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Post by Hunny on Mar 14, 2013 19:03:24 GMT
___________________________________________Our Member of The MonthToby!Congratulations! ___________________________________________COMIC QUOTESStephen WrightSome see things as they are and ask "Why?" Other see things that never were and ask, "Where's my medication?"I was going to give you a nasty look but I see you already have one.Sorry Officer, I thought you wanted to race.Sometimes I make a mental note and then forget where I put it.If you want to make people angry, lie to them. If you want to make them absolutely livid, tell em the truth.I couldn't repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder.If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.________________________________________________________________________________ Delusions of A Hopeful Pessimist by Sadie1263 Sadie is married, with three grown sons and nine dogs. She works for a family business, loves reading (just about everything), watches a lot of TV and does a lot of dog walking!!
Ahhhh.....money is so tight in Washington D.C. that they have closed the White House to tours. Let’s take a look at some of their spending habits and see if we can figure out part of the problem.
A $7.1 billion Homeland Security Department program to make cities safer from terrorism has paid for 13 snow cone machines in Michigan, a $98,000 underwater robot in Columbus, Ohio, an armored vehicle for a tiny New Hampshire town that uses it to patrol the annual pumpkin festival, and humorous videos that offered little valuable information for fighting real threats, according to an investigation by Sen. Tom Coburn. (Now the only one I can defend there is the armored vehicle. According to Charlie Brown the Great Pumpkin is out there somewhere and we need to be vigilant. )
In 2009, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) began pursuing a four-year plan to improve the economic competitiveness of Morocco. A review by the agency’s Inspector General (IG) found the $27-million project “was not on track to achieve its goals.” A key part of the project involved training Moroccans to create and design pottery to sell in domestic and international markets. Don’t they already make pottery???
Many Americans are finding it difficult to afford to put just the basics on their family’s dinner table. Yet, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) spent $300,000 in 2012 to promote caviar. (Kinda makes you understand what happened to Maria Antoinette)
Whatever feelings high school prom may elicit, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has provided taxpayers with a chance to relive the occasion. In 2012, the agency supported the creation of “Prom Week,” a video game simulating all the social interactions of the event. The project used part of a $516,000 grant from NSF.
Without a standard storyline, “Prom Week” players can take one of the game’s characters – 18 different high school students – in many different directions. 232 As a character in the game, they may participate in “getting a date with that cute boy in algebra class” or “convincing Buzz to give Monica a second chance.” ( Kinda makes you want to go drinking and relive part of Prom yourself doesn’t it)
Squirrels are frequently preyed upon by the rattlesnakes, but the snakes rarely attack squirrels who are wagging their tales. When they do, they usually miss the fast moving squirrel. But what happens when a snake is confronted by a robot squirrel, built to look, act, and even smell like the real thing?
Researchers at San Diego State University and the University of California (Davis) spent a portion of a $325,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to construct a robotic squirrel named “RoboSquirrel” to answer that question.
RoboSquirrel is “a taxidermied actual squirrel that is stored with live squirrels so it smells real. The body and tail are heated with copper wiring, so the snake can see the squirrel’s heat signature as if it were real. The tail is controlled by a linear servo motor that makes it wag back and forth.” Personally I’m hoping the snake gets the people out there setting up Robo Squirrel. Also....they could have paid me $10,000 and I would have explained that snakes aren’t going to run into Robo Squirrels....and more importantly no one gives a crap!)
A few more of my favorite expenditures:
The U.S. government is spending $750,000 on a new soccer field for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. (Is this one soccer field???)
The Obama administration plans to spend between 16 and 20 million dollars helping students from Indonesia get master’s degrees. (Feel better about paying back you college loans?)
If you can believe it, the U.S. government has spent $175,587 “to determine if cocaine makes Japanese quail engage in sexually risky behavior”.
The federal government has shelled out $3 million to researchers at the University of California at Irvine to fund their research on video games such as World of Warcraft.
The Department of Health and Human Services plans to spend $500 million on a program that will, among other things, seek to solve the problem of 5-year-old children that “can’t sit still” in a kindergarten classroom. (For $1 million I could explain to them that THEY ARE FIVE YOU IDIOTS!!!)
Fannie Mae is about to ask the federal government for another $4.6 billion bailout, and it will almost certainly get it. (Well...I guess that’s still better than the gov’t trying to run it.....sigh)
The federal government once spent 30 million dollars on a program that was designed to help Pakistani farmers produce more mangos. (I do love mangos!)
The U.S. Department of Agriculture once gave researchers at the University of New Hampshire $700,000 to study methane gas emissions from dairy cows. (I don’t want to know how they collected that!!)
A total of $615,000 was given to the University of California at Santa Cruz to digitize photos, T-shirts and concert tickets belonging to the Grateful Dead. (Well...the Deadheads deeply appreciate it)
China lends us more money than any other foreign nation, but that didn’t stop our government from spending 17.8 million dollars on social and environmental programs for China. (Do you think the Chinese laugh when they get the check?)
The U.S. government once spent 2.6 million dollars to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly.
One professor at Stanford University was given $239,100 to study how Americans use the Internet to find love. (He should have gotten in on the Chinese prostitute study)
The National Science Foundation once spent $216,000 to study whether or not politicians “gain or lose support by taking ambiguous positions”. (How about doing a study on how politicians need their arse’s kicked!)
A total of $1.8 million was spent on a “museum of neon signs” in Las Vegas, Nevada. (and I thought I loved neon!)
The federal government spends 25 billion dollars a year maintaining federal buildings that are either unused or totally vacant.
According to the Heritage Foundation, the U.S. military spent “$998,798 shipping two 19-cent washers from South Carolina to Texas and $293,451 sending an 89-cent washer from South Carolina to Florida”. (I had to read this one several times to make sense of it........I still haven’t gotten there yet)
The National Institutes of Health paid researchers $400,000 to find out why gay men in Argentina engage in risky sexual behavior when they are drunk.
The National Institutes of Health also once spent $442,340 to study the behavior of male prostitutes in Vietnam.
The National Institutes of Health loves to spend our tax money on really bizarre things. The NIH once spent $800,000 in “stimulus funds” to study the impact of a “genital-washing program” on men in South Africa.
(Now seems to me they could have gotten the genital washers from South Africa together with the male prostitutes from Vietnam and the Gay men from Argentina and cut expenses.)
The U.S. government spent $100,000 on a “Celebrity Chef Fruit Promotion Road Show in Indonesia”. (I’ve been to Indonesia.......trust me.....they don’t need anyone showing them anything about fruit!)
The feds gave Alaska Airlines $500,000 “to paint a Chinook salmon” on the side of a Boeing 737. (Well....if they hadn’t I would know what a Chinook salmon looked like, would you? Also, I would have liked a picture of the Abominable Snowman more....wonder if that would have cost more?)
Unless all of us get together and demand better from our governments......it is only going to get worse. This should not be about party alliance. This should be about what is best for ALL THE PEOPLE and not what is best for the politicians and their pockets.
[/b] ______________________________________________________________________________________________ mikemarshall
Husband to BigLin who founded the site, Mike Marshall is a retired college lecturer with a PhD in Philosophy. He and Lin have been together 15 years - married for 12 - and have a son who's eleven and a daughter aged seven. They make their way together, buying and renovating real estate to sell and let. Here is another brilliant article which he was kind enough to write for us.
What is evidence? The word "evidence" is used in a number of widely differing contexts. However, all of them rely, to a considerable extent, upon the notions of causality and interconnectedness.
Inference and the principle of what is known as "induction" also play a great part in determining the evidential status of an event.
Facts alone are not sufficient to constitute evidence. A number of random facts may strongly support a particular interpretation of events but that is not sufficient for them to be regarded as evidentially admissible.
An amusing example occurred when I was speaking to a friend of mine about three years ago. A builder was erecting scaffolding at a shop across the road. The woman who owned the shop came out, demanded that he take it down at once and then picked up one of the metal poles on the pavement. I turned away for a moment as my friend spoke to me and then heard the man across the road shouting in pain and holding his leg. A policeman soon appeared and asked us if we had seen the incident. I replied that I had seen the woman pick up the pole and seen the man holding his leg but that I had NOT seen any actual assault. Even though it was clearly a reasonable inference to assume that she had hit his leg with the scaffold pole, I was unable to claim that I had witnessed any actual assault by her. Two separate facts, both (on any reasonable interpretation) clearly connected, did not constitute actual evidence of an assault. Evidence requires a very high standard of proof and the police officer simply spoke quietly to the woman and told her to calm down.
Now let me turn to another example from personal experience. About five years ago Lin and I were lying in bed together when we both felt a sudden particular closeness. We began communicating our thoughts to one another without either of us opening our mouths or saying a single physical word. For fifteen minutes this went on, in a darkened bedroom with neither of us speaking. Then the mood lifted. We turned on the light and each of us separately grabbed pen and paper and wrote down the thoughts we had shared with each othr. Each of us gave an identical account of our "thought transference," word for word.
I would call that reasonably persuasive evidence for telepathy although of course dogmatic doubters will not. In fact it is difficult to know precisely what the pseudo-sceptics DO regard as evidence.
Now let us turn to the alleged criterion of "repeatability," one of the constant shibboleths of "scientism" as opposed to science. They claim that repeatability is essential in order for a scientific experiment to be considered valid.
How is it, then, that the history of science shows that this is NOT the case? Let's take the example of the neutrino. Faced with certain problems of radioactivity, in the 1930s Wolfgang Pauli proposed the existence of the neutrino, a particle that was without mass. In spite of the atomic bomb having been detonated in 1945, it was not until 1957 that "evidence" of this particle WITHOUT mass was found. However, in 1988 it was suddenly discovered that that the neutrino did apparently possess a tiny but measurable mass. NONE of the previous experiments with the neutrino had detected any mass.
Nor is this all. For almost the whole of the 1980s, only laboratories in the Soviet Union detected neutrinos with mass. EVERY attempt by Western scientists to "repeat" the Soviet experiments failed. Only in the late 1980s were other laboratories finally able to "replicate" the Soviet discoveries. (Christine Sutton, "The Secret Life of the Neutrino," New Scientist, 17, No 1505, January 14th 1988: Dietrich E Thomson, "Ups and Downs of neutrino oscillation," Science News, 117., No 24, June 14th 1980; "Soviet neutrinos have mass," New Scientist, 185, No 1446, March 7 1985)
Since its non-repeatability did NOT lead scientists to denounce the theory, it is abundantly clear that "repeatability" is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for scientific evidence.
Does the "non-repeatability" of the experiments invalidate the notion of a neutrino possessing mass rather than being massless?
Of course not, any more than the 'repeatability' of an experiment is a sufficient guarantee of its truth.
So evidence is a minefield whether in the philosophical, scientific or legal area and any sort of premature rush to judgement will almost inevitably turn out to be a mistaken approach.
-by Linda MarshallAlthough it is late MayWe shiver with the cold,Lashed by strong rain,Battered by windAnd even hail pouring from the skyNo doubt it’s the global warming that they sayWill scorch the Earth beneath a cloak of gold,And lead us into endless death and painAs we all findTomorrow will not come; we all must die.And yet the leaves still glisten on the treesIn spite of most unseasonable snow,The birds sing on for all the buffeting breezeThat blows us humans busily to and fro.And yet the sun is hardly seen at all,Peeping its timid face out from the cloudsAs if an actor waiting for their callWith stage fright, bashful in the face of crowds.Where is the coming summer that should soonGrace our fair land? Where are the sunshine’s rays?Whatever happened to the ‘flaming June’We’d all expect to light and warm our days?Oh, it’s so cold I’ve got the heating onWhen normally at this time of the seasonI’d walk around with almost nothing on,Instead of wrapped in clothes, and with good reason.Come, Spring, however late, and set us freeFrom the late winter’s utter misery! _____________________________________________________________________The internet is filled with people who want to be a show host! So far we've seen Mr. Safety, Jenna Marbles, Weird Kevin, and Christina Rad. I'm going to run Christina one more time, not because I love the topic of atheism, but because her logic fascinates me. Next month we'll hear from someone new. If you'd like to comment about the video, here, please do. This is Cristina Rad __________________________________________________________________ When Mom told you not to eat apple seeds, she had good reason. From peaches to cherries, many fruit seeds contain cyanogenenic glycosides, which turn into cyanide gas during digestion. In the last 50 years, at least nine people in Turkey have died of cyanide poisoning from gorging on apricots.
In 1959, the USSR launched a craft called the Mechta towards the Moon. It missed, and instead became (inadvertently) the first man-made satellite to go into orbit around the Sun.
According to a 2012 New York Times story, 1% of Americans still get on the Internet with an AOL dial-up connection.
The longest place name in the United States is Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg, located in Webster, MA.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________ MEMBER INTERVIEWSmikemarshall Tell us how you discovered the internet, and a brief history of where you've been online. Have you been a member of other types of sites (Second Life, Yahoo Answers, games..)?I discovered the internet originally as a source of information and was impressed at how much easier it made research. Later I discovered online chess although I no longer play that regularly. Please tell us your three favorite things in life? My three favourite things in life are people, nature and cricket! (The game, not the insect!) Tell us some favorite advice (or lesson) you got along the way?I think the best advice in life I ever received was to try and understand other people before attempting to judge them. Do you play a musical instrument? If so, tell us about that. I cannot play any musical instrument although I did attempt to learn the xylophone and recorder but without success! Did you play sports in school?I very much enjoyed playing sports at school - I played cricket, rugby, football (soccer), athletics (high jump and long jump mainly though I was a fairly good middle distance runner), boxing and rowing. Did you get into trouble as a kid? Any stories you can tell?Did I get into trouble as a child? Well, there was a neighbour who had an orchard with delicious apples and I and some of our friends would occasionally steal (scrump was the term we used) the apples. I also once broke a window at home when playing cricket too enthusiastically with friends and in trying to hit a six hit the window instead! Do you like to cook?
I very much enjoy cooking and I believe I make some of the best home made soups, stews and casseroles around. I am also good at making desserts. As a bachelor I realised I would either have to learn to cook or live on takeaways or eating out so I decided to learn to cook! What pets do you have?We have no pets now though I have had a dog and two cats. Sadly all are dead and the emotional attachment is so great that we cannot face going through that awful loss again. What's your fondest wish?My fondest wish? That is very difficult; personally I suppose a happy life, on a more global scale an end to violence, poverty and oppression. Your favorite material possession(s)?My favourite material possession? I am not much of a one for placing much emphasis on things rather than people but I am attached to an old picture of the Napoleonic Wars that belonged to my grandfather. What genre of entertainment do you like best? Sci-Fi, Action, Comedy, Drama...?Entertainment? That is difficult; I mainly watch documentaries though both Lin and I follow the soap Emmerdale regularly. I enjoy crime thrillers and comedies as well. Favorite movie(s)?Favourite movies? Comedy - it's a toss-up between Duck Soup and the Couch Trip; drama - I recently watched the Magdalene Sisters and thought it was very fine If there is one thing you are absolutely passionate about, what is it? I am passionate about my commitment to freedom and my determination to see it triumph against all the authoritarians of the world who seek to destroy it. __________________________________________________________________ By Donna
Married, with three children - a son and two daughters - Donna works part-time as an office cleaner, loves the countryside, West Ham United Football Club and politics. In her spare time she writes as much as she can as well as running three yahoo groups, four blogs and two other forums!
Gender Roles
One of the biggest myths of the last fifty years or so is that feminism has somehow 'empowered' women by elevating them to an almost supernatural status of superiority while lowering men to the level of cartoon villains. They even try to claim 'credit' for the supposed rise in 'working women' when the truth is that it's the capitalists who've forced women to become wage slaves.
Leaving aside their total ignorance of history - most women have always had to work - one of the things about the so-called radical feminists that negs me off most is they way they patronise working class women. Stuck in their smug secure middle class position of superiority they dare to tell us proles how we ought to think and behave.
And in their privileged condescending eyes it doesn't matter how lousy the job a woman does is because at least to them it's a whole lot better than being a wife and mother!
I could talk a lot about the way feminism has destroyed women but I'll try and focus on just two aspects - education/popular culture (more or less the same thing these days) and family life In the first area they've produced a generation of males (nearly all boys/men under about 30) who are either total wimps who can't hardly tie their own shoelaces or else thuggish bullies who despise women and look on them as sex objects or (even worse) enemies.
It's no better for the girls; they're taught simultaneously that they''re eternal victims and that all males are predatory rapists and abusers but also that they, the girls, are 'entitled' to special favours through 'positive discrimination' and other rubbish.
With family life the goal is to destroy the family, make kids fatherless and mothers husbandless. They look on men as sperm donors and cash machines and (from the reproductive point of view) see women as baby incubators and then as purely temporary carers who should dump their unwanted brats on someone else as soon as possible!
Feminists talk a lot about the rights of women and a little about the duties of men but never the other way around - the rights of men and the duties of women. That's because they don't believe they exist.
For all the pseudo-Marxist claptrap they come out with, radical feminism is a right-wing, sexist and pro-capitalist philosophy.
It's no accident that, especially in America, the feminists have found their natural political allies in the religious right that's corrupted the Republican Party with its theocratic nonsense.
Gender roles are largely biological rather than cultural. Of course there are always exceptions but the norm is rational.
Let's get back to the time when men were men and women were women!
Bits & Pieces CONTRIBUTING STAFF Big Lin MikeMarshall Sadie1263 Hunny Donna Chips
__________________________________________________ If you have anything you'd like to submit to be printed in next month's issue, send it to Hunny (click). Copyrighted material re-printed herein is with permission, or for purpose of review or education, by allowance - in the U.S. - of the Fair Use Act. We do not claim ownership of said material. Our writers do claim copyright of their own material, by-lined or not. To contact the Editor, click here.
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