaning that their law is more radical than other countries.

expect to see lots of sob stories about couples offing themselves so they could die together, or about senile old ladies who are being denied euthanasia. The propaganda will persuade a lot of depressed people they are doing a good deed to kill themselves and no longer burdern their kids who don't want to care for them.

and think of all the money you will save!

once this idea becomes common, you will see medical personnel offing people they think are better off dead. I know of two cases where outside (non IHS) docs tried to persuade families to starve their elderly to death because they had strokes. In both cases, the doctors were told off by locals: We don't do things like that here: we Indians care for our elders.

which is why our people often refused to sign living wills or DNR orders... and "bioethicists" lament this is a problem in the AfricanAmerican community too. and the article wonders why (I can explain why in one word: Tuskegee).

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


Archbishop Romero is to be declared to be a saint.



this film shows what he faced: and notice the atrocities are by both sides. I can't watch the film, because the ambush resembled the one that killed some of our missionaries when I was in Africa...

He was killed by a gov't hit squad, our people when I was in Africa were killed by both sides of the war, and in Mexico, a dozen priests have been killed by drug gangs in recent years for opposing violence.

ion thruster

podcast for later listening:

he ion propulsion engine is the first non-chemical propulsion to be used as the primary means of propelling a spacecraft. Though the thrust of the ion propulsion is about the same as the downward pressure of a single sheet of paper, by the end of the mission, the ion engine will have changed the spacecraft speed by about 13,700 kilometers/hour (8500 miles/hour). Even then, it will have expended only about 64 kg of its 81.5 kg supply of xenon propellant. )

fake news: Pain pills

On my medical blog, I analyze why a VA study 'proving' ordinary pain pills work as well as opioids is a fake study:

self selected population, taking the pills on schedule.

This is important for chronic pain: if you only take the medicine  "as needed" sometimes it won't work, and you do need a narcotic to treat that level of pain... the dirty little secret is people tend to "bear it" with pain, until they can't stand it, meaning the problem is not just pain but anxiety that the pain won't go away: and  the pill won't work fast enough or be strong enough to eliminate the severe pain complex, so you think it doesn't work. But opioids not only relieve the pain but they relieve the anxiety of hurting.

and a lot of people only want a few percocet to keep in their medicine cabinet "just in case" (e.g. when you wake up at 3 am hurting) and don't take them anyway.

taking medicine as ordered is important for those with chronic pain so you get a steady decrease in the level of pain: often to a low level that folks can tolerate.

the non fancy part, talking and comforting, is important, as is reawssuring the patient: But low tech medicine often cures but rarely gets into the headlines.

for example when we had a diabetes ulcer program at our hospital, the doctor in charge told us that there were many "double blind" studies on what salve etc is best to help these wounds to heal: and they all worked. Why? Because the important part wasn't the salve etc you used, but the fact that you were cleaning and dressing the wound properly and meticulously.

of course, the placebo effect doesn't work in everyone: I suspect like hynosis it is a neurophysiological ablity that people have in varying degrees.

See also this 2011 article in the NewYorker about the ritual of medicine and Placebo effect.

the bad news: The economic takeover of medicine by big business and government mean you don't have time to talk to the patient and evalute him or her, comfort him or her, or make sure they know how to take their medicines.

The dirty little secret is that a huge percentage of patients don't fill their prescriptions or take them properly, (Stanford report says 60 percent don't) which is why all those scientific clinical studies don't always work in real life.

Also, despite the emphasis on filling out paper work and doing testss and being efficient, the simple comfort of the art of medicine, taking time to see and talk to and examine the patient, is what helps.

From the Newyorker article:

He conducted a thorough examination, and then we talked. He told me I was fine, that Thanksgiving is often a tense time, and that I should relax. My pain suddenly disappeared. I have written frequently of my belief that magic is for fairy tales and science is for humans. But something about that process soothed me. Of course, it was a relief to know that I wasn’t sick. But could words really banish a pain I had struggled with for hours? 

 After I got home, I realized that I had been given a placebo. Not purposefully, perhaps, but it had the same effect. My doctor told me that I was fine, and that made my pain go away. It also eased my anxiety at least as effectively as if I had swallowed a pill. My doctor takes an extremely science-based approach to his work. That’s what makes him so good at his job.

Musical interlude of the day

Quote on the value of work

“I won’t go on, I don’t want to get too passionate about this, but it really makes me angry. Not a joke. Some of you know me. No one ever doubts I mean what I say, the problem is sometimes I say all that I mean….

Look guys, ladies, you know, my dad as I said because he moved from Scranton because there were no good jobs after coal died….

I know what is it like watching uncles, aunts, friends, neighbors, lose a job. My dad used to say ‘Joe remember, a job is about a lot more than a paycheck. It’s about your dignity, it’s about your respect. It’s about your place in your community. It’s about being able to look your kid in the eye and say, honey, it’s going to be okay.’

I’m not being melodramatic. I mean that from the bottom of my heart, as my father did. They don’t get it. Some people in my party don’t even get it anymore. They don’t get it. It’s about our pride. it’ about our dignity. It’s about who the hell we are and what we’ve done. And it makes me angry. It makes me angry.”

Joe Biden

source: the rightwing blog Gateway Pundit. 

one of the few bluedog democrats left.

Survival tip of the day: Quicklime

This year we have found snails wandering around our compound: Large snails, the type we find in the rice fields.

I hate to kill the creatures (our cook smashes them when she sees them) because their shells are so pretty. But what do you do when there are no calcium containing rocks in your area? Well, here he uses snail shells.




I like the videos because they show how to do everything from scratch.

Survival blog explains why would you need calcium, including quicklime. It is not just used for cement.

as a doc, this is why I might suggest having some around:

1. Outhouse. To control odors in outhouses, sprinkle aglime over waste. Any of the other types work, too, though one should probably avoid combining quicklime with water needlessly. Any other offensive odors can be treated similarly.

Lime can be made from shells, or rocks, but a little known fact is that the settlers of New Amsterdam  used the discarded shells found in "middens" ... aka garbage heaps...

 From AtlasObscura:

There were once so many oyster middens in New York that much of the city’s infrastructure is literally built on top of them. In The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell, Mark Kurlansky writes that “numerous known sites lie beneath railroad tracks, city streets, dreaded landfill, highways that hug the coastlines, and docks,”...

 after surviving for thousands of years, most middens did not escape the last three centuries unscathed. European colonizers thought of the shell heaps as an obvious available resource for the taking; shells were easily dried and burned into a quick lyme paste, making a sturdy cement for buildings used in the 1600s, and the calcium-rich shells were good for farming and reading soil for crops. 

Kurlansky  gives a talk about his new book about the history of oysters and oyster eating in NYC:



Kurlansky's books on salt and cod are at Archives, if you sign up as a member. and some of his books are also found at Scribd..again, if you are a member..

medical links

My medical blog has a link about the opioid epidemic:

Summary: Blame China (and Mexico) And the culture that encourages a young person to think it's normal to buy a pill from a known pusher to get high.

(where are the churches on this? Never mind. too busy preaching mercy for sociopaths than preaching ethics.)

(and blame all the banks etc who launder drug money that enables these drug cartels).

------------------
]another review: Rabies is still with us.

Plain women win oscars

No one commenting on the Oscars has notice this, but this year's actresses played real characters who were ordinary looking (i.e. real) women.

the lead in the best picture was supposed to be a plain looking woman, played by Sally Hawkins. And you believed she had a sad life and could sympathize with an alien creature who was isolated away from his home.

She is also starring in the Paddington series of movies.




and of course the big winner was Frances MacDormand, best known for her role as a police woman in Fargo.

I didn't see Three billboards, but to give you a good idea of her ability to act:

watch her facial expressions in this snip:




and she also was in the underrated art type film:




Another role that was good was in LadyBird.... You can tell she's gorgeous playing a plain girl with a bad hair day. but she is at least believeable in doing this.

My granddaughter loved it as an example of teenaged angst, but I didn't really like the character, who was spoiled and self centered, and if I can't care about a character, often I just turn the TV off.

But it's nice that movies are allowing women to star who actually look like an ordinary person, i.e. real, not a Hollywood or Hallmark movie beauty.

and yes, Gary Oldman deserved his oscar.

as for "call me by your name": geez. reminds me of a boring Merchant/Ivory, or a Hallmark movie (with a gay romance instead of the g rated types) about spoiled beautiful people who don't have to work or worry about money.

as for GetOut: yes, it was an original screenplay. Not a great movie, but it was original.

interspecies love

the oscars are redux, with the same old meme being pushed down the throat of those who watch the show, which explains why their ratings are so low. No, I didn't watch it: I haven't seen most of the films anyway, so I just don't care.

The old saying is: if you want to send a message, send a telegram i.e. don't do it in a movie... or distort entertainment into propaganda. A classic in books/plays/movies can mold one's view of an episode, but the reason they are classic is that they have universal themes: topical themes tend to go out of date quickly.

I did see the film that won: a parable/fairy tale on interspecies love and understanding. And how "outsiders" can fight the powerful. That is, of course, a good theme: but who are the "outsiders"?


However, DelToro did that theme of interspecies love before, in the Hellboy series, and did it more entertainingly, I might add. But in Hellboy, the government uses the species to protect normal people against evil paranormals (Rasputin and Nazis), and Hellboy's adopted father is a Catholic... Who wudda thot.
In those films, there is interspecies love (Hellboy's and Aquaman's) without graphic scenes.

But of course "water" is art: Hellboy is just a comic. So whatever.

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Musical interlude of the day

Kreeft meditation on evil

Philosopher Peter Kreeft's lenten meditation at Plough magazine.

The only God I believe in is the one Nietzsche ridiculed as “God on the Cross.” In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples and stood respectfully before the statue of Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world.

But each time after a while I have had to turn away.

And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in Godforsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death.

bookmarked for later slow reading.

Gun Control: We haz that

Dilbert discusses gun control.

the only school shooting where I knew people was done by a mentally disturbed boy who stole his grandfather's rifles and pistols to do it. His grandfather was a cop, and took the boy in because of a terrible family situation. So gun control would not have stopped that shooting.

my take: unless you know guns and regularly shoot so you know how to shoot, and unless you mentally practice what to do in a bad situation, the gun is not going to help because you will probably freeze.

(NON PC observation: shooting in video games gives you this type of expertise...not my opinion but that of the military)

Sort of like CPR: We docs practice all the time and go into automatic action when we do it.

Here in the Philippines, we have security guards with guns and shotguns all over the place guarding banks and shops: and you are frisked when you go into the mall.

But few ordinary folks own guns.. or maybe I should say legally own guns, because Marcos confiscated all guns in the Philippines years ago

Yes, some people have legal guns, the dirty little secret in the Philippines is that most middle class folks have an illegal gun hidden in the closet.

Why have a gun? Well, in the last few years, we have had several old people killed in break-ins by thieves, one a US Navy vet with a gun who didn't get it out in time.

The present mayor has had at least two hits against his family by the previous mayors' family. The first hit killed five people including our nephew in the crossfire. The second was on the way home from one of our cousin's funerals, and killed four in the crossfire. There have been at least two "pay back" murders against those behind the hits.

However, one of our cousins killed his brother with a shotgun he owned for protection at the farm. His brother was drunk and angry (maybe on shabu too) and attacked him while he was sleeping... the sleeping brother work up and shot him in self defense, aiming low so as not to kill him, but one of the pellets hit him in a leg artery so he bled to death. Without that gun, that tragedy might not have happened...

My grandfather was a cop, and knew of cases where kids got their father's service gun and accidentally shot a sibling. So we never had guns in our house.

But my husband, a WWII vet, and a doctor who carried narcotics in the car for house calls, always had a pistol with him. Indeed, when we first married and visited the Philippines, he took out his WWII submachine gun from the closet where he had it hidden and cleaned it... he gave that and his pistol away after he had a stroke, alas, so when crime went up in our neighborhood, we did worry about being robbed or worse.

But now things are safer, thanks to the gangs being decimated by EJK or by fighting among themselves.

Yes, I know: The Catholic church last weekend had a couple thousand demonstrating against EJK.

But one wonders where they are when the bishops get photo ops with crooked politicians who take bribes from drug smugglers etc. (and steal government money sent to help the poor).

The mayor behind our nephew's murder was finally indicted after many years of giving gifts to someone to delay the indictment, but when Aquino became president and started cleaning things up, the ex mayo was indicted but escaped punishment because he "disappeared"... he died a few months after they discovered he was living in Manila, on dialysis. Duh.

And he was buried in a fancy maseoleum, after a Catholic funeral complete with Knights of Columbus body guard.

He donated to the local church, of course.

Short story: At the fiesta mass with the bishop presiding a year after our cousin was killed, that guy sat in the front of church in a place for VIPs with his body guards, and when our cousin Chona went up to give her donation during the mass, she saw him and waved her fist in his face saying : You... YOU...

it caused a bit of a stir, and of course, the bishop saw her, and got the message, because during the next election cycle, the bishop held a mass and had all the local politicians take an oath they would not use violence.

It worked: There was no shooting until after the election...

what is past is prologue

A series of lectures about the Roman Republic and why it was destroyed by internal problems.

Mike Duncan is the author and his podcasts on Rome and modern revolutions are excellent also.

Stories below the fold

fat military recruits meet feminized training methods. what could go wrong? StrategyPage analysis.

the good news? China has similar problems.
more on China HERE.

did you know why Winnie the Pooh is banned in China?



related item: SP has an article and podcast about the world wide threat analysis.

-----------------
How to criticize a politician. By Dilbert

a summary of how to morph non facts and rumors into a meme.

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

one of the Pope's attack dogs wants to shut down ETWN.

how dare he report the news attack the Pope.

it was about this interview:.....

...
and that was before this inteview with Philip Lawler (later in this newscast at 23:00) who has a new book about the Pope...
 


headsup from Father Z. and CWR has a book review here.

This is not the first time progressive bishops tried to shut down the network, but Mother Angelica stopped them ("I'll blow the damn place up before I let them have it" she exclaimed). But since she died, I guess some figure they can bully the lay board that runs the network.

but this is about letting respected Catholic intellectuals point out that there is a problem, letting ordinary people actually hear why they are worried. (whereas the MSM and the Catholic MSM prefers to dismiss such criticisms as being from alt right kooks.).

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

the Emoji movie won the Razzie for the worst film of 2017.

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AlJ on Kuwait's Christians. 264 locals and 900 thousand expats who work there. (total pop est 3.5 million).

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

from DavidReneke: Outer space trivia.

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600 computers used to mine bitcoins were stolen in... Iceland!?

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the pampered chickens of Silicon valley.

now there is a push to regulate the practice.

pdf from the CDC: how backyard chickesn could spread bird flu to Humans. webpage here.

some cities in SEAsia have banned urban chickens for this reason.


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

technology help for small farms:

drones in farming.

more HERE.

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

Hamilton (in five minutes)

for those of you who didn't see the Broadway musical..

.


headsup AnnAlthouse.