how close is society to mass chaos?

So, funny non funny thing happened this past week. A road crew that was replacing a guardrail severed a major telecommunications line and in the blink of an eye my entire county was cut off from the internet and phone networks. I first noticed something was amiss when my cellphone went from giving me two bars to a giant canceled symbol.



I was like....well I know poor service but this is acting like I went back in time and there is nothing out there even resembling cell phone service. Not even an option to dial 911.


And there is the not funny part of all this. Our entire 911 system went down. No one could make a 911 call even within the county because, incredibly, the system was entirely reliant on there being a constant network link to outside the county. Our emergency services were forced to dig out old radios and use them for point to point communication relays. It was crazy and I'm only talking about the 911 problems. There was a whole other set of issues with none of the stores able to use their card reader systems along with all the ATM's being useless that led to many stores just shuttering and not opening that day.


Now the doomsday prepper types that I've been doing business with over the last....since Trump won, basically, had long been warning me about how the fancy new interconnected world was hugely vulnerable. But they usually were talking about something to do with a surprise EMP attack by the Chinese, North Koreans, Surprise Zaire Insurrectionalists, Reptilian-Robot Alliance and these dudes also think chemtrails are real and the UN tracks us through nanobots in vaccines. So why would I pay attention to their blathering?



But...well the way everything got thrown out of whack by one Caltrans subcontractor putting a guardrail post in the wrong place does provoke some reflection. In a world where large scale cyberwarfare might end up being a thing...what chaos might be wrought? What systems that we rely on might be totally undone in ways we don't typically think about? Could all medical files be wiped out? Could loan information just disappear into the aether? How long will pharmacies just not give out drugs if they can't connect to the DEA?


Unlike the prepper crowd I'm optimistic that we would put our heads together and rebuild without the need for trenches and moats. But if you want a trench or moat I know a guy.

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Jesus Rules Over All of Us

I have finally had the epiphany that has led me to understand that Jesus truly lived and came to this Earth to save all mankind, and the truth of the Bible. I am willing to go into great detail to explain how this all happened today of all days, if anyone is really interested. I have walked away from atheism


May he bless you all.


Norm

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The Weather Channel May Have Gone Too far...

I was going over a BBC article concerning the apparent discovery of a fossil bed from the day of the Chicxulub impact (which has already been commented on,) when this item on storm chasing caught my eye. It mentioned a deadly crash back in 2017, which took the lives of three chasers. While the person who was crashed into (Corbin Jaeger) appeared to have been a well-respected storm chaser who was working for the National Weather Service (NWS,) the ones that appeared to have caused the crash (Kelley G. Williamson and Randall Yarnall) were doing so for The Weather Channel (TWC.) And now the TWC was being sued on behalf of the late Jaeger's mother.

The more I read the related article on the lawsuit (and the actual suit papers,) the more disturbed I got. You would have thought that TWC would have learned their lesson from the 05/31/2013 El Reno tornado (nothing says "too close for comfort" like seeing one of your chase vehicles rolling across a field like a tumbleweed {skip to 22.15 for that incident :eek:} .) Instead it appears that the only lesson they learned was to not have their "talent" near the tornado. In this case, it appears that the channel

Quote:

"knowingly chose two chicken farmers and cattle ranchers from Missouri without any emergency/first responder or meteorological training to star in their show. "TWC then instructed them to barrel into dangerous weather conditions to obtain footage, needlessly endangering local residents fleeing impending catastrophe."

What's worse is that is that TWC

Quote:

"...had been warned by other storm chasers about Williamson and Yarnall's "history of reckless driving". It also says that their failure to stop at the junction where the collision occurred was their fourth traffic violation that day."

The suit itself make for some even more disturbing reading, for it appears that when two other chasers came across the crash site and called it into TWC, the person on the other end apparently asked them to recover the video from Williamson and Yarnall's vehicle :eye-poppi (they obviously refused, with one having to tell the person on the other end that this was "a crime scene.")

Based on all the evidence the plaintiffs have, I do not see TWC getting out of this one - they should count their lucky stars that the suit "only" is for $125 million ...:(

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Alex Jones admits he's crazy.

Alex Jones tries to beat a law suit by claiming he's crazy.

Quote:

(CNN) Broadcaster and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones said it was a "form of psychosis" that caused him to believe certain events --- like the Sandy Hook massacre -- were staged.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/30/us/al...ook/index.html

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The day the dinosaurs died

Interesting article in The New Yorker Magazine

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...dinosaurs-died

An article about the discovery of a site containing fossils that almost certainly were directly killed by the Chicxulub impact. The site is also peppered with tektites and micro impact craters (similar to fossil ones seen from hailstones).

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What Really Happened With Seigfried and Roy and the Tiger

Thought this account by one of the animal handlers was pretty interesting:

Quote:

Out of positive-reinforcement options, Lawrence decided to grab Mantacore's leash, which was only about 10 inches long and hung to the side of his collar. At that point Horn backed up. The retreat inspired Mantacore to leap at him, swinging at his legs and knocking the illusionist to the stage floor. The cat also pulled Lawrence, who tumbled first onto Mantacore's back, then rolled off onto the ground beside him. "I vividly remember thinking, 'Here he comes,' and I experienced all of the things that you hear about prior to your death," says Lawrence. "It was very deceiving because it could've only lasted a few seconds but it seemed like an eternity. I remember experiencing a crippling guilt over the thought that I was going to be leaving my children without a father and cause them unimaginable pain that they were too young to understand." Mantacore, though, had no interest in Lawrence. He was zeroed in on Horn. The cat climbed onto Horn's upper body and bit the right side of his neck. Lawrence got up, attempting to hold the tiger back by his neck, to no avail. Soon Mantacore was up on all fours, with Horn in his mouth. Lawrence lost his grip and found himself trailing behind the tiger and his boss' motionless body as the cat dragged him offstage. Lawrence yelled for someone to discharge a fire extinguisher, thinking the loud distraction would break Mantacore's focus and that he might release Horn from his grip.

This contrasts with the official story that Horn (Roy) had a stroke onstage and the tiger dragged him away in some sort of protective instinct. According to the article, Horn had the stroke as a result of the attack.

I have followed this story over the years mostly because I actually got to see their act around 1995 and was blown away by how terrific it was.

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Do leggings make women just too arousing for Catholic men (and women) to handle?

Quote:

I’ve thought about writing this letter for a long time. I waited, hoping that fashions would change and such a letter would be unnecessary — but that doesn’t seem to be happening. I’m not trying to insult anyone or infringe upon anyone’s rights. I’m just a Catholic mother of four sons with a problem that only girls can solve: leggings. The emergence of leggings as pants some years ago baffled me. They’re such an unforgiving garment. Last fall, they obtruded painfully on my landscape. I was at Mass at the Basilica with my family. In front of us was a group of young women, all wearing very snug-fitting leggings and all wearing short-waisted tops (so that the lower body was uncovered except for the leggings). Some of them truly looked as though the leggings had been painted on them. A world in which women continue to be depicted as “babes” by movies, video games, music videos, etc. makes it hard on Catholic mothers to teach their sons that women are someone’s daughters and sisters. That women should be viewed first as people — and all people should be considered with respect. ... I was ashamed for the young women at Mass. I thought of all the other men around and behind us who couldn’t help but see their behinds. My sons know better than to ogle a woman’s body — certainly when I’m around (and hopefully, also when I’m not). They didn’t stare, and they didn’t comment afterwards. But you couldn’t help but see those blackly naked rear ends. I didn’t want to see them — but they were unavoidable. How much more difficult for young guys to ignore them. ... Leggings are so naked, so form fitting, so exposing. Could you think of the mothers of sons the next time you go shopping and consider choosing jeans instead? Let Notre Dame girls be the first to turn their backs(ides) on leggings. You have every right to wear them. But you have every right to choose not to. Thanks for listening to the lecture. Catholic moms are good at those!

https://ndsmcobserver.com/2019/03/the-legging-problem/

Can Catholic men (and perhaps more importantly, women) handle seeing women clad in form-fitting garments that emphasize their bottoms and legs? They clearly wear it because they wish to emphasize their rears, or at the very least don't care if it does.

Should all those young shapely women out there have more concern for those catholic mothers of sons and stop trying to lead them into debauchery and sin? I can understand their concern as i too find that very arousing, but as I'm not a catholic, or a mother for that matter, i can enjoy this completely guilt free.

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Husband in couple formerly held captive by Taliban accused of abuse

Canadian couple Joshua Boyle and Caitlan Coleman were captured by the Taliban after having entered Afghanistan in 2011, several different reasons for their presence there having been given by Boyle since their return. While in captivity, the couple had three children. They were released and returned to Canada in October of 2017. Two months later, Joshua Boyle was arrested by Ottawa police and charged with 19 different criminal counts, including assault, sexual assault, and unlawful imprisonment. The alleged victim in 17 of those charges is his wife; the identity of the victim of the other two charges is sealed by the court.

The night of Boyle's arrest began when he called 911 to report that his wife had run from their hotel room screaming, inadequately dressed from the cold, and was "suicidal". He emphasized that she had a personality disorder and might say things that shouldn't be trusted.

At Boyle's trial, which began this week, the arresting officer recounted his first meeting with Boyle:

Quote:

“He told me he did not want to drag Caitlan back to the apartment, he did not want to hit her,” Henderson [the officer] told Ontario Court Judge Peter Doody. Later, Henderson said, Boyle again said he hadn’t wanted to hit her. He said their quarrel had been about the kids drawing on the walls and “Caitlan as wife not performing her duties, and her roles and responsibilities as a mother.” She was upsetting the children, Boyle said, so he told her to stay in the bedroom. “He offered to have sex with Caitlan if she wanted to,” Henderson said. Boyle said the tension was rising in part because Coleman’s mother, Lynn, was visiting Ottawa, and “Caitlan was unhappy with the cleanliness of the apartment.” When Henderson asked if she had a cell — police can ping phones to get locations — “Joshua Boyle used a chair and stood above the fridge and retrieved a black flip phone… He said he took her phone away to make sure she didn’t break it. She had broken phones in the past.” As the police left to look for Coleman, Boyle, according to Henderson, said “he was concerned, as any husband would be, about what Caitlan would say to us when we found her.”

In the middle of the officer's testimony, Boyle jumped from his seat and attempted to flee the courtroom, but was unsuccessful.

According to Caitlan Coleman, Boyle was a physically and emotionally abusive husband even before the two traveled to Afghanistan - she having been compelled to come with him because he wanted to "meet the Taliban" as he felt they were being portrayed unfairly by western press. She says the physical abuse occurred even in the midst of their captivity by the Taliban, and describes beatings, death threats, and humilation. There came a point where she was given only 30 minutes a day to spend with the couple's children, commanded by him to spend the rest of her time in their holding room's bathroom because he could no longer stand to look at her. She says she was told she had to address their toddler children as "sir" or "madam", to emphasize the fact that she was beneath them.

According to Coleman the abuse continued once they were released and returned to Ottawa. During one such abusive episode, in which Coleman alleges she was made to strip naked to prevent her from leaving and force-fed Boyle's antidepressant pills, she finally burst from the hotel room and ran to that of her mother, who was also in Ottawa to visit the couple.

Boyle opted for a no-jury trial and presumably will be testifying next week.

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$239 Billion

We borrowed $239 billion last year. I guess that's not too bad.

Oh, I'm sorry. Last month, not last year. Last month. February, the shortest month, and this isn't even a leap year.


That's borrowing the money for one new $8 billion Gerald R. Ford class super-aircraft carrier per day, or two aging Nimitz class carriers.

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Deuterium water is hurting mitochondria function

Our friend Jack Kruse is back! This time, we discuss how deuterium in foods and water slows mitochondria ATP function, which decreases the spinning speed and magnetic fields generated by mitochondria.

https://www.blublox.com/blogs/news/a...ium-and-health

Quote:

What is Deuterium? Deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen. An isotope is another form of the same element that contains an equal number of protons but what differs is the number of neutrons in their nuclei. Isotopes therefore have differing masses but their chemical properties and how they behave in most chemical reactions are identical. Hydrogen has two isotopes, deuterium and tritium. We will not discuss tritium but instead focus on deuterium. Deuterium has a neutron in its nuclei which makes it denser than hydrogen. Hydrogen does not have a neutron present in its structure. The role of hydrogen in the body Hydrogen is essential for energy production in humans. The most common form of hydrogen in the body is water (H2O). Our bodies are 60% water so it’s easy to see why hydrogen is important for life in humans. At a quantum level hydrogen plays a vital role in mitochondria function. Mitochondria are the powerhouse batteries of the body. They ultimately facilitate energy production. Within the mitochondria there is a spinning head that rotates very fast, the rotation speed of this spinning head determines how efficiently you create energy. The faster the spinning head rotates the more energy you make and the healthier you will be. The slower the spinning head rotates the less energy you will make and this leaves you more susceptible to chronic mismatch diseases and faster aging. The spinning head also creates a magnetic field. The faster the spinning head rotates the stronger the magnetic field. Oxygen is paramagnetic, which means its attracted to magnetic fields. A healthy magnetic field created by optimal mitochondrial function will draw oxygen into the mitochondria. And we all know why we need oxygen right!? The fuel that feeds the spinning head is hydrogen. Hydrogen enters the mitochondria’s inner membrane and slots snugly into the top of the spinning head. As hydrogen is fed into the spinning head it rotates faster and you have healthy levels of energy production, higher magnetic field and less chance of chronic diseases. The less hydrogen that enters the spinning head the less it rotates and this means less energy production, higher chance of chronic diseases and a weakened magnetic field. So hydrogen is very important to optimal human survival when explained at a quantum level. Enter Deuterium Deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen and performs the same as hydrogen in chemical reactions outside the body. However, inside the body deuterium behaves differently to hydrogen. In essence deuterium will follow the exact same pathway as described above. Deuterium will enter the body and pass into the mitochondria and find itself at the top of the spinning head, ready to assist in energy production and create a magnetic field. The spinning head is specifically designed by nature to accept hydrogen in its standard form. That is one proton and one electron. Deuterium contains a neutron and the spinning head is not equipped to deal with his neutron or wide enough for it to pass through the spinning head easily. When we have deuterium in the body it cannot pass through the spinning head well, gums up the system and ultimately slows down the rotation thus reducing energy production and magnetic field strength. Less oxygen is drawn from the blood, energy levels reduce and your redox potential decreases. A lowering of your redox potential means a huge increase in your risks of chronic diseases. Deuterium is not good if you want to live a long and disease free life. We need to remove it from our bodies. Removing Deuterium from your body Now we understand at a basic level why deuterium is not good for us we need to figure out how to remove it from the body and replace it with pure hydrogen.

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Where did the 97% of scientists figure come from re: climate change?

I don't know enough about climate change to take a personal position on whether we have global warming or not. People keep telling me "97% of scientists say there is global warming that's caused by humans." Where did this 97% figure come from? I was recently told that the past two years have been exceptionally cold.

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Was the Iraq invasion a distraction from the 9/11 Commission Investigation?

We now know that regime change in Iraq was a primary goal for the Bush administration even before taking office.

But, I’ve always found it coincidental, the timing of the Invasion which began in March when there was another big story going around in politics that same month: The 9/11 Commission hearings also began in March and would continue throughout that year into July 2004.

Looking back and comparing today’s headlines one could say that the 9/11 Commission Investigation was Bush’s equivalent of Trump’s Russia Investigation.

Drawing on more parallels, some political experts have stated that the only way Trump could remain popular during a huge congressional investigation is by achieving a quick war victory.

And perhaps that is what happened in 2003.

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Global Cooling Prize - Rewards for Innovations in Airconditioning

At least US$3million to be awarded to inventors who advance energy efficiency in residential cooling systems - development which is vastly needed now and increasingly becoming more important.







https://globalcoolingprize.org/


https://globalcoolingprize.org/about...rize/partners/

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Does eating fruit and vegetables off season destroy election balance?

Has anyone read in depth the work of neurosurgeon Jack Kruse? He postulates that since mitochondria break down food through electron chain transport, when you eat a food that is off season, it messes up the balance of electrons in your body, that then mess up your charge to absorb vitamin D from the sun. Hence, leading to disease. Or something along those lines, Kruse cites a lot of scientific jargon, and it's hard to keep up with it all.
https://jackkruse.com/my-top-ten-paleo-fx-moments/

For example:

Quote:

@PHD Thanks for the back handed compliment. I will take it in a good light. I might also point out that you use written words better than those used to speak with. I would think if one had nothing fully positive to say about the speech you would just leave it unsaid. I guess my sensibilities are just quite different than yours. You and Emily Deans think there is no biologic consequence for eating bananas in winter. I know there is and since you too can affect young peoples choices I have a duty to speak up. It is proven that there are no safe starches in winter because of the neural wiring of the brain.

Quote:

Just because you can eat a banana does not mean you ought to eat it. Moreover, many younger Paleo’s are now aware of this distinction I am making in our approaches now. They also can test it for it too with our taking your or her word for it. Just because you both “feel fine” eating the banana, does not mean it’s fine for your telomeres or longevity. Biology has a way of accounting for these errors of reductive thinking and soon you will see this too. Hopefully for your own sake it wont be before something happens to you both. This movement needs its people healthy and not snarky. I did not make the neural pathways. Mother Nature did. I merely shined light on something both of you have never realized.

And

https://forum.jackkruse.com/index.ph...ns.9690/page-2

[quote]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mihaly Safran I have two questions about electrons, sorry if they were earlyer... 1. If the fruits on tropic area are electron-poor by design, than why is avocado so fatty? 2. If we need to collect as many electrons as we can, than is it possible to do a special artifical battery or electron feeder for human with DC current to gain energy? I know it sounds crazy but maybe you have the answer... Quote: Originally Posted by Jack Kruse 1. Avocado's are vestiges. Read the work of renowned ecologists Dan Janzen and Paul Martin. In 1982 they published a provocative paper arguing that many of the fruits and nuts found in Central American forests today evolved to be eaten by animals that have been extinct for thousands of years. There was a recent book written on this paper talking about the unusual evolution of papayas, persimmons, ginkgo biloba, and coffee. They are foods from a different timescale for life. Since fruits propagate by seeds, their progeny doesn’t grow far from the tree, as the proverb goes; their only chance of spreading their seeds across the land, then, are the animals who eat the fruit, along with its seeds, then “plant” those elsewhere when they poop. The avocado’s abnormally giant seed presents anything from a severe digestive hazard to a death sentence for contemporary earthly species but, apparently, avocados coevolved with ground sloths and were originally eaten by gomphothere — elephant-like creatures that lived during the Miocene and Pliocene, between 12 million and 1.6 million years ago, who happily reaped the fruit with their hefty trunks, crunched them with their massive teeth, and passed the seeds comfortably through their oversized digestive tract. The Younger Dryas took out these animals about 100,000 years ago. Avocado's are there leftovers. 2. Yes it is possible but we have not developed the how to yet.

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Why was Trump blamed for the massacre of Muslims in New Zealand?

Trump never said anything about killing Muslims or even harming them in any way. He only said that since America sometimes has to deal with terrorist acts from Muslims that they should be vetted before they are allowed into the USA.

Trump has done a lot of business with Muslim countries and he said nothing about killing them or even inconvenience them other than the vetting.

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Budget airline ceases business while flights are in the air.

Iceland based budget airline Wow Airlines which operates budget routes from the between the USA and Europe, ceased operations suddenly, stranding over 1,000 passengers on both sides of the Atlantic.

The airline's website advises passengers to "seek alternative flights on other airlines" and says "some passengers may be eligible for compensation."

CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/28/busin...ntl/index.html

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Why are most Christian religions non believers when it comes to ghosts?

Since the only thing a ghost is is a disembodied spiritual being why not believe in them? They believe in Angels, Demons, God and such but not in ghosts. Why is a small spirit unbelievable and big spirits are believable?

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FBI Lawsuit 9/11 News conference from AE911

Well they finally did it. They are suing the FBI for their 9/11 Review Commission Report issued in 2015. They even held a press conference with Bob McIlvaine, Mick Harrison, Dave Meiswinkle, and Richard Gage at Newseum, one block from the U.S. District Court.

The news confernce can be seen here. https://www.ae911truth.org/fbi#newsconference

There was even a reporter there for Courthouse News, who wrote an article. But the original article has been taken down.

Here is a cashed version.

Quote:

“The FBI’s 9/11 Review Commission, and the FBI itself, failed to assess and report to Congress, as mandated, several other categories of significant 9/11 related evidence known to the FBI via reports in the press, via the web, and via public events and/or reflected in the FBI’s own records,” according to the lawsuit filed in Washington, D.C., federal court by lead attorney Mick Harrison. Although the 9/11 Review Commission’s 2015 report details several avenues of evidence explored in its investigation, the plaintiffs argue that investigators failed to address a few key points of evidence, including potential explosives placed before the attacks, individuals seen celebrating the attacks nearby, certain surveillance videos and phone calls, and alternative Saudi Arabian funding sources for the attackers. Regarding the pre-placed explosives, the lawsuit claims that testimony from over 100 first responders describes “sights or sounds of explosions on 9/11 which due to the circumstances and timing and specific details observed and reported could not be explained by plane impacts or resultant office fires.” These allegedly included “‘bombs,’ ‘explosions’ at the lowest level and the highest level of the buildings before the collapses, flames being blown out, a ‘synchronized deliberate’ kind of collapse, like a ‘professional demolition,’ ‘pop, pop, pop, pop, pop’ sounds before the collapses.”

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Dunning-Kruger in graphical form

The Dunning-Kruger effect is that the stupider you are, the more you over-estimate your intelligence.

It's stark seeing it in graphical form, and numerical equivalents, so here goes:



That figure is from an Unz Review piece on the original article here:

http://www.unz.com/jthompson/folie-a-deux/

In this graph, we compare actual IQ scores to self-estimates of our IQ, by IQ Quartile. Use the "Distal" SEI (Self Estimate of Intelligence) vs. IQ line.

The bottom quartile IQ, having an average of 83, estimates their own IQ to be 103. Their IQ is two standard deviations lower than they think. Incredible.

The next quartile IQ, coming in at 95, also over-estimates their IQ, but only one standard deviation: thinking it 106.

The third quartile IQ averages 105 in measured IQ, and likes to think of themselves as 109.

Finally, the highest IQ quartile, coming in at 117 IQ, thinks it only 116. They are the only group that underestimates their own intelligence, and only slightly so.

Suppression of IQ differences seems extremely important in PC culture. Because racial differences in IQ strikes at the heart of the phony white privilege narrative. The Asians do better than caucasians, who in turn do better than blacks and crime statistics follow logically in tandem as well.

But for the individual, regardless of your race, gender, whatever - it is vitally important to have self-awareness. We have an "everyone gets a ribbon" psychology towards education, everyone can get a high school diploma; everyone can get a college diploma...

Which promotes Dunning-Kruger. If you have an IQ of 83, you are below the Army enlistment standard. And you think you are above average IQ. Logically, you can make medical school with a 106 IQ, but the Army knows you are not even smart enough to march in a straight line.

An IQ = 83 is fine for welding two pieces of steel together. Even with an IQ of 83 it is something you can do as an adolescent, no problem. Journeyman welder by 16. Six figure income, retire with an Island in the Pacific.

What you need is a trade. Fortunately, trade schools have almost vanished, and it is illegal to work at trades like construction until you are 18 anyway so apprenticeships, nope.

Anyway, this has more general application, like to the forum. The stupider someone is, the less self-awareness they have about exactly how stupid they are.

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O365 Groups - Who invited dis guy?

Good day all.

Having worked infrastructure and networking for far too long I have recently taken the plunge into a new area, namely Cloud and Cloud based applications.

After being the grizzled vet for many years I suddenly find myself being the 55 year old rookie.

One question has recently been brought up to me that has defied my Google-Fu to find an answer, and I am reaching out to the folks on this board hoping to find a solution.

Here's the question:

Is it possible to see who invited a user to an Office365 group? We have a situation where there is one owner of a test group who suddenly had several new members that he did not invite. It’s my understanding that anyone can invite another user but only the owner can remove them. Is there a way to tell what user invited the other users?

I'm still learning the product so any insight is appreciated.

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Facebook bans white nationalism and separatism on its platforms

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-f...-idUSKCN1R81ZH

(Reuters) - Facebook Inc on Wednesday announced a ban on praise, support and representation of white nationalism and separatism on its social media platforms, furthering its efforts to tackle hate speech.

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Free speech and the marketplace of ideas

To avoid derailing the other thread, I've copied my response to Skeptic Tank here.

Anyone wanting to discuss what I posted, please do so here.

Quote:

There is a certain philosophy on the marketplace of ideas that's popular in a lot of places and in fact is part of the underlying idea behind the rules of this very forum. The main gist of it is that no idea or viewpoint is so ugly or dangerous that it ought to be prohibited, even in privately owned discussion spaces. This viewpoint goes on to argue that its more than slavish devotion to the idea of free speech or fear of a slippery slope but is in fact a positive good to air these ideas in public spaces. Supposedly this allows terrible ideas to be debated publicly where truth and logic will of course win the day! There is often an accompanying claim that absent this public airing these ideas will somehow fester underground and their believers will become worse. I disagree with all of that. I think that the "marketplace of ideas" just gives more exposure and recruitment to bad ideas and allows people tentatively embracing them to find compatriots and strengthen their grasp on these ugly beliefs. It isn't logic or truth that wins the day, but rhetoric and emotion. The same ideas that fueled the Nazis, slavery and a good chunk of the most horrific things in human history really do not need to be debated over and over again. That merely gives the impression that they're up for debate. It seems a very mild expectation of civil human society to say we've settled some very basic things.

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Functional “flying saucer”?

Just saw this on my news feed.... A Romanian aeronautics team design:

https://qr.ae/TW8le4

Thing exists only as a prototype model at present, and some of the claims seem to be a bit... Optimistic.

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To The moon in 5 years.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47721467

""It is the stated policy of this administration and the United States of America to return American astronauts to the Moon within the next five years," Mr Pence told the audience.

"Just as the United States was the first nation to reach the Moon in the 20th Century, so too, we will be the first nation to return astronauts to the Moon in the 21st Century."

So will we need to bum a ride to orbit off the Russians for this though?

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Heteropaternal superfecundation.

Here is an interesting development in dna research, where a woman gives birth to disimilar twins.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle...ectid=12216714

This confirms what I have long suspected, women like to have sex twice as often as men do.

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Polygamy (Split from Anti-Muslim Terrorist Attack)

I'm splitting this off from the Anti-Muslim Terrorist Attack thread because I suspect it would be a sizable derail...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roboramma (Post 12646646) It reminds me to some extent of the issue of men having multiple wives. In principle it seems like everyone agreed to the situation, so why should government prevent people from making personal choices? In reality you find for instance fundamentalist Mormon communities, where old men force young girls to marry them, and those girls have no real choice in the matter. How do we prevent that sort of oppression? By outlawing what seems at first inspection to be a simple matter of personal choice, but in reality is more complicated than that.

For me, I'm against any marriages that are forced, Full stop. This includes monogamous ones in other religions, in which young girls can still be forced into marriage with older men, with the girls having no choice in the matter. I'd note that we haven't banned marriage as a total because of this.

At the end of the day in sticking with my beliefs, I'd argue that it should not be polygamy that is outlawed, but rather the forcing of marriage onto someone without a choice, be it to a single spouse or in a case where there are multiple spouses.

I am also all for keeping it illegal where one spouse has multiple marriages without the knowledge and consent of the other partner(s).

However having stated that, I do know a few polyamorous people who are happy in their relationships, and the laws against polygamy are oppressive to them and their life style. This I do believe to be unfair. Why should they be punished because or other's abuse when the same abuse occurs in monogamous marriages, but the punishment doesn't?

So here I have to stand on making forced marriage a crime regardless of the number of spouses involved, and allowing polyamorous marriage for those that can show that they are in a genuine and freely entered into relationship.

I am aware that in the US this could cause some other issues, but I suspect that it would be easy enough to figure out a way to exempt multiple partners from the various laws.

At the end of the day, my general stance on laws and how we should make them is that we need to be wary of stepping on the rights of all the people because of the bad behaviours of a few. It is better to single out the bad behaviour itself, in this case the forcing of a marriage, than to ban everyone from partaking in a behaviour that can be beneficial to other non-bad actors.

We don't ban everyone from watching football just because a few thugs decide to have a brawl in the streets and stands. Rather we ban the Thugs. I would work polygamous marriage the same way. Hit the bad actors with the ban hammer, and leave the good actors alone to get on with their lives.

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What was America’s biggest politcal lie?

Representative Mo Brooks (Alabama) has a answer.
In a recent speech he compared today’s Democrats to Nazi Germany’s leaders in that they both perpetrated the Big Lie and that they were both socialists. His argument’s conclusion was simple:

"For more than two years, socialist Democrats and their fake news media allies - CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, Washington Post and countless others - have perpetrated the biggest political lie, con, scam and fraud in American history," Brooks continued, arguing that Attorney General William P. Barr's conclusions exposed the accusations of collusion as "nothing but a big lie."

I wondered how other board members would answer the question in the thread’s title?

I wasn’t sure how to define the question. Does biggest lie mean the most outrageous? The most widely-believed? The most damaging? The most enduring? Something else?

“I am not a crook”? 1973
“I did not have sex with that woman”? 1998
“We did not, I repeat, did not trade weapons or anything else [to Iran] for hostages, nor will we,” 1985
“U-2 spy planes are not flying over the Soviet Union.” 1960
“Spain sunk the USS Maine.” 1898

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2020 General Election - Our First Poll

There will be no transparency so the poll is as anonymous as we can make it. The question is NOT what you forecast will be the issues come election time but what you see as the important issues right now.

Multiple choices allowed to get a better feel for what the overall concerns of members are.

The choices - as neutrally worded as possible:

WHAT ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUES IN THE COMING 2020 ELECTION

> Partisanship - Stopping the other "team"
> The Economy
> The Mueller Report
> Healthcare
> Immigration
> Shaking Up the Establishment (d.b.a. "drain the swamp")
> Controlling the Supreme Court
> Bringing God Back to Government - Getting God Out of Government
> LGBTQ rights and treatment under the law
> Other (please specify)
> On Planet X All We Care About Is Who Can Bake A Cherry Pie

I will leave the poll open for a month. Hopefully we get a large enough statistical sampling that it means something (for certain definitions of "means").

Remember - Multiple Selections Are Encouraged. We can't give you "weighting" because the forum software only allows Select / Don't Select.

I'll try to repost the poll periodically to see trends. I know the forum tends to trend "liberal", so that should be taken into account, ultimately. But that's why the choices are as neutral as I could make them. Whether you're for or against a certain stand on, say, "Healthcare" is not important. It's important whether that issue is going to be your driver when deciding how to vote.

Feel free to commence with the usual bickering, but do try to keep to the topic of the thread, which is not the various approaches to the issues but WHETHER OR NOT YOU FEEL THE ISSUES WILL BE THE DETERMINING FACTOR IN HOW YOU VOTE (or would vote if you're not an American).

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Democrats Move to Ensure No More AOCs

One is apparently enough, as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee promises to blacklist any consultants who work for a candidate primarying a sitting Democrat:

Quote:

Six hours after the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced that it was blacklisting firms that work with primary challengers, I met with a potential client who was considering a Democratic primary. The client told me that two consultants dropped out that morning — and now the candidate may not run at all. The timing of the DCCC’s blacklist is not remotely coincidental. In the first quarter of an off-year, many potential candidates decide whether to jump into a race. If campaign staff dries up before day one, a once-daunting campaign can feel impossible.

The concern on the part of the DCCC is that they don't want to spend their time and money fighting other Democrats. They can also argue that going too far left will turn off centrists.

On the other hand it is just incumbent protection and rather heavy-handed at that.

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Huawei P30 Pro "periscope" zoom

Playing with the new phone from Huawei, amazing what they can now fit into a camera in a phone. Some quickly taken hand held photos, from wide angle to its claimed 50x zoom. The end shot is obviously more computation than optics but the 30x mid point is very respectable.

I remember having a "compact" early digital camera that had 5x zoom and the lens had to move about 7cm... The phone is about 7mm deep!

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Probability calculation question

I am not good at probability, so if anyone can help me out, I would appreciate it.

Given 5 fair coins, I can calculate the probability distribution for 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 heads. But what if I have unfair coins? And they are all different?

Suppose I have 5 coins where the probability of heads are 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5. I know the probability of all heads (0.0012) and no heads (0.1512), but what are the chances of 1 heads/4 tails? 2 heads/3 tails? etc?

Is there an analytical way to solve it?

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Edmonton Judge Rules Omar Khadr's Sentence Has Expired

Omar Khjadr, the 15 year old who was held in Guantanamo Bay for allegedly killing a U.S. soldier, sentenced to 8 years in 2010 by a U.S. military court, and then reached a $10.5 million dollar settlement with the Government of Canada, has had his sentence ruled expired. He is now free, without restrictions.

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/edmonton-j...080004989.html

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Creepypornlawyer Avenatti arrested for trying to shake down Nike for 20 million

https://dailycaller.com/2019/03/25/a...r-cnn-analyst/

Celebrity attorney and CNN analyst Mark Geragos is the co-conspirator cited in a federal indictment handed down Monday against attorney Michael Avenatti, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Authorities indicted and arrested Avenatti Monday in New York on charges of wire fraud, bank fraud and attempting to extort $20 million from Nike Inc. Avenatti threatened to publicly disparage Nike if the company did not pay him millions of dollars, according to the indictment.

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EMDR treatments.

I hope this works because my cut/paste thing isn't working.

www.emdr-therapy.com/emdr.html

Is anyone familiar with this therapy? My therapist is encouraging me to use it with his guidance. It requires you to be able to relax to a meditational state, and I am afraid I am too internally anxious.


It has been proven, however, to help people with PTSD, trauma, depression, addiction, and a host of other benefits.

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NTP: High Exposure to Radio Frequency Radiation Associated With Cancer in Male Rats

Quote:

National Toxicology Program releases final reports on rat and mouse studies of radio frequency radiation like that used in 2G and 3G cell phone technologies

https://www.niehs.nih.gov/news/newsr...ber1/index.cfm

Quote:

“The exposures used in the studies cannot be compared directly to the exposure that humans experience when using a cell phone,” said John Bucher, Ph.D., NTP senior scientist. “In our studies, rats and mice received radio frequency radiation across their whole bodies. By contrast, people are mostly exposed in specific local tissues close to where they hold the phone. In addition, the exposure levels and durations in our studies were greater than what people experience.”

Ok, but....

Quote:

"5G is an emerging technology that hasn’t really been defined yet. From what we currently understand, it likely differs dramatically from what we studied,” said Wyde.

5G (5th generation) range is estimated to be anywhere from 6 GHZ to 100 GHZ, which is dramatically different from the GHZ ranges of 2G and 3G.

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Thailand Election

I can't say I'd been watching too closely, but I confess to a touch of surprise at the people voting for the army to keep running the country.

I'm sure Foolmewunz can fill us in on the details...

Was it just the opposition vote being split, or were darker forces in play? I haven't seen any claims of rigging and the result didn't look too different from pre-election polls.

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Man Charged with Assault for Stopping Rape of Child

20 year old Rick Adams of Eastlake Ohio came across a 17 year old male molesting a 5 year old boy. Having been molested himself as a child, it seems he snapped a little and worked the teen rapist over pretty good. Police were called, and charged the teen with rape...and Adams with felonious assault, potentially carrying 2-8 years in the pokey.

So. Defending another is normally a justifiable use of force against a bad guy. Is felonious assault the correct charge here, and should he have been charged at all? Viscerally, I think not.

Possible mitigating factor: Adams also posted a pic on his facebook page of the bloodied-up teen rapist, since deleted.

https://fox8.com/2019/03/24/eastlake...ng-it-stopped/

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Is the Monroe Doctrine repealed?

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/wor...e-maduro-putin

Quote:

It stated that further efforts by European nations to take control of any independent state in North or South America would be viewed as "the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States."

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NECSS 2019 - Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism

Registration is not only NOW OPEN, but as far as I can tell, all of the bugs they initially had on the registration form have been worked out. So, now's the BEST time to get your tickets!

https://necss.org/

Taking place July 11 to 14, 2019; in Manhattan (that's in NYC), at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

Carl Zimmer is the Keynote speaker. He's done a lot for parasites, you know... I mean in a scientific research sense, that is.

Comedian Leighann Lord, is once again, the MC. She's held that role for a few years now, so that's nothing new.

Other guests include, but are not limited to:

• All of the Rogues of the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe (The Novellas, etc.)
• Mary Roach (Author, Science Communication)
• Paul Offit (Pediatrician and co-inventor of rotavirus vaccine)
• George Hrab (The Man. The Legend.)
• Eric Walton (Magician, Mentalist, and possible George Hrab clone)
• Brian Wecht (Physicist, and the "Ninja" part of Ninja Sex Party)
• Heather Berlin (Cognitive Neuroscientist)
• Yelena Bernadskaya (biologist, and Doctor Who fanatic)
• Spiro Condos (Dentist, and former President of NYC Skeptics)
• Russ Dobler (Science Editor for: Adventures in Poor Taste)
• Liz Gaston (Educator and stuff)
• Debbie Goddard (Vice President, Programs at American Atheists)
• David Gorski (I think he's there every year.)
• Randi Hutter Epstein, MD, MPH (Author, Medical Writer, Adjunct Professor)
• Andrea Jones-Rooy (Social Scientist specializing in complexity)
• Brant MacDuff (A taxidermist, for some reason. I don't know why.)
• Neville Sanjana (Bioengineer)
• Odaelys Walwyn (Microbiologist, Immunologist, and Educator)

Every evening there is some sort of show or social gathering to keep you up at night, if you want it.

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Finally a poet who hasn't died yet!

I just read that Lawrence Ferlinghetti turned 100!

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Twenty years ago today "The West" went rogue

With the completely illegal attack on Yugoslavia it destroyed the post-WWII order it created itself. Since then, a long stream of devastation was caused by an urge to prolong the "unipolar moment" after the self-destruction of the Soviet Union into eternity. It's time to admit that the attempt failed and come to an agreement with the part of the world which refuses to submit about how we save our precious spaceship Earth and overcome these stone age habits.

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It's official Barbra Streisand is scum

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/...ving-neverland

“You can say ‘molested’, but those children, as you heard say, they were thrilled to be [at Jackson’s Neverland ranch]. They both married and they both have children, so it didn’t kill them.”


I doubt she'll be blacklisted

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Matt Taibbi on the End of RussiaGate and the Media

I found this piece on Memeorandum, and didn't pay attention to the writer until I was about 1/3rd of the way through. Matt Taibbi is a liberal politics writer for Rolling Stone magazine. He gained my respect for taking on the 9-11 Truthers and here he takes on the MSM for their overly credulous reporting on RussiaGate. Keep in mind that Taibbi is far from a Trump sychophant; his book on the 2016 Election is entitled The Insane Clown President. But here he hits on the media, which he points out made lots and lots of errors in their reporting on the issue and oddly enough in one direction:

Early on, I was so amazed by the sheer quantity of Russia “bombshells” being walked back, I started to keep a list. It’s well above 50 stories now. As has been noted by Glenn Greenwald of the Intercept and others, if the mistakes were random, you’d expect them in both directions, but Russiagate errors uniformly go the same way.

And he even suggests it may have gone beyond simple confirmation bias:

Quote:

Russiagate happened in an opposite context. If the story fell apart it would benefit Donald Trump politically, a fact that made a number of reporters queasy about coming forward. #Russiagate became synonymous with #Resistance, which made public skepticism a complicated proposition.

Taibbi provides a stunning number of recent examples of notable journalists like Bob Woodward recently renouncing their own reporting on major elements of RG, but (drumroll please) not in the original article online, but in his newest book:

Quote:

It was the same when Bob Woodward said, “I did not find [espionage or collusion]… Of course I looked for it, looked for it hard.” The celebrated Watergate muckraker – who once said he’d succumbed to “groupthink” in the WMD episode and added, “I blame myself mightily for not pushing harder” – didn’t push very hard here, either. News that he’d tried and failed to find collusion didn’t get into his own paper. It only came out when Woodward was promoting his book Fear in a discussion with conservative host Hugh Hewitt.

Note that bit about WMD; Taibbi's also been a relentless critic of the MSM's acceptance of the WMD claims in the run-up to the Iraq War. Solid read and a stunning liberal criticism of the media's overly credulous coverage of the Trump-Russia connection for the last several years.

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Recession? What To Do?

So, reading news stories today about bond yields or something predicting every recession in the last 55 years, and whatever it is they do in that situation apparently they just did. I'm not an economy expert (reading explanations of that stuff puts me to sleep) but I know some of you are. So....I'm not really asking if you think a recession is nigh, what I want to know is...what should I do if it is? I have money coming in on the regular which I normally invest in various mutual funds of the total stock market, specific markets, etc. Is there anything in particular that's good to invest in if we're heading into a recession? I am fully on board with buy-and-hold, this is money that's free for tying up for a long period (I won't need it back until I retire circa 2045). I already have an emergency fund in case of disaster and job loss, as well as some money in CDs laddered across the next five years.

Any suggestions on weathering the storm if and when it happens?

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Uri Geller promises to stop Brexit using telepathy

Sheesh.

In an open letter to the prime minister, the Israeli-British TV personality said he felt “psychically and very strongly” that most Britons were anti-Brexit and promised to stop the process telepathically.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...sing-telepathy

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[Continuation] Man shot, killed by off-duty Dallas police officer who walked into wrong apartment p2

Trial date set for Amber Guyger in Botham Jean murder case

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dallas News Former Dallas police Officer Amber Guyger had a court date Monday but the only movement in the case happened outside the courtroom. Her murder trial was set Monday for Aug. 12 -- less than a year since Guyger shot and killed Botham Jean in his own apartment. She was off-duty but still in uniform when she shot Jean once in the chest. Guyger told law enforcement she confused Jean's apartment with her own and thought he was a burglar. She said his door was unlocked and ajar, though Jean's family has questioned that account. Murder cases in Dallas County usually take more than a year to go to trial. It's also common for trials to be delayed. Also on Monday, State District Judge Tammy Kemp signed a subpoena requested by prosecutors for records related to any cruises Guyger took on Royal Caribbean between Sept. 23 to March 4...

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crim...an-murder-case

Thread continued from here. You can quote or reply to any on-topic post from that thread here.

Posted By:zooterkin

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UK Homeopaths ordered to cease advertising CEASE

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47666939

Quote:

Advertising watchdog the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has ordered 150 homeopaths operating in the UK to stop claiming they can cure autism. Five of them face prosecution for advertising a treatment called Cease therapy, which has no scientific basis and is potentially harmful. The National Autistic Society says autism is part of who people are and it is wrong to claim that it can be cured. The Society of Homeopaths said the therapy may now be renamed. Cease stands for the Complete Elimination of Autism Spectrum Expression. It is a form of homeopathy, based on the idea that toxins in the environment and vaccines may cause autism. Therapists claim they can cure autism by removing these 'harmful' substances with homeopathic remedies and dietary supplements. But there is no scientific evidence for any link between vaccines and autism, and experts say Cease therapy is potentially harmful.

If we keep chipping away at this nonsense maybe it will all be gone eventually ...

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More Medicine Doesn't Improve Health?

I just read this article by Robin Hanson in which he claims:

Quote:

But health policy experts know that we see at best only weak aggregate relations between health and medicine, in contrast to apparently strong aggregate relations between health and many other factors, such as exercise, diet, sleep, smoking, pollution, climate, and social status. Cutting half of medical spending would seem to cost little in health, and yet would free up vast resources for other health and utility gains. To their shame, health experts have not said this loudly and clearly enough.

He references several studies, including this one:
https://www.rand.org/pubs/reports/R3055.html

Here's what he says about it:

Quote:

From 1974 to 1982 this experiment spent about $50 million to randomly assign over two thousand non-elderly families in six U.S. cities to three to five years of a specific medical price, ranging from free to full price, provided by the same set of doctors. (See the 1983 Brook et. al. New England Journal of Medicine article, and the 1996 Newhouse et. al. book Free for All?) The experiment’s random assignments allowed it to clearly determine causality. Being assigned a low price for medicine caused patients to consume about 30% (or $300) more in per-person annual medical spending, though less for hospital spending and more for dental and “well care.” The RAND experiment was not quite large enough to see mortality effects directly, and so the plan was to track four general measures of health, combined into a total “general health index,” and also 23 physiological health measures. Their main result: “For the five general health measures, we could detect no significant positive effect of free care for persons who differed by income … and by initial health status.” This summary isn’t fully forthcoming, however. At a 7% significance level they found that poor people in the top 80% of initial health ended up with a 3% lower general health index under free medicine than under full-priced medicine.

He goes on, so I recommend people to read the article (he also discusses other studies).

The bottom line seems to be that when medicine was free people took advantage of that and got more treatment, but health didn't improve as a result.

For instance, here's his discussion of another study:

Quote:

Regions that paid more to have patients stay in intensive care rooms for one more day during their last six months of life were estimated, at a 2% significance level, to make patients live roughly forty fewer days, even after controlling for: individual age, gender, and race; zipcode urbanity, education, poverty, income, disability, and marital and employment status; and hospital-area illness rates. This same study, using the same controls, also estimated that a region spending $1,000 more overall in the last six months of life gave local patients somewhere between a gain of five days of life and a loss of twenty days of life (95% confidence interval). (I’m using a fifty days lost per 1% added mortality rule of thumb.)

A few notes: I wasn't sure where to put this thread, but since it relates to medicine I figured this would be the best subforum. I also don't claim any knowledge on this topic, but found the article both interesting and counter-intuitive so thought it might be worthwhile for discussion here. Finally, the article is from 2007, but I just read it now, and I don't think that it's age is particularly meaningful.

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Jimmy, Oldest ex-POTUS Ever

Jimmy from Plains has outlived the most recent record holder George Bush by one day.

So far.

Good luck with that. Over on FARK these other old record holders only carry the mantle for a few weeks after being designated. But with C, B, and O left it should be a while before the next one RIP’s .

My bet’s on Bush after Carter.

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Mike Gravel, Presidential Candidate?

This article about truther and former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel appeared in Vice today.
A snippet:

Quote:

Mike Gravel, the Online Left-Wing Sensation, Is Also a 9/11 Truther "There's no question in my mind that 9/11 was an inside job," the 88-year-old said on a conspiracy theorist's radio show in 2016. ... When former US Senator Mike Gravel announced that he was considering joining the already jam-packed 2020 presidential field, it set a very particular corner of the online political world ablaze. The 88-year-old Alaskan is something of a legend (if an obscure one) in left-wing circles: In 1971, he read part of the Pentagon Papers, a leaked study of the Vietnam War, into the congressional record. ... Now he's back, thanks to some teens. According to Splinter and Politico, a crew of lefty teenagers in New York State reached out to Gravel (who they had heard about thanks to the podcast Chapo Trap House) to ask if they could set up an exploratory committee for a presidential bid and he said he'd be OK with it. The teens then launched a website and a Twitter account that quickly attracted attention for posting in the take-no-prisoners style of the online left...

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Trash Talking Islam While English

Four people arrested in UK for referencing Christchurch mosque attacks

It sounds to me like these four people have been arrested for saying mean things to or about Muslims. Was there any violence or threat of violence involved? Am I not understanding the story correctly?

Is this the state of free expression in the UK?

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Instagram Is the Internet’s New Home for Hate

Something for the rational to turn their attention to.

Quote:

As other social networks wage a very public war against misinformation, it’s thriving on Instagram. TAYLOR LORENZ When Alex, now a high-school senior, saw an Instagram account he followed post about something called QAnon back in 2017, he’d never heard of the viral conspiracy theory before. But the post piqued his interest, and he wanted to know more. So he did what your average teenager would do: He followed several accounts related to it on Instagram, searched for information on YouTube, and read up on it on forums.... https://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...r-hate/585382/

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I'm a Republican and KY Gov Matt Bevin is an Idiot

This is a disturbing story about a sitting US governor:

Quote:

In a move experts say is medically unsound — and can be dangerous — Gov. Matt Bevin said in a radio interview Tuesday that he deliberately exposed all nine of his children to chickenpox so they would catch the disease and become immune. “Every single one of my kids had the chickenpox," Bevin said in an interview with WKCT, a Bowling Green talk radio station. "They got the chickenpox on purpose because we found a neighbor that had it and I went and made sure every one of my kids was exposed to it, and they got it. They had it as children. They were miserable for a few days, and they all turned out fine.”

That is the kind of story that makes me despair. Bevin's kids may have survived the chicken pox but guess what? They are now prone to shingles later in life. I have a friend who has suffered from shingles for almost 2 years, and I can tell you I would not wish it on my worst enemy.

:mad:

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Yoga and Meditation for PTSD Sufferers

Military veterans with PTSD turn to yoga and meditation

Quote:

The Australian Defence Force is grappling with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among troops, and personnel are calling for better access to emerging therapies like yoga and meditation. Wing Commander Nick Dyce-McGowan had undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder after running air traffic control in Iraq in 2004. "I'd been in a foul mood for about 10 years," he said. "I was just angry for no apparent reason and snappy and I isolated myself from friends and family." Wing Commander Dyce-McGowan was seeing a psychologist privately and working with military medical staff. He turned a corner in his treatment after trying a meditation technique developed for troops in the United States. "I was initially quite reluctant about the whole thing," he said. "But I gave it a shot because nothing else was working. My wife noticed a positive change after the first session. "I think it's the self-regulation aspect. It makes you aware of what's going on inside your own head and how you're reacting to things."

Sure, anecdotes are great, and that article has several. But does it really work?

Turns out, it might. There is a limited amount of evidence that yoga and meditation are marginally effective in assisting to manage the symptoms of PTSD. That's about it. There is evidence that it works, but it's not good evidence.

Meditation for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder - A Systematic Review

Meditation and Yoga for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Meta-Analytic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials

Yoga for posttraumatic stress disorder – a systematic review and meta-analysis

Meditation for posttraumatic stress: Systematic review and meta-analysis.

One of the reasons that it might be marginally successful is that it makes the practitioner more aware of their mental state, which is important in the management of PTSD as it allows a sufferer to more effectively manage their symptoms. Mindfulness meditation teaches you to stand aside and allow the mental traffic to pass you by. The Litany Against Fear from Dune (I must not fear, fear is the mind-killer) is a short guided mindfulness meditation. So its method of operation is plausible.

Should it replace regular psychiatric care? No. But one thing that all of the systematic reviews and meta-analyses conclude is that there are no adverse effects. So even if the effects are only marginal, it might be worth doing anyway.

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Steve King on the new Civil War: 2 War 2 Incivil

Hey, remember Steve King? That Republican from Iowa that Republicans conveniently forget about when they try to sell the ludicrous idea that the Democratic Party is the party of jew haters?

He went and did a thing the other day on facebook. Now deleted but screenshotted for posterity.

I find it kind of interesting that conservatives are so sure they'd win a new civil war. I mean I sort of look at history and note that in all out wars the side with money, tech, organizational skills, manufacturing, and openness to new ideas sort of win a lot. But, yeah, they have like 8 trillion bullets. No real means to make more, but, sure they got them now.



Anyways, postulating a red state win is a thing some members of congress are up to these days.

Attached Images

civil war.jpg (59.6 KB)

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Box Office Truthers

Captain Marvel just passed $800 million global and seems on track to easily pass a billion before all is said and done.


Or....is it all fake? I've seen a lot of chatter about how this is all a scam.


You see Captain Marvel can't be doing well because butthurt white men on the internet said it couldn't after their fever dreams where star Brie Larson called for the genocide of white men. So...how to account for the box office figures? Well one faction thinks the numbers are just fake cooked up by some grand conspiracy between radical feminists and Disney. The other faction thinks Disney is buying up the seats themselves? Yeah, that one is a bit out there.


And to think this is all over an innocent remark about how most film reviewers are white men. From that we get all this whinging about white male genocide. And it is the SJW's that are the snowflakes? Yikes.



[yt]eNUbk-fl51A[/yt]

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CD/DVD drive intermittently won't eject

This one has me stumped

On a Win 10 desktop computer, a reasonably good quality CD/DVD (an LG DVDRam) sometimes will not eject either manually with the button or using the mouse in ThisPC or automatically at the end of a burn process. I have to use a straighten paper clip an insert it into the small hole on the front to force eject - and on some occasions I have to so this, when I try to close the drive tray, it doesn't close automatically and I have to push it all the way shut.

Here is what I have tried

1. Another brand new CD/DVD - same problem

2. Swapping it with another known good drive

a. problem only happens in this computer
b. swapped out drive works fine in another computer

3. Loosening the mounting screws to the point of the drive being loose

4. A different power supply cable connector (one of the spares on the power supply)

Anyone have any ideas what the hell is going on here?

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Finland voted world's 'Happiest Country'

The happiness index of a country could be either a social or a political issue.

What factors do you think makes for the happiness of a country as a whole?

Quote:

Finland has been crowned the happiest country in the world for the second year in a row, leading a top ten that is made up of five Nordic nations. The World Happiness Report, released today, ranked 156 countries by happiness levels, based on factors such as life expectancy, social support and corruption. But while the Nordic nations of Finland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Iceland topped the table, there was no sign of Britain in the top ten.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-bleakest.html

Not everyone agrees with the rankings. Here's a satirical take from Turun Sanomat (Google translation):

Quote:

Finland is still the happiest country in the world. This is what the UN report on happiness published on Wednesday says. Finland is now new to the number one in the past year, even with a clear difference to other countries. "Cannot be true," the gloomy foresters meet to hear positive news about themselves: "There must be some mistake here." So must. The home of happiness cannot be Finland. The mind-saver lives in Finland, but happy people live in Kiribati, Greece, Canada or any other Nordic country. Finland was a depressing country this morning to work. The thermometer seemed to be zero and the weather grayed out like Novosibirsk rain. Few people with orphans stepped into their chores to look at the country. The raw wind pollinated the sanding sand and moved the crumbled tobacco sticks, pizza boxes and hamburger wraps along the roasted ashtray. The logs fought with a piece of sausage. Ilona Suojanen, Doctor of Philosophy at Rotterdam, School of Economics, Rotterdam, spoke on the car radio. He said that the basics of happiness research are very Western. At the same time, he wondered how sensible it is to put the countries of the world in order on such grounds. According to Suojaen, the criteria for research are people's own happiness and the country's gross domestic product, life expectancy, friendship, charity money, and government corruption, and the freedom to decide their own affairs. On the basis of these, Finland's number one can be questioned. Credibility is only affected by corruption. Finland is no longer the darkest suicide of the world. Yet there are a lot of 13 suicides per 100 thousand inhabitants. The figure is the European average. Nearly half a million Finns use antidepressants. It may not be a bad thing, and in many countries of comparison, depression is still being treated more cautiously, but the abundance of depression in the overwhelming happiness of citizens is not mentioned. The toughest readings are news about Finnish elderly care and statistics on domestic violence. According to an EU study, Finland is the second most unsafe country in the Union for women. In the study, almost half of Finnish women reported having experienced physical violence after the age of 15. Approximately one third of the violent crimes committed in our country have been committed by a current or former partner. At the same time, with the news of happiness, Finnish media says today that: - The retirement situation of Finns in their thirties seems miserable. - The woman who was killed in Ilomantsi was killed by her family. - The inheritance inheritance was decided by the Supreme Court. - The Oulu District Court dealt with Nazi and racist nominations. - The hockey player has € 50,000 in debts, almost 300,000 with a skipper, and € 3,400,000 with a rocker. This is not the case with Kiribati. Kiribat has no skijumpers.

The UK was 15th and the USA somewhere like 28th. Discuss.

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Maker of YouTube "family" video channel arrested for abusing cast

According to a police report, an Arizona woman who used her seven adopted children to make videos for her highly popular monetized YouTube channel beat, locked up, starved, molested, and otherwise abused the children when they made mistakes, forgot lines, or failed to follow her direction properly. The children are also said to have alleged that they hadn't been to school in "years", and it seemed that most of their daily existence centered around making the videos.

Allegedly, despite the readily apparent malnourishment, one of the children even refused food offered by the police for fear of being punished by her mother later for eating it.

This case follows other recent incidents of child video "stars" being abused by parents and others looking to make cash using YouTube's video monetization schema. Earlier this month for instance, a UK man pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a young star for one of his video channels late last year, and after his arrest several other girls who starred in his various channels (all featuring young girls) described creepy and questionable behavior by him in retrospect. And in 2017, a Maryland couple lost custody of some of their children and were found guilty of neglect due to videos they made for their channel, which involved subjecting their children to cruel "pranks", even blaming them for nonexistent offenses and screaming profanity at them for extended periods of time, sometimes leading the kids to crying breakdowns or even wetting themselves.

All of the channels involved in these incidents were highly popular on YouTube, and their creators made substantial amounts of cash for them - the "prank" parents reportedly made "hundreds of thousands of dollars"; the "young girl video" channel network run by the child molester was more successful by an order of magnitude. Despite the amounts of cash involved, children used to make YouTube videos are not protected by the laws and industry standards that professional film and television studios are bound to comply with and there's no question that more kids are being exploited to various degrees for this easy money. Abuse as severe as that being alleged in the Arizona case is probably (well, hopefully) rare, but I would bet it's not completely a one-off.

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Supreme Court hands Trump administration a victory in immigration battle

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/tru...e-court-ruling



"The Supreme Court on Tuesday handed the Trump administration a victory in its battle to clamp down on illegal immigration by making it easier to detain immigrants with criminal records.

The ruling that federal immigration authorities can detain immigrants awaiting deportation anytime after they have been released from prison on criminal charges represents a victory for President Trump.

In the case before the justices, a group of mostly green card holders argued that unless immigrants were picked up immediately after finishing their prison sentence, they should get a hearing to argue for their release while deportation proceedings go forward. But in the 5-4 decision on Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled against them, deciding that federal immigration officials can detain noncitizens at any time after their release from local or state custody. The court also ruled the government maintains broad discretion to decide who would represent a danger to the community in deciding who to release or detain."

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Devin Nunes hates Twitter and Freedom

So definitely not an embarrassment to California house Representative, and noted cow fornicator (allegedly), Devin Nunes took some time off from confusing waitresses asking if you want a straw with socialism to launch a series of lawsuits against Twitter (for not shadow banning him) and against two parody accounts that said mean things about him called Devin Nunes Mom (surprise, not a proud mom), and Devin Nunes Cow (even cow sex assault victims can be snarky).


If you are out of the loop back when Nunes was obstructing justice for his Lord & Master Donald Trump Praise-Be-To-His-Eternal-Glory the snark blog Wonkette thought they'd turn the common right wing tactic of throwing out bizarre accusations always bracketed with a fall back "allegedly" by noting that cow farmer Nunes definitely sexes up his cows (allegedly).



This metastasized into a parody Twitter account just named Devin Nunes' Cow. Around the same time the Mom account was created to let everyone know his mom (allegedly) thinks he is a total nitwit tool who gladly eats Trump's feces like a good little minion. In fact a little graphic to explain this arrangement is included as an exhibit in the lawsuit. Gaze upon it and weep at your own inadequacies to irritate a total piece of crap Congressman the way that did. Also it is funny as hell. Amusingly neither Nunes or his lawyer Lionel Hutz (allegedly) have never seen the film The Human Centipede and so mistook this...uh..fecal communion as a sex act.


Another layer of all this is that Devin includes all the ways these Twitter accounts owned him and made him feel bad (which he should, because he is bad) and here are a nice selection lifted from the complaint.

• Devin Nunes' Mom stated that Nunes had turned out worse than Jacob Wohl
• disparagingly called him a "presidential fluffer and swamp rat"
• repeatedly accused Nunes of the crime of treason, compared him to Benedict Arnold, and called him a "traitor", "treasonous *******", a "treasonous Putin shill", working for the "Kremlin"
• accused Nunes of being part of the President's "taint" team
• stated that Nunes was "the most despicably craven GOP public official" and that "Devin might be a unscrupulous, craven, back-stabbing, charlatan and traitor, but he's no Ted Cruz"
• stated "I don't know about Baby Hitler, but would sure-as-**** abort baby Devin"
• stated that "@Devin Nunes is DEFINITELY a feckless ****"
• stated that "[i]f you vote for @Devin Nunes the terrorists win"
• stated that Nunes has "herp-face"

And so much more.



So, what happens now? Well first off Nunes got a rude introduction to the Streisand Effect. And, next, I suppose Twitter will decide if they will fight the lawsuit that asks for the not unreasonable at all amount of $250 million. Prediction, they will fight it so discovery should be fun. Also, what is up with all the right wing douchebags asking for that amount in stupid anti freedom lawsuits?

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