Bing Crosby And David Crosby
Last night, PG was editing pictures while listening to Hardcore History 51 – Blueprint for Armageddon II. The show is three hours of a man talking about the first month of World War I. It has been called the worst August in history. Many say that Germany lost the war when it did not win in the first 900 hours. It took four years, and several million dead soldiers, for this phase of the twentieth century wars to be over.
At some point, PG took a break and looked at twitter. David Crosby was holding court. PG has written about Mr. Crosby before, and tweeted him several times. The tweets are usually ignored. Fair is a baseball hit between the bases. PG decided to try again.
@chamblee54 @thedavidcrosby Did you ever meet Bing Crosby?
@thedavidcrosby “@chamblee54: @thedavidcrosby Did you ever meet Bing Crosby?” Yes I did
@FoxH2181 @thedavidcrosby @chamblee54 DC tells the late robin williams about it on youtube
@FoxH2181 @chamblee54 did you find the crosby /williams encounter on youtube?
@chamblee54 @FoxH2181 listening to a history podcast now – I may, or may not, look for it – there is so much to listen to & i have a big backlog.
PG eventually decided to listen to part one of the Robin Williams and David Crosby chat. Early in the show, David talks about being in the first class cabin of an airplane. David was in full hippie glory, in contrast to the general three piece suit ambience. Soon, a celebrity came on board, Bing Crosby. A man went up to Bing, and asked for an autograph. All that was available to write on was a can of beans. Bing Crosby was very gracious to the fan, which impressed David Crosby immensely.
There was an empty seat beside David Crosby, and Bing Crosby sat in it. “These other guys don’t know who you are, but I do. I like your music. ” And that is the story of David Crosby meets Bing Crosby. The rest of the interview was a comedian, who used to do too much coke, talking to a musician, that went to prison for doing too much coke. There was a lot of comedic riffing and character playing, which fans of Robin Williams might find enjoyable.
PG is easily amused, and decided to go for part two. David Crosby tells a story of going to see the symphony as a young boy. He is impressed by the sounds that are produced by all the elbows sawing on violins at the same time. David Crosby winds up as someone that likes to collaborate, to be a part of a team. At 24:01 of the show, David Crosby says, regarding CSN, “We do shit together.”
@chamblee54 @FoxH2181 @thedavidcrosby David Crosby on CSN at 24:01 “We douche it together” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Z1R__IcNww
David Crosby retweeted your tweet. @chamblee54 @FoxH2181 @thedavidcrosby David Crosby on CSN at 24:01 “We douche it together” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Z1R__IcNww
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Be Kind To Your Enemy
Did Jesus say to “Love your enemy” ? Some believe this, and do it. Some claim to believe this, and practice the opposite. There are others who claim to love their enemies, but you have to understand what they mean by it. It can be very confusing. This is a repost.
PG went to a source for documentation. Oh, the blessed conjunction of copy paste with public domain. When PG entered enemy (singular) in the search engine, 100 verses came up. When the request was made plural (enemies), 237 entries popped up. The last mention of enemies is Revelation 11:12 “And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and their enemies beheld them.” Loving your enemies does not include bringing them to heaven with you. There is also the star of the show.
Matthew 5:44 “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.”
There is scholarly debate about what Jesus did, or did not, say. The words available to modern man have been copied by hand, edited, translated, and interpreted. PG does not know Aramaic from Alabama. Like anyone else, PG can only read and listen, and think for himself.
In a sense it does not matter what Jesus “really” said. The cult of Jesus Worship is going to believe what it wants. More important, it is going to practice what it wants. As far as the difference between what Jesus “really” said, and what his believers say and do…they can explain.
What follows is a humble suggestion. Maybe the translators and scribes got it wrong. Maybe Jesus did not say to love your enemy. Maybe what Jesus said was to show kindness to everyone. This is a practice thing, rather than a belief thing.
It is not as much fun to be nice to someone, as it is to scream about life after death. Kindness does not need to be justified by a quote from a magic book. You just need to do it.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Slaughterhouse-Five Part Two
This is part two of an excavation of Slaughterhouse-Five, a story by Kurt Vonnegut. Part one has already been published. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. It is ok to skip over the text and look at the pictures.
The second chapter is the beginning of the story. The first eight words sum up the plot nicely. LISTEN: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. The first word is the most important, and the most likely to be ignored. People love to talk, but do not like to listen. If they do quit talking, and allow the other person to speak, then they are thinking of what clever comeback they can say. If only people were as proud of the ability to listen, as they are of the clever things they say.
Billy Pilgrim, or BP, is the main character of this story. By trade, he was an optometrist in Ilium, NY. BP led a reasonably pleasant life, in spite of, or perhaps because of, being shaped like a Coca Cola bottle. His father was a barber, also in the mythical town of Ilium, NY, until he died in a hunting accident. This incident motivates KV to write “So it goes.” This will be abbreviated as SIG006.
BP … which under no circumstances should be confused with British Petroleum … survives infantry duty in World War II and a plane crash in 1968. This crash killed everyone except BP and the co-pilot. SIG007. The plane crash is an important moment in the movie version of SF. PG saw the SF movie, while a UGA student, at the PJ auditorium. That is enough initials for one paragraph.
While recovering from the plane crash, BP’s wife dies of carbon monoxide poisoning. SIG008. (In the note taking that preceded this text, PG missed SIG008. If this was a scholarly dissertation, this would be a big deal. To a slack blogger, it is not. While PG will try to chronicle all 106 SIG in SF, he is not making any promises.) After the plane crash, BP comes out of the time travel closet. BP tells earth people about the wonders of Tralfamadore. These folks are two feet tall, green, and shaped like plungers. Tralfamadorians feel sorry for earth people.
PG has long suspected that he is a Zorlac, from the planet Thrunombulax. PG is quiet about this, as prejudice against Zorlacs is acceptable by polite people. Many white people are trying so, so, hard not to appear prejudiced against anyone. When they see an approved target for their tribal rage, white people lose it. Just look at the way people with deviant attitudes about race relations are portrayed. With this in mind, PG has learned to keep quiet about his Thrunombulaxian origin. The relationship of Thrunombulax to Tralfamadore is unknown.
A letter was written to the Ilium News Leader by BP. He tells about the lessons he learned on Tralfamadore. This was in 1967, on the eve of BP’s daughter’s wedding. Trallies see a person who is dead, and say that he/she is having a bad day. It is a Trally custom to say, about death, so it goes. SIG009. Number nine, number nine, number nine. Turn me on dead man. The Beatles white album was recorded at approximately the same time as BP going to Tralfamadore.
A wonderful tool is now available for the production of this SF commentary, and SIG inventory. The text of SF … not to be confused with science fiction or San Francisco … is available electronically in the sf_pdf. Alas, it is an imperfect tool. You can download a copy to your machine. On this copy you can highlight certain words in yellow magic marker, but you cannot copy text. You can copy text from the online version, but it comes out funny and you have to do so much editing that it might be easier to just manually copy the text.
While working on the letter about Trallies, BP is visited by his daughter, Barbara. At a young age, she had to manage her mother’s funeral, and take care of her senile father. KV, who has a way with words, describes the young lady as a “a bitchy flibbertigibbet … legs like an Edwardian grand piano.” Barbara … we might know her married name later … asks her dad why he waited until 1968 to talk about time travel. He did not think the time was ripe.
The tale segues into the first experiences with time travel. This was in World War II. BP was a chaplain’s assistant, which is not a well thought of position. One day on maneuvers, BP was playing A Mighty Fortress Is Our G-d on the organ. (KV made a mistake here. AMFIOG was written by Martin Luther, without any assistance from Johann Sebastian Bach.) A war game umpire showed up, and told everyone that they were dead. Before long, BP got word that his father had been killed while hunting deer. SIG010. The offending shot was fired by his human friend, and not by a deer.
When BP returns from the funeral, there are orders for him to go to Europe. A chaplain’s assistant has been killed in action. SIG011. Soon, BP participates in the Battle of the Bulge. BP has no weapon, helmet, or boots. BP looks alternately like a box of kitchen matches, and a filthy flamingo. BP meets foulmouthed Pittsburgh refugee Roland Weary, so saves BP numerous times before trying to kill him. Roland Weary was the only member of a gun crew to survive a 88mm German tank gun. SIG011.
The name Roland means many things to PG. Rowland NC, with an ornamental w, is the hometown of PG’s father. Roland Cofer is a former co-worker. Roland Cofer was the cheerful son of Willie Simpson, the store manager. The fact that Roland is black, and Willie is white, which should not concern the reader. It did not concern Roland or Willie.
The father of Roland Weary was a plumber. He collected guns, knives, and torture devices. The noname dad gave his wife a model of an iron maiden, which was a torture device before it was a heavy metal band. The device was a small chamber, with doors on hinges. The doors were lined with spikes, which impale the guest when the doors are closed. There is a drain in the bottom, for elimination of blood. SIG012. No mention is made of who cleans the iron maiden, or if it was cleaned. Eventually the smell would make the spikes redundant.
Roland Weary was a bully. He saw BP as a good target for his tough talk. Once, he described a torture where someone was tied down, with his eyes facing the sky. The eyelids are cut off, so there is no stopping the sun. SIG013.
BP is showing signs of common sense. He lets the motor mouth ramble without protest or argument. It turns out that BP is no stranger to gore. (This is blood and guts, not slick Willie’s VPOTUS.) BP had an explicit crucifix in his bedroom. Though nominally nondenominational, the Pilgrim family made sure young Billy knew all about the terrible things that happened to Jesus. SIG014.
Roland Weary had a pornographic picture, which BP saw numerous times. The legend was that André Le Fèvre an assistant to Louis J. M. Daguerre, was busted for selling a print of this photgraph. Mr. Le Fèvre died in prison. SIG015. A killjoy website, mental floss, says this never happened. Roland Weary later fantacizes being the only survivor of a German attack. SIG016.
It was about this time that BP starts to time travel. The first visit is to the YMCA, where his father is teaching him how to swim. The second adventure is to 1965, when BP is 41 years old. His mother is in an old peoples home. (PG once used the phrase “old folks home” at an estate sale, and was quickly told that OFH was considered rude.) While BP was at the OPH, a former marathon runner crossed the mortal finish line, and was wheeled out on a gurney. SIG017.
While sitting in a chair at the OPH, BP noticed a lump in the cushion. It was a book, The Execution of Private Slovik. Eddie Slovik was an American soldier, who was executed for desertion in 1945. SIG018. An excerpt from the court opinion in the case is quoted. It seems as though Pvt. Slovik was executed as a morale building exercise. SIG019.
The next time travel episode was a party in 1958. BP gets drunk, and screws a woman he is not married to. This is putting the tryst back in optometrist. When BP comes back to real time 1945, Roland Weary is about to kick him in the lower back. This effort at self expression is interrupted by the Germans, who take BP prisoner. This is the end of chapter two.
The End Of Racism
One of the touted TED talks in the weekly email is Color blind or color brave? It is by Mellody Hobson, a POC in the investment business. It is the standard call to talk more about race. Talk, talk, talk, and talk some more. The word listen is not used.
At the 3:13 mark, Mrs. Hobson makes a remarkable statement. “Now I know there are people out there who will say that the election of Barack Obama meant that it was the end of racial discrimination for all eternity, right?” It is possible that someone has said that. There are also people who say the earth is flat.
PG asked Mr. Google about this. The top two results are about the TED talk. The third result is an article in Forbes magazine, Racism In America Is Over. It is written by John McWhorter, one of the “black guys at Bloggingheads.tv.” Dr. McWhorter does say racism is over, sort of. The problems that remain are a lot worse. Too much food for thought, for a population with intellectual bulimia.
There is a quote in the Forbes article that is pure gold. “When decrying racism opens no door and teaches no skill, it becomes a schoolroom tattletale affair. It is unworthy of all of us: “He’s just a racist” intoned like “nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah!””
There are a lot more results. PG is getting tired of looking. If you want to see for yourself, google “the election of Barack Obama meant that it was the end of racial discrimination for all eternity.” Except for a rogue title editor at Forbes, almost nobody has said that. This is a repost. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Aerosolized Homosexual Christians
Did Amy Shumer shave off her beard? ~ Sharks don’t bother Fox talking heads when they go swimming. It is a professional courtesy. ~ other than Israel there are very few people you can cheer for in the middle east ~ Gays Have Aerosolized Homosexual Christians, Covertly Attacking Chemtrails ~ Were people allowed to invest in Mr. Trump’s business ventures? That would seem to be a form of gambling. ~ Complications are overrated ~ Mr. Trump should try carbon monoxide. ~ Post Has Been Removed The post or object that you were commenting has been removed by its owner and can no longer be commented on. ~ Tacky political memes qualify as taking the “name of the lord” in vain. If you have any questions, consult the third commandment. ~ 6 Obnoxious Phrases Everyone Says Without Realizing It ~ 6 obnoxious phrases everyone says without realizing it Literally, It’s Like Crack!, I Would Totally Hit/Tap That, Man, That’s Gay, No Offense, Haters Gonna Hate, Addicted, Like, Totes, That’s so ghetto, Sorry not sorry, It is what it is, That’s retarded, ~ This is too much food for thought, and is leading to mental indigestion. There is a dandy comment, in the thread following a rebuttal post. “I blame the acronym LGBT. I think it’s become a four dimensional matrix of oppression olympics.” ~ I hope this is not derailing this thread. If it is then I can delete, and discuss later. Who made the decision to use cis- as a prefix? As I understand it, cis- is the opposite of trans. I can appreciate the need for this word. What I do not appreciate is the word itself. Cis- sounds like sissy. The s sound is tough for some people to say. There should be another phrase that we can use to designate someone who utilizes the gender of birth. ~ Every sperm is sacred! ~ Also scared. ~ They’re not scared, they’re happy! ~ There is a .005% chance they will have to work. ~ Well I think that progress is not possible without deviation. And I think that it’s important that people be aware of some of the creative ways in which some of their fellow men are deviating from the norm, because in some instances they might find these deviations inspiring and might suggest further deviations which might cause progress, you never know. Frank Zappa (VPRO-TV February 1971) ~ The previous post was “Important Lessons We Can All Learn From Franklin Graham” This is a very, very short post. ~ @norm_1142 every day I see new applications of how a policy of “don’t tell people what to do” makes everyone happier. ~ @fieldnegro No Mr. Jindal, we don’t need to “pray”, we need to change the culture of guns in this country. ~ I publish a blog, chamblee54.wordpress.com . I have a twitter account, @chamblee54. For some reason, you have blocked me on twitter. Now, this is really not a big deal, but it is puzzling. I honestly don’t think I have so much as written your twitter address on any tweet of mine. I did quote you on the Planned Parenthood video in a post I wrote.I gave full credit, and included a link. Otherwise, I have had little contact with LGF, or even read it that often. Why did you block me? ~ “White liberals talk about race all the time” The problem is that nobody listens. ~ I Am NOT Cisgendered ~ I have mixed feelings about this. I was put off by the academicism of the first paragraph. I decided to scan the rest, and look at the last paragraph. I found myself agreeing with much of what he said. I am so tired of being labelled and pigeonholed. So many of the things that people use to judge me have little to do with who I am as a human being. The whole cis/trans clusterfuck is just one more source of conflict that serves little purpose. ~ Breaking Down HuffPost’s “I am NOT cisgendered” Tantrum ~ Matt makes a good point about the looney left, and then blows it by whining about media coverage. He also does not mention that the radical right is better armed than the looney left. ~ Humor rhymes with boomer, tumor, and rumor. It is designed to appeal to poets. ~ ppl who want a white pride movement probably need a bowel movement ~ without deviation from the norm progress is not possible ~ dumb de dumb dumb ~ I have only heard the first 25 minutes Truth be known, after the first two minutes it is not that great. But the opening story. You should hear it yourself, as told with a british accent. This man is in a bdsm dungeon. (spell check for bdsm is bdrm) he asks for a bunch of bananas the idea is to see how many he can stick in his butt after a few he cries uncle, and asks for a bucket to eliminate the product. In the minute that the hostess goes to try and find a bucket, the man starts to uncontrollably projectile eliminate the bananas There are 19 episodes of sex with strangers I have downloaded all of them, with the exception of the ones that sound boring, like sex with mormons. The banana episode is 3. Episode 2, Grindr in wyoming, is recommended. ~ @WernerTwertzog Please grant me your pardon if my spell changer converted your name into an insult, obscenity, or vile liquid. ~ @Trepanatus Dennis Rodman just endorsed Trump. Parody and satire are now impossible. ~ uth pb o ~ I got to the question ” “Do you have the word ‘skanky’ in America?” Then the popup ad hit. ~ Pay ATTN: We share commentary, news articles, and videos that cover important societal topics as well as give you opportunities to take action. ~ I use firefox, for the time being anyway. Idk if what I saw was technically a popup. It is where a full screen thingie covers the entire window. Sometimes you can close it, sometime you cannot. ~ Faith is the excuse we provide to rational people who believe to be real the mad, antithetical fictions of the Bible. ~ pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. ~ selah
The Problem Of Anti-Racism
Some people are proud of being anti-racist. This is not always something to be proud about. Often, as in anti communism and homophobia, the struggle against the unseen enemy is worse than the problem you are fighting. When you denounce someone as racist, you might be talking about yourself.
The discussion that follows should not be seen as pro racist. People should treat people with kindness. The word people does not need an adjective. This kindness should be extended to those who do not share your opinions about racism.
Maybe you should lead by example. Instead of worrying about how your neighbor thinks, worry about how you think. If you don’t like the nasty word don’t use it.
To some, racism is the ultimate taboo. It is the worst charge you can make about a person, and the quickest to be made. Once accused, you are guilty until proven innocent. It does not help that the definition of racism is expanding all the time. What one person considers racism is normal thinking to another. It used to be that racism was when you treated someone poorly because of their ethnicity. Now is is a multi faceted boogieman about power and prejudice. Keeping up can be a full time job.
Anti-communism has been compared to anti-racism. To our younger readers, there used to be a system of government called communism. It was alleged to be involved in a cold war with the United States. This cold war was the justification for a bloated military industrial complex. Many crooked politicians were elected on the basis of being anti communist. Often, the fight against communism was worse than the actual system of government.
Anti-racism is the new McCarthyism. Guilt by association is the rule. Difficult to refute charges are made against people. The charge of racism is used as a red herring.
Homophobia is compared to anti-racism. In both cases, the accuser has a set of standards. If the accused does not meet those standards, then the accused is considered fair game for abuse. The accused and the accuser may not agree on these standards. That does not matter. If someone wants to make the accusation, then they will, and will feel righteous about doing so.
It is frequently speculated that the homophobe is secretly gay. The need to be heard badmouthing gays stems from a perceived need to prove heterosexuality. Could this be the case with the anti racist? Maybe the anti-racist is secretly afraid that they might be a racist. The “calling out” of others, for perceived racism, is an effort to overcompensate for their own shortcomings.
Some things need to be said one more time. People should treat people with kindness. The word people does not need an adjective. Shaming and guilt mongering, because someone does not share your attitudes about race, is not appropriate. To use an anti-communist expression, there are better ways to win hearts and minds. This is a repost. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
PU Is Short For Pun
1. The roundest knight at King Arthur’s round table was Sir Cumference.
He acquired his size from too much pi.
2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.
3. She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.
4. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from the algebra class. It was a weapon of math disruption.
5. The butcher backed into the meat grinder and got a little behind in his work.
6.. No matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationery.
7. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering..
8. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.
9. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie..
10. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
11. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.
12. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
14. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway.
One hat said to the other, ‘You stay here; I’ll go on a head..’
15. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.
16. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: ‘Keep off the Grass.’
17. A small boy swallowed some coins and was taken to a hospital.
When his grandmother telephoned to ask how he was, a nurse said, ‘No change yet.’
18. A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.
19. The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.
20. The man who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.
21. A backward poet writes inverse.
22. In democracy it’s your vote that counts. In feudalism it’s your count that votes.
23. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.
24. Don’t join dangerous cults: Practice safe sects.
25. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
26. Stories are in the public duh-main. This is a repost.
Called Ugly By A Frog
11. Thou shalt publish thy arguments in text format. ~ Not everyone received the message in 2000 to stop using colored text. ~ Isn’t the proper expression “text of color”? ~ That class was not very bright. They should have realized after the pebbles that the jar was not full. ~ @StoneCStudios 50 Cent’s name has more money than he does. ~ Nobody hates like Christians they think their ideas about life after death excuse their hate ~ top seven topics on Atlanta twitter right now #TodaysKidsWillNeverKnow #IranDeal #PlutoFlyby #Steve Spurrier #BastilleDay #CowAppreciationDay #Planned Parenthood ~ The website you were trying to reach is temporarily unavailable. ~ trees are all bark and no bite ~ Snopes has had a busy day with the #plannedparenthood video. It says that rapists use “unmarked police cars” to snare victims. However, dialing 112 is not a good idea. 911 is still your best bet. ~ @postcrunk constantly in the middle of billions of uniquely intersecting realities ~ Is that the Mod Squad? ~ I got blocked on twitter today by a “christian” website. I said that the Planned Parenthood video was a fraud, and anyone who believed it was an idiot. ~ Being heard talking the talk is much more important that walking the walk. In so many ways the ARF crowd is like overall society in that the image is more important that the reality behind the mask. ~ When you say blocked, do you mean unfriended? There are different layers of this. OK, you just answered that. I guess I have only been blocked twice by faeries, which isn’t bad considering. ~ Unfriending is hurtful. I have unfollowed a few people, but I don’t think I have ever unfriended anyone. If you change your mind later, and decide that Joe Blow really isn’t a poopyhead after all, then you still have that recorded slap in the face to deal with. Spell check suggetions… unfollowed unhallowed poopyhead pothead ~ @whittmman I am an acme of things accomplished, and I an encloser of things to be. ~ @whitman632 I wish I smelled better. @chamblee54 You have been dead 123 years What did you expect? ~ This is just a bit north of the new baseball stadium. That move was partially justified by looking for a better neighborhood. ~ Damn I hate this yahoo email thing I had to delete the first time I wrote this and start over I added the link first, and then this idiot program tried to add what I wrote to the link. ~ KimKierkegaardashian @KimKierkegaard No authentic human life is possible without a black leather jacket. ~ While the Gaza slaughter was horrible, what Israel is doing today might be worse. Along with Saudi Arabia, Israel is trying to sabotage a peace deal with Iran. ~ Has Caitlyn Jenner ever said what the preferred pronouns are? She might not be preferred. ~ Calling All Geniuses: Are you smart enough to be a Mensa member? ~ @nihilist_arbys It’s 3 am. You awake in a panic. You’re wasting your life? You’re alone? relax. You’re totally insignificant & you’ll die soon. Enjoy arbys. ~ If you like this post, please share it along: ~ The Ministry of Silly Walks ~ If you, say, call the number on a receipt and give feedback on your customer service experience in the hopes of winning $1,000, who verifies that the company actually awards a prize? ~ Quiz: Who Is Your Spirit Musician? Janis Joplin ~ The same people who verify the amount given to charity by shady merchandisers. ~ can white people be negatively affected by racism ~ can you say humbug in July? ~ People who label other people are a problem. ~ some ppl boast abt making pwoc uncomfortable this does not lead to positive change ~ It is socially irresponsible to post images of violence on the daily w/o supporting people’s mental & physical well-being. ~ Naomi Munroe sure does know a lot of big words. ~ the anagram for massive, with or without all caps, is me ass iv or save sim ~ KimKierkegaardashian @KimKierkegaard Skirt is by Chloe. Heels are by Manolo. But everything that makes me impure comes from within. ~ This post has been removed. This post by Gawker CEO Nick Denton has more details. ~ July 17 is birthday of Phyllis Diller & Camilla Parker Bowles Looks are not everything ~ This posting has been flagged for removal. ~ @alphabetsuccess The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn. – Bertrand Russell #quote @chamblee54 What are you going to burn, the bridge or the cross? ~ Doesn’t someone have to shut up and listen, or is that obsolete? ~ this post begins with a condescending comment about the Alaskan native population. It goes downhill from there. I made it as far as the comment about Darren Wilson shooting Mike Brown because of prejudice, and getting away with it because of racism. This sort of simplistic rhetoric does not have any value. ~ When Jimmy was running for President, Lester Maddox said that Jimmy was a liar. Jody Powell replied. “Being called a liar by Lester Maddox is like being called ugly by a frog,” ~ Shut down the Canidrome, the world’s deadliest greyhound racetrack. ~ Mr. Brooks has taken book promotion to a new level. ~ is it as annoying when G-d talks about man as it is when man talks about G-d? ~ What do you think about the rumors the Caitlyn Jenner received the award as a quid pro quo for consenting with an interview with Diane Sawyer? ~ Wonder if the boat owner looks sad when he gets his credit card bill? ~ @WernerTwertzog All this fuss about #DonaldTrump is a waste of perfectly useful hatred. ~ You can always be sure to find uncertainty. ~ Did anyone else get back from riding a bicycle past a Buddhist monastery? ~ @whittmman Just because you have an irrational belief in a supreme being doesn’t mean there is one. ~ pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. ~ selah
The Planned Parenthood Video Part Two
Last Wednesday, a sensationalized video was released. Planned Parenthood was said to traffic is baby parts obtained through abortion. On Thursday, Radiolab released a show, Gray’s Donation.
Sarah Gray was pregnant with twins. The sonogram said that one baby would probably die, and that the sick baby was endangering the healthy baby. A decision was made to abort the sick baby. On the day of the procedure, something had changed. The abortion could not be safely performed. Both babies would be carried to term.
Thomas, the sick baby, lived for six days. Callum, the healthy baby, is doing fine. A decision was made to donate organs, from Thomas, to researchers. In the radiolab story, the mother goes to some of the labs, and learns what happened to the organs.
These quotes are from a story, Thomas Gray lived six days, but his life has lasting impact. “The next day, Gray met James Zieske, the institute’s senior scientist, who told her “infant eyes are worth their weight in gold,” because, being so young, they have great regenerative properties. Thomas’ corneas were used in a study that could one day help cure corneal blindness. … the Duke Center for Human Genetics in Durham, N.C., where even though the twins were identical, scientists found epigenetic differences in their cord blood, research that could one day help prevent Thomas’ fatal defect, anencephaly. … the researcher at the University of Pennsylvania who used the donation in her efforts to cure retinoblastoma, the most common form of eye cancer in children. … It is almost impossible to obtain normal retina from a child, The sample from Thomas is extremely precious for us.”
This is a unique case, as are almost all life or death situations. Things are seldom black or white, They are, pardon the pun, shades of gray. There are serious moral dilemmas involved in the use of some tissues for research. Nuance is not often communicated in 140 characters.
This does not stop the internet comment moralizers. “she a ghoul and a shyster dealer of death parts… praying on those mourning to accomplish ridiculous research” “Great story, but there is no way one of the priests should have claimed that it was OK to abort the sick baby in order to save the healthy one or the mother. The example used was completely wrong. … In Gray’s Donation there was absolutely an intention to kill the sick fetus. It would not have been an accident or unintended, and therefore there is no double effect, and is morally indefensible.”
In the Planned Parenthood video, much is made about pricing for the infant parts. Prices range from $30 to $100. In this study, we hear a researcher say “infant eyes are worth their weight in gold.” This might not be the best way to phrase this, since the tiny eyes probably don’t weigh that much. In a competitive free market, such an item would have a much, much higher price than $100.
One of the worst players in muddying the waters is the Catholic Church. A website called Life News has a misleading article, He Only Lived Six Days Outside the Womb, But Baby Thomas is Helping Cure Cancer. It ignores the fact that the mother opted for abortion, but was forced by medical circumstances to carry the twins to term. The post linked here has a header ad for Faith Focused Dating at “CatholicMatch.” Another ad promotes Affordable Biblical Healthcare.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Murder Statistics
Nate Silver likes to keep busy during a non election year. He issued a report recently, Black Americans Are Killed At 12 Times The Rate Of People In Other Developed Countries. The Silver report was published June 18. The various internet content recyclers only picked up the story a day or two ago.
“If you’re a white person your chance of being murdered every year is 2.5 out of 10,000… If you’re a black person it’s 19.4, so almost eight times higher…. the murder rate for white Americans is similar to the murder rate for people living in Finland, Chile or Israel. The murder rate for black Americans, on the other hand, is similar to the rate found “in developing countries that are war zones even, like Myanmar, or Rwanda, Mexico, Brazil, Nigeria, places that have vast disorder.”
If there is one thing you can find on the internet, it is statistics. Since we are dealing with totals, not averages, the numbers used in this post should be fairly reliable. There might be some under reporting, or questions about how to deal with mixed race people. For the purposes of this post, we are going to take the numbers at face value.
The numbers used today are from 2013. The population of the United States was 316,128,839. Of this total, 77.7% are white, and 13.2% are black. There are 5.88 times as many white people as black people. There were 245,632,107 white people, and 41,729,006 black people. For purposes of this study, these numbers will be rounded off, to 316m total, 246m white, and 42m black.
Expanded Homicide Data Table 6 was produced by the FBI. For white people, there were 3,005 murders in 2013. This is 12 per million. For black people, there were 2491 murders in 2013. This is 59 per million. These numbers are different from those quoted by Nate Silver.
Who is committing these murders? For the white people, 2,509 (83%) were killed by a white person, and 409 (13%) were killed by a black person. (These numbers will not add up to 100%, as there are “other” and unknown killers.) For the black people, 189 (7%) were killed by a white person, and 2,245 (90%) were killed by a black person.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
A Study Of Cusswords On Twitter
There was a link on facebook to a Gawker situation, Do You Live in a “Bitch” or a “Fuck” State? American Curses, Mapped. The article has a series of maps, with unappealing red and blue splotches embedded. Each map is dedicated to a cussword: asshole, bitch, cunt, damn, darn, faggot, fuck, gosh, motherfucker, and shit. Red splotches means a word in a particular region, while blue splotches mean the phrase is less popular. Only three of the Carlin seven words are studied.
We only know that the words are being used on twitter. The technology is not advanced enough to determine if the words are used as a compliment, or an insult. Are these wirty dords employed as nouns, verbs, or modifiers? Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient only goes so far.
“Jack Grieve, a professor in Forensic Linguistics at Aston University in England, has been tweeting out maps of the U.S. with geotagged data from Twitter that show where in the country we are using which swearwords. Almost a billion tweets, from October of 2013 to November of 2014, were collected by Diansheng Guo at University of South Carolina, totaling nearly 9 billion words.” In other words, this is based on tweets. Peeps who communicate in 140 character segments are a tiny subset of the overall population. The utility of this group as a representative sample is questionable.
The results are amusing. Cunt is popular in New England, and not so popular in the south. This designation for vagina apparently has a latin root… cunnus also gave us cunnilingus. There was a tasteful comment exchange The 3 Legged Horse Quite disappointed with the lack of cunt usage in my area. tortfeasor “Tell me about it.” —Random desperate guy
There is a 333 mile wide zone around the southeast states, from Virginia to Texas. In this region, shit, bitch, and fuck are popular. Fuck and faggot enjoy great popularity with California tweets. New England and Utah are full of 140 character assholes.
On his twitter page, @JWGrieve, round 2 has started. The words analyzed here are bastard, crap, douche, fuckboy, hell, pussy, slut, whore. The shit/fuck/bitch belt shows a propensity for pussy and hell. Slut is popular in Seattle, and the Texas rudder.
Jack Grieve has a website, where the cusswords are undigitized. He discusses other projects. “Here’s a map of the alternation between LOL and haha on Twitter, ignoring all of the other ways of signalling laughter, including variations on these two forms. This map clearly shows that regions with high LOL percentages also tend to have large African American populations. … So it appears that white speakers are taking the lead here and that African American speakers are resisting the incoming form haha.”
Mapping Lexical Spread in American English is another study. It studies the top rising words on twitter, for 2014. The winner is fuckboy, which is not a compliment. This noun is popular in New Jersey, Central California, and parts of West Texas.
“Identify emerging words from 2014 based on an analysis of a multi-billion word geocoded corpus of American tweets. The team at USC are in the process of compiling a multi-billion word corpus using the Twitter API, consisting of almost all geocoded Tweet from the US and the UK since 2013. These tweets come from the approximately 2% of users who are tweeting from a geo-tracking mobile device. The analysis presented here is based on a 8.9 billion word corpus of American Tweets from October 2013 to November 2014.The corpus contains approximately 980 million Tweets from 7 million users from within the contiguous United States. We first extracted the 67,000 words that occur at least 1,000 times in the corpus and identified rising words by correlating word relative frequency per day to day of the year using a Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient”
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
The Planned Parenthood Video
At some point yesterday, a video was released by The Center for Medical Progress. . It showed a secretly recorded luncheon with an official with Planned Parenthood. This official seemed to be discussing the sale of fetal body parts. Heads began to explode in teabagistan.
PG heard about it on twitter. He checked with Mr. Google. The sites reporting on the video included TOWNHALL, The Daily Caller, Breitbart, and the blaze.
@chamblee54 Has anyone checked with snopes? This sounds far fetched and many reporting on it are not dependable @nickmiller Featured in @WORLD_mag Highly reputable news outlet.
Madworld I believe the ONLY reason abortion is legal in the US is because the biotech/medical/scientific community profits from baby parts. Mad scientists get to experiment baby parts and slip them into drugs/vaccines. Also, the CDC recently officially recommended circumcision, because baby foreskin, like aborted baby parts, is a profitable commodity with various uses–including cosmetics (look up foreskin fibroblast cells). Sadistic perverted sickos. Our govt will allow any sickening procedure if corporations will profit from it. (Comment at the blaze.)
As soon as you could say snopes the internet fact checkers were weighing in on the story. Planned Parenthood issed a press release. While the video may have a grain of truth, it sensationalizes a common medical practice. There is an ongoing ethical discussion about these practices. These issues will not be resolved by tabloid videos.
The best observation might be at Little Green Footballs. “The sentence I put in bold explains the section of the video where they do talk about money, specifically “$30 to $100 per specimen.” This is not a “purchase price” for the specimens — it’s for transportation and other incidental fees. Anyone who thinks human body parts would be sold for the ridiculously low price of $30 to $100 is (not to put too fine a point on it) a gullible idiot.“
Yeah, Obama’s a Communist The “doctor” explains that there is a price range of $30-$100 per specimen. Since the abortion is already paid for, that disparity of pricing no doubt covers differences in quality. So yeah, you get what you pay for. (Comment at The Daily Caller.)
The luncheon in the video took place July 25, 2014. Why was this video released nearly a year later? Is it a coincidence that a nuclear deal with Iran was announced on this day? The video was somehow released, and was all over digital dingbat land within minutes. How this happened might be an interesting story. Pictures for this voyage to the underbelly of the internet are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.UPDATE: Part Two.
Chamblee54 
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