A new improved afterlife

Good Catholics like Father Z insist that the Pope has made a comment that could be taken out of context or misquoted in a press that traditionally looks for ways to smear Christians at Easter time, so they snapped up the comment and ran with it.



Never mind that we don't know the context or the exact words, as Father Z reminds us. 

You read the confusing headline. You peruse the article. You get mad. Shake it off and say “Blessed be the name of the Lord!” and then get back to the duties of your vocation.

David Warren, an ex reporter, however, is a bit more cynical.

I have been around for some time. I know at first hand how the media work, and I know that Bergoglio came to Rome (from Argentina of all places) with a reputation as an adept media manipulator, fond of playing the crowd.

He is no babe in the woods. He must know as I do that if a journalist seriously misrepresents what you say, you don’t give him another opportunity. Moreover, you publicly correct him in a way not only unambiguous, but sharp enough to get everyone’s attention — at speed, I should think, if you have millions of Catholics hanging on your words. Instead he lets the outrage stand.

why yes.

So what should we do (aside from writing blog posts and saying our rosary for the conversion of sinners?)

Warren in another essay notes the problem of the no more hell statement:

But now we have a “new” Christ, of comprehensive “mercy”; a sweetheart, who will forgive anything; who is not hung up on theology at all; and dispenses the Host like candy. A Christ for our ironical times.

This cannot stand. It is too wicked. The reversal will itself be reversed, and has, in fact, already been reversed. For the truth was, is, and will be, that Christ rises!

But he continues:

A naïve correspondent, citing the latest, asks if I will leave the Church like so many others whose faith and intelligence this pope has insulted. Let him leave; I’m staying Catholic.

GET CRACKING

A talk by Catherine DeHuek Doherty.





An interesting lady, who went from being a daughter of the Russian aristocracy to a nurse in WWI to a penniless refugee fleeing to Canada, who became wealth again giving talks on the pre WWI society in Russia, and then as a recruiter for others to give talks for the Chataqua organization.

While in Europe, she met the poet Tagore, and knowing of his religious poetry, asked him why he didn't become a Christian, and he answered: Well, Catherine, I'm waiting for you to become one first.

So in the early 1930's she left giving talks, arranaged for her son to be cared for by others, and started a ministry to the poor, first in Toronto, and later in Harlam, where she pioneered a Catholic interracial ministry called Friendship House.

She is mentioned in Thomas Merton's biography Seven Story Mountain, when he spent a short time working as a volunteer.

Later, she retired back to Canada with her second husband, fast talking Chicago Journalist and screenwriter Eddie Doherty, who met her while working on a story...

His biography of her starts with the word "Sex" (she is telling off a socialite complaining that her husband seeks out prostitutes, telling her off about her frigidity). Heh. Eddie did know how to get your attention... see: Tumbleweeds, which can be borrowed from Internet Archives.

A later biography is a bit of a haliography: it has more facts but is more flat.

One of her best books is the classic Poustinia, about Russian Spirituality of the hermit in the world. InternetArchives has that one to borrow too. (I brought the book with me to the Philippines).






---------------
update
Canadian NatPost article on Madonna house.

Good Friday

Self defense drills

There was a lot of laughter at one teacher's suggestion to keep rocks in school rooms for people to throw at an active shooter.

But actually, that would work.

PhysOrd discusses self defense drills.

The present idea of "run hide fight" means fighting back is the last option, but maybe it should be the first.

and "lock down" only works if the doors actually lock, and there are cops to take down the shooter.

these drills will help, since if you practice doing something you will know what to do. Usually the response to an emergency is to "freeze" making response slow or resulting in no response at all. That is why we docs etc. practice CPR.

That is why the idea to "arm teachers" doesn't work: Unless you are practicing shooting, when confronted with a real live shooter, you will freeze, or maybe hestitate long enough for him to shoot you first.

And, of course, an untrained person might accidentally shoot an innocent person who is not a threat, or who could be stopped in a non lethal way: (a lot of the "unarmed" people killed by cops are the result of panic, are often due to poor training or thinking the person was a threat/had a gun/etc,)

Most workplace shootings are a guy trying to take out his ex wife or one or two fellow employees who got him fired. So running and hiding is an option.

But a mass shooter is different: everyone is a target.

alas, one's first instinct is to hit the ground, and that does make it hard to throw your purse, keys, shoe etc. at the guy.

Luckily most of them are not well trained (including most "lone wolf" terrorists), so if a dozen folks all threw something at the guy while he was reloading, it would probably work.

The bad news is if a trained person (soldier, cop, trained terrorist) goes after you, a lot of folks will die even with snipers and professionals around.

That is what happened when an "amok" cop took out a bunch of Chinese tourists in Manila a couple years ago: They knew him, and had him calmed down and ready to surrender so they didn't shoot him. Then they allowed his brother to talk to him, a big mistake.

Sigh.

we call these murders "amok" murders, which is as good a name as any for a paranoid or depressed person who snaps and decides to kill. Usually it is a family member, an enemy, or the politician they blame for their problem.


  LINK

Local news from the Philippines

Here it is Holy Week, and the country is closing down so everyone can travel back to their home towns for the Easter holiday.

They are singing the "Pasyon"outside: Florinda erected a small chapel in the middle of the street near us, and they are also singing it in our neighborhood Chapel.

wikipedia

The Pasyón (Spanish: Pasión) is a Philippine epic narrative of the life of Jesus Christ, focused on his Passion, Death, and Resurrection. In stanzas of five lines of eight syllables each, the standard elements of epic poetry are interwoven with a colourful, dramatic theme.

The uninterrupted recitation or Pabasa of the whole epic is a popular Filipino Catholic devotion during the Lenten season, and particularly during Holy Week.

and no, our area doesn't have the "crucifixions" that the MSM loves to report on to prove Filipinos are crazy. They are mainly in Pampanga, not in our area, and it says a lot that the Wikipedia article names the few devotees who perform this custom.

The Church discourages it, of course, but won't condemn it because it is folk religion to honor Jesus, and very personal for those involved.

the best explanation of why people do this was in this Nat Geo program:




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

I have written before how hand plows (large rototillers) are replacing the water buffalo for plowing etc. on most farms.

The Inquirer has an article on how local farmers are using their waterbuffalo for milk, and how introducing new breeds will improve the stock and enable farmers to have another source of income.'

The Philippine Dairy Carabao is a product of crossbreeding native and Murrah water buffaloes. —ANSELMO ROQUE

Read more: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/978660/3-in-1-carabaos-developed-in-nueva-ecija-to-boost-farmers-earnings#ixzz5B5jJwoke 

more HERE.

Most of the milk is imported (ultrapasteurized milk, usually from New Zealand or China) but we always buy local Carabao milk, which is high in fat and wonderful for adding to our coffee or for making sweets.

altogether now:

Family News

We got tickets for me to accompany Ruby home from her Canadian school (she is under 18 so some airlines insist on an adult to go with her, as does immigration).

I will stop in Florida to see my son and his new wife. I haven't seen since I moved here (my two flights were to visit my brother in New England, and I had to hurry home to my elderly husband).

I thought I had enough frequent flier miles for the shorter flight from Florida to Canada, but when I checked, I had a lot of miles, (a "thank you" for caring for a sick lady during one flight) so my ticket to the US was "free" too.

Joy just smiled and reminded me the Lord will provide.

We got a "cheap" return ticket for both of us on a new Chinese airline.., twelve hour layover in China where Joy warns us they have no WIFI (oh the horrors!). But anyway, the tickets are bought so that is one worry behind us.

I have taken care of four emergencies on flights over the years, but usually minor stuff. If that should happen now, I might decline, since I no longer have any "active" medical licenses and am rusty after ten years of retirement.


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

Cat item of the day

They only march for white kids

One reason I am cynical about the children's crusade to get rid of hunting rifles (aka "assault rifles") is that they miss the real gun shot victim epidemic: an epidemic of inner city violence that has been going on for years

We had plenty of such shootings when I was a medical student/intern/resident in the late 1960'/early 1970s, so it's not exactly a new problem.

and most of these murders are not with "assault rifles", but with handguns.

So, fancy school kids: Do the lives of poor people lives matter?

If so, you should be defending the "stop and frisk" programs that made NYCity safe under Mayor Guilliani, and maybe even enforcing gun crimes including illegal gun possession.

the irony is that when an innocent guy is stopped fand frisked when he is doing nothing, it causes anger in the community. Voila, "black lives matter" appears and the result is fewer arrests of bad guys, and the murder rate actually goes up.

Sigh.

But anyway, here are the statistics:

CDC website:

and where these murders occur might surprise you: not just states with urban areas but the deep south.

Every one of these victims had families who loved him, or who tried to save him in a culture of violence.

 This 2013 article in the Washington Post tells a poignant story of one victim

He had a full-time job that he enjoyed and a deepening religious faith; he was close to earning a high school diploma and excited to be an expectant father....

Year after year, young black males make up the bulk of the slain, most of them shot in poor or working-class neighborhoods, as David was.

In 2012, more than 90 percent of the dead were African Americans and nearly seven in 10 were younger than 35. The city’s homicide rate has gone way down – the annual body count dropped from a record high of 482 in 1991 to a half-century low of 88 last year – but the casualties don’t change.

Like David, many of the fallen loitered in the danger zone, in the vicinity of the killers and the killed, always in the shadows of trouble. Victims who aren’t perceived as innocent tend to draw scant public notice or sympathy, and the shooting of David Robinson appalled the civic conscience only briefly, owing to the dismal particulars of the crime: He had died in a gunfight after being robbed of his new Nike sneakers.

Sigh.

Read the whole thing to get a glimpse of one "statistic", about his family who cares for him, about the pastors and teachers and counselers who tried to help him, and his inner rage that made him prone to get into fights.

Sigh.

and another WaPo article notes that only one third of these crimes result in conviction.

Sigh.

The Girl who ended school segregation

Linda Brown died this week.

Linda Brown’s name will live eternally, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said at a Topeka church while visiting this community for the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board ruling in May 2004.

“God has a way of taking the ordinary people in sub-ordinary positions, exalting them to extraordinary heights and then they become the frame of reference,” he said. “So Topeka is on the map not because of the richest family in Topeka – nobody knows who that is nor does anybody care. Linda Brown’s name, and her father’s name, will live eternally.”

Patrick Woods, who serves on USD 501′s school board, said the Brown family shaped the country and made it a better place. They were ordinary people who decided to stand up for their rights, Woods said, and that’s a lesson for all of us.

headsup GetReligion who points out her father was a pastor, and Linda a believing Christian.

Have You Seen Steve?

Via David Reneke:

NASA is searching for Steve (and they want your help).

According to Liz MacDonald with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, “STEVE is a very narrow purple arc and sometimes it has these little green features that go along with it as well that are kind of like waving fingers or a picket fence.”

STEVE was first noticed by citizen scientists who were observing the aurora and saw this unusual purple swirl showing up in low latitudes, farther south than the aurora typically appears. When asked, NASA scientists didn’t know what it was.

more here.

The Greatest invention since sliced bread

Ketchup slices !

 



if you don't know why this is a great idea, you haven't had to clean up a ketchup covered kid.

Headsup Dave Barry

Oysters

Mark Kurlansky has a book out about the history of Oysters.

But the book mainly is the history of Oysters in the Manhattan area.

The Big Oyster, is a history of New York told through its most celebrated shellfish. New York City’s oyster houses were famous around the world until pollution finally destroyed the beds off nearby Ellis Island in the 1920s. Kurlanksy’s gastronomic history covers four centuries of cultural, economic and culinary trends – with recipes throughout!

PhysOrg has an article about those studying how to restore the New York oyster's ecosystem...

Urbanization has destroyed much of the oyster's habitat, but a few areas still have oysters... So can or should the city try to increase areas to grow oysters?

the main problem? Pollution and chemical waster and bacteria from human waster can lead to sickness in humans who eat the oysters.

Babies!

Whales have calves,

 Cats have kittens,

 Bears have cubs,

 Bats have bittens,

 Swans have cygnets,

 Seals have puppies,

 But guppies just have little guppies.

by Ogden Nash

How to make "gunpowder"

No, not the thing that goes "bang", but the spice:  from NDTV food:

Ingredients:

250gm chana dal

250gm toor dal

6-8 red chillies

1 Tbsp Putana (roasted Bengal gram)

1 t Tbsp coriander seeds

1 tsp whole jeera

1 Tbsp black sesame seeds

 Method

1. Dry roast all the ingredients separately. Bring it down to room temperature, and powder.

2. Serve with ghee or oil.

-----

headsup from one of the writers of Improbable Research who found this item at a local restaurant in Frankfurt:

Everyday heroes

The BBC has an article about the high death rate in the rescuers of 911:

Gerard Fitzgerald, of the firefighters' union the UFANYC, told the BBC that of the 10,000 active firefighters and 6,000 retirees who attended Ground Zero on or after 9/11, about 2,000 had gone on to suffer some form of cancer.

He fears the alarming rate of cancer cases among New York firefighters could soon increase substantially. It's feared that 9/11 first responders were exposed to significant amounts of asbestos, but cancers caused by asbestos exposure rarely emerge until 15 years later....

According to the CDC, just under 70,000 people who helped during 9/11 have applied for medical aid after the disaster, as have about 14,300 people who were in New York City at the time.

the article uses two men who recently died of cancer.

Photo credit: KALEY YOUNG

Keith Young, who recently died of cancer, was a celebrated chef as well as a firefighter

and Thomas Phalen, who was not an NYFD at the time (although he later joined the FD) but a civilian who operated a tourist ferry.

Photo credit: UFANYC

This story didn't get a lot of publicity, but when the subways and bridges and tunnels were closed (for public safety), it was civilians who helped evacuate the stranded so they could get home:

About 500,000 people are estimated to have been taken to safety by boat in only nine hours - the largest evacuation in New York City's history. 

so many heroes.


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

another hero: the French policemanLieutenant-Colonel Arnaud Beltrame, 44 who was killed after he took the place of a female hostage in a standoff with a terrorist.

They held a mass in his honor, attended by local Christians and Muslims.

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

AlJ also has an article on the brave men in Pakistan's Bomb disposal unit.



Only this article, which quotes the men risking their lives, dares to mention they are doing it to protect their families but also inspired by their faith.

'We must protect our own lives along with the lives of others. Bravery is not about getting yourself killed' [Armed with Faith]

"Only those who want to serve their people will work for the bomb disposal unit. [The] Prophet Mohammad preached that when you save one person's life, you save all of humanity. What can be a bigger contribution than that?

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

One of the dirty little secrets of the 911 firemen/rescuers was that so many of them were Catholics. The BBC of course didn't notice because they don't recognize the nuances of NYC outside of the elite enclaves: but legendary street writer Jimmy Breslin did: Here is his classic essay about them from the Rolling Stone.

Inside the church, somebody was reading a eulogy. It tells you a lot about New York City that somebody named Mike Weinberg gets his send-off at Our Lady of Hope Roman Catholic Church and nobody even notices, much less explains it. "He's a firefighter," somebody from the neighborhood says, if you inquire. Which meant he was part of a religion to begin with – firefighting – which is itself an affiliate of the Catholic Church. "His father's a German Jew," somebody said, "but his mother's name is Mary." In the kitchen and in religion, the woman is always trump.

-------------------
Too often, the MSM ridicules people of faith, or slants stories to make evil men seem as if they represent people of faith

Often ordinary people don't spout religion: it is part of them, and like Breslin's comment that no body notices the person's faith because their friends and neighbors take it for granted , and the outsider reporters are alas too often clueless to the quiet but important part people's faith plays in their daily lives.

Mike Weinberg's father, Mort, was there, too. "I told my son, 'If you have to work, this is the best job in the world. You accomplish something. You get a chance to do the most beautiful thing in the world, save a life.' "

Alinsky tactics take two

well, so far there isn't a big uprising against the Pope, but twice he has pulled Alinsky tactics to sneak in changes he wanted.

(the bishops meeting for the family, where the report was written before the meeting and was not the one that passed, and later the footnotes and bishops allowing people in second marriages to receive communion, as if it was just symbolic, so why not)

Now there will be a "youth" meeing, and we see this report:

this is what "youths" want.

“Young people look for a sense of self by seeking communities that are supportive, uplifting, authentic and accessible,” said the document, “communities that empower them.”

They desire “strong communities in which young people share their struggles and testimonies with each other.”

in other words, they want a support group, not a place to worship God.

This is psychology, not a religion.

 Or maybe what they can find what they want in a cult, or at a small local bible Church down the street: except they don't want the bible:

“The Church oftentimes appears as too severe and is often associated with excessive moralism,” they noted. “We need a Church that is welcoming and merciful, which appreciates its roots and patrimony and which loves everyone, even those who are not following the perceived standards.”

Translation: Don't dare tell me schtupping outside of marriage is wrong.

Sigh.

I go to mass to meet Jesus in the Eucharist

You know: meet God?

and all sorts of people go to mass:  if you are a good Catholic, you are too busy praying to notice the transvestite in the next pew.

reminds me of Tolkien's quote on the modern church: we go to worship God.

J. R. R. Tolkien said:

“I can recommend this as an exercise: make your Communion in circumstances that affront your taste. Choose a snuffling or gabbling priest or a proud and vulgar friar; and a church full of the usual bourgeois crowd, ill-behaved children — from those who yell to those products of Catholic schools who the moment the tabernacle is opened sit back and yawn — open necked and dirty youths, women in trousers and often with hair both unkempt and uncovered. Go to Communion with them (and pray for them). It will be just the same as a Mass said beautifully by a visibly holy man, and shared by a few devout and decorous people. (It could not be worse than the mess of the feeding of the Five Thousand — after which our Lord propounded the feeding that was to come.”

Be Afraid... be very afraid

This is the scariest thing I have heard in a long time: because this is not a conspiracy, alt/r site of paranoia but a mainstream podcast that is discussing open threats by the previous leader of the CIA.

very scary, because this is not "infowars" or "coast to coast am"  but a mainstream podcast.

And the (progressive) Nation magazine had a similar warning in February.

It is one thing to tar Donald Trump with a groundless campaign, Nixon-style, so as to insinuate without evidence that he entertains objectionable ties to Russia. That is mere politics....

  It is another matter altogether when the descendants of Dulles... mount what looks awfully like a coup operation against the president of our republic. That is a strong phrase, but it belongs on the table far more than the “complete garbage” you can read in any day’s edition of The New York Times. There I will put it for now, awaiting a historically informed argument for taking it off.

read the whole thing, because it relates what is happening now to the story of the CIA/Military opposition to JFK.

Now, unlike most bloggers, I am old enough to remember reading an interview with Kennedy (in an ordinary women's magazine, that my mom bought for the recipes etc), where Kennedy said he actually was happy with the anti nuke/ peacenik groups because they helped to counter the pressure on him by some in the military to start a war.

(Place JFK assassination conspiracy theory here.)

Back in the early 1990s, there was a military paper called the Military Coup of 2012 (that is a Scribd link, but googling will find it elsewhere on line), but in that paper, it posited a paralyzed Congress that had lost public trust, but a military that still had the public's trust.

Is that true today? Yes.

But that assumes the military is a monolith and would "obey" the CIA/politicized Generals.

 Especially since their oath is not to their generals or to the President but to the Constitution? And any coup would be a threat agasint the constitution...

Here is one satire on the coup scenerio:

General Mattis to the rescue?

The back story of this is the elite/modernist vs the outliers, as explained in an article by Professor Bulliet that I posted a few days ago that warns of opposition to the wonderful world that the elite are building for all of us.

The world has boarded the globalization express and is hell-bent on a WTO paradise. But what if the counternarrative of yahoo-hinterlands-pushing-back-hard-against-the-modernizers has substance?

Glen Reynolds of Instapundit had published a legal paper n the subject, in theory (as if he didn't really take it seriously) a couple of months ago, LINK and he notes that if a coup took over the presidency, they could only be legitimate if Congress and the courts went along.

But even then, they would face resistance from the states including governors who have control of their local National Guard units.

He also points out the importance of the second amendment here:

The Second Amendment,29 which plays a major anti-coup role in popular lore, may also come into play. The armed citizenry of the United States forms a potentially enormous military force: Tens or hundreds of millions of people with weapons.Some of those people are quite expert, and some of the civilian-owned weapons are quite sophisticated.

 He also points out that just owning a gun is not enough against trained soldiers, but again, many of us have had some military training.

which brings us to all those kids marching in Washington.

Are the kids being manipulated to join a cause that is supposed to be for something good (gun control, and maybe even mental illness control), but is actually about something else: Getting rid of Trump.

Why do I say that?

Because President Obama had eight years to do gun control, and he didn't.

and because there are well funded Democratic operatives behind the marches.

from an email from Democrats abroad:

Please join with Democrats Abroad as we rise and organize this Saturday in marches around the world. And then help us vote out the politicians who are holding America back from common sense gun laws.

So has anyone asked who paid the kid's plane tickets? Their parents? I heard local political activists were arranging for kids to stay with local families, which again suggests some grass roots support, but what are the numbers here? or is someone paying for their hotel and meals too?

the press will use the photos as examples of grass roots protests against the president, as propaganda.

But I am really paranoid about the timing.

No one marched after previous shootings during Obama's administration.

But you know, if there is a threat of a coup, getting guns out of the hands of civilians under the guise of "it's for the children's safety" would make it easier to confiscate weapons.

That is why Marcos confiscated all the firearms in the Philippines in 1972, under the guise that any opposition to him was communist.

I don't know.

I haven't lived in the US for a decade, but I do think that if the CIA attempts a coup, it could easily morph into a civil war.

and then, why worry?

 because it would be a green light for China to march in to take over the Philippines something they already have mentioned in their press... (and VietNam and Taiwan and maybe North Korea and eventually Siberia).

Sigh.

Musical interlude of the day

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

elegy for Japan's Tsunami victims (March 11, 2011)

Stories below the fold

USNavInstBlog has an article about the pros and cons of Hospital ships.

They do a good job and give good publicity, but take so long to get supplies and go to disasters, they are not much help in the acute phase of a disaster.

However, for prolonged conflicts or disasters, they are a life saver.

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

what is "Magic Leak", and why should we care?...




reminds me of  the world described in The Machine Stopped.
-----------------------------

Trumpieboy has been clamping down on sex trafficking, and put Ivanka in charge.

From Physorg:

Congress just passed a law, and now even Craigslist is shutting down their part in that evil trade.

but the techies are upset because if expanded, it could result in censorship of innocent activities.

Rappler notes: UNICEF says the Philippines is the top global site for internet child pornography.

“Child pornography is a billion-dollar industry, and Filipino children are the ones being traded and exploited online. Children who are made to perform sex acts in front of a web camera will never get their childhood back. We must all work together to protect our children,” Unicef Country Representative Lotta Sylwander said.

The report noted that online sexual exploitation of children (OSEC) was the leading form of cybercrime in 2014. One case study cited by Unicef showed that while abuse starts in the digital space, it can lead to physical prostitution. 

(also READ: Facebook groups open more channels for PH cybersex trade – study)

oh, but don't worry: Facebook will keep your data safe. Would they lie to you?
--------------------------------

Don't worry: if TEOTWAWKI occurs, Elon Musk to the rescue

although I suspect it would be a lot cheaper just to move everyone underground into caves or old abandoned mines and grow food hydroponically.

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

NYTimes reports Netflix will put a warning lable on one of the pro suicide miniseries for teens.

yes, she killed herself in order to punish the kids who bullied her.

well, it's better to do that than pull a "Carrie" or Columbine. (/sarcasm). (Stephen King wrote Carrie when he was teaching in high school... hmm..)

And although it was good in that it showed how bullying and social isolation is horrible the problem is that it is also promoting a terrible solution to those vulnerable to suggestion.

Suicide is contageous (as are school shootings, the flip side of bullying, where the anger turns outward instead of inward).


CDC reports on a study of teen suicides:

. A recent crisis, defined as an event occurring within 2 weeks of death that was indicated to have contributed to the death, was reportedly experienced by 83 (55.3%) decedents; these were most commonly family relationship problems (31, 21.8%) and intimate partner problems (15, 10.6%). Other crises included school problems and suicide of a friend or a family member.

and many were druggies: self medicating their pain, which alas doesn't work very well.

Among 131 (92.2%) decedents tested, 26 (19.8%) had one or more of the following drugs detected in their system at the time of death: alcohol, cocaine, amphetamines, marijuana, and opiates.

The really bad news: Most (84%) were being treated by the mental health system.

and social isolation/ lack of connectedness is part of the problem.

Medical article on suicide prevention programs.

Facebook and fake news

Facebook: heh. They were spying on your information all that time.

on the other hand, since the Chinese hackers already have my federal OPM file, why should I worry if the Trumpettes or snowflakes get my personal information to "manipulate" the election?

Data collecting is nothing new.

I mean, they already do that type of stuff for elections: When Obama was running, we used to get phone calls in Spanish to push us to vote for Democrats.

where did they find that information? From our voter registration, or from the phone book?
The problem? Lolo was a Republican, and a FilAm and didn't speak Spanish.

As for the hype of manipulating the elections via fake news on Facebook: you mean you find news stories there?

I use facebook for keeping up with the relatives, but tend to avoid going there, because I have to wade through propaganda: my leftist friends put up two minute hates (usually straw man arguments againt Christianity: hey one Christian in Tulsa said X so all Christians are A..h....and evil).
On the other hand, my Christian relatives keep putting up stuff like: If you love Jesus, share this. So it balances out.

Question: why is no one looking at Google News and it's selections of stories? I stopped using it because they were touting headlines that were meaningless, not the explantion behind the headlines...and often now, you can't read the full story because they are behind a pay wall anyway.

And don't get me started on the TV news. CNN is crap: and not just in their anti Trump bias. And Ralph Peters is right: Fox (which we just got on our cable) is now morphing into propaganda too.

Oh well: we do have AlJezeerah, the BBC, and Bloomberg.

but I get most of my news on the internet.

Family news

cooler today: Only in the low 80s.

Our watchdog is feeling better and chasing cats again.

Kuya is busy at the harvest, so busy he is unable to sign a paper permitting his daughter to travel alone (she is underage) so the first alternative is that I will go to Canada and pick her up.

As Drudge says: Developing.

Boracay won't be closed, at least not the entire island, so Jordan's wedding there is back on.

There is a sign in the mall saying they will hold mass there are 4pm on Sunday. I prefer church, but the mall is airconditioned, and I tend to faint in church (which is why I go at 5:30 am). So maybe I will manage to go to church on Palm Sunday and Easter, where the church is so crowded I usually can't find a seat and often have to leave.

Audiobook of the week

I haven't read it yet, and as a little old lady, I find most of his stuff is: well, duh. Didn't your grandmother tell you that?

 but if you want to hear what he really wrote (instead of the strawman arguments of the MSM), then enjoy!

(before the copyright cops find it)

Living in the picturesque Philippines

Our town has gone from a sleepy rice growing town to a town with one (soon, two) malls, McDonalds and a decent internet.

And our rice now can get grown easier with handplows, reapers and threshers (although we still plant by hand and harvest the wet fields by hand with help of our waterbuffalo). As our older famers retire, we often hire people from other areas of the Philippines.

And as our older farmers retire, often they sell their rice fields, because their kids no longer live here, often the fields are bought by "balikbayan", i.e. people who saved money from working overseas and now retire here.

But the down side to this: a lot of the prosperity here is thanks to remittances from our Overseas Foreign Workers.

MigrantsRights is posting a four part essay about our OFW in the Philippines.
part one
Part 2

Because of poverty, (and corruption) people can't find jobs, so seek a job elsewhere. They send money back home to support their extended families, who use the money for food, school fees, and to build a decent house.

And the "stuff" they send home is greatly welcomed.

They send "stuff" home to help their family, so a superficial outsider would lament they are destroying their family life for "stuff".

So one could be sarcastic and say: Hey the kids are brought up by the grandparents because mom and dad work overseas, but hey they have cellphones.

But when you are poor, the stuff means more than "stuff": It means hope for a better life...and the cellphones connect you to family and to the larger world, while your education means maybe you won't have to be a construction worker in Saudi, but can get a job closer to home in a callcenter in Manila, or maybe even get a degree of nursing that allows you to move to the USA or Canada (and eventually bring your family with you).

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Food glorious food

DavidWarren has a thoughtful nuanced and slightly ironic essay about agribusiness vs the greens.

The question is thus not whether we should grow food, but how. I will be quickly condemned if I modestly propose that the way we are doing it now — in huge monocultural sections adapted to automotive seeding and harvesting — is not ideal. Only a city boy would question arrangements which are truly feeding more than seven billion living souls, with more calories each, on the average, than ever before. I am a city boy, however, so let me try it on....

But this is the scandal of contemporary agriculture, merely adjusted. It is all, essentially, insane. It requires massive “inputs” to keep it going — of fertilizers, pesticides, machinery that now includes computers, and a global infrastructure of transport and storage. A bit of war, and the whole thing collapses.

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BeeApocolypse update: walmart to the rescue? Walmart to the rescue?



again, the weak point is the infrastructure collapse in case of war, solar flare, a supervolcano eruption, an EMP or a killer asteroid.

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Game Changer?

question of the week by Professor Bulliet: on Fundamentalists.

On the Saudi side, modernist businessmen who wear their Islam lightly and have summer escape-the-heat homes in Houston or London or Nice look down on the atavistic mud wrestling that characterizes contemporary American democracy and look to the Chinese model of centralized development for a road map to the future.

Devout Wahhabis, on the other hand, see the American fist, rather than President Obama’s extended hand, wherever they look in the Islamic world. And everyone is hyperconscious of Israel’s influence on American policies. There’s no changing this situation.Oil and geopolitics indissolubly bind the two countries.

Unless, of course, the hinterland zealots on one side or the other should actually succeed in seizing control of the government. (Contrary to popular belief, Wahhabi divines do not currently have the power to push King Abdullah around.)

A Saudi Arabia ruled by Osama bin Laden would not be America’s friend and partner. Nor would an America governed by the Tea Party be looked on with equanimity by a Saudi king. Could such a game-changing shift in power come about in either country? No. At least not according to our historical master narrative devoted to the rise of modernity.

The world has boarded the globalization express and is hell-bent on a WTO paradise. But what if the counternarrative of yahoo-hinterlands-pushing-back-hard-against-the-modernizers has substance?

What if those who see secular humanism as an amoral distraction from faith are thinking actors, and not just mindless scarecrows put up to keep the globalizers on their toes? Can we face the future with any confidence when our reading of the past excludes, demeans or explains away the forces that seem increasingly to be real? If we are to ignore this telos, the inexorable forces of history may push back violently against the naysayers who cannot fathom a world that must reconcile religiosity with the Enlightenment. More by

Professor Bulliet of Columbia University has an excellent series of lectures on youtube on world history, and others about the Islamic world. I believe his specialty is Iran. But what really impressed me is he wrote an entire book on the development of the wheel in history. so he is not a pure ideologue.

I found this article on Scribd, (which requires a subscription) It was originally published here, which requires a subscription.

A lot of thoughtful stuff, including the observation of how the outliers tend to change civilizations, and the similarities between heartland America and the Islamic fundamentalists, not as violent bozos (which is how the press portrays them) but as people of faith who see things differently than the modern meme.

and note that part about gamechanger.

Hmm... No Tea Party or Fundie, but Trump seems to be such a game changer, but not a radical but one who does represent the outliers in the US...

and I won't even guess what is going on in Saudi.

And this explains why the Republican establishment hates him as much as the Democratic ubersocialist hate him.

by the way: in the article he also mentions two peasant revolts against the Emperor of China in the 1800's, both led by religious zealots.

Something to keep in mind when you read the meme about that country.

Podcast of the week

HistoryAccordingToBob podcast is starting a series on ancient warfare: The Sea Peoples (who many think were the reason for the Bronze age collapse)

he also has podcasts on Rome, Napoleon in exile, and the Robber Barons. Archive of recent podcasts here, and his older ones can be bought on CD's.

Boracay beach clean up

I may write against the religion of PC ecology, but it does not mean I oppose conservation and green measures to stop it.

here, corruption results in excess building, traffic congestion, contaminated water and dumping garbage into the ocean near the beachers. A small gift to the authorities will let you pollute (sound familiar, Chicago?), and is one reason Duterte is pushing to shut down Boracay.

one of Joy's relatives owns a small bed and breakfast there (she invested her savings as an OFW into the place) so we have visited Borachay.

So we are waiting to see what happens, and if our cousin Jordan will have to arrange his wedding here instead of at that resort.

The business community is upset, of course. Lots of money and a lot of people will lose their jobs if there is a complete shutdown.

But one suspects it was the usual Duterte hyperbole, but at least he is trying to clean the place up for future tourism before "developers" destroy that wonderful beach.

The Inquirer discusses the problem here, including compromise solutions which would work... if they are actually done.

the PhilStar calls the island a "ticking time bomb" that needs to be rehabilitated before the place is destroyed.

so what should you do if they actually shut the place down?

To minimize the adverse impact of the planned closure of Boracay to tourism, the Department of Tourism has requested airline companies, including Philippine Airlines and Cebu Pacific, to allow those who have already booked flights to Boracay to cancel or rebook without fine or penalty. These airline companies were also asked to just divert their Boracay-bound flights to other tourist destinations in the country.
Once all the illegal structures are gone, plans are to possibly adopt a masterplan prepared for the DOT by top urban planner, architect Felino Palafox. Some of its features are a boardwalk and and a tram that will go around the island, which means that all other modes of transportation presently being used such as habal-habal and tricycles will be phased out.
Read more at https://www.philstar.com/business/2018/03/18/1797722/ticking-time-bomb#SD42kC8PZvQCJFpF.99

to make things worse, a typhoon caused a lot of damage last December, and locals blamed the unregulated (and illegal) development for making the flooding worse.

here are several videos discussing the problem: All alas in Tagalog.






this is an ongoing problem: Here is a report about one such illegal resort that was taken down in 2014.



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so where else can you go if you are headed to the Philippines?

well, we don't have beaches, but our area is a prime destination for ecotourism:



I mean, what is more exciting that sitting around and watching the rice (and Onions) grow?

The Aral sea

the Dead sea is not the only place that irrigation destroyed a lake.

The Aral Sea almost disappeared when the USSR drained it for irrigation.

but now it is recovering: slowly, maybe;

Free Speech and Limericks

Peter Hitchens (the liberal brother of the famous athiest/communist writer) has an essay in the UKMail about the decline of free speech in that country and the demonization and even threats to the loyal opposition. Much of it is about local politics, but some of it can apply to many countries, where PC culture is regulating religious speech.

He covers several subject in his essay, and ends it with the scandal of the Bishop of Chichester, who didn't allow a fellow clergyperson accused of abuse to get a proper legal defense and now is in deep dodoo for going along with the kangaroo court instead of seeking the truth.

Again, local politics, of which I know nothing.

However, the article reminds me of the X rated limerick about the Bishop of Chichester.

Well, this is a PG blog, but here is the PG rated version:

A pious young lady of Chichester
Made all the pale saints in their niches stir.
And each morning at matin
Her breast in pink satin
Made the bishop of Chichester's breeches stir.

I found that in an essay about Limericks and similar poems.

The essay includes this factoid:

1225—Saint Thomas Aquinas may have written the first limerick: a prayer in Latin!

huh? Yup. it's true, but the poem wasn't funny. But like a lot of limericks, it was R Rated (and maybe inspired by that time his mama kidnapped him from the cloister and asked a local lovely lady to... well, never mind... this is a PG rated blog.)

Sit vitiorum meorum evacuatio
Concupiscentae et libidinis exterminatio,
Caritatis et patientiae,
Humilitatis et obedientiae,
Omniumque virtutum augmentatio. 

More HERE and it has several different translations into English, including this one:

Another Version

by Robin Kay WilloughbyThis limerick’s for purging my sin,
Ousting lust and desire from within,
Which leaves oodles of space
For agape and grace,
Plus humility, virtue, and gin.

and if you go to the link, there are many similar limericks and other short poems for your enjoyment. '



so where are today's jesters? A joke is worth a thousand preaching words.

Stories below the fold

PhysOrg: the Dead Sea is dying: too much water is being diverted into irrigation etc. so it has been shrinking.

So now there is a plan to build a canal to divert sea water into that lake to restore it.

After years of studies, the $1.1 billion Red Sea "Peace Conduit" deal was signed by Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian authorities in 2013. The project, located entirely on Jordanian territory, includes a desalination plant near Aqaba. After producing drinking water, the remaining highly saline liquid will be sent by pipeline to fill the Dead Sea, powering two hydroelectric plants along the way.

Yes, you read that right: It is a deal between Israel, Jordan and Palestine.

paid for by the US and Japan and maybe EU loans to Jordan.

what is that saying? Dogs and cats living together?

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(Italian) retired cop has vision of Mary in southern Germany. Hundreds due to attend to the next scheduled visit today.

These visions pop up all over the world: A few are genuine, some are "failed" (because the visionary gets proud, or because those around them are nuts). But from a Jungian standpoint, artists and sensitive people tend to "sense" something going on, and proclaim it... heck, you can hear these types nearly every night on Coast to Coast Am or similar programs about the weird.

or maybe it is Mama Mary giving the liberal German bishops, who seem to be more interested in making their church politically correct than preaching the gospel, a headsup that God, not they, are in charge.
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as I posted before: The Beeapocolypse is one of the latest "WAGD" scares.

But don't worry: you will still have tofu:
Monsanto announces self pollinating soy beans.

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why hasn't anyone mentioned that the reason high school students are out marching against guns is not politics, but because marching and feeling self righteous is fun? And it gets you out of class...


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another Manila Casino/hotel fire.

the dead seem to be employees working in security... hmm...

in our prayers. A robbery cover up, carelessness, or terrorism? Developing...

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Manila schools are shut today because of a transportation strike against laws "modernizing" (i.e. getting rid of) local jeepneys: i.e. small buses that carry people on short trips, because progressive leaders want to replace them with new "EJeepneys".

This will improve the air quality in Manila, but will mainly benefit the larger transportation businesses, and destroy a lot of small jeepney owners and hurt the Poor.

so what do you want: to be able to breathe, or to be able to afford to go to work?

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not all space deaths are astonauts: Remembering the 1980 explosion in Russia that killed 48 near the launch pad.

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a Conservative Blue Dog pro life Democrat got elected in western Pennsylvania, where people "cling to their guns and religion".

Is this a "headsup" to the establishment Republicans, who favor big business and the global agenda? Or is it a "headup" to the Democrats, who hate guns, love welfare (and taxing hard working stiffs) and celebrated abortion as the best thing invented since sliced bread?

A lot of pundits are saying it was anti Trumpyboy, but since his position is closer to Trump (or to Bill Clinton for that matter), I suspect the pundits are out of touch.

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Attention Paddington Bear: The Penrith Marmalade festival celebrates this condiment.

Translation problems

Sometimes things get lost in translation, especially acroynymns.

Not only do we have a militant Islamic group named "MILF" and another one named "BIFF", but now a church in the Philippines made the Twittersphere by telling people they need to
"F-A-P" every day in Lent. (fasting- almsgiving-prayer).

This is a PG rated blog, but if you don't get the joke, ask your grandkids.

All your face are belong to us

Introducing Face Recognition For More Features

on my facebook page today:

 Hi
we’re always working to make Facebook better, so we're adding more ways to use face recognition besides just suggesting tags. 

For example, face recognition technology can do things like: 
 • Find photos you're in but haven't been tagged 
• Help protect you from strangers using your photo 
• Tell people with visual impairments who's in your photo or video You control face recognition. 
This setting is on, but you can turn it off any time, which applies to features we may add later. -The Facebook Team

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it's not just facebook:

here is how it is being used in 7-11s in Thailand. (FTimes)

The ubiquitous retailer, whose Thai stores are operated by a unit of the Bangkok-based conglomerate Charoen Pokphand (CP), is to work with Remark Holdings, a Nasdaq-listed AI company with operations in China and the US. Remark will deploy its KanKan technology, which uses gesture recognition to collect and analyse data points on traffic in stores, staff activities, how long customers linger at specific shelves and even their emotions as they pass through stores.

this article is about China's use of face recognition. (venture beat).

As China’s Lunar New Year approaches, citizens and tourists will spot the country’s police force with facial recognition glasses. These glasses will help officials use real-time ID verification to fight crimes during the celebrations around this year’s event. But interestingly, such facial recognition technologies are not new to the people of China. In the past, the country has relied heavily on cardless identification. The “Smile to Pay” feature, launched by Alibaba’s Ant Financial affiliate, lets users take a grinning selfie to authenticate a digital payment. Facial recognition in China also allows students to enter university halls, travelers to board planes, and employees to enter office premises with ease and no ID cards. In 2015, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security announced it was looking to implement an “omnipresent, completely connected, always on and fully controllable” network using facial recognition systems and CCTV hardware.

Survival Times has six ways to fool face recognition.



and facial recognition is not just for people: They now can ID cows.

Students at MIT are busy trying to fool it too.



 so what could go wrong?

UK Guardian reports.

everyone has the information:  the FBI, for example.

but then you read this:

He mentioned FindFace, for example, the Russian company that made an app that could . The app was supposed to be for finding friends, but members of the online messaging board Dvach started using it to and spam their families with the news of their discovery.

the idea is being sold under the guise of "convenience", and of course, as a way to fight fraud and catch criminals.

Ah, but what happens when people with the wrong ideas are declared to be criminals?

And Technology Review notes the technology is getting so sophisticated that it could pick up clues if you are gay, your IQ, your political leanings, or if you have criminal tendencies.

what could go wrong?

what about those of us who just don't want people snooping into our lives? (uh, remember that nasty 4th Amendment that limits the government from snooping in on you?).

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

the problem is, of course, you signed up and gave Facebook, Twitter, your IPhone etc. all that nice information voluntarily, and they are not the government.

But how many folks realize that they sell this information to a lot of people, and that the gov't snoops in and finds out what you say anyway.

I don't have an IPhone (but my stepson and his wife do, as does my granddaughter). Not because of privacy issued, but because the print is too small to read, and my house has lousy cellphone reception thanks to the house being basalt and surrounded by concrete walls.

IF they want to call me, they call the cook or the gardener, both of whom have ordinary cellphones.

As for Facebook: I avoid posting my photo there, but probably they have me on someone else's post. Sigh. 

And if the gov't wants me, no problem: I'm on the Philippine gov't data base for my visa (and they do use facial recognition software at the airport)...

as for the US, I am already on the US gov't data base because I worked for the Feds (IHS).

Heck, my OPM personnel file was one of several million hacked by China a couple years ago, so China probably knows me too.

Family news

The harvest is almost finished. A good harvest.

It is getting hot, and there was a report two local kids drowned while swimming in the irrigation canal: which is forbidden, since the sides are steep, and the current is swift. Sigh.

It is also time for kite flying: Gusty winds in the late afternoon, so all the kids are out with their kites.

After church, the dog was chasing cats and had a nose bleed. He had one earlier this week, and so I figured it was a cat scratch, but when it didn't stop we went to the vet who said it was coming from inside, and put in some medicine and we applied cold compresses.

Blood work tomorrow. This is our watchdog, a labrador, but he is 11 years old, and getting frail. Sigh.

The dog in the business side of the compound just had three puppies. So far they are all okay.

Church was crowded for the 5:30 mass: Lent, getting toward Easter. So I left early.

The church that meets in our meeting center is going strong: Halleluyah! mostly young folks and Pentecostal.

Jordan is planning to get married in May in Borachay: but Duterte is planning to clean up the place (drugs, prostitution, and illegal houses) so he may have to marry closer to home. We are invited, and the place is beautiful: the best beaches in the Philippines. But I probably won't go, because I hate to travel.

they got beez in their bonnets

Bloomberg has an article debunking the population bomb hysteria:
It seems that as people get more wealthy (and kids don't die), they decide they don't need 6 kids to make sure someone is there to care for you in your old age.

And yes, even Muslims and Africans are limiting their offspring. Even here in the Catholic Philippines, where birth control was not supplied free to women, the average number of kids fell from 6 to slightly over 2 in the last 20 years.

and something else happened to stop the mass starvation predicted by these honored globalists: Norman Bourlag and the green revoution.

but hey, the population bomb went putz, so now it is global warming, aka climate change.

and of course, those pushing this also include pollution (not just nasty pollution but GM crops, pesticides and artificial fertilizers, along with chicken farms for poor people to eat chicken and eggs, and feed lots to produce cheap beef)

The latest hysteria: Bee Apocolypse.

My granddaughter Ruby at a PC NWO school in Canada has to read an R book about this: not just full of propaganda but a couple of perverted X rated scenes to make things interesting.

We grow organic rice, and I see no problem: it is healthier. But it is also more expensive and has a smaller crop. The government here and the Catholic church love organic foods, and thanks to the growing middle class here in Asia, there is indeed a market for our product.

But the dirty little secret is that without modern farming techniques, including hybrid seeds (and now GM seeds), fertilizer and pesiticides, you wouldn't have enough food for the large urban poor population: or if there was enough food, the poor wouldn't be able to afford it.

so essentially we are gourmet food producers, for the growing middle class, but import our cheaper rice from China, Thailand, and Vietnam, where they use chemicals galore, and have larger harvests.

Ah, but the author doesn't seem to be in favor of such things.

The book starts out with Chinese post apocoplypse farmers pollinating fruit trees by hand.

Well, they already do this in China,  to improve the apple and pear harvest, but one wonders why: to make money of course. Not because people would starve without those fruits.

so what's the alternative when there are no more honeybees (aside from, maybe breeding GM bees who don't die from mites, which are why they are dying off)?

Heck, even MotherEarth News has an article pointing out that there are self pollinating apple trees available out there, and it only took two seconds of googling to find where to buy self pollinating pear trees.

Duh. Guess a book starting with Chinese farmers planting and harvesting self pollinating fruit trees just wouldn't have the same propaganda value.

And of course, it reminds one of the stupid agricultural shennanigans ordered on Chinese communes during the Great Leap forward: inefficient and mainly not helping the poor farmers, who often overworked doing stupid stuff while starving to death.

But never mind. This is a book in the latest genre of post climate change apocolypse fiction.

silly me. when I was growing up, the meme was post nuclear war fiction: but I guess that is out of date now.

of course, the Atlantic insists the depressing book does have a solution:

Lunde leaves open the possibility of a way of life that values the collective over the individual.  

heh.

Can you say "socialism" people? New World Order dictatorship?

Sigh. Maybe my granddaughter's father was right (he opposed sending her there), but on the other hand, the X rated shennanigans going on here was the reason I helped her mother finance the move. (she got a full scholarship but we paid the plane ticket etc)...

But you know, when a school charges 30 thousand dollars a year tuition for high school, you do expect the kid to get a decent education, and learn to think.

That is what reading the classics and learning philosophy was all about, at least in the old days.

On the other hand, questioning stupidity is why they killed Socrates...

Mortimer Adler call your office. Homer and Luo Guanzhong are now banned as obsolete white men.