Hackers? We haz that

CNN here is getting hysterical about the "Russians" hacking Hillary's unsecured bathroom server and emails, and releasing them to embarass her.

Assange and others with Wikileaks said,, au contraire, it was a whistleblower in theDNC who did this, because he/she was disgusted with the dirty tricks that they were doing. Deep Throat redux? Uh Oh.

Heh. I'm old enough to remember when "Deep Throat" did this to show Nixon's dirty tricks, and became a hero. But Nixon was evil, of course, whereas Hillary had a vagina and is above reproach.

On the other hand, the government has been hacked so many times its almost a weekly backpage story.

Did I mention that my Federal personnel file was stolen? Presumably by Chinese hackers.

My favorite hack was the teenager who hacked into the email of the head of the CIA.

As the saying goes: Houston, we haz a problem here. And it's not the Russians, who after all are not the only ones hacking government related computers (NSA anyone?)

But the headlines keep repeating "hack the election" to describe this. NO, hacking the election is hacking voting machines on line. As far as I know, this was not done, and Jill had them hand count the paper ballots to prove it didn't elect Trump, albeit so far no one checked if the dead were denied their vote in Chicago.

A more correct news story would be that there was a release of the DNC's dirty tricks via a whistleblower. You can fill in the blanks if the dirty tricks were found by a disgruntled employee, a Russian spy, an idle teenagers, or anti war Wikileaks


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Canadian David Warren muses about education, Boloney and Bologna's medieval law school graduates who ran medieval Europe, and then adds this bit:

But of course, they were also detested for their arrogance and sophistry, their “old boy” clubbishness and exclusive networking.
They, as it were, spoke “Bologna,” and my speculative etymology is founded on this fact. 

 Today, the populist Trump is doing something remarkable. He is making appointments not from the “Ivy League.” Candidates from Harvard, Yale, and Columbia — who overwhelmingly populate the Obama bureaucracy, as other administrations going back to FDR, if not Woodrow Wilson — have suddenly ceased to be the gene pool. This, to my mind, is a significant development; one I was not entirely expecting.

Trump has the nerve to look across the rest of America for talent and good sense. Somehow he noticed in his flyovers from Manhattan that there were people down there. We will see if the result is a disaster. 

hmmm... I never thought of it that way.

ut hopefully these business leaders are more aware of the danger of industrial espionage than those who went to Harvard.

StrategyPage has a lot of essays about hacking and the ongoing computer wars, The latestdiscussion is how the Army is offering rewards if a hacker finds holes in their security system: essentially using outside hackers to see if they can hack into the system instead of hiring their own.... i.e. crowdsourcing "white hat" hackers.

Unfortunately the attackers (spies, mercenary hackers or just very skilled and bored but talented hackers) have a lot more skills than the people the Department of Defense currently has playing defense. In effect there is a Cyber War and the Department of Defense finds itself outnumbered and outgunned. Desperate measures are required. -- Przemysław Juraszek

hmm.... if a lot of this sounds familiar, it's because that was the plot behind DieHard 4.0....

But I guess Harvard Graduates don't watch action film, or listen to C2C or other "fake news" sites.

Remembering Walt

Write Brian Sibley writes it is the 50th anniversary of Walt Disney's death, and relates how his life was changed by Disney's work.

. During the fifty years since that day, I have continued to study and, occasionally, write about the life and work of Walt Disney and, in the process, had the privilege of meeting many of those who knew, loved and (occasionally) loathed the man. Now, once again, I am working on a book about Disney and am realising that I am passing on a torch to those who will come after who will not have the familiarity of having lived when Disney was still known throughout the world as a flesh-and-blood person as opposed to just a corporate name represented by a copyrighted signature.

Disney's genius was not just in his creativity but that he could use the talents and creativity of others to assemble a product, in this case, a film, a tv show, and his themepark.

This is from the film "Saving Mr Banks".

link:
The emotional weight of the scene featuring the song "Feed the Birds" is based on the fact that it was Walt Disney's personal favorite song. According to the real Sherman Brothers, Walt would call them into his office to play the song when he felt depressed. It got to the point that he would call them in and simply say, "Play it," and they'd know what he wanted. According to Richard M. Sherman, Walt felt that the song was a perfect summation of why he created Walt Disney Pictures in the first place.

Podcast of the week

Why did Dickens write the Christmas Carol?

from talking history

Pasta science

Improbable research reports on how to use pasta to explain polarimetry
, t

“Our experience of explaining polarimetry to the general public is that they frequently ask how molecules rotate light, which is difficult to explain using non-technical language. Therefore we were keen to find an analogous large scale system which mimicked the polarimeter and used everyday left- and right-handed objects.”

• See: The World’s First “Pastarimeter”: An Analogous Demonstration of Polarimetry Using Pasta Fusilli J. Chem. Educ., 2002, 79 (10), p 1214.

more pasta science at link, including:
• Also see: Pasta’s place in the history of superconductivity

and:

 Nuclear Pasta (a type of degenerate matter found within the crusts of neutron stars) at Wikipedia :
“When the gnocchi phase is compressed, as would be expected in deeper layers of the crust, the electric repulsion of the protons in the gnocchi is not fully sufficient to support the existence of the individual spheres, and they are crushed into long rods, which, depending on their length, can contain many thousands of nucleons. Immersed in a neutron liquid, these rods are known as the spaghetti phase. Further compression causes the spaghetti phase rods to fuse, and form sheets of nuclear matter. This is called the lasagna phase.”

Cat Item of the day

headsup Dustbury

ten reasons cat meow.

wikipedia says:

A meow /miˈaʊ/, also spelled miaow, is the most familiar vocalization of cats. A meow can be assertive, plaintive, friendly, bold, welcoming, attention soliciting, demanding, or complaining. It can even be silent, where the cat opens its mouth but does not vocalize. Adult cats rarely meow to each other, and so adult meowing to human beings is likely to be a post-domestication extension of meowing by kittens.^[1]

Invention of the year: A cat collar that translates the meow for you.



the real reason my cats meow?

Philippine news

The local NEJournal has an article about the large drug rehab center opened in nearby Fort Magsaysay.

it also has an article that the funding is party via Hulang Rulun.

So who is Mr Rulun? a local Chinese tycoon.

Asia Times article here

and this is important to understand why Duterte cursed out Obama:

For the Philippines leader, Huang’s support for the rehabilitation centers is in sharp contrast to the criticism of Duterte’s drugs war by the United States and other Western nations. China, Duterte said, had offered help “without boasting, without news, without publicity.” “This is how you treat your friends,” he said in a speech. “You do not go about reprimanding.”

It is Christmas, so I am not spending time in the news, but the NYTimes had a hit piece on Duterte's war on drug related murders, and I hear "100 Global Foreign policy thinkers" just awarded the lovely lady in the news an award (in contrast, here she is a laughing stock here for sleeping with her driver and is suspsected of using him as a go between to get kick backs from drug dealers...)

of course, others who got the award include other globalists approved leaders like Hillary, Baby Trudeau, Merkel, and a transgender lawmaker no one has ever heard of but who is being honored for bragging about his/her psychiatric problem in public and getting elected anyway.

the rumor is that the award was via friends of friends of the now VP, and the idea is that if they can undermine Duterte, she will become President, in the same way that lovely Gloria became president by throwing out ERAP.

in the US, there is a push to see marijuana as "harmless", (put Soros money/Open Society agenda of legalizing all drugs everywhere... this is an open secret for years, but also rarely mentioned in the MSM)....Illegal drugs make corruption of officials and cops worse, but the Soros minions insist just legalize and tax them and voila, no problem.

Really?

But what is being ignored in the MSM discussion of drugs if this:

“Drugs have always been a public hazard worldwide,” (Huang) said in comments emailed to Reuters by a company official. “They hurt people’s bodies and disrupt social order.”

Drug use is not just killing people by overdose (and by Hepatitis C and by HIV) but by destroying families, by destroying communities, by gang related crime (as in Chicago, where drug gang murders are ignored by the BLM folks), not to mention one million children brought up by relatives or in foster care because mom is too high to care for the kid.


In the meanwhile the back story of meth/crack and now heroin abuse is being covered up. Some black lawmakers once blamed Crack on the CIA and/or the gov't trying to destroy the inner city, but that story disappeared with Obama. So is the heroin problem also a government conspiracy against middle America? (no, I don't think it is a conspiracy as much as not a priority to stop).

Ah, but the "opioid" abuse was "recognized" by the FDA and blamed on doctors. We got oodles of guidelines not to give out pain pills, while legalizing "assisted suicide" for people in pain. Duh. My cynical take: a twofer. use the narc excuse to keep docs in line to obey guidelines of Obamacare on everything, while eliminating those expensive useless eaters.

Essentially the meme in the MSM was that evil doctors were behind the abuse, but the real story is that the heroin and opiod analogues are being smuggled in from Mexico.

Of course, if you admitted the open border with Mexico might be a reason for the smuggling, (not to mention the influx of Hispanic gangs who terrorize black inner city neighborhoods in LA and white folks in the midwest) you would have to admit Trump might be right.

The violence in Mexico is an undercovered story too, as is the involvement of the Mexican cartels in the Opioid and meth epidemics, with help from China.

A lot of the illegal drugs here  and in other place around the world, and this doesn't include the problem with providing precursor chemicals, also from China.

China is also fighting their own drug problem. And China has a major problem with corruption, meaning that those making substandard, counterfeit, or illegal stuff can get away with it. President Xi's fight against corruption is another undercovered story in the US MSM... but it might get some notice now that Trump has appointed a friend of Xi to be their next Ambassador.

In the meanwhile, here in the Philippines, Duterte continues to be popular among ordinary folks.

Duterte is wrong to look the other way when vigilantes pay back local low level pushers while ignoring the big shots involved, but you know, every day there is another headline of a big shot whose case is thrown out of court or the courts decide they are innocent (and often these cases are years old when tried, meaning the witnesses have been paid off or disappeared).

Sigh.

been there, done that: every time I visti Lolo's grave, I have to pass the huge Mausoleum of the ex mayor who was behind the hit that killed our nephew in the crossfire, but stayed out of jail even though he was indicted.

Behold the power of Drudge

LINK

the stranglehold on the news ended with the blue dress.

I'm old enough to remember when the power difference between employer and employee (or doctor/ patient or pastor/altarboy) not just illegal but morally wrong, and those who did such things were shunned. The idea not to abuse or sleep with those under your power goes back to Hippocrates (the Hippocratic oath includes a part not to sleep with patients, their families, or "their slaves").


But of course, the Clinton impeachment was not about having an affair, but about covering up a relationship with an employee, which was illegal, and the fact he lied under oath that he never did such thing, so that a lawsuit where he ordered a state employee to give him sex would be thrown out of court.

and Hillary claimed it was the Vast Right Wing conspiracy, sort of like the "fake news" and "the Russians put those fake emails on Anthony Weiner's computer" lies we are hearing about now.

they can blame the alt/r or the Russians or whoever, but maybe the Weiner emails were the last straw.

Swallows and Amazons

a new movie version of the classic children's book.

Poldark!

Quick, before the copyright cops find it: several of the audiobooks are on youtube for your listening pleasure.
 

Demelza (book 2)

(Jeremy Poldark, book 3, has already been deleted)

Warleggan (book 4)

Black Moon is not available.(book 5)

and then some of the later books, which have Ross and Demelza in them but include a lot of plots about relatives and friends and their kids:

the Four Swans (book 6)

the Angry Tide (book 7)

the Stranger from the Sea (book 8)

the Miller's Dance (book 9)

actually, I have listened or read most of them already, because they are at ScribD....

Orange babies and blue men

A follow up on a previous post about Rose Madder being fed to horses to make their hooves pink.

That is not the only dye/foodstuff that can do this:



Wholesome baby food website discusses the question: Why is my baby orange.

Image: keeleymorris on Twitter

Carotenemia is a medical term for a condition that causes the skin to turn orange-ish due to increased blood carotene levels. In the vast majority of cases seen, it is associated with large consumption of carotene in the diet; as in too many carrots or sweet potatoes. Read more at http://wholesomebabyfood.momtastic.com/orangebaby.htm#1kHfjLYwFgte6T66.99

more at Wikipedia 

we see this a lot in kids, and the way you can tell it's not jaundice is that their eyes are not yellow. The treatment is to reassure the parents.

I've only seen it once in an adult: It she admitted that she had a craving for carrots.

People who are anemic often have similar cravings: although ice eating and starch/clay eating are more common.

I tested her, and sure enough, she was anemic and low in iron.

but carrots are not the only food that can cause problems: tomatoes can do it also, from the lycopene in them.



argyria is from silver in the skin (benign) and Iron overload (from a genetic defect, hemochromatosis or from being given too much iron for severe anemias) can also discolor the skin.

It's not hemochromatosis per se, but there is a well known problem of dark black skin in Bantus in Africa.

We saw a lot of very dark skin in our heavy native-beer drinkers in Africa: it is because the local beer is brewed in iron kettles, but also because some people carry a gene that makes them vulnerable to the condition.

WIKIPEDIA link

Dietary iron overload is the consumption of large amount of home-brewed beer with high amount of iron content in it. Preparing beer in iron pots or drums results in high iron content. The iron content in home-brewed beer is around 46–82 mg/l compared to 0.5 mg/l in commercial beer

we didn't treat it as such (often these patients also had cirrhosis from alcohol, and/or viatmin B deficiency, so mainly we would feed them up and tell them to stop drinking.

The Wikipedia article also suggests this might be behind the high rate of liver cancer in Africa, but I have also read that mold in certain foods might be another reason for this, or maybe Hepatitis C.

finally, there was a book of medical mysteries that included a story about 11 blue men.

this was due  someone accidentally putting sodium nitrate into salt shaker.

Full story HERE

quite a few medicines can cause methhemoglobinemia, but most of these medicines are used in doses too small to cause problems unless you overdose, or unless have a genetic problem. this long medical article discusses the problem.

and then there is a rare congenital form of methhemoglobinemia that runs in families... one example is the Blue Fugates of Kentucky.

Simbang gabi take two

Traditionally after mass, families go outside and snack on traditional food (in our town, there are vendors in the parking lot and the street, but the young folks tend to go to the nearby city square where there are not only vendors but lots of benches to sit and flirt with each other).

This is a commercial for ice cream :

Simbang Gabi

advent song: Come Jesus Come.

Simbang Gabi starts this morning.

the nine day prayer (AKA Novena) before Christmas was a mass traditionally said very early in the morning so that farmers could attend it before going to the fields. Simbang Gabi translates the night mass; an alternative name is the Misa de Gallo (the mass of the rooster, i.e. at dawn). link

Lolo would sometimes attend the mass here when he was well, but not me (I don't do mornings).

But in modern days, often they hold the mass at other times.
Our church has morning mass, but also has an alternate time in the early evening for people to attend after work.

Family news

Ruby has a Christmas party in Manila and will be baking cupcakes to go.

she got this photo in the local paper.

Philippine finalists for Children's short film festival in Hokkaido

The cook has the flu: Presumably the rest of us will be sick in a day or two.

One of the small outdoor dogs is in heat, so it does get noisy outside when visitors come here in the middle of the night to court and Papa dog, who is old and half blind, tries to chase them off. Ah, love.

history stories below the fold

Before the evil white man, Native Americans lived in peace and harmony.

Uh Oh: They did what?

New evidence suggests that the site — now part of Montezuma Castle National Monument — was not simply evacuated by its inhabitants, as archaeologists have believed for more than 80 years. Instead, recent research shows that its final days were likely fraught with violent conflict and death — an account corroborated by Native American oral histories of the site’s collapse some 600 years ago.

that was before Colombus;

between the years 1375 and 1395.

the oral histories of both the Apache and the Hopi tell the story, but hey, why believe the survivors when the story goes against the meme of a peaceful paradise? It also confirms the Apache were there at the time, which also goes against the set story that they moved in later.

Now, if we only can figure out why Cahokia disappeared about the same time.

Global warming, anyone?

another meme that is being chipped away is the idea that Amerindians moved in via an ice free corrider.

An alternative theory that they moved down the coast at the end of the last ice ageh is now being explored. The problem? Global warming when the ice age melted means that their villages etc might be under water.

Conspiracy theory of the day

No, it wasn't Russia but insider leaks that did in Hillary.

I mean, who do you believe, Assange or the CIA?

The worst thing about all this is that it is aimed at promoting further conflict with Russia. This puts everyone in danger for the sake of more profits for the arms and security industries – including of course bigger budgets for the CIA. As thankfully the four year agony of Aleppo comes swiftly to a close today, the Saudi and US armed and trained ISIS forces counter by moving to retake Palmyra. This game kills people, on a massive scale, and goes on and on.

heh. it's a conspiracy to get money for the "military Industrial complex", a phrase coined by that extremist left winger, Ike.

this is, of course, a far left wing site and the article includes Hillary's election shenanigans against Bernie. And of course, no one needed the Russians to figure out how her minions manipulated the press in her favor. 

but the "headsup" is from the very right wing blog "Gateway pundit".

I sort of agree with this quote from the Diplomad2.0:,

In conclusion, did Putin throw the election? I very much doubt it. I doubt those blue collar workers in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio, etc., were marching to the beat laid down by Moscow.

Hillary and her cohorts engaged in unethical and illegal activities which came to light and the people did not like those activities...

 The Russians did not create the shady Clinton Foundation, although they gave generously to it and got access to US uranium in exchange, the Russians did not have Hillary put highly sensitive material on her private server, they did not have the DNC pass debate questions to Hillary, they did not . . . . well, you can fill in the blanks.

Actually, Hillary lost the election with one word: Deplorables.

mad people go to the polls, so you don't want to make folks mad.

As for the Bernie backers: I suspect a lot stayed home.

And yes, I am ignoring the total vote count, at least until they figure out how many dead folks voted.

Ever wonder why the Green party only wanted recounts in states that Trump won?

and one of these days, you might find why a lot of us refused to vote Democratic: fear of religious persecution.


this NYTimes discussion was found on NPR, discussed if they should report the news correctly or slant it to echo their opinions (AKA "Truth").

that link was via GetReligion blog who analyzes the story and adds their own opinion:

Now, for me, the next logical question would be to ask why these heartland folks voted the way they did. It's crucial to know that the Trump vote – if you read what voters said – included lots of people who openly said that they didn't want to vote for Trump, but felt that they had no other choice. Lots of these people (in-depth exit polls will soon tell us more) linked their vote to cultural, moral and religious tends at the U.S. Supreme Court and in executive orders from the White House. In other words, they feared emerging cracks in the First Amendment and what they saw as threats to free speech, freedom of association and freedom of religion.

But that item is not in the vocabulary of the elites, alas.

Rose Madder

No, not the Stephen King book but the dye.

Halfway through Lent and Advent (both seasons of penance that used to be taken seriously before Vatican II), the priests, instead of wearing the violet "penitence" color vestments changes to Pink, In the midst of season stressing sorrow for sin and repentance, it is sort of a break to remind us to rejoice in the Lord.

Post Vatican II, of course, no one bothers with confession or penitence, albeit our priest last week reminded us to go to confession (now if they only would post when they heard confessions  in our church I might be able to go).

well, anyway, last Sunday was Gaudete Sunday, the name coming from one of the Latin prayers at the beginning of mass:

Gaudete in Domino semper: iterum dico, gaudete

or in English:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice. 

Father Z has various examples of traditional vestments and discusses the various shades. Most seem to be quite expensive silk, which would be expensive but which lasts for years if cared for. If you are into textiles you might want to check out some of the photos there.

Our priest wore a plain pink mauve polyester one that probably a few dollars to make .

At the end of a long digression from the Maturin books by O'Brien, he comments:

The shades of vestments have a lot to do with the history of trade and of dyes.

awhile back, I had a post about brazil wood and red dye.

Ah, but pink comes from the roots of the herb Rose Madder. (AKA Turkey Red).

from Wikipedia:

Early evidence of dyeing comes from India where a piece of cotton dyed with madder has been recovered from the archaeological site at Mohenjo-daro (3rd millennium BCE).[1]

In Sanskrit, this plant is known by the name Manjishtha. It was used by hermits to dye their clothes saffron. Dioscorides and Pliny the Elder (De Re Natura) mention the plant (Rubia passiva).

In Viking age levels of York, remains of both woad and madder have been excavated. The oldest European textiles dyed with madder come from the grave of the Merovingian queen Arnegundis in Saint-Denis near Paris (between 565 and 570 AD). In the "Capitulare de villis" of Charlemagne, madder is mentioned as "warentiam". The herbal of Hildegard of Bingen mentions the plant as well.

The red coats of the British Redcoats were dyed with madder, after earlier being dyed with cochineal.[2] Turkey red was a strong, very fast red dye for cotton obtained from madder root via a complicated multistep process involving "sumac and oak galls, calf's blood, sheep's dung, oil, soda, alum, and a solution of tin."[3] Turkey red was developed in India and spread to Turkey. Greek workers familiar with the methods of its production were brought to France in 1747, and Dutch and English spies soon discovered the secret. A sanitized version of Turkey red was being produced in Manchester by 1784, and roller-printed dress cottons with a Turkey red ground were fashionable in England by the 1820s.[4][5]ar

another history of the herb, and how you can make it if you are into natural dyes for your textile art, can be found at Wild Colours.uk.

and, if you read Father Z's long quotation from O'Briens book, this site explains what the good doctor was trying to figure out:

Madder root was fed to white horses to colour hooves and teeth, and to hawks to colour beak and talons. There is even a mention of feeding madder plants to sheep to dye their wool

more about ancient dyes HERE.

Stories below the fold

One of Tolkien's more depressing stories (edited into a single book by his son) is the story of Turin. Depressing because Morgoth has cursed him to be a failure in everything he does, to punish his father Hurin.

TORN has an essay about Turin's wish to fight Morgoth (one of their discussion groups will ponder if he was wise or foolish to fight and buy time if the situation is hopeless)... But the introductory essay is interesting.

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In contrast, Mark Steyn remembers the days when JFK said America would go to the moon,

'Forty years ago, we could do it—repeatedly—but since then we have not been to the moon, and I suggest the real reason we have not been to the moon since 1972 is that we cannot any longer do it. Humans have lost the capability. 'Of course, the standard line is that humans stopped going to the moon only because we no longer wanted to go to the moon, or could not afford to, or something.... But I am suggesting that all this is BS. . . . I suspect that human capability reached its peak or plateau around 1965-75—at the time of the Apollo moon landings—and has been declining ever since.'

most sarcastic line is the last one in his essay

John Glenn must surely have wondered, as all the astronauts weathered into geezers, how a great nation grew so impoverished in spirit. Our heroes are old and stooped and wizened, but they are the only giants we have. Today, when we talk about Americans boldly going where no man has gone before, we mean the ladies' bathroom. Progress.

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should kids learn to read and write by hand?

Freakonomics podcast.

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Mary Beard notes that a lot of what you "know" about ancient Rome is wrong.
caution: R rated.

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Dirty money... literally.

If you are afraid of germs, stick to copper pennies.

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for later reading: StrategyPage on the mess in Syria.

not just the Russians but now Turkey is trying to kill Kurds.

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The government of India has declared jihad on cash, as in money.

"Black money" -- the colloquial name for a vast network of off-the-book cash transactions and unbanked savings -- is one of India's biggest scourges. Amounting to as much as $460 billion a year, bigger than the GDP of Argentina, all that money lies beyond the reach of the tax authorities, creditors and anti-corruption investigators.

translation: They don't really trust banks so keep money hidden in their house and buy from each other informally so there are no sales taxes collected. The state doesn't like this, because they can't collect income or sales tax.

Credit cards, smart phone transactions etc will be the way of the future...

As if they couldn't be hacked/stolen (did I mention my Federal personnel file was hacked? Plus my yahoo email? And of course Facebook knows all about me).

All this hacking of course will lead to pressuring people to accept the mark of the beast, but of course, only fundamentalist Christians and electronic privacy nerds worry about this.

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Fuzzy lovable Santa Claus is based on Saint Nicholas, who was famous for his charity.

But he wasn't exactly a fluffy helpless character in real life, as Arius could tell you. He got punched in the face at an Ecumenical council by jolly old St Nick for denying Jesus was God. Nicholas was jailed, but released after a miracle (Of course).

in some European countries, St Nicholas is followed by a helper who beats the bad children while he gives gifts to the good ones.

In Modern America, the list of naughty and nice is often ignored and everyone gets a gift.

more factoids about the good bishop here.

and there is a legend how he helped save a ship that had grounded and was in danger of breaking up, so he is also the patron saint of sailors.

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DilbertBlog has a lot of posts on the way people frame reality and how Trump is understandable using a business point of view. And many of his posts are about cognitive dissonance.

His explanations are cynical, but they do give one a different point of view about the election and how folks cope when reality doesn't agree with their deep set beliefs.

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

Heh. The CIA just noticed that a lot of the stuff in certain "evil" news sites that dared to oppose Hillary might have originally been stolen by Russia who arranged it to be released via Wikileaks, to hurt Hillary.

Russian disinformation? Nothing new in that.

but this does not make it "Fake" news, as some are stating. One sided, maybe, but not fake.

No, it just means that Wikileaks (maybe with the help of Russia) is the new Woodward and Bernstein, daring to investigate the real story behind the lies of the government.
---------------------------

Live and let live is American. Using one person's "feelings" to bully around the majority is not.


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Factoid of the day

The Greatest Generation Astonaut:

Glenn flew 149 combat missions in World War II and Korea, where his wingman and eventual lifelong friend was baseball legend Ted Williams. In Korea, Glenn earned the nickname “Old Magnet Ass” due to his skill in landing his airplane under any condition, even after it was riddled with bullets and had blown tires.

more HERE.


via Instapundit.

Medical stuff

cross posting from my medical blog:

Is smallpox a new disease?

and if so, does this mean a similar epidemic could pop out from nowhere?

Bubonic plague: Not just for rats anymore.

Cat related outbreak in Idaho, and a PJMedia article about killing plague carrying squirrels in 1918.

Could CRSPR cure hemophilia? they are working on it.

The controversial Down's Syndrome video.

a discussion of the syndrome, with a small comment about Pearl Buck's daughter, who had PKU (a disease that now is screened for and prevented by diet restrictions).

RatFever: Leptospirosis.

We see cases in the Philippines after every typhoon or flood, where people wade through ankle deep dirty water.

Pope's vocabulary mistake

There is a minor kerfuffle (including on Drudge but also elsewhere) that the Pope compared "fake news" reports to a fetish of eating excrement.

Actually it sounds like he merely mixed  up two technical words that sound alike.

I believe what the Pope meant to say is that fake news is Corprolalia, 

Coprolalia is the medical term used to describe one of the most puzzling and socially stigmatizing symptoms of Tourette Syndrome—the involuntary outburst of obscene words or socially inappropriate and derogatory remarks.

The kerfuffle is actually an example of what he is talking about, but also an example of the Pope's problem with language in his "off the cuff remarks" where the press hooks on to something outrageous, takes it out of content and then spins the story for headlines instead of accurately reporting the problem he wants to discuss.