The shocking things they wouldn't print

the uberliberal Jesuit magazine has censored an interview with a gay activist with a black husband.

Who wudda thot?

well, it's Milo of course.

 Although you grew up Catholic, you now say and do many shocking things in your public career which seem to be at odds with your childhood faith. In what sense do you still consider yourself a Catholic? 

 Plenty of saints were shocking, to say nothing of our Lord, who got in a spot of trouble for His shocking claims, as you might recall.

I am certainly no saint, but I don’t think “shocking” is a helpful way of approaching the question of Catholics in public life.

It doesn’t settle much to say that the current Pope is shocking to many Catholics, including me.

Or to note that I’m shocked by supposedly Catholic politicians who make laws in flat contradiction to the natural law, which you need no faith to grasp.

In my case, do you mean it’s shocking that a Catholic like me is loudly worried about Islam, which has waged war on Holy Mother Church for more than a millennium?

Or that I say Planned Parenthood’s abortion crusade amounts to black genocide?

Or that I’ve supported Pope Paul VI’s criticism of artificial contraception so strongly that Hillary Clinton attacked me for it in her presidential campaign?

Frankly, what’s really shocking is that a poor sinner like me has spoken out more on contraception than 99% of our bishops, who seem too preoccupied with diversity and climate change to talk about God.

Ouch.

and there is more.

Headsup TeaAtTrianon

Survival tip of the day

------ and if you use the double sized one, you can keep your eyebrow pencil sharp while facing the end of the world

Conspiracy theories in the news

WTF is going on in the investigation of the Las Vegas shooting?

even the conservative NReview is wondering WTF is going on.

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"catholic" reformers meet in Boston and pull a few fast ones on dogma.

So is the Pope incompetent or ignorant when his friends say things like this?

Kaveny used curious language to describe Our Lord’s teaching on marital fidelity: “Jesus clearly disfavored adultery.”...

italics mine.

Ah, but they have the right to change Jesus' words because:

Kaveny adds: “We do not need to disturb Jesus’ teaching in order to refine and develop it in these ways, in ways that moral theologians and canon lawyers have always done.”

and it gets worse;

Fr. Antonio Spadaro, S.J., who also spoke at the conference, uttered an incredible statement that dovetails with Kaveny’s remarks. He said: “It is no longer possible to judge people on the basis of a norm that stands above all.”

ah yes: Who am I to judge pops up again.

The Catholic Thing via Father Z.

George Orwell call your office.

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via Instapundit:

Soros officially gives his "open society" foundation a lot of money. (Yes, I think you could call 18 billion dollars a lot of money)

Back in the early 1990's, the Open Society was using funding to find ways to make "end of life" easier... Sort of using slithering language to re image what they wanted. (non treatment became refusing unwanted treatment that harmed the patient became overdosing him to death became direct killing)...

Well I am aware that overtreatment can cause suffering, but also that if you do it correctly, sometimes the patient lives. But if you do it the way they want to do it, you make sure the patient dies.

The Open Society also supports legalizing all drug use, but they pretended they only wanted to legalize medical marijuana...

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The reporter who blogged about money laundering and other shenanigans revealed in the Panama papers has been killed by a car bomb. LINK.

In our prayers.

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there has been a conspiracy theory about Russia buying US uranium reserves , but now the story is back in the news.

The Hill:

Before the Obama administration approved a controversial deal in 2010 giving Moscow control of a large swath of American uranium, the FBI had gathered substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering designed to grow Vladimir Putin's atomic energy business inside the United States, according to government documents and interviews.

headsup Instapundit.

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Duterte is pushing our jeepneys to modernize to improve air pollution, and to keep routine maintenance done so that accidents from failing brakes etc. are fewer. Rappler has details about the modernization program.

The jeepneys etc. said screw you and went on strike. They claim it is too expensive and will raise fares for the poor.

So Duterte closed all schools and government offices.

Joy said it didn't help: Traffic was still terrible but everything was open.

rappler discusses more here.

 The traditional jeepney running on fuel (left) alongside an electric jeepney. Photo by Rommel T. Juan

Jeepneys comprise only 2% of the total vehicle population in Metro Manila yet they contribute a staggering 80% of its total air pollution. The former icon of Filipino culture is not something to be proud of anymore. It has lost its luster. It has turned into a symbol of decay and neglect.

Aside from air pollution, there is also a deep social issue in the jeepney transport system that can only be seen if you look closely enough. This is the oppressive "boundary system" that has evolved through the years. It's a somewhat antiquated feudal system that oppresses the driver and eventually, even the jeepney owner or operator.

Under the boundary system, the driver has to operate for an unspecified number of hours to raise a fixed amount of fares that he pays directly to the jeepney owner. This minimum amount is called the "boundary" that goes to the owner or franchisee of the jeepney line. After filling up the jeepney tank, the driver keeps anything in excess of the boundary as daily earnings.

Fake News and bad logic

Science stories

Beothuk DNA in Newfoundland suggests they are related to the Mikmac.

Wikipedia has the story of their slow extinction, including outright murder and deliberate capture of women (including one captive that might have gone home with the Vikings).  But most of them died from the usual reasons: disease and displacement by aggressive newcomers.

the article includes stories of some of the survivors past that point but mainly those who intermarried outside the tribe.

"The Beothuk were unable to procure sufficient subsistence within the areas left to them."[5] They entered into a cycle of violence with some of the newcomers.

Beothuk numbers dwindled rapidly due to a combination of factors, including: loss of access to important food sources, from competition with Inuit and Mi'kmaqs as well as European settlers; infectious diseases to which they had no immunity, such as smallpox, introduced by European contact; endemic tuberculosis (TB), which weakened tribal members...

By 1829, with the death of Shanawdithit, the people were officially declared extinct.[8] 

 Sigh.

The story of many indigenous folks.

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Baltic clams and worms release as much CO2 as 20 thousand cows.

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Look to the Sky: Chinese Space Station due to crash back to earth.
nor is it the first one to do so:

n 1979, NASA’s Skylab space station hit Australia during its own fall to Earth, and the Soviet Union’s Salyut 7 space station followed suit over Argentina in 1991.

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the tough life of small farmers on gov't reserves in the Amazon.

Interesting experiment.

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How the "S" Bend made modern toilets possible.

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BBC report on the California wildfires. It's the Diablo winds making it worse.

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BBC: backstory on Chinese society and families

half a million Chinese are studying overseas, and most will return.

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Stories behind the headlines

What's wrong with saying let a person's conscience be your guide?

The problems of subjective feelings vs reality was discussed as far back as Socrates, say actor Kevin O'Brien.

Socrates made fun of Protagoras’s homo-mensura, which asserts, “Man is the measure of all things.” For clarity’s sake, the homo-mensura can be interpreted as this: “The human-animal’s perceptions and opinions determine the value of all things.” According to Socrates, Protagoras may as well have asserted, “Pig is the measure of all things,” or, “Baboon is the measure,” since those creatures also possess “the power of perception.” Protagoras, foiled by his own maxim, is “no better authority than a tadpole, let alone any other man.” If Protagoras’s homo-mensura is truly so weak, why does anyone bother to uphold it? One possible answer: it makes crowds happy.

As the ancient progenitor of truthiness and alternative facts, the homo-mensura helps sophists win over audiences. “Everyone’s opinions are meaningful and valuable! You can decide on any scientific, political or artistic subject for yourself!” (Cue applause.) The worst effect of the homo-mensura is that it renders futile any attempt to examine or refute “each other’s ostentations and judgments,” for each individual demands respect and narcissistic recognition. “This is surely an extremely tiresome piece of nonsense,” Socrates decided.

, "Your individual situation determines the morality of your actions! You can decide what is right and what is wrong! For God Himself is asking you to put yourself in that position! It's what He wants!" (Cue applause.)

related item: Was the Moral Majority right?

well, those rules were not just made up by the puritans because they didn't like you having fun. Traditions, religious laws and common law are how societies distillate the pragmatic lessons of thousands of years of human experience.

In the meanwhile the Pope wants the church to regress to the morals of the hedonistic 1970's, in the name of "mercy".

Truth is an embarrassment, says David Warren

As we see in society at large, and now hear even from Rome, sincerity becomes the substitute for faith. What is true can only be “true for me,” and the genuineness of a feeling substitutes for the content of the faith itself.

This is what a pope is now preaching: not against the content of the Catholic faith, which all his predecessors accepted as true; rather against their view that this content has importance — that, in effect, the truth is true, and commands our adherence because it is true, whether we find comfort and pleasure in it, or not.

Instead, any view sincerely held is taken as acceptable, and though we might technically allow it is in error, we must “accompany” the holder to death’s door.

What's wrong with this picture?

Harvey Weinstein call your office.

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Yesterday, someone on CNN was discussing removing Trump from office. And someone dared to email them and say: a lot of folks would see this as an illegal coup.

why yes.

But why do some people decide to push this idea on an international cable news network? Well, CNN International does tend to be anti American, but even so...

So what has Trumpie boy done recently?

Let me count the ways says Molly Hemingway at the Federalist.

glennReynolds remarks:

Meanwhile, consistent with Scott Adams’ theory, the press has quit calling Trump Hitler and is now calling him incompetent. Soon, Adams predicts, they will pivot to, “well, maybe he’s competent, but we don’t like what he’s doing.”

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since I am on a rant about truth and spin and reality: Could I mention that the press has done a lousy job at reporting on the Las Vegas shootings? Three time lines so far.

And I am still waiting to hear where his Filipina girlfriend comes from. Mindanao or Luzon? Catholic, Protestant or Muslim?

I mean the Pinoy community must have some clue, (everyone has a relative who knows someone who knows someone else in the Philippines) but no one seems to have researched much, not even the press here...

The conspiracy theories are starting to sprout in the vacuum.

Robots

Fiesta Nacional de España

In Spain, Columbus day is celebrated as Fiesta Nacional de Espana.

Events similar to Hispanic Day to mark the anniversary of the date Christopher Columbus first set foot in the Americas are also held in other countries. October 12 is known as Discovery Day in the Bahamas, Day of the Cultures in Costa Rica, Day of the Race in Argentina, Chile and Mexico and the Day of Indigenous Resistance in Venezuela. The second Monday of October is Columbus Day in the United States.

the day has a more politically correct designation in leftist countries, or in countries who killed off most of their indigenous like Argentina (2%), Costa Rica (2%) and Chile (10%) or places like Mexico where the whiter descendents of the Spanish families rule .

LaRaza does not translate as "race", by the way, despite how American born activists seem to think. It means "ethnicity": The day of all of us of various ethnicities, according to this Yankee essay in an English speaking paper.



And in today's news, the day is being used by Spaniards to hold celebrations in order to push back against Catalonia's attempt to secede.

Ondeando banderas españolas y catalanas, al grito de “Viva España” y “Cataluña es España” los manifestantes descendieron por el emblemático Paseo de Gracia hasta la plaza Cataluña. Foto: EFE

Este contenido ha sido publicado originalmente por Diario EL COMERCIO en la siguiente dirección:http://www.elcomercio.com/actualidad/marcha-barcelona-secesion-cataluna-carlespuigdemont.html. Si está pensando en hacer uso del mismo, por favor, cite la fuente y haga un enlace hacia la nota original de donde usted ha tomado este contenido. ElComercio.com

So why doesn't the US celebrate their Hispanic heritage on this day? Because of the black legend, pushed by the British Protestants for political reasons.

the problem? they cherry picked atrocities from publications written by Catholic priests like De Las Casa, who was trying to document atrocities in reports to those in charge, something done to get the gov't to defend human rights..

 And then the British and Dutch took the actions out of context, and exaggerated them, while their own atrocities went unnoticed. (e.g. Hugonaut massacre! Horror! Numerous Irish Genocides? Ho hum. Spanish Inquistion! Quel Horrors! Elizabeth I's star chambers? Left out of the history books).

sort of like the press that takes American caused deaths (ex drone strikes, or Duterte's drug war) out of context, exaggerate them, only show one side of the problem, and then pretend it is the truth.

As fo "indigenous day": I have no problem with this.

But it is a "feel good" exercize for the PC who ignore the very real problems caused by dependency mindset caused by the superior minded do gooders and the BIA, the lack of funding for schools and hospitals, and the huge theft of wealth from the tribes' trust funds in the recent past.LINK LINK2

Rice in ancient South America?

I was aware that rice was domesticated in both east Asia (Oryza sativa) and in east Africa (Oryza glaberrima), but now there has been found evidence of rice in ancient South America.

this doesn't seem to be a variation of "wild rice" such as some communities in the area still gather, or similar to the "wild rice" that the Indians of Minnesota still harvest every year (Zizania palustris) but the Oryza species.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-017-0322-4/figures/1

if it was Oryza, then one wonders if it was native or introduced there. the map lists other species of rice.

From Nature:

Increasingly large Oryza sp. husk phytoliths recovered from mid-Holocene levels of a shell mound in southwestern Amazonia (Fig. 1) dating to ca. 4,000 cal. yr BP show the progressive selection of larger wild rice seeds by its pre-Columbian residents, who were already engaged in the cultivation of maize (Zea mays) and squash (Cucurbita sp.)19.

alas, being Nature, I can't get the full article, but then I probably don't know enough to interpret it anyway.

this article in Science points out that the Amazon area was not "pristine and untouched" as some ecology types insist: it was actually well developed and many trees and plants were domesticated and cultivated by locals in Pre Colombian times.

Family news

Big storm last night, and this morning a neighbor woke me up to point out that one of our banana trees fell down. We moved it out of the street and took the not yet ripe bananas inside.

Two days ago, one of our waterbuffalos ate a nail and got sick, so they decided to slaughter it for the meat.
Remind me not to eat "beef" in the next few weeks.

Joy is at a trade fair in Manila.

Ruby is ok at school: They are holding celebrations for each area, (she is Asian Pacific) and she plans to hold a demonstration on how to make HaloHalo.

hmm... I wonder if they sell Ube near her?



halohalo means "mix mix".

and no, we don't make for ourselves: the best HaloHalo in town is at nearby Luz' restaurant.

Strange things in the news

Drudge has a lot of links about the Hollywood kerfuffle, and how the guy used the press to keep the scandal quiet. 
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In the meanwhile, Project Veritas has undercover film of an editor of the NYTimes essentially saying yes they were slanting the news deliberately.

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both stories are only news because everyone knew this stuff, but no one had a "smoking gun" for proof, so you were ridiculed as "fake news" if you said it.

Heh:

http://drudgereport.com

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In the meanwhile, the Las Vegas massacre story gets stranger and stranger, as it seems not one but two men reported the shooter before he started shooting. WTF?

This is how you get conspiracy theories, guys.

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But my favorite story: Newsweek actually notices the "mindfulness" fad in medicine is scientific nonsense.

A new study by a multidisciplinary group of researchers at several universities calls out the "misinformation and propagation of poor research methodology" that pervade much of the evidence behind the benefits of mindfulness. They focus in particular on the problem of defining the word mindfulness and on how the effects of the practice are studied. 

“Mindfulness has become an extremely influential practice for a sizable subset of the general public, constituting part of Google’s business practices, available as a standard psychotherapy via the National Health Service in the United Kingdom and, most recently, part of standard education for approximately 6,000 school children in London,” the authors write in their paper, published Tuesday in Perspectives on Psychological Science.

"Mindfulness" is essentially hypnosis and placebo effect. It is related to Trascendental meditation, the Jesus prayer, faith healing, etc. It is neither good nor bad: and is related to "deep concentration" (e.g. what happens when you play music, read a book, etc).

Different people have neurological wiring for different levels of this, and most of the studies don't take this into consideration.

Those who are easily hypnotized can be persuaded to believe anything when they are in this state.

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and I have noted this awhile back when I discussed India's plan to go cashless:

via Instapundit:
YOU’D BETTER PRAY FOR THIS REGARDLESS: In a Cashless World, You’d Better Pray the Power Never Goes Out.

it's not just when the power goes out: We have had a hack on our ATM's here in the Philippines so last weekend I was shut out of the ATM machine until they could replace my card on Monday morning.

Luckily I keep a small stash in Lolo's safe.

Yes, I have two ATM cards, but the other one is being replaced too and is "in the mail".

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We lost one of our waterbuffalo: it ate a nail and then got sick, so they killed it so they could eat the meat.

Remind me not to eat any "beef" in the next few days.

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California has some bad wild fires.

In our prayers. I lived through the year NewMexico burnt down, but our area's fires didn't make the news because it didn't reach our city, but Los Alamos was partly destroyed up north.

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also via Instapundit:

SINGLE PAYER, SINGLE DECIDER: VA conceals shoddy care and health workers’ mistakes.

fellas, I hate to tell you: the IHS is worse.

from the Billings Gazette (9-6-2016) article:

The Indian Health Service formed in 1955, taking over health care from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, whose task had been to prevent disease and assimilate tribal members. From its start, the agency has faced frequent criticism and undergone numerous changes.

Early scandals included the secret sterilization of women at some hospitals, medical studies without clear patient consent and the placement of some disinterested doctors in IHS hospitals so they would not have to go to Vietnam.

More recently, the top leadership has been in flux at agency headquarters and several regional offices as federal officials investigate long wait times and problem physicians.

the article is part of a series....

maybe Jennifer Lawrence and the other celebrities who used the ND pipeline protest to get virtue points will get publicity for this system of free government care.

The pushback continues

How dare they take seriously 2000 years of tradition and Biblical statements about marriage and the sacraments (including by that guy Jesus).

The Pope is replacing rules and ethical behavior with sentimentality and psychological excuses for sin, no repentence needed.

What's wrong with this picture?

a scholarly discussion can be found here at EWTN.





replace rules with psychobabble, ignore the concept of sinful lives, and voila, wait awhile and the whole church will destroy itself.


As Maureen Mularchey writes:

It does not serve Francis’ objectives to clarify the ambiguities in Amoris Laetitia. He has only to allow the vagueness of “pastoral discernment” to stand.

It will come by degrees to be the default position in pastoral care.

Moral thinking will evolve—develop—to further accommodate the subjectivity implicit in discernment and in such fluid standards as accompaniment in weakness.

A discretionary end run around indissolubility will gradually assume the authority of Tradition, thereby deflecting need for clarification.

she also asks where are the US Catholic bishops on this?

Well at least they are silent.

In the Philippines, our church has gone full heresy on the matter, even though the church, and the bishops, have long fought against divorce. The backstory for their change of heart? Mercy for the sinner.

Let them eat at your table, says the letter. Fine. But what about their real wife and kids? Do we keep them away from family gatherings, or just let them be shamed by the boyfriend or girlfriend sitting as an honored guest?

Does the phrase "walang hiya" mean anything to our bishops?

or maybe follow the money:

a lot of our rich elites have "second wives", lots of girlfriends, or schtupp their employees.

Harvey W got a pass in Hollywood and the press because he gave oodles of money to Hillary and liberal causes. Our rich give money to the church, who traditionally look the other way.



Besides, Cardinal Tagle is running for Pope.

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update:

related item: Professor Esolen's powerful essay

your "Mercy" enables evil. And there are victims.
Warning: R rated.

And after working as a doc for 35 years, I could add my own list of victims to his anecdotes.

via Father Z.

update 2:

LINK

Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago is co-hosting the conference. In June, the cardinal interpreted Amoris Laetitia as a call for Catholics to graduate from “an adolescent spirituality into an adult spirituality” where they will be able to use their “freedom of conscience” to “discern truth” in their life.

yes, that bishop Cupich...

Perverts in Hollywood? Who wudda thot?

The "casting couch" is in the news.

Who wudda thot?

Women throw themselves at men who are powerful, as President Trump remarked (Yuck). Yes, it is true: I have seen women send "messages" in their body language to doctors and priests during casual conversations.

And sometimes I've seen good women do this and not realize that they are sending such a message to a man, and then get upset when he makes a pass at them. 

One memorial talk to our Catholic school Sex ed class for girls was a priest who instructed us that boys were not made of steel, and if we led them on too far, they would not be able to stop.


This is especially dangerous for Muslim immigrants, who are not used to the openly aggressive (but chaste) way western women relate to men.

But one does expect grown men to be able to stop.

I also know doctors who are predators, and who try to seduce any attractive nurse. I've even worked with a doctor who once chased a nurse around the nurses station trying to grab her.

So where do you place the line?

Well, if you go into his hotel room, or take some "ludes" he offers you to relax you before you have sex, you are giving partial consent.

So why do women do this?

Some actually want sex.

But others were brought up to be compliant with authority figures (this is especially true in third world countries, as in Africa or in the rural Philippines). 

And yes, this includes many American girls who want to be liked so don't want to hurt the guy's feelings (often a problem for teenage girls).

So what is going on in Hollywood? Sorry, but the "casting couch" is not new. Some women accepted it as "the" way to get ahead, and even exploited it to get ahead.

But the power differential means the man is guilty, even when the woman cooperates, or appears to cooperate.

And often the aggressor considers women as his, as if he was a king and entitled to women he desired.

Sigh.

Nor is this limited to girls too young to say no, or women who go along with the abuse to get ahead.

In the third world, any employer, priest, teacher, older relative would be able to coerce a young relative, street kid, employee, etc... male or female, into having "consensual" sex: even when the person objected.

But often the predator insists it was "consensual" and has no insight that it was not.

Sigh

At least the Hollywood slimebucket doesn't go around justifying his behavior because "god made me this way", (and then condemn anyone who objected to what he was doing).

Sigh. Long story. Keep us in your prayers.

The Science of eggs

alcohol cooking eggs?

bouncing eggs?

Green eggs?
   

The Little Prince podcast

Catholic podcast site Discerning Hearts is presenting a series on the book The Little Prince.
mp3

Listening with the ear of the heart, Fr. Mauritius Wilde guides us through  “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.  In this episode, Fr. Mauritius gives us some background on the work and it’s surprising spiritual overtones. 

Colombus day: pretending to care

American Indians are "in" for the elite, so they protest the statue of Colombus.

Uh, he was trying to find a trade route to China and the Spice Islands, and is he hadn't done that, someone else would have. Heck, the Baque fishermen already knew about the place, so it wasn't exactly a secret.

But it's "IN", and so a lot of SJW will protest. It won't solve anything of course, but it will make them feel better about themselves. They are rich and feel guilty  about it, so hey, let's protest. It's cheaper than psychotherapy and a lot easier than actually doing something to help those in need.

Reminds me of when the elite joined the trendy protest against a ND pipeline (because...environment),
something FYI that I supported, because locals were involved in the original protest.

However, all those virtue signaling types seemed to overlook the fact that the pipeline could easily have been diverted from the tribe's land/burial ground.

Never mind. My problem: after the protest ended, did they bother to check back and see if the actual people were helped: i.e. given jobs, check if the IHS hospitals had proper up to date equipment and hired doctors who spoke English?


So although NPR lauds the North Dakota protest a year later., it is a bit telling that the tribal head who sponsored the protests was just voted out of office.

the guy who won the election said he opposed the pipeline, but noted that the protests caused a strain with local officials, and shut down the local highway, meaning folks couldn't come to the casino which provides a lot of the money for tribal development.

He said he personally opposes the pipeline but thinks the large-scale protest took focus away from other issues, including health care, education, elderly needs, suicide problems, illegal drugs and a poor economy. "We kind of neglected our own" by taking the lead on the pipeline protest, he said. "We did what we had to do, but we didn't realize we were going to hurt our economy that much."

But of course, like the protests against the names of sports teams, it is about them, not about their pet minority.

Did they pressure President Obama's EPA over the Gold King mine spill?

it is in litigation now, but the last article in the main press that I found was January 16th, 2017 where President Obama's EPA said they wouldn't pay because "sovereign immunity". And it says a lot that this article has a photo of white people kayaking, and says the spill turned the waters red and mainly discusses the local farmers problem.

Here are recent local articles about the problem.

NavajoHopi observer: Part one Part 2 

And it isn't just this one spill, but that there are many mines polluting water in the area. From the Eastern Arizona Courier:

Mining companies have extracted materials such as gold, uranium and coal on Native American lands for centuries. The contamination left behind, such as excess lead, selenium and chromium, remain long after the miners’ final paychecks.
Roughly 600,000 Native Americans live within six miles of an abandoned mine, according to the Center for Native American Environmental Health Equity.
Most of the uranium mines in the western United States are on federal and tribal lands, a government mining database shows. Public health researchers are especially concerned about these mines because the half-life of uranium is more than 4 billion years.
Chronic exposure is linked to cancer and kidney disease.
“You don’t have a lot of options if your water is contaminated with uranium,” said Debra MacKenzie, a researcher at the University of New Mexico. “It’s hard to take away a mountain. You can’t just move away.”
A recent U.S. Department of Justice Department report on environmental justice lists the legacy of Cold War-era mines in Navajo country as “one of the most severe environmental justice problems in Indian Country.”

excuse me for being cynical about this.

It's not just the Native Americans, of course: the stream near our house when I lived in the coal mining area of Pennsylvania was also polluted and ran red. Locals usually bought bottled water (or collected it from local springs upstream from the mine) because they simply did not trust the drinking water there.

But of course, the miners and their families were poor whites (actually mostly Polish or Italian, who up to the 1970's were not considered white, but never mind). So they don't count.

This is why I consider myself "green": not because of "mother gaia" but because money speaks, and it is easier for companies to pollute and harm poor people because they can get away with it. And if they can "get away with it" in Arizona or Pennsylvania, you know darn well that they can get away with it in the Philippines or in China...

On the other hand, I also realize that removing all mines or industry means poverty. Is there no middle way? Of course there is...

One does hope that pragmatists will win in the end, but in today's polarized world, I am less than optimistic.

The reason I dislike protests is that they are "all or nothing".

I also dislike them because often the protesters do it because they want to feel virtuous, and don't stick around for the hard work of fixing stuff.

The idea is get in the headlines and get your own two seconds of fame, not to actually change things.

Excuse me if I am a bit sarcastic about virtue signaling protests.

At least Colin Kaepernick gave 1million dollars to local groups to empower the black community...

Audiobook of the week

I was looking for an Anglo Saxon grammar by Michael Drout on Archive.org and found two of his lecture series are there.

From Here to Infinity, about science fiction.

and

Tolkien and the West. 

and YouTube has his lecture series on Fantasy literature.


an excellent teacher.

Quick: Download before the copyright cops find it is there (or buy them if you can afford them).

By the way, his grammar book, King Afred's Grmmar, is on line here.

and you can audit his course Introduction to Anglo Saxon at Signum University (for a small fee).

send in the... Loons?

the hurricane destroyed some of Puerto Rico's cellphone towers, but someone got an idea how to do a termporary fix:

From PhysOrg:

Google's parent company is set to launch balloons into the Caribbean skies in an attempt to restore telephone networks in hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico. Alphabet Inc., which controls Google, obtained authorization from the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to deploy the devices—developed from 2013 as part of a project known as "Loon."

It aims to temporarily re-establish Puerto Rico's cellular network—where 83 per cent of cell sites were still out of service Friday, according to FCC figures...

Initially designed to drift, the balloons are now equipped with navigation systems, powered by solar panels, which keep them in a specific area.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-10-balloons-puerto-rico-cell-networks.html#jCp

NASA Going back to the Moon?

From DavidReneke's website:

NASA will land humans on the Moon again, confirmed American Vice President Mike Pence. Speaking at NASA, he revealed that the Trump administration will ask NASA to direct its efforts into establishing a permanent base on the lunar surface. This is a major policy change from the Obama administration which directed NASA to divert all its efforts to getting humans to Mars.

While Mars is still very much on the agenda, it now looks as though the Moon will become the first step in that journey....

...Initially NASA had planned to test out its Mars mission by sending astronauts to an asteroid, however this will now be scrapped in favour of lunar missions instead.

this makes sense since other countries have hinted at similar plans for moon bases.

more HERE.

Happy Ada Lovelace day!

Lord Byron, who is often portrayed as a dark, romantic hero, had a wife who he mistreated and abandoned, and in many biographies she is ignored or ridiculed.

But she dared not to go along with his self centered manipulations, which seems to be for her to pay all his bills and put up with his drinking and promiscuity, and he tried to manipulate her so she would do the same. When she did not, and when she dared to have a daughter in stead of a son, he essentially ordered her to leave him, which she did as soon as she had recovered from childbirth.

He had tried his strength with her fully. The first attempt had been to make her an accomplice by sophistry; by destroying her faith in Christianity, and confusing her sense of right and wrong, to bring her into the ranks of those convenient women who regard the marriage tie only as a friendly alliance to cover license on both sides.

her stor.y here, at the Atlantic.from 1896.
Librivox version

Written with sentimentality as was the style of that time, but reading in the light of today's feminism he was a manipulative narcissistic husband, probably bipolar and a known substance abuser.

Ironically, although his verse and "romantic" story gets a huge chapter in literary history, his daughter's contribution to computer science probably has contributed more to today's world.

Wikipedia article on Ada Lovelace...

 Explaining the Analytical Engine's function was a difficult task, as even many other scientists did not really grasp the concept and the British establishment was uninterested in it.^[57]Lovelace's notes even had to explain how the Analytical Engine differed from the original Difference Engine.^[58] Her work was well received at the time; the scientist Michael Faraday described himself as a supporter of her writing.^[59]The notes are around three times longer than the article itself and include (in Section G^[60]), in complete detail, a method for calculating a sequence of Bernoulli numberswith the Engine, which could have run correctly had Babbage's Analytical Engine been built.^[61] (Only his Difference Engine has been built, completed in London in 2002.^[62]) Based on this work Lovelace is now widely considered the first computer programmer^[1] and her method is recognised as the world's first computer program.^[63]

there is an argument if this made her the first computer programer, but the original article is so convoluted that few would have read or understood it without her notes.

October 10th is Ada Lovelace day, a day celebrated to encourage women in STEM.