Florinda's birthday party

Family news

fiesta parade today...

The Monsoon has started...daily thunderstorms for the last three days.

The good news: fewer brownouts from low hydroelectric dams, no more water rationing for Manila.

The Bad news: brownouts from thunderstorms, Internet on and off, and I hope I don't fry my computer from an electric surge like I did last year...this time I have not one but two surge protectors, just in case...

party here for workers and staff tomorrow.

Stuff below the fold

Teddy Kennedy's ghost will have to stop locals from benefitting from clean energy:
But does anyone remember Jaws2?

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Supreme court okays 70 year old monuments with crosses on them...

Someone should tell the ideologues that a cross stands for sacrificing one's life so others could have freedom...ever hear of Spartacus?

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Robin of Berkeley learned the power of suffering to lead to wisdom when she became a Buddhist...and has this poem:

So you must not be frightened
if a sadness rises up before you
larger than any you have ever seen;
if an anxiety, like light and cloud-shadows,
passes over your hands and over all you do.
You must remember that something is happening to you,
that life has not forgotten you
that it holds you in its hands,
and will not let you fall.
- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Yes, pre vatican II catholics knew this too, but the PC prefer to smoulder in anger to the "unfairness" of life's blows.


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Headlines below the fold

actually, I don't support blasphemy against anyone, but if you blaspheme God, why make a fuss about a mild joke against a mere prophet?

Stuff below the fold

bookmarked for later reading: EESchumacher.

Is it a choice between globalization/homogenization and being green/poor/primitive?

Ah, but there's a third way, as Joseph Pearce's essay on the "Small is beautiful" author points out.

Mildred, the Surfing Sheep

headsup Notcot.

Craft item of the day

Purlbee has a tutorial on how to make these lovely bird ornaments.

she used them for Christmas ornaments, but I think hanging them as a window decoration or as a mobile above a baby's crib would be wonderful...

Stuff below the fold

The FreeLibrary has a podcast by Kitty Kelly, about her Oprah biography.

Come on, now: just like the National Enquirer you'll read it, you just won't admit you read it...

they also have a podcast by Paul Davies on the search for ET...
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Adopt a child as a green political statement?

Attention CNN: Children are not things or pets. You adopt a child to have a child to raise, not to make a political statement.
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Catholic church statistics: 1.1 billion Catholics, 400 thousand priests...

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The NYTimes lists the bad guys of the financial crisis:

Yet, in the end, it comes down to this: Goldman Sachs, ACA Capital, IKB Deutsche Industriebank and even the rating agencies never had any duty to protect us from their greed. There was one entity that did — our government.

But it was the purported regulators, including the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision, that used their power not to protect, but rather to prevent predatory lending laws. The Federal Reserve, which could have cracked down on lending practices at any time, did next to nothing, thereby putting us at risk as both consumers and taxpayers. All of these regulators, along with the S.E.C., failed to look at the bad loans that were moving through the nation’s banking system, even though there were plentiful warnings about them.

More important, it was Congress that sat by idly as consumer advocates warned that people were getting loans they’d never be able to pay back. It was Congress that refused to regulate derivatives, despite ample evidence dating back to 1994 of the dangers they posed. It was Congress that repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated investment and commercial banking, yet failed to update the fraying regulatory system.

Headlines below the fold

Terrorist plot foiled by...traffic police?
Ecoterrorists were planning to blow up a Nanotechnology center near Zurich...

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That the Chinese take organs from executed prisoners,including political dissadents and those whose only crime is religious belief.
and then there is that mandatory sterilization program.

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Noah's Ark has been discovered again.
now if they can only find the boats of Utnapishtim, Zuisundra, and Manu...

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The "memo" ridiculing the Pope by the British Foreign Office was not by a low level twit, but was written by the team supposed to coordinate his visit...

My comment: one of the suggestions is that the Pope support AIDS clinics....hate to tell him, but they run a lot of them, in places like Africa and Asia. There is a large one in the rural Catholic hospital where I used to work in Africa...
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Stephen Hawkings warns: Don't talk to Aliens. They might not be friendly.
But I found this part interesting:

Alien life, he will suggest, is almost certain to exist in many other parts of the universe: not just in planets, but perhaps in the centre of stars or even floating in interplanetary space.

Hmm...sounds like Eldils.

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CSLewis and Lost connections?
Yup...the series is full of similar links

Family news

I didn't blog yesterday, because rollling blackouts kept interfering with the internet, and it was hot.

Last night, Florinda held a birthday party with family only. Emie is here from the US. Daisy is scheduled for surgery on Friday. Keep her in your prayers.

Lolo is fine.

It's now official

Boobs do cause earthquakes.

OTTAWA — Maybe the Iranian cleric had a point.

As women around the world bared their cleavage Monday in an event dubbed ‘Boobquake,’ a strong earthquake measuring 6.9 struck southeast of Taiwan.

That’s exactly what Iranian cleric Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi warned would happen, when he recently blamed earthquakes on immodest female clothing.

Photo of the day

NASA's recently launched Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, is returning early images that confirm an unprecedented new capability for scientists to better understand our sun’s dynamic processes. These solar activities affect everything on Earth.



A full-disk multiwavelength extreme ultraviolet image of the sun taken by SDO on March 30, 2010. False colors trace different gas temperatures.Reds are relatively cool (about 60,000 Kelvin, or 107,540 F); blues and greens are hotter (greater than 1 million Kelvin, or 1,799,540 F). › Larger image

headsup from
SpacestationShuttleBlog:

Stuff below the fold

How is earth like an apple?
Dr. Ebtekar at Persian Paradox gives a lesson on Earth Day...

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The lady in the attic: BBC4 podcast about literary heroines with mental illnesses...

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Hubble Telescope is 20 years old...Steven Barr at First Things has links to some of the best photos...Nat Geo has photos here...

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I know nothing about economics. Robert Reich had a citizen's guide to reforming wall street HERE.

The Acidtongued Spengler has a different view HERE

For me they are both "MEGO" essays ("my eyes glaze over"). I can understand the pathophysiology and life cycle of Schistosomiasis, but not high finance...

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The "things that go bump in the night" post of the day:
One seer explains the veil is thinning.

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Dog story of the day: protective vests for service dogs.

Photo is of Midge, a drug sniffing dog in Ohio...

Don't forget:

Monday April 26 is also "Hug an Australian Day"

and although you probably heard about the film "Australia", here is the trailer for the "Fair Dinkum" version of the film...

Don't forget: Monday is Boobquake

Show your cleavage, ladies!

Do immodest women cause earthquakes, as one Iranian cleric claims?

Scientific experiment commences Monday:

Jennifer McCreight is determined to prove him wrong.

Since launching the "Boobquake" Facebook page she has enlisted more than 20,000 women promising to show as much cleavage as possible on Monday, April 26.

If the world doesn't then disappear into an apocalyptic fiery chasm, then Sedighi will have no option but to admit he was wrong.

Download of the day

The Railway Children is on youtube for your enjoyment:

Stuff below the fold

according to the UKGuardian, these are "ethical" fashions....ethical here meaning they come from a PC fashion place.
At least they admit:

"Those with an earth-friendly disposition will surely want to buy organic - see the Environmental Justice Foundation on cotton if you want to know more - and luckily everyone and his eco-dog are now producing organic cotton ranges. Probably all made in sweatshops by two-year-olds of course, but hey, it's organic, right? "

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The Iliad and war...

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Troubling story of the day: Framing the wrong man.
and although this story says the next man fingered had access to "purified" anthrax", the anthrax linked to Ivins wasn't weaponized, just an average strain used by many folks to make anthrax vaccine...

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and the science headline of the day:

Whale poop is vital to ocean's carbon cycle

Medical headline of the day

Nanny state is going to keep salt out of your food...

The FDA plans to work with the food industry and health experts to gradually reduce the salt consumed each day by Americans. The initiative, when launched later this year, would eventually lead to the first legal limits on the amount of salt allowed in food.

Guess they never heard of salt shakers...
or Patis (aka fish sauce or Soy sauce...

Actually, Asian salt consumption is twice that of the US, which is why we have so much high blood pressure...but in Zimbabwe the poor, who had little salt in their diet, rarely had high blood pressure, whereas it was common in the richer who ate a European foods with their diet, and very high in West Africa, where seafood consumption is common.

Jennifer Lockett's podcast notes that the Romans used it too...it was called garum......more here

DOGS CHANGE LIVES

DOGS CHANGE LIVES

Absurdity of the day

Catch the Unicorn Killer video game...


Step into the shoes of Jennifer Lourdes, a young FBI agent tasked with tracking down hippie-guru turned international fugitive Ira Einhorn. Join veteran agent Alan Michaels on a global search for the infamous Unicorn Killer and hours of eye-opening hidden object fun. Explore crime scenes, collect clues, solve puzzles, and bring this notorious killer to justice before he escapes for good. Based on the tragic murder of Holly Maddux,