Happy Christmas!

We have the traditional 35°C Christmas day, so lunch had to include salad We also had sprouts and fritters (although that's not quite the recipe, ours has 1 tsp oregano and 1/4 tsp nutmeg as well).

Your video, Arson as a Christmas Tradition: The Gävle Goat, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Dont worry those jobs are a fiction. The world's going to renewables and robots fast -Trump or no Trump.

And if coal did come back big the Chinese would just swamp the market. How long do you think Trump - or any republican - is going to pay triple market price as a favour to Jonny Lunchpail?

The traditional next move for a big promising, low delivering demagogue is to immediately start a war.

"But Catholic priests, bishops, and cardinals don’t give “reproductive advice”; they articulate the truth about human life and reproductive ethics in accord with Catholic teaching. A teaching promulgated and practiced for centuries by an entire religious group is fundamentally distinct from a panel of “virgins in bathrobes” dictating to women what they can and cannot do."

I'm...failing to see the difference... It all seems like an appeal to tradition. The fact virgins in bathrobes have been telling women what to do for centuries doesn't actually make them right.

also "truth" LOL

FFS, I'm not trying to make an argument. As for watching the video, that wasn't a waste of my time, it was entertaining and informative unlike the article which was desperately trying to excuse an awful situation.

But fine, you want an argument? Let's do this.

"If one doesn't want the very small set of restrictions that go with some (not all) religiously affiliated hospitals, don't go there. One does have a choice."

You have that backwards. If you don't provide all the services required of a hospital, you don't get to call yourself a fucking hospital.

How would you feel if there was a Jehovahs Witness hospital that didn't do blood transfusions? Or a Christian Science hospital that refused to do medical treatment?
Both of those are real world examples where people died.

There's a big bloody difference between "not equipped" and "unwilling". In a local area, there might be several smaller medical facilities, but finding two major care centres across the road from each other is pretty rare.

And it's a bit fucking rich to bring up false equivalencies when you just compared unavailability of potential life-saving medical treatment to someone whinging over not getting a big mac at kfc.

As for the article:

"First, Bee ignores the fact that Catholic teaching on human life and reproduction is a fundamental, longstanding tradition of the Church, passed down from one generation to the next for centuries. "

Irrelevant. Next...

"But Catholic priests, bishops, and cardinals don’t give “reproductive advice”; they articulate the truth about human life and reproductive ethics in accord with Catholic teaching."

Really? They "articulate the truth"... as I said before, this is self-evidently complete and utter fucking bullshit.

"the claim that women will be without care if they are refused service at a Catholic hospital."
Er, even the article acknowledges that Bee understands this point and makes the point that in an emergency situation, you go to the nearest available centre that can treat you.

"This is another straw man. In most cases, when women want a particular reproductive service, they have ample time to locate and attend a non-Catholic hospital. "

Yes, and in most cases, people do. BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT WE'RE FUCKING TALKING ABOUT.

"Even in the few emergency situations — which Bee presents as if they are the vast majority of cases"

No, she really doesn't.

"Though it sometimes might be inconvenient for a woman to travel to a non-Catholic hospital, the inconvenience surely does not outweigh the importance of conscience rights, which demand that Catholic hospitals not be forced to provide procedures that Catholicism deems morally wrong."

Yes, "inconvenient" is exactly the right word for a woman who is probably in the middle of the worst day of her life.
I mean, she might end up "inconveniently" dead, but hey, we wouldn't want to stop catholics telling other people how to live, would we?

"In reality, a direct abortion (in which a doctor intentionally kills a child) is never medically necessary to save a mother’s life. If a woman is having a miscarriage, having her child killed in an abortion will do nothing to improve her health or save her life."

And here we come to strawman of all strawmen. The problem is NOT that a woman needs a "direct abortion", it's that she may a surgical procedure that kills the child inadvertently. And this isn't theoretical, women have died from this.

The fundamental point is that religion has no place in medicine. If a patient wishes to refuse certain treatments because of their beliefs, well, they're an idiot, but it's their choice to be an idiot.

But a hospital doesn't get to refuse treatment based on some bronze-age belief. If the treatment is legal in its jurisdiction and they have the capability to provide it, they must provide it. Businesses should not be allowed to refuse service on religious grounds ("I am religiously opposed to treating gay people or blacks!!")

As you said yourself "If you don't like it, go work somewhere else".

They messed up a little bit. Hand wound pocket watches don't tick in the traditional sense as they have a balance spring that causes the balance wheel to oscillate at a resonant frequency typically much greater than once per second (usually at least 4 beats per second). Only quartz watches have the classic tick/tick/tick sound each second. Those only came out in the late 1960's and don't require winding.

Perhaps the most important thing with anything that you buy from the store is to read the label, organic or not. There are brands that try to use clever labeling to try to mislead customers, as the video alludes to.

One of the ways labeling can be deceptive is that it is often extremely unclear where the ingredients come from. A box of cereal might be 100% organic, but if the ingredients are all from China you simply cannot know what quality you're buying, for a multitude of reasons, including poor regulation, poor water quality etc.

A couple of other points:

Farming traditionally, without synthetic (petrochemical) fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides is sustainable... forever.
Farming techniques that require oil will have to be phased out eventually, because it's a finite resource. So in this regard, the video is wrong (in regards to them both being able to sit side by side), at least in the long term.

Grow your own food (you don't need much space for a garden), or buy local. Transportation/shipping causes an unbelievable amount of pollution.

Look Mutter, nein helmut!

“The vision vehicle will act with foresight and is able to protect the rider at any time,” says Heinrich. Driver assistance features will continually monitor the environment, the route, the speed, the angle of lean, and myriad other factors, intervening to ensure the rider can’t crash. Gyroscopes keep the bike upright when stationary, so you can’t even fall when stopped. BMW’s roughly an eternity from actually telling riders to ditch traditional safety gear, but things like traction control, hill start assist, and antilock brakes are already making it harder to kill yourself on two wheels.
https://www.wired.com/2016/10/bmws-motorcycle-tomorrow-feels/

I'm happy to see the concept of male only sports dying off.

At the same time it's sad, after all we know about the long term effects of repeated concussions, to see adults encouraging teenagers to slowly give each other brain damage.

I know it's traditional and fun, but burying your head in the sand over this reality is a failure as a parent or teacher. Also, just another terrible idea about what to do with your head.

As a (slightly retired) fencer I love this, but I'd say a couple of things about the description.

The 'whap on the back' needs to apply 500g of pressure for 15ms in order to count. The time rule came in a while back to discourage 'flicking' - that exact problem.

The idea of dropping someone 'before he strikes back' is central to the roots of foil (fleuret in the video) and sabre. Essentially, if your opponent is attacking you have to parry them as a priority. The foil was traditionally the practice weapon which prioritised blows to vital areas, and defence over attack. Unfortunately, this also makes them very hard to follow if you don't know what you're watching.

Great video though. Makes me want to pick up a weapon again. Feel free to imagine some tragedy that made me swear never to fence again.

@eric3579, I agree with you. Hillary's reputation took a big hit after the DNC Leaks broke during the convention.

@newtboy, here's how I think of the campaign. (Please pardon me for this silly fable. I just kinda got writing and my creative side just sorta took over, and I just kinda had fun with it.)

.. ..

As the primary campaign advanced it was clear that Scissors was the front runner in the Rep's side. Unless something changed drastically, he would be become the nominee.

On the Dem’s side, the race was not yet decided. Rock was behind, but not by much. He was quickly closing in on Paper’s lead. Rock was hoping that his strategy of being consistent over time would prevail and win him votes. In the beginning Paper had taken off an airplane. Laughing at how slow Rock was to gain speed. But now Paper’s once comfortable head start was being called into question. Could Rock’s momentum grow fast enough to overtake her?

Paper had gone through extensive planning (on paper) long before the election. Paper wanted to keep news of Rock from reaching the voters. The idea as was to keep Rock "covered over" to the point that many of voters just didn't know about him. They just saw the old familiar name of "Paper" on the ballot and went with that. They had little or no exposure to Rock.

Rock was on a roll, and it was clear that it was gathering no moss.

Since so many voters relied on “traditional” media for information, it wasn’t too difficult to keep pro-Paper ads on the radio, and television, and in newspapers. It was expensive, but Paper seemed to have an unlimited supply of money to fund the campaign. It was almost like Paper had bought the press...

Though Rock started to break through into the areas that Paper had been dominant, the Strategy worked. Rocks downhill momentum wasn’t able to fully catch Paper’s airplane—head-start.

Paper would win the primary and go on to face Scissors in the general.

But at the Democratic Candidate Coronation Ceremony, something terrible happened!

It turns out that someone was keeping a paper-trail on Paper’s dealings. Paper had written many correspondences, and many of those letters had reached the hands of Wikileaks, which had finally chosen to publish the secrets!

The strategies Paper had used to ensure victory over Rock—the Cover-Up Campaign—were revealed. The fundraising done by The Paper Foundation to keep money flowing around laws were becoming clear.

And each week and new secret seemed to drip onto Paper’s hat…

What happens next? We don’t know. There are so many questions! Could a boat float if made of Panama Papers? How deep will the leaks get? What other secrets will be revealed before the final election? Will Paper win over former Rock supporters now that the reality of the Cover-Up-Campaign had been uncovered? Who will win the final election? Can Paper beat Scissors?

Could Scissors have been secretly helping Paper out behind the scenes out of a fear of facing Rock? Could Paper have been helping Scissors in the early parts of his primary campaign out of a fear of facing Ben Carson?

Tune in again for out next episode of House of Cards I mean Rock-Paper-Scissors to find out!

//

//

Okay, I hope you read that with in the lighthearted voice it was intended. And I’m not hiding my bias. This story was mostly about Paper—who (at first) I thought would be a fine second choice.

(I was rooting for Rock the whole time! I liked they way he rolled!)

Trump was Scissors: Wouldn't hesitate to cut his opponents with his uh.. 'wit.'
Sanders was Rock: Consistent over time. (Not blown around by the wind)
Hillary was like Paper: Thin, like her integrity.

Except you still need content to attract viewers and YouTube did that by creating a place where you could find shit you will never see on traditional TV. Without viewers you might as well be erecting billboards around Neptune. And advertisers will be willing to pay for ad space on YouTube, there are simply too many eyeballs for them to ignore.

I fail to see how the depiction of the luna dance is offensive to Hawaiians. I wonder if she would be offended by my DVD copy of Lilo & Stitch? Or my wife's Lilo bobblehead.

Some history: Protestants banned hula in the 19th century, so the celebration of this traditional dance seems to me to be empowering versus the censorship of what the Protestants called "heathen". Sure, the introduction of the Portuguese ukulele and other Western aesthetics changed the art form, but it's practiced in both modern and traditional forms today.

You also can't simply demonize the cross-pollination of cultures, because cultural values are always changing. Hawaiian and Polynesian culture went through many changes and forms long before anyone from the West showed up on their shores. The luau itself is partly symbolic of women's rights (as well as lower class rights) in Hawaiian culture, as before the luau, women were not allowed to eat the same food as men, and commoners could not eat with royalty or eat their royal Hawaiian food.

This change didn't happen until the 1800s, so it's likely that this level of equality within the Hawaiian culture is due in part to European contact, including the the King who himself became a Christian -- and yet also encouraged the luna dance.

When cultures make contact with each other, they become entangled. They influenced us and we influenced them -- and they're Americans now so deal with it. I once had pictures of Italian Americans on my wall (Godfather/Scarface posters) and my grandma has a Jew on her crucifix. Neither of us are Italian or Jewish. LOL

DMT(ayahuasca) are not recreational, no matter which way anyone wants to flip it. The Universe in 5 minutes... an eternal life/death scenario. I was taking ayahuasca to mediate upon my father's death 2 months prior, along with a shaman I respected deeply, I also respect the "traditions" (in that I find the anthropological history incredibly rich) but I realize after "figuring out" DMT on my own that I think my way is best (standard psychedelic procedure, alone) and is the most important thing that I can learn from it. That this is my journey into the soul and I don't need anyone else in my way during my experiences; shamans have a way of influencing the experience, but the experience itself and YOU are the real guide, no need for a shaman with smoked DMT Ayahuasca is definitely an incredible experience and plant... I just prefer my way of visiting "that" realm of infinite knowledge. Tell us how it goes

Some things I did not like about Santo Diame were Christian dogma (with a lot of beliefs taken from many religions), they want you to stay with the circle even though you may be compelled to find somewhere that is quiet and away from everyone else, they separate men from women half circle men, half circle women, guide in between, they do not want talking, but the music is incessant and influences the experience (when the lights go out, be prepared to experience hell on fucking Earth), I couldn't stand the "helpers" at the ceremony I went to, they kept urging people to drink more - there were a lot of aspects that I didn't like about it. But, I certainly wouldn't want to take ayahusca alone, either. Instead, I believe the best way, for me at least, would be one on one with the shaman, in an open place, preferably outside and for him to just chant and check in with me every once in a while.

Also, you can check out the video I made about my smoked DMT breakthrough experience https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuRbLAqM6Kk