Stories hidden below the fold

Bastille day? Bah humbug: via LesFemmes
The Vendee massacres were written out of history, but were a prelude to the massacres of later revolutions.

Solzhenitsyn on the Vendee martyrs.

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factoid of the day: From strategyPage: Slavery in Muslim lands.

Slavery was outlawed in Arabia in the early 1960s, but that only eliminated the more obvious cases in urban areas. The practice continued in more remote areas. It's been going on for thousands of years, during which Arabs are believed to have enslaved up to 20 million Africans. As a result, up to twenty percent of the people in Arabia appear to have African ancestors and genetic studies have confirmed this.

again, the decimation of East African rural people by Arab slave traders was written out of history. Of course, it dates back way before Islam...

but you know it wasn't just Africans: the slave trade by the Barbary pirates is almost forgotten too...not to mention all those white deportees to America and Australia who were essentially slaves too.

As for the African Slave trade: until Africans write their own history, (i.e. not the marxist version of history that only recognizes the Atlantic slave trade, which was mainly to the west Indies or Brazil) this will not be remembered.

I mean, will they ban Great Zimbabwe because of it's involvement with the slave trade?

of course, nowadays, the importation of foreign workers continues.

No, not slaves, but few rights. And, like slaves, they work cheaply and don't reproduce and leave babies behind to grow up and take over these countries, allowing the clan heads to continue to run things.

which is why the gold standard for people here in the Philippines looking for jobs is the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand or Europe...where they and their children will be integrated into society.

semi related item: The Republican nativists like Donald Trump seem to think that the Hispanics are a monolith and will never be integrated into society (this, despite Cruz being one of their candidates).

Yet the dirty little secrets is that a lot of Hispanics not only intermarry with Anglos and after the first generation but that many of them become Protestant/Pentecostal.

via GetReligion: Luis Palau gives a revival in NYC...and unlike the NYTimes notes it is a multi ethnic meeting.

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oppose Obama, get psychiatric treatment by court order.

Yes, I know: He broke election finance laws. And he is a bit nutty and one sided in his films, but hey, so is Michael Moore...

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Pluto may or may not be a planet, but hey the photos from the fly by are awesome.

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ProfPodles: Remembering the hydroplanes and the first Atlantic crossing by air

so how did they navigate before GPS?

On 16 May, the three Curtiss NCs departed on the longest leg of their journey, from Newfoundland to the Azores Islands in the mid-Atlantic. Twenty-two more Navy ships, mostly destroyers, were stationed at about 50-mile (80 km) spacings along this route.^[4] These “station ships” were brightly illuminated during the nighttime. Their sailors blazed their searchlightsinto the sky, and they also fired bright star shells into the sky to help the aviators to stay on their planned flight path.^[5]

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BBC: What does Rosemary (the herb) do to your brain? 

the implications of this kind of research are huge, but they don't mean you need to spend your days smelling of rosemary and your night sleeping on a pillow of lavender. The effects were measurable but modest and they give us a clue that further research into some of the chemicals in essential oils may yield therapeutics and contribute to our understanding of memory and brain function.

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from Improbableresearch:

The History of Looking at Breasts

Peace in our Time

Yes the Iranians are now being allowed to pretend not to make an atomic bomb, so sanctions may be lifted.

Coming soon: the Iraq Iran war redux

What Obama has done is insure that Iran can take over the mess in the middle east, and get rid if ISIS (which is Sadam's guys who started that war). Obama probably sees this as the lesser of two evils...
Unless, of course, Iran gets the bomb and the Saudis buy a couple and we'll see a really really big problem.

As for Israel: the wild card. I doubt the mullahs will nuke Israel, who they know will nuke them back. The real question is if Israel will sit still while they make a bomb

and if the Iranian people will let the mullahs run the place much longer. This deal, alas, will only improve their popularity.

Stories below the fold

Second start to the right and straight on til morning

Says Nadia Drake of Nat Geo...

Belmont club discusses the Pluto Probe, and how political correctness has robbed children of dreams of a better future.

True. I grew up on Podkayne of Mars...my granddaughter grew up with Hunger Games.

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Because hundreds of dead in ferry accidents makes such a good tourist magnet:

 Lawmaker urges Coast Guard to relax ‘no-sail policy’ to help shipping, tourism

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The good news: Plants talk

The bad news: Uh oh:

Carnivorous plants communicate with bats

A large, meat-eating pitcher plant in Borneo has evolved a unique way to communicate with bats that it hopes to attract. The plant, Nepenthes hemsleyana, communicates via special structures that reflect the bats' ultrasonic calls right back to the flying mammals, according to a study published in the latest issue of the journal Current Biology .

and no, they don't eat the bats: The bats perch on the  plants and the plants feast off of bat poo...

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the story of the USS Independence, and how this ship, filled with radioactive waste, was recently detected off the coast of California.

Before it was finally decommissioned in 1951, theIndependence was loaded with several hundred 55-gallon barrels of radioactive waste leftover from the production of nuclear weapons, which were covered in concrete and sealed in the ship’s engine and boiler rooms.
The Independence was then sunk to a depth of 800 meters, or 2,600 feet, where it was re-discovered by Delgado’s team as part of a two-year program to find and map the 300-plus shipwrecks that now rest within the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary.

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I am reading Outlander... and for background, here is an article on Scottish witchcraft....

The term "old religion" referred to Catholicism during this period (the 16th and 17th centuries), not paganism. Although, Catholicism was synonymous with paganism in the minds of the Protestant reformers.
The term for this mixture of belief systems is "popular religion." It refers to the beliefs and practices of the common folk as opposed to the officially sanctioned beliefs of the Church.
Just as you see a heavy influence of indigenous belief mixed with Catholicism in places such as Mexico today, there would have been a mix of indigenous practices seen in the form of Christianity practiced by Scots at the time of the Reformation.
So, while I stress that the individuals in question were not pagan, some of their practices did have pagan roots. And, that is what got them in hot water with the church.

headsup from MedievalNet

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the "WAGD" article of the week:

Is a mini Ice Age on the way?

The Maunder Minimum (also known as the prolonged sunspot minimum) is the name used for the period starting in about 1645 and continuing to about 1715 when sunspots became exceedingly rare, as noted by solar observers of the time.It caused London's River Thames to freeze over, and 'frost fairs' became popular.

This period of solar inactivity also corresponds to a climatic period called the 'Little Ice Age' when rivers that are normally ice-free froze and snow fields remained year-round at lower altitudes.There is evidence that the Sun has had similar periods of inactivity in the more distant past, Nasa says.The connection between solar activity and terrestrial climate is an area of on-going research.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3156594/Is-mini-ICE-AGE-way-Scientists-warn-sun-sleep-2020-cause-temperatures-plummet.html#ixzz3fogxugMI Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

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Russia is getting aggressive, and the US is tired of guarding Europe.

Europe spends little on the military, and many soldiers are unfit for cambat...this has implications for the wars in North Africa.

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Satanists unveil a statue of Baphomet (Satan) surrounded by two children in Detroit.

Catholics respond with a mass of reparation.

Although I do wonder if people realize that Baphomet was the nickname for Alister Crowley, a notorious pedophile... but since he tended to be a sex tourist pedophile, that part of his life is usually ignored by those who admire his philosophy, but alas not by all of his followers.

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LadyGaga is back in the news, sporting a fishnet body suit.

she's doing a world tour with Tony Bennett.
who at 88 is still going strong.

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The Lays of Beleriand

The next podcast series from Mythgard academy is about the Lays of Beleriand

I have three of the "History of Middle Earth" series here with me in the Philippines but not this one.

Part of it are read at Youtube

The Heartbreak behind the numbers plus rants

VirtueOnLine has an article about the heartbreak of failed relationships, and how it affects marriage and the family.

Civil partnerships offered equal protection under the law. It's nobody else's business how long such relationships last. But the moment redefine what marriage is, you bring children into the discussion, and that ought to change the way we work out what our priorities are.
It's true straight people have not made a good job of stable relationships, and kids have suffered badly. But here as they say, is the thing; and I'm sorry to turn to statistics again. How long do straight marriages last? Not long enough obviously, but the figure is about 58% of traditional marriages last longer than 20 years.(Source: National Centre for Health Statistics, Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (2001). What do we know about same sex stability? ....The evidence is that same sex relationships are much more fragile even than opposite sex ones- and if you are creating a framework to bring up children, this instability matters; 

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Such statistics are usually done by the CDC or similar organizations (and ignored by the MSM, who prefer "academic" studies).

I don' t have statistics for those questions but here are a few statistics that need to be part of the discussion

Quick stats: Annual birth statistics:

The birth rate for married women (97.0 per 1,000) was more than three times that for unmarried women (29.4) in 1980. From1980 to the mid-1990s, the birth rate among married women generally declined, whereas the rate for unmarried women generally increased. Both rates stabilized in the mid-1990s and then increased until 2007–2008. The birth rate among unmarried women declined from 51.8 in 2007 and 2008 to 44.0 in 2014. The birth rate for married women dropped 5% during 2007–2010 but increased to 88.7 in 2014.

note: The numbers don't add up to 100 percent because it compares the rates for each demographic.

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Family and children wellbeing study report here.

Single parenthood and cohabitation have lost much of their stigma as their prevalence has increased. But there are still many reasons to be concerned about the well-being of children in fragile families, and, indeed, research overwhelmingly concludes that they fare worse than children born into married-couple households.4 What remains unclear is how large the effects of single parenthood and cohabitation are in early childhood and what specific aspects of life in fragile families explain those effects.

the article calls some families "fragile families" and then goes on to note " Men who choose to cohabit, for example, may not have the same family values that men who choose to marry do." It is a long, complicated analysis that one should read if one is interested in the problem of marriage and families in the USA.

But essentially it can't tell which came first; the chicken or the egg.

The answer is that the ecology where children are raised is the problem.

 The sixties' generation pushed normalization of recreational sex, drugs, and the "me" generation instead of encouraging people to grow up and take responsibility.

 If gay activists started pushing stability and family values as part of their search for "dignity", they'd have a lot less problem with those of us who see how society is toxic for raising children with values that include self control and responsibility, values that often go against the commercialism pushing more stuff and the values free sex in too many movies and tv shows.


 and for those of us who live outside the US, it is disturbing that your tax money is being used to push a sexual agenda on us, a values free agenda that pretty well destroyed the family in the USA?

 Here in the Philippines, where gays and transvestites are part of the landscape, we have (often American NGO's using tax money to pay them) activists pushing abortion, divorce, contraception, and now the gay marriage agenda...at the same time our elites are pushing casinos and ignoring the sex tourism and drug problems that have even hit our small towns.

Just ignore that our main problems are stealing/bribery/corruption, and that the only way a non elite can get a decent job or get rich is to emigrate to Manila or to work overseas, where you don't need bribery or family connections to get ahead.

 and that is one reason that the Pope is so "anti capitalism". He sees capitalism as putting money first, over people.

 Here in the Philippines we see companies that destroy the environment (bribe local officials to look the other way when they destroy land to mine minerals, use dangerous agricultural chemicals and then dump them into the environment, or denude mountains of their trees causing landslides).

Just ignore companies that underpay the poor who work for them, have them work in unsafe factories (let flammable trash accumulate, have inadequate sprinkler systems and few emergency exits, and bribe fire officials to ignore this), encourage hundreds of thousands of people to emigrate to find work (either to cities or overseas where they are cheap labor for factories) which often means destroying the family left behind.

 So he does have a point.

But of course in the USA the argument will be used to criticize evil Republicans (just ignore that socialist countries are also corrupt and have pollution problems), and of course, ignore that Calvin saw making money honestly as a way to serve God...

. On the other hand, I thought it was ironic that the priest on Sunday gave a sermon against greed and living high on the hog.

Why ironic? Well, the 5:30 am mass was full of people who had to go to work early, most of whom were dressed in the local costume of cheap teeshirts, jeans and sandals.

Yup. Preaching a message to the wrong choir.

Headlines below the fold

Oh well....not only do the Chinese hackers have my personnel file from when I was a federal employee, but now they probably have my file from when I was in the National Guard.

Information released Friday night, so it was probably a devestating leak, since most important information is released late on Fridays, when people are busy doing weekend things.

but the OPM is covering their tushes: I now have "insurance" in case they use my identity to steal money.

and ignore that Iran is getting technology to make their bomb.

 the MSM is touting the meme to destroy all Confederate symbols: a distraction from what is really important.

So now, Dukes of Hazard is banned, and Elizabeth Foley (tongue in cheek) wonders if they will dynamite Stone Mountain the same way the Taliban blew up the Buddhist statues.

StrategyPage has a long article on how The Big Lie works as propaganda.

This is actually older than this century: the diamond necklace and the lies against Marie Antoinette that was spread to inflame the populace to support the French revolution... other examples include the anti-Catholic lies of Elizabethan England that remain in American history books, the "white man's burden" that insisted that the Irish, Africans and South Asians really needed the benevolent hand of the UK/France/Netherands/Belgium to become civilized (/s) and the "black legend" against the Spanish (it was infectious disease, not massacres, that depopulated the Americas).  Or to go furthur back: don't forget Ramses the Great's win at the Battle of Kardesh: believed by historians until the Hittite archives told a different story. Of course, maybe the Hittites were also lying...

A similar "big lie" is that only evil religion (aka Christianity) was behind all of the wars of history, a lie that is now the meme on the internet.


The problem with the meme: one sided cherry picking by those who don't know history (ignore the Hittites, Darius the Great, Julius Caesar/Scipio Africanus/Trajan, most of Chinese history, the Japanese invasion of Korea in 1600, Genghis Khan and Tamerlane).

And did you read that the UN's Human Rights council passed a resolution supporting the traditional family?

The resolution notes that the family is “the natural environment for the growth and well-being of all its members and particularly children,” and that while the State is responsible for protecting the human rights of all, “the family has the primary responsibility for the nurturing and protection of children.”
Both recent resolutions received strong opposition from states and organizations with a pro-“sexual rights” position on the basis that they might be used to “advance highly contentious family values and family-oriented policies,” according to a statement by the group Sexual Rights Initiative (SRI), which exists to promote the extremely contentious notion of “sexual rights” within international institutions.

You see, in a lot of countries that don't have or can't afford a huge socialist Big Brother government, the family needs to be strengthened: as Pope Francis said:

“The family is the nearest hospital; when a family member is ill, it is in the home that they are cared for as long as possible. The family is the first school for the young, the best home for the elderly. The family constitutes the best ‘social capital’. It cannot be replaced by other institutions. It needs to be helped and strengthened.”

but that resolution didn't get a lot of publicity either in the MSM..

Silly me: I'm old enough to remember when America used to mean "mom and apple pie".

The technical name for the phenomenon is “pareidolia,”

Improbable research explains why people see Jesus on toast and hear the Minions saying dirty words.

The technical name for the phenomenon is “pareidolia,” hearing sounds or seeing images that seem meaningful but are actually random. It leads people to see shapes in clouds, a man in the moon or the face of Jesus on a grilled cheese sandwich.
The audio form of pareidolia has been causing confusion for years and years. 

The BBC article on this phenomenum is HERE. 

Other experts say pareidolia is a consequence of the brain's information processing systems. The brain is constantly sifting through random lines, shapes, surfaces and colours, says Joel Voss, a neuroscientist at Northwestern University.
It makes sense of these images by assigning meaning to them - usually by matching them to something stored in long-term knowledge. But sometimes things that are slightly "ambiguous" get matched up with things we can name more easily - resulting in pareidolia, he says.

Sort of like using a Rorshack test to see what people see in pictures, or a Freudian slip that tells people what you are really thinking about.

and just in case you missed Despicable Me one and two, and are too embarassed to ask your kids what it is all about,  here are the Minions:



and if you really want to translate what they are saying, go the the Minions Language tranlator page 

Insomnia Download of the week

quick before the copyright cops find it:

Multi system failure

EricCline has a book about the Bronze age collapse, which he attributes to multiple problems (climate change, migration, earthquakes, war, famine). The only major empire that didn't collapse then was Egypt, but Ramses III managed to fight off the sea peoples (but was killed by a harem conspiracy, probably because he was so busy fighting he didn't notice people starving).

Another period of collapse was the destruction of Ghengis Khan, the climate cooling causing famines, and then the Black Plague came in. Again, lots of death and collapse (mainly of Islamic civilizations).

But before this, there was another "year without a summer", with starvation followed by bubonic plague.

but only recently have historians try to put two and two together via ice cores.

LATimes:

The team drew connections between the ice core evidence and historical texts describing diminished sunlight over long periods of time. The analysis revealed that there had been a massive eruption in North America in 535 or 536, followed by another in the tropics in 539 or 540 -- corresponding to temperature dips in the tree ring records starting in 536.
Of that year, the study noted, the historian Procopius had written, "For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during this whole year, and it seemed exceedingly like the sun in eclipse."
The authors wrote that the cooling, which extended for more than a decade, "provides a notable environmental context to widespread famine and the great Justinian Plague of 541-543 CE that was responsible for decimating populations in the Mediterranean and potentially China."

The Chinese histories need to be checked for such information, the problem being that a lot of times the bad news was not written down (and of course, losing hundreds of thousands of peasants wasn't such a big deal for some emperors, at least until the peasants had enough and decide to mount an uprising. You think Western European history is bloody, you need to do a body count of China).

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related item: remember all those headlines about how many people were descended from Genghis Khan? Well they were wrong. Statistically it was a coincidence.

Forwhat...we are blog notes:

the authors, to make their argument even more certain, simulated genetic data under the standard coalescent, a neutral model that does not include cultural transmission of reproductive success. As you can expect, the simulations confirmed that what surprised Balaresque and others is just absolutely normal by mere chance: no Genghis Khan effect ever took place.

blame Zipf's law 

Family News

So I was up three times during the night telling the outside dogs to keep quiet...one is in heat and many of her boyfriends are outside, and the other two dogs, being jealous, have been barking a lot. Or maybe it's because it is Friday night, and the Resto-bar across the street has a lot of people coming and going.

Then, at 3 am, we heard a loud noise at the gate. I thought they had opened the gates to take out the truck to do a delivery, but I didn't hear the engine, so went back to sleep. Then at 4 am the cops arrived at the door, and when I checked the door noticed our large truck was halfway through the door (but the door stopped it). The neighbor noticed the semi destroyed door and called them.

We checked, and no sign of anything stolen. And the cops noted the smoke we smelled came from the battery, so he disconnected it and while doing so the starter went on for a second and the truck went forward an inch.

Inside, the keys were there and "on", and no parking break, and the clutch was in first gear. Probably "carelessness".

The cops checked the entire compound and noted that anyone could go over our walls (which we know). Up to two years ago, we had a man sleep in a small room that faced our back garden for safety, but we have no one now... the cops said if we heard anything, we should call them...won't work for me since I don't have a cellphone, and Joy barricades the door for safety, since we both figure let them steal everything but let us alone (several people have been killed in robberies in our town, mainly from trying to fight them off).

I usually am the one downstairs to answer the door at night, with only George the killer dog for protection. Presumably I should get a gun, but I'd be too klutzy to use it. I gave my mom a shotgun for protection, so maybe I should buy one. Lolo always had a pistol and his old WWII automatic rifle, but when he had a stroke, we gave them to relatives and kept a man with a machete to guard us.


Later Chano said the "starter" was not working right yesterday but they didn't have a chance to fix it.

But we still don't know if someone tried to steal it but couldn't unlock the door, and the door was too strong to crash through, or if someone just carelessly left the truck in first gear and the key on, so when the rain/moisture dripped and caused the battery to short, the starter kicked on and it simply went forward by itself. Probably the latter.

So more expenses to fix the truck at a time we need the large truck to haul large objects to the farm.

Oh yes: A lifesaving hint my mom taught me when we stalled out driving through a ford in Africa and got water in the engine: If you "start" the car when you are in first gear, it lunges forward. It took four lunges for us to get through the water one time. And in Africa, when the water was above the floorboards, you simply opened the door and let the river run through so it wouldn't float you away.

But if the water is over 18 inches, unless you are in a deep ambulance/truck, you are better off not doing this. So when Sister Patricia started convulsing from cerebral malaria, they detoured fifty miles on dirt roads upstream to ford the river in our ambulance that had high clearance to get her out.

Banned in Boston

 A small item in the local paper reports that  Boston Museum of Fine Arts has banned "kimono Wednesdays" as racist.

Created as a light summer distraction, “Kimono Wednesdays” invited visitors to “channel your inner Camille Monet” by donning museum-provided kimonos and posing for photos in front of Claude Monet’s “La Japonaise,” a painting of the artist’s wife wearing a kimono.
But the event quickly raised the hackles of protesters, who charged that the museum was perpetuating racist stereotypes by presenting Asian culture as quintessentially exotic.

one JapaneseAmericanInBostonBlog comments here.  and relates the background (how Japanese art influenced European artists among other issues). So it is about art, not prejudice..

It is clear that the MFA's actions don't stem from a belief that American culture is superior to Japanese culture. The MFA has one of the largest collections of Japanese artoutside of Japan so I think it's safe to assume that they have a genuine interest in promoting Japanese artistry and culture. There no prejudice – nothing about this event is about opinions "not based on reason" and there's no discrimination – they held similar events in Japan so we're not being treated differently here. 

here is the picture.

Yes, she is a blond because it is Monet's wife...

The "WAGD" post of the day

Is DieHard 4.0 just entertainment, or a prophecy of the future?

the WaExaminer writes:

step one: Take out all the transportation. Step two: The financial base and telecoms. Step three: You get rid of all the utilities...that's why they call it a fire sale, because everything must go."
On Wednesday, the U.S. experienced two out of three of the stages described in the movie.

Well, welcome to the third world.

At least we have generators and our own water pump...and an old fashioned jeep that doesn't have a computerized carburator...and a pickup that uses diesel (read biodiesel). And if worse came to worse, we have two waterbuffalos for plowing and transportation.

altogether now:



Which is why Lolo, who lived through the great Depression and WWII, told me if I move here, I would always have enough rice to eat.

The whisper below the fold: it's the family

The modern deconstruction of the family and of gender reality is going full fledged, with the government pushing everyone to comply.

Presumably I will have my bitching blog shut down for hate speech so I made it personal. After all, the reality of the "gay lifestyle" (not gays per se) is right in front of me, and in this case it involved breaking the first, 4th, 5th, 6th 7th and 8th commandments so far in the name of "freedom to be what I am". And What would Jesus say? Well, isn't there that part about a millstone?

Even Anne Althouse, a libertarian and long time supporter of gay marriage, notes that the defenders like Jimmy Carter who seem to think Jesus has no problem with the implications comments sarcastically:

You can talk about same-sex marriage. What I find surprising is Carter's idea that Jesus would encourage any love affair if it was honest and sincere and was not damagingto anyone else. That's not limited to marriage or even to lifelong loyal partnership. Carter's got Jesus cheerleading straightforward fornication! What's more honest andsincere than I just want to f*** you?

 And that is one problem: In a country where 35 million caretakers care for the young, old or handicapped family members, and where 30 percent of children are raised in poverty, often without fathers, doesn't the government have an interest in strengthening family ties?

and will "gay marriage" do this, or will it merely be a way to force people to be non judgemental and accept any type of sexual acting out, no matter how abnormal?

Confucius, confronted with the warring state chaos, insisted that strengthening the family should come first, and as anyone in Asia could tell you, strengthening the family often means putting your family's welfare in front of your personal wishes, especially for women.

Patriarchal marriage is not limited to a Christian world, you know, no matter what the religion haters say.

And guess what? It worked. Yes, women "lost" rights to be free. But now women lack the right to be supported when they are pregnant, and society encourages women economically forces them to abort/neglect children to work and use all their skills to benefit the economy to afford the latest gadgets/basic needs.

, and instead of policies that allow children and working mothers, we have the idea warehousing kids with strangers is a good alternative (Middle class moms might prefer "educational" daycare, but my poor patients preferred friends and relatives to baby sit, not day care. Any studies about this?)

And the next step: various forms of poly marriages.
This has a lot of the Christian left and right up in arms, but the reality is that polygamy is not common even in countries where it is practiced, because it makes women miserable and often their misery and bickering make the men miserable too...

Yes, the MSM portray it as a lovefest of young sexy people.

As for polyandry: Except for Tibet, I am not sure it exists in other countries. If it was an option, maybe China, (and India and Korea in the near future) with it's huge woman deficit, should push this as a better idea than single men without connections to families. Since they are not doing so, then maybe it is because China is realistic about such things.

Yes, Marriage is about protecting women so they can raise children, but it is also about proving men with connections to families. Boys become adults when they learn to support families. And it is about caring for the dependent in their extended families.

This was brought up by the Pope in Ecuador.

“The family is the nearest hospital; when a family member is ill, it is in the home that they are cared for as long as possible. The family is the first school for the young, the best home for the elderly. The family constitutes the best ‘social capital’. It cannot be replaced by other institutions. It needs to be helped and strengthened.”

as David Warren points out: The MSM didn't cover this part of his speech.

The headline, “Pope says families need a miracle, hints at ‘scandalous’ changes for the church,” gives a fair summary. A journalist with any idea of Bergoglio’s previous remarks on this “evolution” — total opposition to it — could not have written anything so perverse and silly. For in this case, as in all others, the pope was defending the “traditional” family (mommy, daddy, children and so forth) against the modern world:

There are conservative arguments for gay marriage as a way to encourage gays not to be promiscuous (and to allow lesbians the dignity of living in their usually monogamous relationships). In such families, gay marriage would resemble that of traditional marriage. Would Jesus approve? No, no more than he approved of the adulterous woman's activity, but he would probably offer them mercy.

Yet after 50 years of elite propaganda to get rid of the family and traditional marriage because it stands in the way of "freedom", the real problem we face is reconstructing marriage and the family as a real and holy way for people to live.

The dirty little secret is when the Supreme Court insists that gay marriage is about "dignity", they are implying that "dignity" and "Rights" are granted by the state (not God)

but one only has to peruse the latest TwitterHate to notice the result will actually be a way to use the power of the law and pressure private corporations to force people to approve of all sexual activity, and legally to cooperate with activity that they disapprove of for ethical religious reasons.


And that part about "approving" is the real problem: because pious Christians/Muslims/Jews/Confucians know that this is wrong.

Family news

Joy and Ruby are going to Manila for deliveries

The rains have stopped, but it is still cloudy, so maybe it means the monsoon is here.

the rest of the news is the same old stuff.

Another MERS case here, in a visitor...they were discussing prevention policies yesterday on TV. Luckily not in our area of the country.

Factoid of the day

AtlasObscura post about the grave of Miss Baker:

first animal to survive after being shot into space.

Wikipedia

She also was the longest lived Squirrel Monkey of record.

more HERE

and Wikipedia says no, she wasn't named after a person, but that she was number two, i.e. the Beta or Bravo monkey, but they renamed her using the older Phonetic alphabet, i.e. Baker

Podcasts and books to listen to while the world goes kaput

All the news is bad...just check Drudge.

Or here, check the local news: Corruption, earthquake, tropical storm, landslides, dengue epidemic, plastic rice scams, Chinese aggression, and it's hunger season (farmers etc. run out of money from the last harvest, so are at risk until the next harvest in September) so all the beggars are coming to the door, and I didn't have extra money to give them. Yes, I feel guilty but I mean, you give them fifty cents and they all are demanding more...)

Even Google is going nuts:

mixing Cc3Po and angrybirds with Klingon script? Who knows...


So I am busy downloading podcasts etc.

Quick before the copyright cops find it:

Outlander the audiobook.

the View from Here links to CBC podcasts about Shakespeare

and a lot of history and history of medicine podcasts:

African Americans health care workers in the Civil war.
and more civil war lectures there.

a podcast about Cole Porter from a South African University (lots of other stuff here too).

University of Bath podcasts doesn't have many new ones, but they often have science oriented podcasts.

And if you are an Agatha Christie fan, listen to this podcast (and put coffee down while listening).
Say It With poison

reminds me of the book Wicked Plants. (I read it at ScribD)

Stuff around the net

rewrite the history books: Not just cats but millions of dogs were killed and mummified as offerings in Egypt.

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8 recipes for the backyard grill.

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What we have been told about hardening of the arteries is wrong. it's the smooth muscle that may be the problem.

LINK

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from Improbable Research: The British push back against the metric system.

The argument is that the meter is "scientific" and pushed on folks by a bunch of busybody types, but the older foot/inch etc measurements are human and easier to understand.

Ditto for F vs C in temperature measurements.

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the annotated guide to the Ghostbusters3 anti ghost pack.

ah, but I wonder if the PC police will complain that the original movie was racist and sexist and that the bad guy was from the EPA...

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Stuff below the fold, Asian edition

StrategyPage reports: The Philippines is taking China to court about their attempt to take over islets in our economic zone. China intends to ignore the court settlement, because hey, some Chinese fisherfolk fished there in the past.

 China is now attempting to regulate how other countries can use it (for fishing, oil exploration, or even transit via sea or air). Only American military power can provide an obstacle the Chinese cannot just brush aside, at least not without risk of escalation and violent encounters. It has long been American policy to actively oppose the sort of claims China is making. So far American opposition to China has been very restrained and not persuaded the Chinese to slow down.

 So Obama won't do much here, but the Japanese are starting to help.

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by the way: Did you read that China's stock market just crashed? No problem...they are arresting folks who are spreading the truth of the matter rumors.

So it's not just Greece who might destroy the world economy.

and as this pundit points out, a similar "crash" preceeded the US stock market crash of 2008, so this might bode another financial crisis...

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MedievalistNet discusses how Romans and Greeks (or Greek/Persians) influenced China in the good old days.

 Modern Western scholars do not have many tools to investigate the subject seriously, and they are very cautious when it comes to Chinese national history. The subject can hurt national sensibilities, because it is situated at the crossroads of major ancient civilisations, and some might regard investigating the interactions in that area as taboo. 

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DUKU2.0...the cyberwar continues.

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Local stories from the Philippines

The headlines are that another ferry tipped over from a wave, with some loss of life.

In Our prayers.

We are having a tropical storm hitting us, with moderate wind and rain (we are signal one).

That means I am staying indoors.

The strangest story in the news is that someone is selling/importing "Fake rice": Plastic shredded to look like rice, but which turns gluey when you cook it. Yes, it's not good for you.

Insomnia downloads of the week

The Greek View of Life...all 11 hours of it.



cut up into shorter pieces Here

There are several audiobooks of Greek myths to put you to sleep on youtube too...or find them on Librivox

But if your kids falls asleep reading those boring G rated versions of Greek gods and godesses, try the Percy Jackson version.

I bought the book for my granddaughter, who was scandalized since it starts with some really violent scenes...but the later stories are a bit better...advice: Skip the first few chapters.

and the download of the week from Librivox:

Brewing. a book on how to brew