The HIstory of Shorthand

With all the texting, recording, and abbreviations, who uses shorthand? BBC essay on why this is still used e.g. by reporters.

Shorthand was invented by Cicero....

The first fully formulated shorthand system, it's widely agreed, started in 63BC when the philosopher and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero wanted a reliable way to cover debates in Rome's Senate. Marcus Tullius Tiro, a learned freeman living in Cicero's house, obliged, inventing what became known as Tironian Notes.

I learned to type in high school, since back then, women didn't have many jobs open to them, but you could always get a job if you could type. But I didn't learn shorthand, which was harder. And our school taught Gregg, not the Pittman version discused in the article.

I did learn to use my own form of speedwriting, or I would take good notes, by summarizing what I heard. The problem, of course, is that in journalism sometimes you get things wrong.

For my office, I had a dictaphone which allowed you to slow down or stop as you typed.

The BBC article pushes the new version of shorthand called Teeline.

and this webpage has lots of Pittman shorthand links.

Family news

Ruby's school had a cotillion yesterday, and they came back late.

They are going back to Manila Monday.

I am short of cash: Not really but I am trying to stick to a budget and getting tight with money so my savings stop shrinking.

We have two new puppies: from the farm, shy and skinny. They are starting to get friendly, and last night they cried and cried, and then went silent. A few minutes later, George our killer Lab went to the door and scratched to go out. I went out to see the problem, and found the puppies frolicking happily under the sofa where our watchman was trying to sleep. They just were lonely.

This morning, I heard a loud puppy crying, and saw a small dog in the drainage ditch, covered with tarry black gunk, and thought it might be ourr puppy, so I got him out, only to find he was a stranger...so I picked him up in a trashcan and brought him in....after he settled down, he got a bath and I found he was a she... a golden retriever like puppy...

But she was having episodes of mild seizures/twiches, so I had her checked at the vet, where they said she probably swallowed some toxins since rabies usually is constant and in between the episodes she was friendly and playful.

One of our workers saw her and said he'll take her home if we can't find the owners. We are asking around but so far no one claims here. (Often people just throw unwanted dogs and kittens into the vacant lots and they wander to the ditch to drink... usually the kittens die even if I rescue them, but the dogs often become feral dogs, hiding in the weeds, getting thinner and thinner until you find them dead. But this puppie is so friendly I suspect she might have a home nearby.

Factoid of the day: a simple matchstick

So where does the word "matches" come from?

A discussion of the word and the evolution of the simple match at a discussion of whether they had matches in Middle Earth.

When gunpowder came into use in Europe in the 1500s the English adapted the word match to refer to a small cord or piece of wood soaked in sulphur; they used such matches to light lamps, candles, and cannons.Matchlock firearms were developed in the 1400s, and they used a match for lighting their gunpowder and triggering mechanisms resembling door locks. When the triggering (lock) mechanism was pulled it lowered a burning wick (match) onto a pan of gunpowder, thus igniting it.

but self lighting matches were invented in the 1800's.

and they add this: matches were invented in China.

more HERE
which says they were invented by a woman (maid).

And the first book to describe them was several hundred years later:

The book Records of the Unworldly and the Strange, by Tao Gu, China, circa AD 950, includes one of the earliest descriptions of a match:

If there occurs an emergency at night it may take some time to make a light to light a lamp. But an ingenious man devised the system of impregnating little sticks of pinewood with sulphur and storing them ready for use. At the slightest touch of fire they burst into flame…This marvelous thing was formerly called a “light-bringing slave”, but afterwards when it became an article of commerce its name was changed to ‘fire inch-stick’. 

Some Chinese scholars speculate that the invention was made in 577AD by women of the Northern Qi, (or Sui) who were unable to leave the confines of their city to search for tinder, because it was under siege by the Northern Zhou and Chen.

that link, from the Museum of everyday life, also includes other facts about matches through the years, and explains why in Spanish and Tagalog, we call them "phosphoro": because some early matches were made with white phosphorus.

and for the DIY tpyes: Here is how to make a "strike anywhere Match" from theInstructables website. which, alas, uses matches to make...

and PopSci has an article on how to make a firestarter with Elmer's glue

or just get a firestarter.

One thing I noticed: When I light a match from a box (which are the matches we use here) I hold the match between my thumb and index finger, and push it down the strip, using my thumb.(so the side of the match is the part in contact with the box).

Our cook holds it like a sewing needle, and pushes it down the strip, meaning the tip of the match is in contact with the strip.

Her way works the best...

Medical news

CDC reports on sudden deaths in oil/gas workers: usually associated with inhaling fumes from tanks, without using a respirator.

the report is a "headsup", because they suspect more deaths or unreported adverse incidents not ending in the death of the worker.

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the heart attack of the mummies

related item: ForWhatTheyAre blog recommends the PBS series on early human migration.

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via Improbable Research:


Cow Catalyser Combats Climate Change (new patent)

 Although hydrocarbon-burning factories and power stations belching CO2 might be first spring to mind when considering greenhouse-gas emissions, some say another kind of belching, from cows, causes even more damage. A newly patented (1st Dec. 2015) invention from Caldeira et al., entitled ‘Treatment of ruminant exhalations’ suggest that cows’ methane-loaded exhalations might be mitigated if the animals were to be fitted with a pair of catalytic-converters (one in each nostril). The electronically controlled methane oxidiser can use metallic catalysts in a similar way to those currently fitted to vehicles.

heh. But wait till we all become vegetarians. From Treehugger: LINK 

 the relative significance of direct human flatulence to the total carbon dioxide and methane loads was shown to have increased dramatically by a massive human shift to a highly legume- and cabbage-dependent diet. More vegetarian farts, in other words.

ah, but yes, there is a remedy for that: UNDER EASE UNDERWARE

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when I worked in Africa, we sterilized polyester fishline  because it was stronger and cheaper than using prepackaged silk or expensive plastic based sutures.

well, now a study shows using mosquito netting to reinforce hernias works as well as the more expensive and usually imported dacron/polyester mesh.

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Fatty liver in diabetics is not new, and rarely goes on to liver failure in my experience, but in the last 20 years there has been an increase in fatty liver disease in adults and also in children, and it makes me wonder what is going on.

the official blame goes to the high fat, high sugar American diet, and better dietary habits improve the  liver.

but I still suspect the increase is due to chemicals, either directly toxic or because they are endocrine disrupters.

Scientists have suspected that exposure early in life to BPA and certain other chemicals that disrupt the action of hormones, called endocrine disruptors, may promote obesity in adulthood, 

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I mentioned that huge methane well leak in California a couple weeks ago, but MomJones has the details.

it's been going on since October....and locals are now starting to evacuate the area.

heh. An oscar nominated film I actually saw

Inside Out has been nominated for best animated picture.

I downloaded it illegally for Ruby, since it didn't get shown in our area and I heard it was good. It is.

However, I suspect what will win is the "quirky" film about a belly button gazer, complete with sex scenes, that made a tiny amount of money in only 17 theatres.

No, Peanuts, the good Dinosaur, and Minions weren't nominated.

But Shaun the Sheep was.

Go Shaun! No, I didn't see that one either, but the TV show is on Youtube...

The other movies? Meh.

The Martian was in Manila but didn't get here, and I am looking forward to seeing Joy on HBO. But the rest? Either same old story or too violent.

My comment about the bear attack film: Luckily for him it was just a black bear. If it was in the Rockies, and the attack by a much larger grizzly, the movie would have lasted only five minutes.

Black bears are around populated areas, but luckily rarely attack unless you get too close to their cubs or to their food supply.
But a lot of our patients in Minnesota were afraid to jog because of bears, and I've seen them near town when we lived in Appalachea. So no, I won't root for the bear.

Factoids of the day

mostly from the BBC:

Pollsters say their polls were wrong because people with conservative opinions were "too hard to contact".

the positive side of global warming: The ice age has been postponed.

Oil prices goes under $30 a barrel, causing havoc in oil producing countries.

bu it is good news for us, since it means lower expenses in growing rice (handplows, threshers, transport) ordinary travel, and cooking (LPG is commonly used).

various urban legends place Jesus all over the place,  but the strangest one is that he visited the UK...

Lego, China, AiWeiWei, and censorship.

where did the word cocktail come from?

The Hottentot Venus:
Sarah Baartman remembered.

more popular than Mao: The face of Col Sanders.

cockroach links

DavidWarren muses about cockroaches

Don Marquis page on Archy the Cockroach

from Thailand: Roasted cockroach recipe

you prepare them like shrimp:

Directions:
Prepare the cockroaches and crickets by freezing overnight and thawing.  Remove the head, thorax and legs from the cockroaches and discard.  Abdomens may be chopped or left intact.

and altogether now;

Population movements and the collapse of civilization

The present day "immigrant" influx to Europe reminds one of how the Goths, fleeing the Huns, sought to enter the Roman Empire, and it's aftermath.


but an earlier puzzle is the Bronze age collapse and the invasion of the Sea Peoples.

Ah but the invasion happened in two periods, the first with the Pharoah who followed Ramses the Great of bible fame, and the second with Ramses III, who is best known for winning the battle but bbing assasinated by his wives after coming home.

There is some question if this was done for greed, or if he neglected his own people from famine.

Well, anyway, Maritime History podcast is covering those times in their recent podcasts LINK

I always wondered if the raid on Egypt in book 14 of the Odyssey  (which was actually Ulysses telling tall tales as usual) was actually a rememberance of other Greeks who raided Egypt...

However, the second wave is the real question: Were they the cause or the result of the Bronze age collapse.

and modern archeology notes that the Philistines might have included many Mycenaean age Greeks.

if a lot of this sounds confusing, it might be me, or it might be because the specialists are still arguing about the details

Eric Cline in his book 1177 has a discussion of the controversy,

the Caregiver wage gap

Freakonomics discusses why women earn less than men...

a long discussion of various factors, but the big one is this:

The noted public-policy scholar Anne-Marie Slaughter, in a book called Unfinished Business, singled out what she calls the “care penalty” as a main driver of gender inequity.
Here’s how Slaughter sees it:
ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER: If you take women who don’t have caregiving obligations, they’re almost equal with men. It’s somewhere in the 95 percent range. But when women then have children, or again are caring for their own parents or other sick family members who need care, then they need to work differently.

 sigh. been there done that

The WAGD post of the day

Are you worried that the US power grid will collapse from attacks from ISIS/Iran/Russia/a massive solar flare/green men from outer space?
The REAL enemy is closer to home:

SUCCESSFUL CYBER WAR OPS AS OF 2016.01.05

Agent	Success
Squirrel	623
Bird	214
Racoon	52
Snake	47
Rat	25
Beaver	9
China	0
Russia	0
USA	1

ABOUT THIS MAP

"I don't think paralysis [of the electrical grid] is more likely by cyberattack than by natural disaster. And frankly the number-one threat experienced to date by the US electrical grid is squirrels." - John C. Inglis, Former Deputy Director, National Security Agency 2015.07.09

If you have confirmation of additional unclassified ops please email ops AT cybersquirrel1 DOT com

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

headsup DaveBarry

For later reading

Via TeaAtTrianon: on CWR, people note the best books they read last year (lots of which are classics, not "best sellers")

yeah: A lot of "best sellers" tend to be by "belly button gazing" types on their narcissistic search for something or other, usually romance.

yes, sometimes I like romance, but even with the few I enjoy, like Outlander, I wondered: they had so many long, deep conversations with their paramours. Yes, pure female fantasy...


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Related item from TeaAtTrianon: Quoting Bishop Sheen on the Anti christ.

The pre-Communist Russian belief is that he will come disguised as the Great Humanitarian; he will talk peace, prosperity and plenty not as means to lead us to God, but as ends in themselves. . . The third temptation in which Satan asked Christ to adore him and all the kingdoms of the world would be His, will become the temptation to have a new religion without a Cross, a liturgy without a world to come, a religion to destroy a religion, or a politics which is a religion–one that renders unto Caesar even the things that are God’s.

Sounds familiar...alas...

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related item: survival at all costs, and revenge. Or maybe not, if this review is true, "the Revenant" isn't the blood fest it is made out to be in most reviews.

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the US is not the only place that is debating the definition of "natural born citizen": Grace Poe is fighting to run here, and running into problems.

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for later reading: Sunni vs Shiia on the internet.

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Handicapped people often need their dogs with them to navigate, but in recent years, the passengers who inist on "support animals" are getting weird and agressive/

Delta says on its website it allows customers to travel with emotional support animals as long as they're 'trained to behave properly in public settings ... Emotional support animals travel free of charge and the animal is exempt from cabin allotment. Like service animals, emotional support animals can be transported in the cabin.'
However, a closer look at the airline's stipulations suggests the turkey was lucky not to be booted off. Delta lists the animals it doesn't accept due to safety and/or public health concerns, including hedgehogs, ferrets, reptiles... and non-household birds, including farm poultry.

Turkeys are aggressive dirty birds, not "emotional support animals". This is just a scam for folks to get out of paying luggage fees to transport the pet.

ah, but spoiled yuppies think differently. More HERE.

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the Cologne assaults might indeed be political agenda, not just drunken bums feeling up women... report from the UKMail.

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Yes, that is political, but this is sick... a Filipino cybersex den for pedophiles.  again from the UKMail:

Poverty combined with the rise of cheap, high speed internet access has turned the country into the hub of a billion-dollar cyber sex industry with tens of thousands of girls being exposed to sexual abuse. Last year, 139 Brits alone were being investigated for paying to watch Filipino children online. Yet that number is just the tip of the iceberg. Interpol and the FBI estimate that over 750,000 paedophiles are online at any one time looking at child porn or live streaming.

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Sigh. Been there, done that

GetReligion links to 13 John Allen's essays about Christian persecution.

Some are killed for being Christian, as victims of the radical Islamicist terrorists, but many are killed for their stances on morality or for defending the helpless, or because they oppose the violence of the local drug gangs, self proclaimed "insurgents", or by the paramilitary death squads....

I had an earlier post about the priests killed in Mexico, and Allen covers the deaths of two women in Colombia, where many priests and clergy have been killed also,  but even here in the Philippines, we have had martyrs: A priest killed for defending the indigenous from those wanting to steal and destroy their land, a priest kidnapped and killed by the Islamicists because he refused to go quietly, knowing that he would be used for ransom money that would be used to kill more people. And several Protestant bishops and pastors killed for their left wing/pro poor people stances...

Allen notes that when you take a stance against violence, either side can kill you:

They face danger not for their religious beliefs, but for preaching against the drug trade and the killing in ways that infuriate both gangs and paramilitaries of left and right. ... Chilito was executed by a right-wing paramilitary and Castilla by a left-wing guerrilla group, proving that martyrdom in Colombia is an equal-opportunity enterprise.

yes, and when I worked in Africa, we had missionaries (both European and local people who worked in isolated schools and hospitals) and ordinary locals killed by both sides...not to mention those killed or injured when their car or truck hit a landmine.

none of this is new, of course: the real story is that the church can be an independent force against the tyranny of the strong, be it Thomas Becket or Thomas Moore...

but Allen's work is "new" to many Americans...
he used to be on the National Catholic Reporter, but is now at a Boston paper..

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update: Allen lecture on youtube. for later watching:

Family News

Joy is back from Manila after renewing my residency permit.

She brought Krispy Kreme donuts with her.

There goes the diet.

It is quite hot (the start of "summer" here, which lasts until the monsoons arrive in June). They must be irrigating because the canal was full again.

Light bulbs are back

Here in the Philippines, it is almost impossible to find old fashioned light bulbs...thanks to the green lobby who likes to make us green by replacing cheap and rugged items with more expensive ones that the poor can't afford.

and the cheap mercury filled ones tend to break and/or burn out quickly, making me worry that the mercury from badly discarded bulbs will cause health problems in the future.

So in our house, we are gradually changing to LED lights, which are also harsh, and a lot more expensive, but hopefully will last more than six months.

But now a breakthrough: MIT has developed a light bulb that is more energy efficient than the LED light bulbs.

what is their main advantage?

(the new lightbulbs) shows colours ar more naturally than modern energy-efficient bulbs. .

Any woman wearing makeup could tell you: You look terrible under flourescent lights.

Usually traditional light bulbs are only about five per cent efficient, with 95 per cent of the energy being lost to the atmosphere. In comparison LED or florescent bulbs manage around 14 per cent efficiency. But the scientists believe that the new bulb could reach efficiency levels of 40 per cent.
.Previously researchers have warned that the blue light emitted by modern bulbs could be stopping people from getting to sleep at night and campaigners have expressed concerns about the dangerous chemicals they contain.

the new bulb? Similar to the old fashioned incadescent light bulbs.

Researchers at MIT have shown that by surrounding the filament with a special crystal structure in the glass they can bounce back the energy which is usually lost in heat, while still allowing the light through.

Calling Edison, Calling Mr Edison....

Science headline of the day

Praying mantises watch movies while wearing tiny 3-D glasses

the experiment is to see if the bugs have depth perception.

Hey Francis: get real

According to Reuters, the Pope' new books wants to extend mercy to everyone. (not offering repentence and a new life, but merly a green light for whatever you want).

Traditional Catholics have worked with the marginal of society for about 2000 years, but you wouldn't know it from this article. Heck, traditional Catholics have been the marginal in society for 2000 years, but I guess he only addresses the good news of salvation to his fellow intellectuals, not ordinary folks.

But what really worries me: if the article is correct, the Pope is busy lambasting the evil people who dare to try to judge good and evil, and who actually try to live according to their conscience.

Not a good thing.

so let's hear it from a good atheist on what is his problem?

“The evil in the world comes almost always from ignorance, and goodwill can cause as much damage as ill-will if it is not enlightened. People are more often good than bad, though in fact that is not the question. But they are more or less ignorant and this is what one calls vice or virtue, the most appalling vice being the ignorance that thinks it knows everything and which consequently authorizes itself to kill. The murderer's soul is blind, and there is no true goodness or fine love without the greatest possible degree of clear-sightedness.” 
Camus: The Plague

giving a green light to bad behavior under the guise of mercy is not merciful, because you are letting the bad behavior go on.

So does the Pope want us to ignore the harm done by people who give into their weakness and sin, and then insist they did nothing wrong?

Who defends the victims?

 We docs run into this all the time, and try to get our folks into stable relationships, better health habits, and/or rehab. We try to help the family members who suffer morally, financially and emotionally from their sins.

What we don't do is say: Hey, who am I to judge?

So who am I to judge?

Again, Camus:

 All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it's up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences.”

and I found the audiobook on Youtube.



it is both interesting from a medical point of view (for those of us who fight sickness against all odds) but it is also an allergory of the moral collapse of France under Nazi occupation, and that a small number of men said now and decided to fight against this "disease"....

The world is changing...maybe

Remember when Rolling Stone put one of the Boston marathon bombers on their cover, looking like an innocent student?

Well, they did it again.

(headsup via AnnAlthouse)

A drug lord in Mexico, where over 100 thousand people have been killed by cartel violence over the last ten years, has an interview by actor/activist Sean Penn. To make things worse, the guy was allowed editorial control on what was printed, meaning he could veto anything sounding bad against him in the interview.

the good news? Whoops. They got him.

Mexico Attorney General Arely Gomez had said on Friday that Guzman’s contact with actors and producers for a possible biopic helped give law enforcement a new lead on tracking and capturing the world’s most notorious drug kingpin.

Well, after all, if the spies could find a Filipino terrorist group after they ordered pizza, they could probably have spied on Penn (one doubts this left wing narcissist would risk his life by actually spilling the beans).

However, apparently the article included this quote as a summary of the ethics behind the article:

 "The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom."

Uh, actually that is not true.

One's conscience is innate, even found in toddlers, and is pretty nigh universal.

However, about ten percent of the population are sociopaths or narcissists who do not have a conscience and therefore don't believe others do. They are pressured into doing the right thing by society because it is advantageous for them, but once anarchy ensues or the cops aren't around, they are free to do anything they want to do.

This, by the way, is why the idea that one needs God to be good is wrong: No, it's an evolutionary advantage to be good for most folks.

(As a Catholic, I believe God arranged evolution to hard wire the brain to be good, just like he arranged for the brain to be hardwired for religion, but that's another subject altogether).

A good society is one where the conscience is backed by custom and law.

However, as studies have shown, public pressure will allow ordinary folks to overcome their consciences and do evil.

Which leads us to the saying: one man with courage is a majority.

Like the child in the Emperor's new clothes, once someone dares to oppose the false opinions, often those with consciences recognize their own opposition and get the courage to say no.

Belmont Club notes that we might be getting a "western spring"...

 Yes,  but is that a good thing?

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world..

The Arab Spring only let the radicals take over (a gun after all is more powerful than a pen...at least in the short run), but now Europe and the USA are also having a lot of ordinary folks stepping up and saying WTF (or in the US: TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP). Sigh.

The tension between the forces of political correctness and the pent-up forces of repressed cultural traditions is now bursting like a spring wound up beyond containment. 

In the USA, a lot of us are tired of being called "white people" and "bigots" (especially those of us who are ethnic Europeans who ourselves suffered discrimination). And we are tired of being made fun of because we think one should work for a living, be polite, follow the law, not take drugs, not be promiscuous, and that being married and faithful and taking care of our children is something good, not something to be ridiculed.

Luckily, America's constitution permits an election cycle that allows the craziness to be aired out every four years...

Europe's problem is an unregulated ingress of people who could cause trouble.

The MSM stresses all those poor families fleeing being murdered, but the reality is that 70 to 80 percent of the "refugees" are young men, often not from countries at war, and who unlike the Mexicans and Central Americans migrating illegally to the USA, may are probably not going to assimilate and many may not easily find work.

Uh, why not regulate who gets in?

Which is what the unwashed masses in the USA are saying to Obama, not about the Mexicans who take their jobs but about the drug and gangs coming in a porous border...

Yet most Hispanics are trying to support their families, and given a generation or two will assimilate and intermarry, just like the Catholics and Jews and Asians have done and are doing now (often churches help this along ).

But this might not be true in Europe, where citizenship is based on ancestry, and the madrasses are manned by wild eyed preachers inspired by Saudi's rigid creed.

An excess of young testosterone filled Muslim men in a country where women go around half naked? Guess what happens? if only a a tiny percent of them act on their impulses (as seemed to have happened on New Year's eve) you have a problem...DUH.

Europe has been through this before, after WWII, where a lot of young men were wandering around looking for love.

Yes, the Red Army rapes were policy to punish civilians, but the Allied were pretty good at it too, albeit a lot of the sex that went on then was exchanging sex for fun, food or gifts: as the saying went: They are oversexed, overpaid, and over here.

So Europe has a problem, and what makes it worse is that their "right wing" resembles David Duke a lot more than Trump.

Ah but what about Asia?

Two potential troublespots here.

One of these days, North Korea will implode...hopefully it will not explode.

And China's problems are simmering too: Stock market collapse?  Housing bubble? Corruption? Wildcat strikes? Unemployment?

StrategyPage has a summary here.

well, I suspect that if China gets too chaotic, what will happen is a war against those nasty aggressive Filipinos.

 Photo: Kalayaan ATIN ITO/Facebook

Yes, the latest Pinoy aggression against China is a bunch of college students armed with smartphones and Facebook...

Conspiracy theories...Whoops they might be true

in 2013, the USCatholic bishops sued the Obama administration, but it didn't get much publicity.

From CNS news site:

(CNSNews.com) - The Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., is arguing in a new lawsuit that the Obama administration is engaged in a “conscious political strategy to marginalize and delegitimize” Catholic “religious views on contraception by holding them up for ridicule on the national stage.”

At issue in the lawsuit is whether the administration can force the archdiocese to secure a third-party administrator for its self-insurance plan who will provide sterilizations, contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs at no cost to church employees at some of the archdiocese’s separately incorporated subunits.
These subunits include a number of Catholic schools and charities, including Archbishop Carroll High School and Catholic Charities of Washington.

the administration insisted that these religious institutions were not "religious employers" so they could be ordered around.

Ho hum. what else is new? Just some confusion in the language of the law, nes pas?

But today, Instapundit  links to a NReview article that notes that this was not an accident:

SHOCKER: Internal Obama Administration Emails Reveal Deliberate Targeting of Catholics with Contraceptive Mandate. “Administration health policy officials were downright obsessed with figuring out which Catholic institutions would fit within the section 6033-based exemption. As early as October 2011, the White House was trying to figure out how to structure the exemption so that Catholic universities would be forced to provide student contraceptives in student health plans. In July 2012, emails show officials trying to make sure that the contraceptive mandate would treat the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops – the spiritual leaders of Roman Catholic entities in the United States – differently from the colleges, charities, and other groups that they lead. The documents were originally discovered during congressional inquiries into the sharing of tax information between the IRS and the White House.”

more HERE...an article about the suit by the Little Sisters of the Poor refusing to cooperate with the administration's mandates.

First amendment? What first amendment?
Silly me.

I guess we need to ignore the first amendment...

But didn't Obama take an oath to defend the constitution?

ah, but the bishops still back him on immigration and gun control so don't expect them to make a fuss.

But the Little Sisters might have more guts: They actually recognized that the usual idiots took over a lot of the US orders and the nun's "leadership" group back in 1980's,  years before the Vatican noticed. And unlike the Vatican, they took on the PCNew age sisters by leaving that group and starting an organization for nuns who are still Catholic.

yet this has implications much larger than the culture wars.


Reread that last part: it is a shocker too:

The documents were originally discovered during congressional inquiries into the sharing of tax information between the IRS and the White House.(italics mine).

Heh. Some of us are old enough to remember Nixon, who had an enemy list, and tried to get the IRS to harass his political enemies.

USA Today article from 2013 remembering Nixon and the IRS bureaucrat who defied the president. 

In the early 1970s, when embattled President Richard Nixon sought to use the Internal Revenue Service as a weapon to investigate his enemies, the administration turned to Walters, a Hartsville, S.C., native and head of the tax agency, to do the dirty work.

Walters, now 93, said he refused.

The IRS controversy currently dogging President Barack Obama has raised new allegations that the agency has been engaged in political meddling and bias. Obama has denounced as "outrageous" the targeting of conservative political groups by the IRS.

Walters walks with a cane now and is soft-spoken. But the recent IRS developments prompted him to sit down for an interview and resume his personal quest, not for vindication, but to validate his rejection of Nixon's tactics while he was commissioner of Internal Revenue.

Family news

It's the start of hot season.

I went to early mass at dawn, when it is cool. Today is the feast of Jesus' baptism, but they had the Black Nazarene statue in the back of the church,  there, presumably for a procession after one of the later masses.

The Black Nazarene is a statue of Jesus carrying the cross...the statue turned black in a fire or something. But every year, Manila shuts down for the procession.

The idea is that Christ suffered, and we identify our pain with his sufferings.

Not my cup of tea: Catholicism tends to be flexible in worship, using art and music and stories and customs according to the culture of the people, (whereas the Protestants here tend to be like Americans: literal, strict and emphasis on words/quotes, similar to some American Catholics...
Of course, this lets them look down on the hoi polloi who have statues and rosaries and who enjoy a fiesta honoring Mary or the saints, instead of honoring a football team as is done in the USA).

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Other family news is that we lost another of the outdoor dogs. She wasn't that old, but was related to the one who died last week. I wonder if they had an illness, or got poisoned by chemicals since they are allowed into the garage at night as watchdogs.

I wasn't too sorrowful about it: She was the only dog here who has bitten me. She was medium sized, but took after her father, George the killer Lab and was quite aggressive.

Sigh.

We buried her under the Banana trees in the back garden, lighting two candles and said a prayer.

My 3 dogs are also getting older, and the Labrador now sleeps in my room. He bites so I feel safe, but we now need a couple of medium sized dogs to roam around the large business center etc. at night for safety. We will check if there are puppies at the farm to bring down.

Terrorists or morons

I have worked in the Mountain states, but only in farm areas with irrigation, or on Indian Reservations.

I don't know much about these groups holding a "standoff" in the US West, but I remember the "white supremicist" farm that aided the OKC bomber was full of FBI and/or ATF informants, something that was sort of covered up in the news (but known to locals, which is why the second guy is still alive and in jail, despite a conviction in a state that is more death penalty happy than Texas: locals figure one of these days he'll tell the truth of who was behind it.)

Professor Podles relates the background on the latest self proclaimed militia kerfuffle in Oregon. He notes both sides of the dispute and then notes an earlier story about two robbers and potential bombers who eluded the FBI in a 1998 case.

he refers to one of the Hillerman Mysteries that also had a reference to the group: Hunting Badger.
One of the few of the series that I didn't bring with me, but it is on Scribd so I'll add it to my reading list.

as for the militia, this quote comes to mind: