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Friday, May 24, 2013

Give Syria Peace Talks a Chance

In their article Give Peace Talks a Chance Michael Quinn and Madhav Joshi discuss how peace negotiations in Syria could work. Although they start from a different perspective they come to similar conclusion as I did in previous articles.

They object against the announced global conference: Most peace processes begin with secret or else private pre-negotiations. In private talks, there is no audience, and the cost of joining or leaving is low. The primary function of these discussions is to overcome the psychological barriers to formal negotiations by addressing the warring parties’ major fears about the process. Each side expresses the problems as they see them. These perceptions are repeatedly reframed until a shared understanding of the issues that need to be addressed is developed.

They also warn against big demands and goals at this stage: Talks that bite off too much too early are likely to fail. In Nepal’s first round of formal peace talks in 2001, for example, the Maoists put forward a list of roughly 40 demands, which included dissolving the government and the constitution and holding elections for a constituent assembly. Government mediators balked. The talks failed, and the civil war entered its most violent period. Two years later, in 2003, the Maoists called a cease-fire and the government reciprocated. This time, the initial gambit was only three security-related requests that did not include dissolving the government. The government accepted and formal negotiations began. By 2006, the two sides were signing a comprehensive agreement that ended the war. They even agreed to form a constituent assembly to write a new constitution, which, in turn, abolished the monarchy.

They also argue against having a transitional government now: Transitional power-sharing arrangements are quite common in peace agreements. (Over half of the accords in the Peace Accords Matrix, a database of comprehensive peace agreements hosted by the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, establish a transitional power-sharing arrangement). Such provisions, however, typically entered into agreements later in the process, once the parties had decided what they were transitioning to.

They don't consider the fragmented nature of the opposition a major problem: But many successful negotiations do start out as bilateral talks between the government and one or more groups. They tend to expand to include more opposition groups over time because, as talks near their end, no one wants to be left out of the process that will shape new political institutions or even form a new government. If a group does not put down its guns, it runs the risk of being denied recognition as a legal party or, even worse, becoming the target of an increasingly focused military campaign under a unified government. In other words, starting negotiations with one or more groups tend to lead to negotiations with the other groups.

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Dead Man Kicking: Mississippi Man Wakes Up In Funeral Home Right Before Embalming

Good timing

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Courtesy of Eddie Hester

Walter Williams in the hospital.

A Mississippi funeral home says it found a man alive and kicking in a body bag hours after the coroner pronounced him dead.

Walter Williams was pronounced dead Wednesday night after his pulse stopped, but funeral home employees found him trying to kick through his body bag Thursday morning.

Eddie Hester, Williams’ nephew, said Friday Williams is in the hospital and breathing without the help of a respirator, but is too weak to talk.

“It’s a miracle,” Hester said in an interview. “I don’t know how long he’s gonna be here, but right now he’s here, and the whole family is glad.”

Williams started to move right as the funeral workers were getting ready to embalm him. He was rushed to the hospital and is now in good condition. The coroner said William’s pacemaker may have stopped working and then re-started, which could explain his pulse stopping.

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Come chat with us! Download and install an IRC-client -- Hexchat is recommended -- and go to the channel #National-Socialism on the Undernet server.

22 February 2017

Jewish Liquor-Merchant Attempts Mini-Holohoax

Survivor of a self-inflicted mini-Holocaust

On 21 January 2017 Jewish liquor-store owner Scott B. Young started a fire in his own store, broke the display-window, and spraypainted the words "Burn the Jew" on the back door and two swastikas (see photo) next to the door.

He then told police that two bearded men in black had robbed him at gunpoint, then started the fire and shut him in the store, spraypainting "Burn the Jew" on the back door as they left. He said that he had escaped the fire by breaking the display-window and climbing out.

On 24 January the Jew filed an insurance-claim. Thus it was Jewish lightning as well as a fake anti-Semitic incident -- two great Jewish traditions combined.

This particular Jew was not so clever, however, since he left the used can of spraypaint under his counter, and could not even devise an explanation when police found it. And, although he claimed that he had climbed out through the display-window after breaking it, shards of glass and other items on the sill were undisturbed. Police also noticed, contrary to Young's story, that the door had been open when "Burn the Jew" was sprayed on it.

On 16 February Young was charged with seven crimes in connection with his hoax. (A. Gorosko, Newtown Bee, 21 February 2017)

By presenting himself as a survivor of an anti-Semitic attack, the Jew obviously hoped to give himself a sacrosanct status that would discourage scrutiny of his fake insurance-claim. This is the Holocaust reparations scam in microcosm.

The ADL did get involved (J. Voket, Newtown Bee, 24 January 2017), and there was moral grandstanding about the supposed hate-crime in local media ("Not in Our Town," Newtown Bee, 26 January 2017) -- which in some jurisdictions, it is easy to imagine, might have deterred the investigation -- but the Newtown police nonetheless conscientiously followed the evidence and arrested the Jewish hoaxster.

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Improving education in the Year of Light

Light plays a role in every aspect of our lives. We rely on it to brighten our homes and businesses.

We use light-based technologies in our smart phones, tablets, laptops, and DVD players. You’ll even find them in use at the grocery store, the airport and the doctor’s office.

No doubt about it, light is a vital part of our world.

Perhaps that’s why the United Nations has proclaimed 2015 the International Year of Light. Over the next 12 months, lighting experts, technology leaders and the brightest scientific minds will convene to explore and discuss ways that light-based technologies can be used to solve some of the world’s most challenging problems—problems like energy consumption, agriculture, health and education.

For our contribution, Solatube International, Inc. will continue to work on improving education by growing our established educational daylighting program. Through this initiative, we provide free Solatube Daylighting Systems to qualifying U.S. schools and universities. The units deliver natural light that helps students concentrate, perform better on tests, and work more productively. They also cut electricity costs, allowing more money to be put into the classroom and less into utilities.

Our most recent efforts benefited Newington High School in Newington, Conn., a facility that hadn’t been updated for 40 years. The school’s media center was the main focus of the project. Surrounded by corridors and classrooms, this section of the building had no access to natural light.

The space was brightened using several Solatube Daylighting Systems, installed by the Solatube Commercial Distributor for New England, Willco Sales & Service.

 “I was impressed with the difference natural daylight brought  to the room,” said Architect Kevin Lipe of Jacunski Humes  Architects. “Before the project, turning off the room lights left  most of the space in darkness and brought to a stop whatever  activities were underway. Now, turning off the lights causes an  almost imperceptible change to light levels and activities  continue on uninterrupted. Solatube Daylighting Systems  greatly enhance the quality of ambient light throughout the  space without shadows, glare or direct sun.”

Thanks to the new units, students now have access to better,  brighter lighting. The school can also reduce its energy use since traditional electric lights can be left off during the day.

As the International Year of Light continues, we’ll continue to do our part to solve the world’s problems as they relate to education and energy consumption. In fact, plans are already in the works to install units in additional educational facilities domestically. We’re even looking to expand our program outside the U.S. to ensure children in schools all over the world have the lighting they need to study and learn.

Solving the world’s problems won’t happen overnight. But with awareness building initiatives like the International Year of Light and educational improvement programs like the one we’ve put into place, we’ll continue to chip away at it. One school at a time.

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Father Raymond J. de Souza: Christopher Hitchens lived in service of plain hatred

Peter J. Thompson/National Post

Christopher Hitchens is dead. By his own lights, he is utterly defunct, decomposing more rapidly than yesterday’s newspaper. I take a different view, and do sincerely pray for a merciful judgment. In the mean time, I trust that his soul, even now, is chagrined with the extravagant evasions that marked his death. My colleagues were enthusiastic contributors. Our editorial board praised his “courage” as a journalist and deemed him the “greatest columnist and essayist in the English-speaking world.” The estimable David Frum wrote that, “If moral clarity means hating cruelty and oppression, then Christopher Hitchens was above all things a man of moral clarity.”

Clarity he had. But hating cruelty? He was himself both hateful and cruel. Upon Bob Hope’s death, Hitchens wrote that he was a “fool, and nearly a clown.” When Ronald Reagan died, Hitchens called him a “stupid lizard,” “dumb as a stump” and “an obvious phony and loon.” On Mother Teresa: “The woman was a fanatic and a fundamentalist and a fraud, and millions of people are much worse off because of her life, and it’s a shame there is no hell for your bitch to go to.”

The sadness is that there is a hell for Hitch to go to. He was granted a long farewell, with the opportunity for reconsiderations and reconciliations with those he hated and those he hurt. He declined to take advantage of it. Mother Teresa is fine, and no doubt prays for her enemies, including that Hitchens would be delivered both from hell and the nihilistic oblivion, which he thought awaited him.

“He was a virtuoso hater and his hatreds were redeemed, when they had to be, by the sheer relish with which they were expressed,” wrote Michael Ignatieff upon his death.

For many of Hitchens’ fellow journalists, the virtuosity of his brilliant writing and bracing conversation earned him a pass on the hatred. But hatred it remained. His commercial genius was to harbour hatreds sufficiently vast and varied that a lucrative constituency could be found to relish all of them.

In the first of his elegant essays about the ravages of his terminal cancer, he wrote about the consequences of his abbreviated future: “Will I really not live to see my children married? To read — if not indeed write — the obituaries of elderly villains like Henry Kissinger and Joseph Ratzinger?” The Scriptures in which Hitchens did not believe say that love is stronger than death. Maybe he thought hatred was, too.

He desired to live that he might trash the freshly dead. It was habitual for him, most intensely manifest when he accepted an astonishingly ill-conceived invitation from ABC to provide commentary for Mother Teresa’s funeral broadcast, using the occasion to heap abuse upon her as she was being laid to rest. It was a vile, vicious and typical performance. Is it truly possible that the “relish” with which he did, so redeemed it in the eyes of his literary friends?

As for his courage, I find less there than others do. He faced his final illness with real fortitude. He was fearless — and peerless — in debate. But I think it more apt to explain the idiosyncratic incoherence of his views by the gravitational pull of shifting opinions. He was a Trotskyite as a young man in Europe in the aftermath of 1968. He abandoned socialism — just as the entire world was burying it amid the collapsing ruins of communism. After 9/11, he took up the cudgels against Islamofascism, as he was pleased to call it. He supposedly broke with the left by endorsing the Iraq War — back when Ignatieff, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton were endorsing it. And in his final act, he was toasted by secular elites the world over for his fundamentalist atheism.

Professionally, only his campaign against the mendacity of the Clintons was courageous. That cost him some of his friends in the Washington salons, where he so grandly presided. Almost every gushing remembrance mentioned his legendary drinking and dinner-table rhetoric. That he could write better drunk than the rest of us sober is impressive in its own way, but the sheer awe of his drinking prowess is puzzling. Perhaps if I had gone drinking with him, I too would have been bewitched. Or perhaps not, given that I spend much of my time around university students, so I am rather less impressed than most adults by ostentatious alcoholic excess.

“Mercifully, too, I now can’t summon the memory of how I felt during those lacerating days and nights,” Hitchens wrote for the January 2012 issue of Vanity Fair, recalling the horrors of cancer and its treatment. Yet the lacerations inflicted by his writing do remain, and are remembered. The remedy is mercy. Hitchens was disinclined to show it, let alone ask for it. Yet the hope remains that he knows it now.

National Post


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Tag Archives: arm

5 Reasons Why Squats Are Stopping You from Getting BIG Arms

The bar was loaded. My back was covered in chalk. The belt was squeezing my waist like a pair of pliers. A rhythm that could make a dead heart beat again, and a guitar escorting your soul to the place where deities live, were coming out of my headphones. I got under the bar – […]


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I (Heart) My Writer-Friends

Sumner (wearing AWESOME boots and striped socks, wish you could see), Random Blue-Haired Chick, and Paula (sans diamond-encrusted gourmet chef's hat)

Aren't we cute??? This picture was taken last weekend during a very special celebration dinner. Paula and Sumner are two of my sharpest, smartest Writing Weapons. In other words, they are my readers.

My Early Readers.

A good Early Reader should never be taken for granted. Not only will she tell you all the wonderful things about your novel, comments that make you feel tingly and sparkly inside (and praise is truly necessary to keep going, I don't say that lightly), but she ALSO has to be unflinchingly honest. Someone willing to say things like:

"I'm just not loving your main character right now."
"That's cheesy. Cut it."
"Huh? I don't get it."
"I don't believe this part."
"Why? No, seriously, WHY?"

Paula and Sumner say these things. Often. Frequently. And THANK GOODNESS they do! I am a much, much better writer thanks to their questions, thanks to our lunchtime meet-ups to brainstorm what the HECK is going on with my plot, and thanks to their encouraging emails which move me forward, which give me the energy to FINISH.

If you are a writer, I sincerely hope you have such wonderful writer-friends as I do.

So, the celebration!

After my happy happy agent news, I was lucky to have many celebrations last month. January was an endless stream of phone calls, emails, cards, flowers, plants, a gorgeous and meaningful necklace (Thanks, Lauren!), carrot cake cupcakes, and a really really really awesome pizza party (YUM! Thank you, Tai & Staci!).

My friends and family are incredible. It was overwhelming to be surrounded by such support and happiness, and I am grateful. (And I can't wait to celebrate all of THEIR future accomplishments.)

But last weekend's celebration was something extra special. Because without Paula and Sumner's help, I wouldn't even have a completed novel. So I certainly wouldn't have an agent. It was as much their celebration as it was mine!

They surprised me with a stunning French gourmet dinner, made all the more impressive because my friends are vegetarian, and French food is soooo meat-intensive. For them to go out of their way to find the right recipes and cook such an amazing meal, so we could celebrate in the true French fashion (if you recall, my novel is set in Paris), was . . . well. I'm teary thinking about it.

Thank you. You ladies are the BEST.

My only wish is that some day Laini Taylor, my other Early Reader, will be able to join us! Laini is an AMAZING feedbacker, a relentless plot-fixer and plot-tightener and plot-thinker, wielder of pretty pink pens and smart questions and lots and lots and lots of very welcome smiley faces and hearts.

Ha! Swiped from her blog. (She's the one on the right.)

Laini also writes killer-funny emails, and has the supernatural power of always knowing exactly the perfect thing to say at all times. But she is also LAME because she lives in PORTLAND which is on the OTHER SIDE OF THE COUNTRY.

Which makes coffee dates very difficult.

She also just shared with me the first installment of her work-in-progress, and -- holyfriggingcrap, you guys -- it's AMAAAAZING! And I can't say anything about it, other than the world will wet their collective pants when they discover how supremely perfect and exciting and romantic and wondrous it is.

I love it. LOVE. IT!

And speaking of writer-friends, I have a *new* acquaintance who also just shared her latest. Kiersten White! I had the honor of reading Paranormalcy, and let's just say I'm kinda freaking out. She wrote it in three weeks, you guys. Three. WEEKS! And it's funny and exciting, and it's got a great hook and a Very Cute Boy. Teens and adults will snarf this thing up. Big big big congratulations, Kiersten.

(This, I should mention, is the other fantastic thing about writer-friends. Getting to read THEIR work before everyone else! Ha!)

Of course, there is one more person who needs mentioning here. One more Early Reader. My First Reader.

Every author has a First Reader, the one whose opinion means everything to them. The one who without that encouraging smile, without those words of excitement, it's not worth going on. Mine?

Jarrod. Of course!

I love this picture of him wrocking out. (And yes! That IS a Jayne hat!)

Last weekend, Jarrod sat on the floor of my writing room and went through the last third of my novel -- scene by scene, sentence by sentence. This took HOURS. He talked me through each action, helped me figure out what-should-go-where, and together we restructured it until it clicked. Had I attempted this alone, I would still be sorting through the pages of notes and outlines and brainstorms.

And my end result wouldn't be nearly so clean or smart.

Thanks for being my First Reader, love. For always being my First Reader.

  1. Ooh, that IS a cute picture! Hooray for your hubby!

    And yay for writer friends! I wrote my first book without them and, well, no one is ever, ever going to see it, and that's a good thing.

    But most of all hooray for STEPHANIE! Seriously, still SO pleased with your editorial notes and excited over the edits, and I haven't even seen all of them yet!

    I can't wait until you are a world famous author and I can totally tell people I knew you when AND you were instrumental in making Paranormalcy awesome...

    Also, you and your friends are babes. And you and Laini are really making me wish I had cool hair...

  2. Writer friends do rock. And it looks like you have some seriously awesome ones! My goodness, I want colored hair so bad right now.

  3. I love your top and your necklace! You have the cutest clothes!!! And it's good to see a pic of Sumner and Paula and put faces to the names. You ARE really lucky to have good local writer friends! I'm very glad to be [finally] making friends in the Portland writing community. Of course, it goes without saying that it is YOU who are lame for living in North Caroline and not in Portland, but what we REALLY need is access to a certain doorway so we can meet in certain other cities for things like mint tea and poisoned goulash!

    (Can't wait to read the next draft! And Jarrod DOES totally wrock for doing that!)

  4. It's imperative to have good, kind, supportive, honest critters. I'm glad you have some rockin' ones.

    Love Jarrod in that hat!

  5. Kiersten -- It's easy to make editorial notes when a book is THAT GOOD! I'm relieved they'll be helpful. And we're totally achieving superstar status together, remember? Sometime around next Wednesday?

    Natalie -- I see you with a bright orange bob :)

    Laini -- Hello, YOU have the cutest clothes! I can only aspire to your great taste. Either that, or I can aspire to find the magic doorway and take it to your closet. Don't be surprised if you find that gorgeous turqouise blue coat missing.

    lotus -- Critters! Cute!!

  6. I've got my own writer friend, here--Katie my blog partner. Whew! I couldn't function without her. She gives the encouragement and criticism that keeps me going.

    She's especially great for those times I'm standing on a ledge about to fling my WIP into the abyss in a fit of frustration and self doubt.

    Yay writer friends!!

    Sarah Frances

  7. I'm totally counting down to Wednesday. It's been taking way too long.

  8. Hooray for lovely friends! There's nothing nicer than a friend who cooks for you.

    And also you have happy-making hair. I asked my mom if I could dye mine and this is what she said: "Sure!" And I was reallly happy until she said:
    "If you want to make yourself ugly, I'm not stopping you."

    (ps Gred and Forge wrocks!)

  9. Landed here via Kiersten and

    "A good Early Reader should never be taken for granted. Not only will she tell you all the wonderful things about your novel, comments that make you feel tingly and sparkly inside (and praise is truly necessary to keep going, I don't say that lightly), but she ALSO has to be unflinchingly honest."

    I was recently trying to explain/describe what I want in a proof reader and why the first person reading it HAS to generally love my work for them to be effective in critiquing. You put it so clearly.

  10. Lexi -- Ohhh, I feel your pain! I didn't dye my hair for YEARS because of what I thought my family would say. (And your other comment made my husband happy! Thank you!)

    Sylvia -- Welcome to my blog, and thanks for the nice comment!!


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Saturday, August 29, 2015

Let Us Sharpen Our Eighth Sense of Naturalism

Naturalism. Let's not just rely on our inventions, such as the barometer and seismograph. The behavior of living things can be read and interpreted, including our own feelings. Unusual observations and occurrences tell us to prepare foreventualities. Let us sharpen our eighth sense - naturalism.

Dr Abe V Rotor
Mosquitoes become agressive before a rain; they need blood before laying eggs in stagnant water left by the rain.

1. Drought – Occurs in summer; landscape scorched; dry river beds and ponds; brush fires occurs; lake water recedes; crack on earth, especially areas under water in monsoon; worst scenario - flowering of bamboo usually during El Nino, a phenomenon that happens every 7 to 10 years.

2. Earthquake – Farm animals restless; horses kick and neigh; pigs snort; fowls abandon usual roost; turkey cackle; cattle seek exit from corral; dogs howl; and the like. Wild animals abandon abode – snakes come out into the open; reptile keep out of the water; elephants defy their master’s command; birds abandon nest, other emigrate.

Misty crown and ring around the moon could mean bad weather ahead

3. Typhoon – Doldrums-like calm; uneasiness to both humans and animals as barometer reading drops which means atmospheric pressure goes down; arthritis and hypertension symptoms are felt by sensitive persons. As typhoon approaches, sea becomes rough; sky overcast; clouds move fast to one direction; gusts of cold and warm wind, thunderstorms.

4. Mad dog – Its tail is tucked underneath; animal restless biting at anything within its reach; froth coming from its mouth; stealthily moves about without any apparent direction; dreads the presence of water (hydrophobia); usually occurs during hot days particularly in summer. Be keen; keep distance; notify others of danger; get help.

5. Influenza – Precipitated by alternate cold and hot weather, thunderstorms, abrupt change in season. Influenza season is usually at the onset of amihan as the habagat comes to an end. Practical signs: people coughing in church and other gatherings; sale of cold tablets and antibiotics is up; hospitals full. Epidemic starts in the family, neighborhood, local community; also, in schools, malls and markets, and may spread to cover a city or district or province. Modern transportation has made spread of flu easier and wider.

6. Pristine Environment – Abundance of lichens on trunks and branches of trees, rocks, and soil. There are three types: crustose (crust), foliose (leaf-like) and fruticose )fruiting type). They are biological indicators of clean air. The untimate test is the abundance of the fruticose type.

7. Inclement Weather – Halo around moon; gray and red sunset; a storm may be coming depending upon the intensity of these signs.

8. Rain - Dragonflies hovering; aggressive biting of mosquitoes; ants move to another place carrying their young and provisions. The latter predicts heavy continuous rainfall or siyam-siyam or nep-nep. Herons on the move heralds the monsoon.
When field crickets (Acheta bimaculata) are noisy, it's still summertime. Crickets are "watchdogs" in Chinese homes. They stop fiddling at the sligthest sound of an intruder.

9. Monsoon – Frogs croak; insects (termite, ants) swarm; lightning and thunder get frequent; first heavy rain in May vegetates the landscape, thus turning from brown to green. It comes early or late, but usually in later part of May. Global warming has brought unpredictable signs indicating that our climate is changing.

10. Ripening of Fruits – Generally from green to yellow to orange (banana, orange, apple, etc. Determined by smell: guava, jackfruit, durian, melon, etc); shiny rind (caimito, siniguelas). Dull skin (chico), enlarged ridges and furrows (atis, guayabano, anonas)

Apply Naturalism in the following: (For research and discussion)

1. Sweetness/sourness of fruit
2. Maturity and succulence of vegetables (okra, cucumber)
3. Tenderness of nut (buko, macapuno)
4. Sweetness and maturity of fruit (watermelon)
5. Time to harvest singkamas, onions, garlic, sugarbeet
6. Presence of jellyfish
7. Red tide signs
8. Coming flood (earthworm)
9. Time to harvest palay, corn, wheat.
10. Slippery walkway (presence of algae and scum, seldom used)
11. Depth of water (by color, sound of oar, current, clarity)
12. Cloud reading of weather(nimbus for rain, cirrus for fine weather)
13. Glassy eyes (deep feelings like hatred, or “wala sa sarili”)
14. Wrinkles at the corner of eyes (happy disposition)
15. Furrows on forehead (problematic)
16. Rough hand (worker, also athlete)
17. Brilliant and attentive eyes (intelligence)
18. Clumsiness, strummer (nervous, uncertain)
19. Heavy feet (angry, lazy)
20. Tight jaw (angry, restlessly active)

Topics for Research and Discussion

1. How reliable is “gut feel”
2. How about ESP?
3. What is “aura?” How does it apply to relationships?
4. What is Biological Clock? Name how it affects your life.
5. Life starts at 40 – how do you interpret this?
6. What are prophets to you? Are there people who can see the future? Do you believe in Nostrodamus?
7. Are dreams hidden motives, indirect messages, prophesies?
8. How superstitious are you? Do you practice superstition?
9. Do you think you were once living on earth in another being or living thing? Do you believe re-incarnation?
10. How fatalistic are you – you are predestined even before you were born.

Living with Nature, AVR
Mad dog – Its tail is tucked underneath; animal is restless biting at anything within its reach; froth coming from its mouth; stealthily moves about without any apparent direction; dreads the presence of water (hydrophobia); usually occurs during hot days particularly in summer. Be keen; keep distance; notify others of danger; get help.

Dogs warn before they attack. This dog at home (Kulit) warns intruders with flashy eyes. Slowly withdraw but don't show you're afraid by looking straight into the dog's eyes. On the street don't turn your back and run. The dog will run after you - and it could be the whole pack. Tell this to your children.

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Monday, August 16, 2010

By Request....a couple of interior pictures

Life has been rather hectic for us recently, so I haven't been able to update as regularly as I would like to, but by popular request, here are some inside pictures :o)
We quasi-moved in last week as we aren't quite ready to move the tiny house into position yet, so we've been unable to hook up to water and permanent power and are just running the lights off an extension cord for now.
A rather unexpected setback for us was when we went to move our mattress and boxspring into the new house and discovered that the whole underside of our mattress had black mold all over it! NOT good! We had really wanted to upgrade to a completely non-toxic organic bed, but didn't have it in our budget for now, but seeing as how our mattress was toast, we had to do something.
So for now, we're sleeping on our futon on the floor upstairs anxiously awaiting our new mattress to be finished being built by the wonderful folks over at Soaring Heart in Seattle.
We're also generally moved into the living room, of course the picture will be hung properly once we roll the insulation into the walls and put up the tongue and groove on the inside :o)
Lots of work left to do yet, but in the interest of trying to get our 5th wheel up for sale before the summer is over, we're going to live in a construction zone for a bit.
Also, as a side note, we have found another one of those small marine wood stoves to use in place of the one we were going to, so I'm going to be selling the one we originally purchased for the house with the little oven, burner, and griddle top. They retail new for over $3400 once you add in tax and crate/shipping charges, but we bought ours used for $1500 and I'd like to try and get most of that back out of it. So, if you know anyone in the market for a teeny tiny cookstove for their tiny house, let me know!

1 comment:

  1. Your loft looks awfully tall. Can I ask how high the kitchen ceiling is?


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cloned animalsBrazil has announced that scientists within the nation will soon start cloning endangered animals, ultimately seeking to release them back into the wild to increase population.

I’ve covered a great deal of stories surrounding the act of cloning, biotechnology, and a multitude of topics in between. What is truly amazing to see is just how fast many scientists are able to bypass the entire ethics debate regarding cloning and push it through by propping up a universally accepted issue. In this case, the issue regarding the rapidly declining number of endangered animals in Brazil.

Ethical concerns that have been brought up by major scientific groups and individuals.

Back when scientists from Oregon Health and Science University in the United States went and created genetically modified monkeys using cells from 6 different animals, it led to massive outcry.  The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) and other institutions spoke out to the media and other scientific communities, characterizing the event as ‘deeply disturbing’ and downright unethical. In a summary provided to the media, the organization’s lead scientific consultant Dr. Jarrod Bailey explained in a quote how the research:

 “Raises enormous ethical concerns and imposes a heavy welfare burden, resulting in severe suffering to many animals”

Now, the Brazilian government is seeking to clone populations of endangered animals such as the jaguar, wolf, or even the local deer. Known as Embrapa Cerrado, the government-run animal research organization is partnering up with Barzil’s Brasilia Zoo to complete the project. While not immediately being released into the wild, where it would breed with other non-cloned animals and alter the genetic coding of all future animals, the government plans to do so in the future. As RawStory reports, the cloned animals could be released over time.

The news comes just days after the report detailing the release of millions of mosquitoes worldwide with even more set to be unleashed in the near future – all without a proper risk assessment.

Eating Cloned Meat? USDA Says ‘No Idea’

Brazil, the top producer of beef, has also cloned cows within its borders. According to Embrapa Cerrado employee and researcher Carlos Frederico Martins, the government clones such farm animals to improve ‘desirable characteristics and efficiency’. The statement brings to mind an admission made by the USDA, in which the organization openly stated it ‘did not know’ whether or not citizens were eating meat made from cloned animals.

The introduction of even more cloned animals into the food supply could prove to be even more of an issue when it comes to knowing what you’re eating. It is also more than likely that the FDA and USDA will claim that cloned meat, just like genetically modified organisms, are the ‘exact same’ as natural and organic products. The cloning issue is not just an ethical debate, but it is an issue of personal and public health. With the USDA already clueless as to whether or not you are chowing down on cloned beef, a whole new wave of cloned animals thrown into the mix will create the perfect agricultural storm.

Storable Food

About Anthony Gucciardi:
Author Image
Anthony is a natural health and human empowerment writer, speaker, and entrepreneur whose writings have appeared in #1 USA Today and Wall Street Journal Best-Selling books and top 100 websites. After overcoming Lyme Disease and nerve-related facial paralysis, Anthony's work now reaches several million readers per month through his highly prolific group of social media pages and websites. Focused on self-development techniques and living a healthy lifestyle, Anthony currently sits on the Advisory Board to Natural Society in addition to managing and directing several other companies dedicated to enhancing social good. Anthony's work routinely appears on both alternative and established websites and television programs alike, including Drudge Report, Thom Hartmann, Simple Reminders, RT, Infowars, Michael Savage, Gaiam TV, and many others.


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True Natural Beauty comes from within...

True Natural Beauty comes from within...
Welcome, to my natural bath and beauty blog, where nature is our pantry....grab a cool drink and snatch a few quiet moments here..... Have questions about recipes? Need more detail? Just put your question in the comment box and I will be happy to answer it.............Anna

Friday, January 20, 2017

DIY How to make a daily face cleanser

All natural facial cleanser, gentle enough for everyday!
This is so easy, you may be tempted to dismiss it, but .... trust me.... TRY THIS !

Base Recipe:
2 Tablespoons baking soda
1 Tablespoon water

Smooth over skin in a circular motion to remove dead, dry skin cells that dull your complexion, and clog pores. Rinse with warm water, splash with cool water, pat dry. Follow up with your favorite moisturizer or a few drops of natural oils (that's what I do) such as olive oil, sunflower oil, grapeseed oil, jojoba oil etc. I also use hyaluronnic acid.

Not everyone's skin is the same, if you experience irritation you just may need to add more water to your mix. It's important to moisturize after using this as well.

"WHA LAH!" or as the French say "Voila" which means "see there!"

.... this gentle exfoliating scrub reveals new skin cells, giving you a glowing, younger complexion.

Now for some fun...
To kick this up a notch, add some great natural ingredients from your pantry....
  • For an antioxidant punch add 1/2 teaspoon of powdered matcha tea

                              Blend matcha into baking soda and water.

    Mix until you get this super creamy texture, doesn't take long.

TIP: I recommend following up with a natural moisturizer, or you can simply add some oil to your cleanser. Be sure and use an oil that won't clog pores such as :

  • argan
  • hemp
  • sunflower
  • sea buckthorn,
  • apricot
  • sweet almond
  • grapeseed
  • jojoba
  • peach kernal
  • tamanu
  • olive

 Other great Ingredients you can add to personalize your daily cleanser:

  • a few drops of your favorite oil to moisturize
  • a few drops of lavender essential oil to soothe skin
  • a few drops of tea tree essential oil for troubled skin
  • colloidal oatmeal, or finely ground oatmeal to soothe
  • warmed honey, antioxidant rich, moisturizing, nourishing
  • powdered milk to soothe, nourish, gently exfoliate
  • vitamin E

Enjoy natural skin care you can make at home!

Like my stuff?
Head on over to my YouTube channel, and Face Book for more!

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navelgazer mythos

Omphaloskeptical purveyor of looking-glass introspection, devotée of colorful reflection upon a central well. She is edge-of-world grower of herbs, brewer of aromatic teas, crone and maiden, witch and watcher, semi-recluse, teller of bones and rambling poetical inventions of solitude and blunder, concoctor of tangible maps to imaginary geographies, spyglass looker out yonder, laserly.

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Jeff Teague doesn’t want Atlanta to match Milwaukee’s offer

NBA free agency is about the money. First, second and third. This is a business.

But it’s also about feeling wanted. Players feel neglected and overlooked by the team they are on and suddenly here comes other teams telling them how special they are, now much they are wanted and needed, and by the way here’s a nice check to go with that love. The grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence. It’s no wonder a lot of guys that sign offer sheets really don’t want their original team to match it.

That’s where Jeff Teague is — he signed an offer sheet with the Bucks (four years, $32 million) and he’d prefer if the Hawks didn’t match it, he told the Journal Sentinel.

“I’m definitely excited at the opportunity to come back to work with Larry Drew,” Teague said. “The Bucks have a good team, a young nucleus and guys that are ready to take the next step. I can help.”

(Teague’s agent J.R.) Hensley said Teague was frustrated by the Hawks’ lack of interest and phoned team president and general manager Danny Ferry to inform him he did not want to return to Atlanta.

“I’m nervous,” Teague said of the waiting game which will play out until Atlanta makes its decision. “I really want to be here. I thank Milwaukee for giving me this opportunity and taking a chance on me.”

See, it’s also about feeling wanted. The Bucks told Teague how much they wanted him while Atlanta, as is their right, coldly let the market set the price tag to keep him. Now Danny Ferry and the Hawks have to decide if they keep Teague, let him go and go with Mo Williams or guys on the roster, or go chase a free agent such as Brandon Jennings, who was a Buck and didn’t feel the love from Milwaukee.

Atlanta has to make a decision by Saturday.

One reason Markelle Fultz happy to be Sixers over Celtic? Philadelphia has Chick-fil-As

Getty Images

For about a month, from the day of the NBA Draft Lottery until less than a week before the draft, it was assumed Markelle Fultz would be a Celtic. And he said he was good with that — he’s the No. 1 pick going to a 53-win team that is thinking title contention. That doesn’t happen often.

Then that top pick was traded to the Philadelphia 76ers, and suddenly Fultz was going to be paired with Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons. Fultz liked that a lot, and he liked the city a lot.

Why? Because they have Chick-fil-A restaurants. Check out what Fultz wrote in the The Players’ Tribune, an article titled “What’s Up, Philly.” (Hat tip Inceptions at NBA Reddit)

Then (Fultz’s agent) Keith hit me up and said, “New plan. Philly.”

I was just waking up. So I was like, “O.K., cool. Do they have Chick-fil-A there?”

A crispy chicken sandwich for breakfast. It’s kind of like my good luck charm. Keith never got back to me about that important question. So I found out for myself. I googled it immediately.

Philly does have Chick-fil-A. It has six, actually. Seven if you count the one at the airport. Boston has zero Chick-fil-As, for what it’s worth.

Are restaurants becoming a new recruiting tool? “I know you’re thinking of signing in San Antonio, but we have far more Chipotle’s per capita.” “There’s a Cheesecake Factory just down the street from our practice facility.”

I give it four years, max, before Fultz switches to a slightly healthier breakfast choice, at the requestion of Philly’s training staff.

Warriors newbie Jordan Bell gets call from Draymond Green

Associated Press

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Jordan Bell knows he will most certainly get an earful from Draymond Green come training camp as a Golden State Warriors rookie.

Green came looking for him on draft night with a FaceTime attempt after acquiring his new teammate’s digits from general manager Bob Myers. But Bell – out with friends celebrating – didn’t answer because the number was unfamiliar.

Bell decided he would text back instead.

“I was like, `Who is this?”‘ Bell recalled Friday, when he was formally introduced and given his new No. 2 Golden State jersey at team headquarters.

“He didn’t reply so I called the number and said, `Who is this?’ Then he was like, `Yo, I FaceTimed you, hang up right now and FaceTime me right back, don’t call me,”‘ Bell said. “I FaceTimed him and he didn’t answer. I was like, all right. I waited like five seconds and I called him back FaceTime and he answered … and we started talking about it. He was like, `Enjoy this night, celebrate, it only happens once, but after this time we have to get back to work, we’re trying to get rings over here.”‘

The NBA champions began the night Thursday without a draft pick but acquired Bell in a trade with the Bulls. The 6-foot-9 forward and Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year out of Oregon was the 38th overall selection by Chicago.

Bell had been upset he dropped so far in the draft, then everything changed once the Warriors made a move for him. Green was drafted 35th overall out of Michigan State in 2012 and still has a chip on his shoulder about it. In fact, he can name every team in order and its selection above him that draft year.

“Draymond will be a fun challenge for you,” Myers said. “Draymond texted me as I was driving home and he said, `What the’ and then expletive `is your problem’ to me? So you can fill in the blank. Then he said, `I have to hear about this’ expletive `on the internet, you didn’t’ expletive `tell me about it.’ So I couldn’t text and drive so I called him and I said, `OK, all right, calm down.”‘

Green demanded he be able to talk to Bell, so Myers obliged with the new rookie’s contact info.

Green’s teammates are accustomed to his intensity. He even yells at them from time to time.

“He’s like our team mom in a way,” joked Myers. “He’s the one that you have to kind of get through him.”

Rumor: Cavaliers could wait to chase Dwyane Wade, Carmelo Anthony after buyouts

The first reaction to hearing Jimmy Butler was traded to Minnesota on draft night was “the Bulls only got what back?”

The second reaction was “does Dwyane Wade still opt in?”

Yes, he does, and as he said there are 24 million reasons to do so. Hard to argue with that logic. Which leads to the next question: Will the Bulls buy him out? Or, more likely, when will the Bulls buy him out?

Carmelo Anthony could be in the same boat. Phil Jackson wants to trade him but Anthony has a no-trade clause. The number of teams willing to give up anything for ‘Melo where he would waive that clause is very, very limited. You might be able to count them on one finger. And that might be generous. So a buyout could be in order.

Which leads to this interesting note from Brian Windhorst, via Marc Stein, of ESPN.

This makes sense for the Cavaliers. They need roster upgrades and they are capped out. They tried to find a deal to move Kevin Love to get space to chase Jimmy Butler or Paul George, but those three team deals never came together in part because of a lack of trade value for Kevin Love. Adding either or both of these two players to the roster for minimum salaries while giving up nothing is a perfect scenario.

Wade, obviously, has played with LeBron. Even though he is not the player he once was, if his knees are rested he is capable of stretches of fantastic play that can help carry a team. He would be another offensive weapon in a deep arsenal of weapons the Cavaliers have stockpiled.

Anthony would be the same in some ways — he remains a strong scorer in isolation (sets the Cavaliers run more than any other team in the league) and he makes difficult shots. The problem would be elite teams — Golden State, Boston, etc. — could expose his defense against the pick-and-roll. Still, he would be an upgrade if nothing is surrendered for him.

There’s a lot of “what if” still to happen before we get to this. However, the idea of one or both of these guys being in Cavaliers uniforms by the start of next playoffs is not out of the question.

Alec Peters’ tearful reaction to being selected what NBA Draft should be about

Getty Images

The NBA Draft production in Brooklyn is entertainment. It’s glitz. There’s stage with changing graphics. The NBA Commissioner comes out and announces the picks, then guys who have realized for a while now they would fulfill their dream of playing in the NBA come up on stage in their expensive suits, put on a baseball cap from their new team, shake the Commissioner’s hand, and next get interviewed on national television. It all feels rehearsed and staged, with very little feeling genuine.

I prefer how it went for former Valparaiso star Alec Peters better. He was in his hometown, with family and friends, unsure if his name would be called until just before it happened at spot 54 — and he still didn’t believe it until he heard it.

That is authentic.

The Suns are a good place to land for a young man wanting to develop and prove he belongs in the league. Peters is a 6’9″ power forward who shot 36.9 percent from three. Can he develop into a stretch four/pick-and-pop threat? He’s got a high IQ and will need to prove he can hang with NBA bigs, but he’s going to get his chance.

(Hat tip Ball Don’t Lie)


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Denver Nuggets preview

NBA Season Preview: Denver Nuggets

2010-11 record: 50-32

Head Coach: George Karl

Key Departures: Raymond Felton, Gary Forbes, and the three guys on an extended Chinese vacation — J.R. Smith, Wilson Chandler, Kenyon Martin

Key Additions: Rudy Fernandez, Andre Miller, Kenneth Faried. They also kept Nene, which seemed unlikely at points but makes this team much, much better.

Best-Case Scenario: The Nuggets somehow overcome the loss of Felton and the exodus of Smith, Chandler, and Martin to China, keep playing with the same offensive and defensive efficiency that they played with after the Carmelo trade last season, and make a deep playoff run in the shark tank that is the Western Conference.

More likely scenario: You can’t keep losing talent — your best talent — and still win. The Nuggets have a respectable season and sneak into the playoffs, but don’t come all that close to making it out of the first round.

Prediction: 40-45 wins


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Friday June 23, 2017

Washington News

Washington Hotline

46% Reduction in IRS Identity Theft Reports

On May 18, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen spoke to the Council for Electronic Revenue Communication Advancement (CERCA). He called the 2017 filing season "the smoothest filing season since I became Commissioner."

By May of 2017, the IRS received 139 million returns. Over 152 million are expected by the October 16 tax extension filing date. The IRS issued 101 million refunds, with an average payout of approximately $2,800.

Koskinen thanked the CERCA members for helping to support the IRS Security Summit. With the help of companies that provide tax-filing software and services, there has been major progress in "efforts to combat stolen identity refund fraud and protect taxpayer data."

In Koskinen's view, the new safeguards produced "stunning results." There was a major decrease in fraudulent returns and bad refunds.

The number of taxpayers who reported identity theft crimes declined dramatically. There were 698,700 reports in 2015 and only 376,500 in 2016. This reduction reflects IRS success in "stopping criminals from filing false returns using someone else's personal information."

In the future, a combination of the support from CERCA members and the new Identity Theft Tax Refund Fraud Informaiton Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC) will be critical to reducing fraud and identity theft.

Editor's Note: The IRS has made major progress in reducing tax fraud and identity theft. Because the thieves are creative and continue to develop new strategies, it will still be important for CERCA and the IRS to educate and alert taxpayers about the latest tax fraud methods.

Published May 19, 2017
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Protecting Your Financial and Tax Records

House Sends American Health Care Act to Senate

White House Releases Tax Reform Plan

April 23 is Tax Freedom Day

Tax Deadline Tips

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Friday, January 20, 2017

Lucy is Back

Of course, Lucy has not actually been anywhere.  My computer limped along, allowing me to read your blogs but not to comment.  Or to post on my own blog.  What with the holidays and so many other things going on, I did not get a new laptop for a while.

It became more and more clear that my laptop was seriously impaired so I had it checked and was told that if we were lucky, they could obtain the really important data from it.  But there was nothing to do for the major problems with the C drive.  I was lucky.  The computer expert was able to pull all the data from the laptop.  Off I went to get a new one and in no time I was back in action.  I am totally in love with this new one.

Turns out that 2016 had one more kick in the posterior for us.  We have an injured player again who is impaired and awaiting surgery in early February.  We will definitely be able to call him a bionic man because of his metal joints.  So while I am back in cyberworld, I am also back in the real work of undertaking all the work of maintaining the household.  So I won't even try to post on a regular basis, but will hope to give you some glimpses of our Lucy in action.  (Or inaction as the case may be.)

This week we had record high temperatures, so it's hard to believe that we had 12 inches of snow just a few weeks before.  I managed to keep up with shoveling the decks and made a three-foot wide path up the driveway to the street.  Several people walking their dogs offered to come back and help.  I explained that we weren't going anywhere but thanks, anyway.

Lucy "helped" me by running zoomies in the snow until I finally made her stop and took her inside.  Goodness knows, we don't need another joint injury around here.  I was too busy to take any photographs, but this one from last year is exactly what she looked like.

Go dog go!

I had no plans to shovel the entire drive since I knew we would not get out anyway.  But the next morning, I heard people outside.  And there were three of our neighbors with their shovels working on the drive.  I grabbed my shovel and went out.  We had such a good time, catching up on the latest gossip and shoveling the snow.  In fact, we had so much fun we decided that we would gather and do all the driveways next time it snows.

While I'm glad to be back,  but I will not be posting much since I have more important duties at  home.  Good thing, too.  I can more easily avoid the "news."  I've changed from a news junkie to someone who avoids it all.

Today's quote is from Henry Ford:

When everything seems to be going against you,
Remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.

Louvregirl said...

She looks like a bluurrr (a good blluurrr, too!)

Carolina Linthead said...

Lucy! I am so glad she is back <3

robin andrea said...

Welcome back! I missed you and Lucy and the stories from your neck of the woods. Hope the surgery goes well. Thinking of you and sending best wishes.

Kay G. said...

Bless you, you are one busy gal. Take care of yourself, and remember, just do what you HAVE to do...have some time to rest for yourself, okay?
Good luck with the surgery for the bionic man. x

Ginnie said...

It's like a breath of fresh air to see Lucy again. I'm so glad you are back ... for as much or little as you want to post. Give Lucy a hug from me.

troutbirder said...

Be safe. Best wishes to your hubby.
I'm also taking a news junkie hiatus. Hopefully a maximum of only four years...:)

Arkansas Patti said...

Welcome back!! I was getting ready to pay the ransom:)) Seriously you have been missed and so has Lucy. I really enjoyed getting my Lucy fix with her doing zoomies. That was adorable.
Hope the surgery goes swimmingly and the ten million dollar bionic fellow is frisky soon.

KB Bear said...

I'm so glad that you're back, although I am sad to hear that your injured player is injured again. I hope that the surgery can solve things completely.

What wonderful neighbors! We've had similar things happen when we've been sick or injured, except that driveways are very long around here... so our help comes in the form of a neighbor in a pickup with a plow. Good neighbors are a true blessing.

That's a wonderful photo of Lucy zooming!!!!! She looks like a puppy!

I'm sad to say that I just get more sucked into the news the worse things become. I need to try to break the addiction but I love my NYTimes.

Thanks for checking in!

Barbara Rogers said...

Welcome back to my readership world. So glad to know how things have been with you lately...though of course it's not all been a bed of roses for any of us. Having a working computer does help, not to mention wonderful pets. May the bionic man's transformation be easy on him and solve all problems. I was part of a women's march today, which reaffirmed my belief in other people, especially my neighbors in our community.

Nance said...

Welcome back. Best wishes to you as you manage everything in front of you at present. Cut the Small Stuff loose and don't be afraid to Ask For Help.

(Trust me: I know how hard it is to follow that advice, but it saved my life once.)

Louvregirl said...

I miss the mountains. I so 'get' your shoveling experience!!!

lg :)

Vicki Lane said...

Love the zoomies! And all good wishes to the injured player.

The Bug said...

Woo hoo! So glad you're back in the land of the interwebs. I hope the injured player is soon on his way to good health - maybe in time for spring training?

Cheryl said...

What a wonderful thing.....good neighbours are a blessing.
I love the image of Lucy, she seems to be having such a fun time.

The news gets worse understand you trying to avoid it.

Have a good week.

Tara Crowley said...

LOVE that quote!

What lovely neighbors you have. A reminder of how good people can be. And aint it fun to be working shoulder to shoulder and having a good laugh?

Good to see you back. Best of luck with with all the medical stuff -- oy! We are getting older, aren't we?!

Beatrice P. Boyd said...

Welcome back, although it does sound like you will be very busy tending to all the things in the household and an injured player as well. Hope that there will be some good news for you both in this New Year. And, there is truly nothing like good neighbors!

How Sam Sees It said...

Yay, welcome back!

Monty, Harlow, and Ramble

Lowcarb team member said...

Welcome back ... so lovely to see that photo of Lucy.

It is simply wonderful to have good neighbours for help and support.

Good luck to the bionic man for the up-coming surgery.
My good wishes

All the best Jan

Ginnie said...

I miss the photos of Lucy. Hope all is OK and that you are enjoying the early summer. Can't imagine how hot it will be soon !


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Thursday, August 23, 2012

All I Need to Know About Birtherism I Learned from the “Feejee Mermaid”: Audience Reception and Interrogating Truth Claims in Communications Revolutions

NB: My week to post to the blog was the same week that I 1) had my comprehensive exams and 2) got married, and in the confusion, I forgot to post. For this reason, I am postdating and putting this up now in hopes of getting feedback before the conference.

United States History has in many ways been singularly defined by a long series of communications revolutions. From the First Amendment and the Postal Road System to the telegraph to the birth of the Railway Mail Service to the rise of the mass media to the Internet, the United States has been a nation that has been constantly being reshaped by revolutionary shifts in communications. The way that people communicate has been shifting rapidly and radically for most of our nation's history. This paper looks at the way that these communications revolutions have encouraged audiences to constantly retrain themselves to discern between counterfeit and authentic, to critically interrogate new information and attempt to detect deception-- and how this sort of interrogation has become a recurring form of entertainment and ludic pleasure.

PT Barnum is perhaps best known for his apocryphal dictum that “there’s a sucker born every minute,” but investigating Barnum’s audience suggests that they were far savvier and less trusting than is popularly assumed. James Cook, in his The Arts of Deception, demonstrates quite well that Barnum based much of his career on a winking playfulness with his audience, one based on constantly dancing on the line between the authentic and deception. This playfulness with truth claims, far from going unnoticed by his audience, was one of the primary things that appealed to Barnum’s audience. Witnessing exhibitions of the “Feejee Mermaid,” George Washington’s 161-year-old nursemaid Joice Heth, or the nondescript “What Is It?”, audiences went to witness uncertain “objects,” to interrogate the truth claims of exhibitors and the surrounding media, and to attempt to determine for themselves if they were being deceived or not. The playful negotiation of truth and fiction was a large part of the audience’s enjoyment, in a time of intense technological and media shifts, from the age of Jackson to the twentieth century.

Likewise, while many popular and academic accounts of Internet users assume that they are a deeply uncritical audience, I argue that much the same process of playful interrogation of authentic versus counterfeit still goes on on-line, and that it is indeed a very popular type of discourse on the web. Looking at examples including the 4chan “Perfection Girl” meme, “Slender Man,” and Youtube trick-photography videos, I argue that Internet users are playing with one another, making a game of critical analysis. Of course, in an age of deep epistemological uncertainty, “truth” is a far more problematic category today than it was in the nineteenth century. For this reason, I extend my analysis to the Korean <Tablo Online> movement, as well as the 9-11 Truther and Birther movements in the United States. While these online movements deal with far more serious issues-- and while the conclusions they come to are deeply problematic-- the mode of discourse within them and the methods by which they interrogate evidence is fundamentally very similar to the game-like mechanics with which Internet users play at questions of veracity. I argue that this is fundamental to the popularity and longevity of these conspiracy-theory based movements, and can provide insight into the way authenticity and deception are understood in the twenty-first century.

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Dante Sweater

Dante Sweater

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Ultra soft, sleek and modern cashmere sweater from the edgy and modern styling of Veda. Features a slim boyfriend fit, classic rounded neckline, and quilted leather contrast panels at the shoulders.

• Leather paneled cashmere sweater
• Crew neckline
• Ribbed cuffs and hem
• Quilted leather shoulder panels
• Slim boyfriend fit
• 100% Cashmere
• 100% Leather contrast
• Dry clean only
18" bust
16" shoulder to shoulder
24.5" shoulder to hem
24" sleeve length

Measurements taken from size small
Model wears size small. Model is 5'9.5
This sweater fit true to size
Standard domestic flat rate of $7.95—free on orders of $75 or more.

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Shell Track Top

Han Kjobenhavn

Shell Track Top

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Final Sale

Please note that this is a final sale item. No returns or exchanges will be accepted.

From Han Kjobenhavn, a lightweight track jacket in Black and Grey. Stand collar. Full zip closure. Flocking graphic print. Elasticized hem and cuffs. Full mesh lining.

• 100% polyester
• Machine wash cold, line dry
• Made in Portugal
22.25" chest
19.5" shoulder to shoulder
34.5" sleeve length
26.25" front length

Measurements taken from size medium.
Model wears size medium. Model is 6'2
Standard domestic flat rate of $7.95—free on orders of $75 or more.

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Sunday, January 12, 2014

Merry Monday Challenge ~ Ribbon or Twine

I thought I would try something different this year for me
Since I am a "by the seat of your pants" type of girl...
I am challenging myself to join the weekly "Merry Monday" challenge
to make a Christmas card, once per week.
Just think, if I keep at it, I will have a slew of cards finished when I need them!!

The other challenge to myself, is I have a HUGE Ziploc bag of already
die cuts, stamped images, and pieces of this and that to use up....
SO, I am going to try my best to just work out of that bag...
should be fun to see that bag "dwindle" !!!!

My card today is a LONG time ago "cased" layout from a, I presume SU demo.
I tweaked it a bit by adding a bit of Stickles to the snowflakes.
....all I had to do was add the already stamped panel to the card stock
and "viola" I was hmmm!!

Entering this the challenge at "Merry Monday" which is "ribbon or twine".

Ruth S, said...

Lovely card Diane - it will be handy to have all those festive makes at your fingertips come December! This card is beautifully simple and the Stickles surely give it some real wow-factor ;)

Susan Joyce said...

Thanks for joining us at Merry Monday with your pretty Holiday card.

Darlene (SCS:akronstamperdpk) said...

This is fabulous Diane and what a great idea ... maybe I should join you at Merry Monday and I too can be 'ahead of the game' this year!
Great job once again!
Hugs from Ohio!

Ros Crawford said...

Love this CAS card ... really chic!

Lisa said...

So pretty!! The snowflakes look so beautiful!! What an awesome card!!

A Mermaid's Crafts

Leslie Miller said...

One a week is quite a challenge, but you'll be so glad you did it, even if you miss a week once in a while. To use up the parts is a great goal, too. This turned out wonderful with those pretty snowflakes. I think I have this set. Not sure if it's the same, but I have an SU! snowflake set I've never used. It is definitely on "the list".


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Toothnclaw - Demonology Warlock

Submitted on: Sep 27, 2016 at 11:58 AM

Alt Characters <-- Just a char i play now and then. <-- char i stopped pretty much few days after Legion launch

Tell us about yourself

Retired, so i got 24/7 a week to play and improve which i consider a big asset to the guild.

I think guild always comes first, even if it means skipping out a boss to give room to someone else. flasks,food etc are a no brainer, those are always with me as every raider should.
Im not sure what to add, perhaps since you didnt see my UI, the mods i use.

-RCLootcouncil (old days)

i think that covers the basics, if you would like an interview it would be nice. Ive always been bad at selling myself with text.

Tell us about your history with raiding endgame content

From vanilla to Legion every dungeon but MoP's cleared with atleast heroic if possible. Ive raided a long long time,
i was in Sauna before Paragon was even made, got few world firsts in past, like long long time ago. Did clear 13/13 HFC Mythic by the skin of our teeth but still.

Why do you want to join Nemurenai

Impressive progress, still chill which is needed. No need to have a stick up ur arse.
Besides im NOT mediocre so i dont want a mediocre guild and wait till i can get to do Mythics raids, something challenging instead of sleepy normal (Yes i might need Normal or HC once to boost up abit) but thats normal if you intend to go mythic.
I think the reason i chose you if because you are kinda like me, dont know on skill lvl you might be better since you raided already, but because of the same mindset. Focussed on raiding, getting resuilts..that kind of thing caught my eye.

Previous Guild(s)

In time, guilds change..brake up of transform.
Its natural to go with the flow, even if it means leaving something old behind.
I usually dont quit guilds myself unless they break up.

The Core (vanilla)

Current guild

Reason for leaving / wanting to leave

The guild is ok, but they raid 2 days per week and have no ambition or dedication..they are not driven to aim higher, go for the rankings etc.
Sure ive been gone a while, im rusty..but im already pretty much getting it together again (ofcourse first raid in month(s) hc ursoc isnt the best way to fire up, but still)

Do you have a working microphone?

Yes and i use it if need be, to socialize, mythics etc.

How would you feel about getting replaced by someone else, in favor of a better setup or for the greater good of the raid?

Not a problem tbh. As i said before guild comes first.

Anything else you would like to add

mmm..oh yeah.
Guy ends up on russian prison, and you know what happens to new get to be someones bitch.
But these russians seemed gentle as they offered him a choice...without Vaselin or with. The guy
thought ok lubricant is good "ill take the vaselin". Russian guy grins and waves over a giantic bodybuilder, "Hey, Vaselin..get over here"...har har

Nagagaming#2846 or just hop on discord / ts.

GM - Castella
Nice application, but did you link the wrong logs? I cant find you character in them...
Also I assume you are planning on doing a faction + server transfer in order to join us?
Yes i intend to. Hold on i think i did get wrong logs^^
First raid in months so i was bit rusty..
GM - Castella
Rusty perhaps, but that is not the dps we are looking for, we need players doing 100k more than that, sorry friend.

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sape suruh bukak ?

ikut nak ? :D

Friday, December 4, 2009

kenapa kena ade title ?

One Moment please ?

The Moment you are in Tension
You will lose your Attention
Then you are in total Confusion
And you will feel Irritation
Then you will spoil personal Relation
Ultimately, you won't get Co - Operation
Then you will make things Complication
Then your blood pressure may raise Caution
And you may have to take Medication
Instead, understand the Situation
And try to think about the Solution
Many problems will be solved by Discussion
This will work out better in your Profession
Don't think it's my free Suggestion
It's only for your Prevention
If you understand my Intention
You will never come again to Tension

idea by ;Bill Gates written by ; sayaa (:

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Monthly Archives: July 2009

Upcoming Gigs for July 2009

Phae and I are getting all packed up to attend a special all-day event in Ottawa, Ontario this Saturday, July 11th: Fire in the Hearth. Isaac will appear with Dr. Brendan Myers, author of The Other Side of Virtue, Dr. … Continue reading

Posted in Calendar, Personal Happenings | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment


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Friday, 17 February 2012

I wish to announce two things that I am particularly proud of right now.

The first and least is my darling Silver, lead character in the 'Enigma' series, who has kindly given an interview which I will be posting over the weekend. It wasn't easy to answer some of the questions and I'm really proud that he did so well.

The second and, by far the most, is my son. He's won a competition at school to have his story published in an anthology which contains the best of schools all over England and Wales. The story is as follows

There was a man called Maledos, who was accused of many crimes, A wave of fear washed over him as the scarlet-stained, golden rope was fitted around his neck. The lever was pulled, the door opened. He saw darkness then light... saved by a magnificent golden angel.

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December 22, 2015

Liars, Damned Liars, Presidential Candidates

Tree of Candidates, 22 December 2015
image/svg+xml Bush Carson Christie Clinton Cruz Fiorina Huckabee Kasich Obama O'Malley Paul Pelosi Rubio Santorum Trump

A few months ago, I plotted out the Presidential candidates from the two major parties in terms of their truthfulness. I did this through a "tree" (really more of a "bush") that showed how close each was to all the others if one uses the Politifact Truth-o-Meter to measure "truthfulness".

As I mentioned before, Politifact gives us a summary chart for each person and a description of each of their determinations. Unfortunately, comparing the profiles isn't quite straightforward, especially if you want to compare several of them at once. That's where nerdistry comes in.

So, once again, I took the data on each politician's page, ran it through some nerd magic, and came up with the clustering. The names correspond to formally filed candidates who have more than 4 rulings on Politifact and haven't dropped out of the race, plus Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, for reference. I color-coded them by party. You can click on any name to lead you to the person's Politifact page. Many of the candidates had more data--more statements that got a Politifact "ruling". That meant that Dr. Ben Carson made it onto the tree. He wasn't in August, only because Politifact did not have at least 4 statements by him. Now they've plenty. Several candidates dropped out. Nevertheless, if you look at the older tree, you'll see that things haven't changed much. As bafore, three "meaningful" clusters appeared in the data and have curves drawn around them. The differences among politicians inside the same "meaningful" cluster are not worth noting. Yes, this means that, when it comes to truthfulness, as measured by Politifact, Santorum, Fiorina, and Huckabee lump in with Pelosi. Clinton (and Obama) are pretty much the same as Bush, Christie, Kasich, Paul, and Rubio.

What do the clusters show? As last time, it comes down to what end of the "True" vs. "Pants-on-Fire" profile a candidate sits on. The top left cluster (Let's call it Clinton-Bush) leans more to "True" and "Mostly True". The cluster on the right (Pelosi and her boys) tends to prefer "half true" and "mostly false". The bottom cluster is heavily dominated by "False", with a dash of "Pants on Fire" and a rare "True" or "Mostly True" O'Malley is in his own world, but he has moved compared to the tree as a whole. Last time, he was a complete outlier and couldn't be related to anyone. Now that the wacky pack at the bottom has amassed a truly monumental level of whoppers, this has squeezed O'Malley in to be closer to the other two clusters than to Trump/Fiorina/Cruz.

And the take-home message? Two messages: First, if you agree with Politifact, it's a rough indication of who is more trustworthy. If you reject Politifact's conclusions, just invert the true/false interpretations. Second, you can see who resembles each other in terms of trustworthiness and that this hasn't changed much since August. Agree with or reject Politifact, this part is consistent. Politicians in the same cluster seem to have the same basic character as each other when it comes to honesty or its lack. Like I said, if you dislike Politifact, just flip the interpretation of truth.

Nerd Section

This is a repeat of Agust's methods. I used a copy of "R" statistical language and the "cluster", "gclus", "ape", "clue", "protoclust", "multinomialCI" and "GMD" packages. Then I gathered up the names of declared candidates for US President. I did not intend to limit this to only Republicans or Democrats. Unfortunately, when I looked people up on Politifact, it was only Republicans or Democrats who had more than 4 rulings. Why more than 4? A rough estimate of the "standard error" of count data is the square root of the total. The square root of 4 is 2, which means that if a candidate had 4 rulings, the accuracy was plus or minus 2. That's too much for my taste. This time, I had 15 candidates.

Comparing them required a distance metric. I could have assigned scores to each ruling level and then calculated an average total per ruling. While this might be tempting, it is also wrong. Why is it wrong? Because that method would make a loose cannon the same as a muddled fence-sitter. Imagine a candidate who only tells the complete truth or complete whoppers. If you assign scores and average, this will come out being the same as a candidate who never commits but only makes halfway statements. Such people should show up as distinct in any valid comparison.

Fortunately, there are other ways to handle this question. I decided to use a metric based on the chi distance. Chi distance is based on the square of the difference between two counts divided by the expected value. It's used for comparing pictures, among other uses. However, a raw chi distance depends very much upon the total, and the totals were very different among candidates. The solution to this was easy, of course. I just took the relative counts (count divided by total) for each candidate.

I needed one more element for my metric. Politifact does not rate every single statement someone makes. They pick and choose. Eventually, if they get enough statements, their profiles probably present an accurate picture, but until they get a very large number of statements, there is always some uncertainty. Fortunately, multinomialCI estimates that uncertainty. I ran the counts through multinomialCI and got a set of "errors" for each candidate. I combined these with the chi distances to obtain "uncertainty-corrected distance" between each candidate. Long story short, this was done by dividing the chi distance by the square root of the sums of the squares of the errors. What that meant is that a candidate with a large error (few rulings) was automatically "closer" to every other candidate due to the uncertainty of that candidate's actual position.

I then created a series of hierarchical clustering trees from this set of distances. There is a good deal of argument over which tree creation method is best. I decided to combine multiple methods. I created trees using "nearest neighbor", "complete linkage", "UPGMA", "WPGMA", "Ward's", "Protoclust", and "Flexible Beta" methods. The "clue" package was designed to combine such trees in a rational fashion. Feel free to look it up if you want to follow all the math. I used clue to create the "consensus tree", which is the structure I posted on my blog. But clue doesn't tell you how to "cut" the clusters. For that, I turned to the "elbow method".

The elbow method is an old statistical rule of thumb. Basically, any set of "clustering" has multiple ways you can slice it to say "these things fall into those groups and smaller groups don't really matter". The "elbow method" compares the "variance" of each possible way of cutting the clusters and charts them on the basis of number of clusters vs. "variance explained" by that number of clusters. The math is not simple. What you do is then plot the "variance explained" vs. the number of clusters. What you look for is a "scree" or an "elbow". The line will always be descending. The idea is that you hope there is some point where there is a sharp bend in your line. At the point of that bend is the "elbow". More clusters won't add enough additional explanation to be worth the cut. In this case, my elbow was at four clusters, the three I outlined plus O'Malley.


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Electric Wiring-'Domestic'

Electric Wiring-'Domestic'

by Brian Scaddan

elec wiring.png
Electric Wiring: Domestic has for many years been acknowledged as the standard guide to the practical aspects of domestic electric wiring. The twelfth edition has been thoroughly rewritten and updated and seeks to address the areas of most concern to the qualified electrician, especially design and testing. It will also be a useful addition to the resources available for students working towards NVQs or City & Guilds qualifications.
  This book is also a vital reference source for many other professionals whose work demands a knowledge of electrical installations, including electrical engineers, heating engineers, architects and maintenance staff. It is not intended as a DIY manual, although some non-qualified persons may find certain topics useful before calling in qualified operatives. The contents cover current professional best practice and are fully in line with the 16th edition of the Regulations for Electrical Installations issued by the Institution of Electrical Engineers.

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Monday, March 7, 2011

Network Learning Opportunities

The Network seminar, May 15-16 is going to provide a great opportunity to learn from some of the schools in BC at the leading edge of personalizing learning. In addition, Lorna Earl, Kim Schonert-Reichl, Helen Timperley, Alma Harris and Laura Tait will be working with us to create deep and sustained learning connections. Hope to see many of you there!

Here's a link to the blog by John Medina, author of Brain Rules. His work on learning and neuroscience is important and easily accessible. Check it out!

This morning I (Judy) attended a healthy living inquiry session at Vancouver Island University featuring the work of Grade 3, 4, and 5 students at Randerson Ridge Elementary School. The work of these students was deep, thoughtful, and inspiring. I had a chance to ask some of the students the three key questions: Where are you going with your learning? How is it going? Where to next? One young boy in Mary Lynn Epps class answered this way:
"I am learning to write with more flow and more detail. I am using the criteria Ms. Epps gives us to see how I am doing. First, I write a bit. Then I look at the criteria to see how I am doing and what is missing. Then I write some more. I usually do this three or four times until I get my final draft. I am working on my 4 C's, in particular becoming more cooperative. I am pretty good at working with the person next to me in class but I need to work on making more of a contribution in a bigger group."
It is impossible to get thoughtful answers to these questions unless the learners are clear on what is is they are intended to be learning, the criteria for determining the quality of their work, and descriptive feedback that helps them figure out their next step. I think that Donovan has a pretty clear idea.
What do you think?

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21 May 2014

The big #SciFund analysis

A new manuscript detailing what we learned from the first three rounds of #SciFund is up at PeerJ!

Much of the analysis you will have seen at the SciFund blog, and the manuscript is in review right now.

I’ve never had a manuscript up as a pre-print before. I will be very curious to see what sorts of feedback. And yes, someone already found an error. Sigh.

External links

To crowdfund research, scientists must build an audience for their work

20 May 2014

Tuesday Crustie: Googly

In case you didn’t know, there is an entire Tumblr of deep sea creatures with googly eyes.

This photo of Mysis relicta seems to have come that way naturally.

Photo by Per Harald Olsen/NTNU on Flickr; used under a Creative Commons license.

16 May 2014

Can we get a bullet train?

The UTPA and UTB community had its first chance to meet the presumptive first president of UTRGV, Guy Bailey, today.

He was at Brownsville in the morning and Edinburg in the afternoon, and had three meetings, with faculty, staff, and students at each.

I pointed out that he had a bit of a drive from Brownsville to Edinburg, and asked how he envisioned UTRGV working with the distances between all the various facilities. Interestingly, he didn’t just fall back on the “technology” answer that has been the usual one from administrators talking about UTRGV. He said, “There has to be transportation.”

When he said that, I asked, “Can we get a bullet train?” I hadn’t thought of it before that moment, but I’m glad I did.

If you’re talking about effective transportation to unify campus facilities and maximize productivity, a lot of person vehicles or buses won’t cut it. When I go out to the Coastal Studies Lab, it’s about a three hour round trip. That pretty much chews up a whole day.

There are several trains in service that do 200 miles an hour and more.

Google Maps tells me that the distance from UTPA to UTB is about 65 miles. That would be a mere 20 for a 200 mile an hour bullet train. That’s a reasonable commute between campuses. Heck, you could even add in 10-15 minutes for stopping along the way.

Comments for first half of May 2014

Pascale Lane went to Randy Olson’s narrative workshop and reports back on what she heard.

14 May 2014

Squid nociception helps them beat their predators

I currently still have my head down, writing, writing, and doing more writing, but I took a little time to talk to Jane Lee, who was reporting on a new paper by Robyn Crook and colleagues in Current Biology about invertebrate nociception.

I said:

This study is one of the few experiments that have looked at pain in a context closer to real-world conditions, says Zen Faulkes, an animal behavior researcher at the University of Texas-Pan American in Edinburg, Texas, who was not involved in the project. Specifically, the study looked at pain in the context of a predator-prey interaction rather than as an isolated sensation in an individual.

It’s a very interesting and cool paper. This is the key figure:

The left two columns are uninjured squid. A squid with no injuries has about a 75% chance of escaping fish predators.

The right two are injured squid. An injured squid 50% chance of escaping hungry fish.

But if the squid has injury, and is given a painkiller (IA in rightmost column = injured with analgesic, or a painkiller), the squid only have about a 25% chance of escaping a predator. In other words, the nociception system is helping the squid do better in the wild than if it didn’t have that sensory information.

Crook R, Dickson K, Hanlon, RT, Walters ET. 2014.Nociceptive Sensitization Reduces Predation Risk. Current Biology: in press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.03.043

External links

Pain's Benefit to Squid May Hold Clues to Chronic Human Pain, Scientists Say

13 May 2014

Tuesday Crustie: Signage

Painting on the wall of a bait shop on South Padre Island. I was there yesterday, buying – surprise, surprise! – shrimp to carry on the work I started with Nadia Carreon and Brian Fredensborg.

You can read a pre-print of the latest shrimp paper, co-authored by Nadia, online at Integrative and Comparative Biology now! It’s open access and everything!

01 May 2014

Comments for second half of April 2014

Joan Strassman looks at author credits.

This bycatch inforgraphic looks nice, but on its own, lacks credibility. Citations, please!

More on peer review at the PubChase blog. When you’re talking about long-standing problems, suggesting that one year old websites are the solution may be a bit... optimistic.

Paige brown ask, “How do you decide what to write about when you’re a science blogger?” This leave me wondering what a “news peg” is, but never mind my own ignorance!

Scholastica plotted the same data on Elsevier’s costs to universities that I did. They did an infographic; I did traditional plots. Compare and contrast...

Craig McClean compiles playful acknowledgements. I add a couple more.


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Marilag Ang Malaya

Sunday, July 1, 2012

MozCoffee at the Embarcadero

Maray na Aga, Bikol! It's such a great morning in Legazpi City, especially after a good night's sleep on a proper bed. But as with all great mornings, there are great things to do. So off we go to another Mozilla event, just one floor down from the hotel.

As usual, our faithful Bikolano Community Manager met and greeted the participants from Bicol University and the tech community in Legazpi City at the La Mia Tazza Coffee of Embarcadero de Legazpi that overlooks the sea.

After the introductions, we got right into Engagement mode, introducting Mozilla products and projects, left and right, along with the generous demonstrations online and actual. We encouraged them to be web makers as well as to organize their own Mozilla events. Such a great discussion, so little time.

After the MozCoffee, some of the participants helped us find our way around Legazpi City to book our bus tickets back Manila. Such hospitable people. I'm looking forward to the next Bicol event!

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Saturday, June 30, 2012

What a Great Open Web Day at Naga!

Another awesome day was completed today!

We have just finished the first day of the Bicol MozTour--two grueling days of events across two different major cities in two different provices in the picturesque region of Bicol. We travelled to the Heart of Bicol in the dead of the night, some 389 km south of Quezon City.

The first day was held at the Fr. James O'Brien Library of the Ateneo de Naga University in Naga City, Camarines Sur (also known as CamSur). More than fifty attendees flocked to the computer research center of the library to participate in the Open Web Day, jointly organized by the Philippine communities of Mozilla and Wikimedia. As ever, Mozilla Philippines was lead by its ever-vibrant Community Manager Jun Barrun, and the Wikimedia team was lead by Jojit Ballesteros.

Most of the attendees were Library and Information Science students as well as Librarians from the local librarians organization.

The usual format for Open Web Day was followed, with Wikimedia PHL introducing how Wikipedia works, and how to contribute as well as an online workshop where the participants submitted new content to Wikipedia.

After the Wikipedia workshop, Mozilla PHL had its turn to tell the story of Mozilla, our advocacies and our products and projects. Unusual for Jun, he finished his long keynote in half the time he usually takes. Nice!

Next up, Jean Austin Rodriguez introduced the Boot to Gecko project (aka Firefox Mobile OS) along with the demo phone.

Lastly, I was asked to speak on localization. After my talk, I asked the participants to contribute 220 more strings to complete the strings translation. And they finished the translation in less time than I did to finish my talk! Great work, Naga City! :) Now it's up to the reviewers and approvers of the Tagalog translation to finish the job. :)

We capped off the day by traveling another 119 km to Legazpi City for the second leg of the Bicol MozTour.

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Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Massive Firefox for Android Now Available!

Mozilla has just released a massive update to Firefox for Android, reflecting enormous contributions from all across the organization. Firefox for Android is for everyone who loves Firefox on their desktop, but now in their pocket. It is faster than the stock browser that ships with phones and has all the capabilities that our users love about Firefox and is available across lots of flavors of Android.

Firefox for Android continues the tradition of Mozilla to cater to the open web, and is responsive to the needs, choice, and privacy of Internet users.

If you have an Android-powered phone or tablet, get Firefox for Android now. And if you love it, rate it 5 stars on Google Play.

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Friday, June 8, 2012

MozCoffee held at the Stock Exchange

I hosted a small Moz"Coffee" for the Sunwest IT staff on May 31, 2012 at the Country Spice, Philippine Stock Exchange Center in Ortigas, Pasig City.

I've worked with these guys since 2003, and these are hard-core open source advocates, as well as Firefox users. These guys are users of GNU/Linux, FreeBSD and Mac OS X, and normally also use these technologies for their application deployments.

Among the topics that we discussed were the Firefox for Enterprise users, as well as auto-update functionality. Newer versions of Firefox use silent updates that were normally blocked by corporate firewall. Also among the topics were marketing opportunities.

Monday, May 7, 2012

Airport tussle with Public Figures

Columnist Ramon Tulfo figured in a fight against a gang led by showbiz couple Raymart Santiago and Claudine Barretto at the NAIA Terminal 3 yesterday. Several news reports point to the said altercation can be found online with the social networks were spewing vitrioil against both camps.

I'll try not to touch on the irrelevant facts of the case, as you can learn about them on the news reports, but I'd like to express my vehement opinion against the couple. I believe that Tulfo was merely doing his job as a journalist in recording Claudine's tirade against the Cebu Pacific. Whether Tulfo was on his vacation or not, a journalists job begins when something interesting is happenning. Something interesting turned out to be newsworthy indeed!

I don't believe Santiagos were right on ganging up on the man. Firstly, their defense about privacy doesn't hold any water. They are public figures, they are in a public place, and there were other people involved, in this case, employees of the public transport company. In other words, they were pretty much fair game at that time. Now, if they had really wanted privacy, they should have chartered a private plane.

Secondly, the man is old and alone. There were six or so young people in Raymart's group. You can almost see the social injustice of it all. When the tussle started, the guards restrained the old man, and nobody restrained the young people. (Damned useless guards. On the video, you can see one guard who was just standing.)

The news as of this writing is that both camps are filing charges against each other. But all these could have been avoided if we learned that journalists are essential to us as a society. Please, don't shoot the messenger, especially the journalists. Sila po ang nagrereport ng mga makabuluhan na balita. Otherwise, we'll all be reading blind items. Kahit nga mga showbiz reporters, hindi ginagalang ng mga nasa showbiz. Kaya rin siguro, ganun na lang ang trato ng mag-asawa kay Mon Tulfo. I'd like to not compare this incident with the Maguindanao Massacre, but if you analyze the root of it all, isa lang kasi makikita mo: that some parties don't want the truth to come out. There is a sub-culture among the rich and famous to cover up the truth, or to twist it if it does not suit their agenda. This is a culture that we, ordinary Filipinos, should not tolerate. The press is not to be oppressed. Stop the violence against journalists and bloggers NOW.

Nota Bene: Some people have noted that Mon Tulfo is an asshole. A word of advice to the naive: it's not illegal to be an asshole, both on or off the Internet, but it's illegal to throw punches and false statements.

Monday, April 2, 2012

TRO defy, Nuns justify

I've been following the case of the 5 students of STC Cebu whose pictures of them in bikini were the subject of much controversy in the media. The case involves quite a backward take on morality and child rearing. Lots of tweets are on it, lots of blog posts, lots of drama, religious jihad, and stuff like that on the comments and the sidelines.

At first, it was STC who held the moral authority as the children indeed violated the rules found in their Handbook.

However, things took a turn-around when they took a page from P-Noy's Secretary of Justice, Laila de Lima, who defied a Supreme Court TRO allowing GMA and the ex-FG from leaving the country. In fact, they used the same term-- "deficient".

Suddenly, the issue became larger than the mere five students involved. The issue now is, are the TRO's issued by the RTC, SC, or any Philippine court, merely a guideline or an order that must be followed.

In punishing the students, the nuns of STC defied law of the humans in the Philippines. After reading much in the debate, I now believe the students do, in fact, deserve punishment. And true enough, the nuns have succeeded in doing so.

On the other hand, I also believe the nuns also deserve punishment for defying the TRO. A court TRO is not a mere piece of paper. It is the judgement of an official of the land, a representative of the Filipino's justice. Irrespective of the deficiencies of the TRO, they are not merely obliged, but obligated to follow it. While these nuns do have dedicated their lives to following their version of God's law, they must first follow the law of man, for it is among men that they live their lives in service to God.

Defying the TRO is a classic move of the nuns "making a wrong to 'right' another wrong." It is then left to the RTC to render everything right. In a stroke of ultimate justice, I pray that the RTC judge hold these nuns in contempt of court (and mete out the appropriate punishment), while accepting the punishment that they gave their wards as well. In doing so, the RTC will reclaim its authority that has been in much tatters since the day the SC held itself above it. Should the nuns accept the punishment of the RTC, it will render them invincible against future children and parents who hope the get around the rules in the Handbook--that they are willing to be crucified so that their wards can claim eternal life.

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Crazy copyright infringement claim

Ads serve to distribute a message from businesses about their products and services that they are selling to potential customers, like you and I. So, knowing this in mind, it's often in the best interest of the ad to be seen by a lot of people, especially people like you and I who have enough spare cash to buy what they are selling.

Some years back, I wrote about a piece about a new (then) Microsoft ad to counter the "I'm a Mac" ads. As with any other Internet video, it had a YouTube video which you can embed and so on and so forth.

Therefore, it was with great surprise that I discovered my post no longer had the video on, but the embedded video says it was reported for infringement by Microsoft. Infringement?? For distributing ads?? Shocking! They should be paying the guy, instead of banning him.

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Nev’s fashion fix

“Fashion is merely a form of ugliness so unbearable that we are compelled to alter it ever six months.”
– Oscar Wilde

The steadily increasing stream of students to Edinburgh for university Freshers Week has made me start to notice what will probably turn out to be the next bloody awful trend for the desperately effete hipster fauxhemians: half-mast trousers.

Along with the low-slung skinny jeans, v-neck T-shirts, cardigans, winklepickers, slouchy beanies and accessory scarves that would only keep your neck warm if it were to be set on fire (hold on to that thought for a moment), these too-short trousers have yet to fully permeate into society but I still find it hard not to burst out laughing when I’ve seen them – they immediately make me think back to the unpopular kids at school who underwent a sudden growth spurt and had to wait a month or so before they got a new pair of strides.

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3 thoughts on “Nev’s fashion fix”

  1. @Alex, I was unsure if I should have filed this under “Rants” or simply “Personal”. It doesn’t upset me, but man, does it ever make me laugh. Maybe “Humour” would have been a better tag?

  2. I most enjoyed this particular rant. Please can you start a blog consisting solely of rants? Or even better, solely of anti-fashion rantings?

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