Bob opposes murdering cats / why Egypt worshipped the cat

Click image to enlarge.

Letters to the Editor
The Orlando (Florida USA) Sentinel

To the Editor:

Tempted though I am, I would not urge that your guest columnist Ted Williams be euthanized.

I would urge, however, that The Orlando Sentinel forever slam shut its opinion page on Mr. Williams and his profoundly ignorant, cruel and dangerous ideas -- an inadequate word, but a psychiatric-neutral one.

Since a genetic mutation partnered them with us, cats -- housecats and feral -- have been the key to civilization's rise and survival. They guard us through their astonishingly effective hunting of rodents which threaten famine through theft of our farmed grain, and host bubonic plague (still occurring in the United States as well as the underdeveloped world).

The Black Death of Medieval Europe was explosively accelerated by the religious belief that cats were the devil's "familiars," and were banished from homes and cities. With our cats gone, rats were free to kill one third of Europe's human beings.

Killing troublesome animals is a uniquely human "solution" to our ill-perceived inconveniences, but our best and brightest life scientists by no means climb aboard this bandwagon. Only vile idiots like Mr. Williams, and profit-driven pharmaceutical firms, fly the cat poisoner flag.

I urge The Orlando Sentinel to protect its readers and their children, and keep famine and plague from our door, by keeping dangerous fools like Mr. Williams out of its pages.

Robert Merkin

Chesterfield, Massachusetts

==================

The Orlando Sentinel
daily broadsheet Florida USA
Thursday 14 March 2013
 
Trap, neuter, return  programs 
make feral-cat problem worse

by Ted Williams / Guest columnist

==================

(Guest columnist Ted Williams on March 21 submitted this postscript to his March 14 column):

In my recent op-ed I reported that a common over-the-counter drug, an effective and selective poison for feral cats, had not been registered for this use because of pressure from feral-cat advocacy groups. While the statement was not inaccurate, it was unwise because readers might construe it as a suggestion to go out and start poisoning feral cats. What’s more, the statement could be, indeed was, manipulated by feral-cat advocates into something I didn’t write or intend. I should have used the generic, lesser-known name. Further, I should have explained that this feral-cat poison, if registered, would be applied only by the state and federal wildlife managers who are widely, legally and lethally (but not effectively) controlling feral cats with rifle, shotgun and trap. I urge people not to take the law into their own hands. They should leave it to professionals. Finally I should have explained, as was later explained by the Sentinel, that “editor-at-large” of Audubon magazine was a freelance, not salaried, title. I regret this slovenliness.
 
================

Feral cats are maintained in the wild by a dangerous, cruel, and illegal practice called trap, neuter and return. After these unfortunate animals are re-abandoned, they are regularly fed, which draws more feral cats and encourages more re-abandonment.

One intact male can impregnate dozens of females, so trying to reduce cat populations by TNR is like, well, herding cats.

It's dangerous -- because feral cats are reservoirs for disease. Three studies reveal that 62 percent to 80 percent carry toxoplasmosis. Feral cats are now the most common domestic rabiesvector. In Florida, where rabid cats attack people, the state Department of Health warns that TNR "is not tenable on public health grounds because of the persistent threat posed to communities from injury and disease." A TNR colony at Point Pleasant Beach, N.J., was removed because rabid cats were biting children.

It's cruel -- because feral cats lack vet care and suffer from injuries and the same diseases they spread. They infect lynx, bobcats and endangered Florida panthers with feline leukemia, distemper and an AIDS-like immune-deficiency disease.

It's illegal -- because feral cats kill migratory birds and endangered species such as honeycreepers in Hawaii and lower keys marsh rabbits and silver rice rats in Florida. But the Interior Department lacks the spine to back its law-enforcement agents who want to prosecute TNR practitioners. Free-ranging cats have driven at least 33 bird species to extinction.

Four years ago when I interviewed Elizabeth Parowski of Alley Cat Allies for my column in Audubon magazine, she informed me that the American Bird Conservancy had been way off in its estimate of 500 million birds killed annually in the U.S by free-ranging cats.

She was right. In January 2013 the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute released a study showing that the real figure is somewhere between 1.4 billion and 3.7 billion birds a year and for wild mammals between 6.9 billion and 20.7 billion.

Arguing against euthanasia, Parowski asserts that "feral cats will keep other cats from moving into their territories." I get the same line from every TNR outfit I consult, along with "cats stop killing when their stomachs are full." Rubbish.

Cats kill by instinct. And if cats were territorial, they wouldn't form colonies.

"TNR is like a religion," remarks Hawaii Division of Forestry and Wildlife biologist Fern Duvall, who gets death threats for such statements. "You can't sit down and reason with most of these people." Facts are dismissed, data denied, suffering of wildlife and cats ignored.

For example, the official policy of the No Kill Advocacy Center of Oakland, Calif., is that feral cats must be protected as "healthy wildlife." The Santa Monica-based Voice for the Animals Foundation actually stocks feral cats.

There is an effective, humane alternative to the cat hell of TNR: trap and euthanize. TE is practiced by state and federal wildlife managers; but municipal TE needs to happen if the annihilation of native wildlife is to be significantly slowed.

For my Audubon assignment, I inspected three odiferous feral-cat feeding stations in Honolulu. Scrawny, gimpy, semi-hairless, cloudy-eyed and single-eyed feral cats padded over rooftops, crouched, slunk and crunched kibbles. Dining with them were mongooses, another alien scourge sustained by TNR.

An otherwise literate professor who helped maintain the colony at the University of Hawaii bragged to me that TNR had worked because over the past decade, 80 percent of the feral cats on campus had been sterilized. In the same breath he estimated the current population at 400.

Ted Williams writes an independent column for Audubon magazine. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the National Audubon Society. 
- 30 -

the day before Spring

Click on photo to enlarge.

The day before Spring. We were totally cabin-bound. Of 5 cats, only Spike wanted to go outside.

But everybody was cozy. We had a fire in the woodstove and cocoa.

i guess that makes it a theocracy, but the tourist brochure says it's the Middle East's only democracy ...

Well, this sucks.

===============

The Telegraph
daily broadsheet UK
Sunday 17 March 2013

Israel to define itself
as 'national state of Jewish people'
-- despite Arab population
by Robert Tait

JERUSALEM -- Israel's new government plans to pass a controversial new law defining the country as a "national state of the Jewish people" despite the presence of 1,500,000 Arabs within its borders.

The move is likely to be denounced as weakening Israel's democratic principles while triggering accusations of official discrimination against Arabs, who form around 20 per cent of the population.
The legislation is being proposed under an agreement between Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing Likud Beiteinu bloc and the ultra-nationalist Jewish Home party, who will form part of a new governing coalition along with two Centrist parties.

It will be enshrined in Israel's Basic Law -- the country's equivalent of a constitution -- and lay down that The State of Israel is the National State of the Jewish People.

"Such legislation won't be seen as democratic by universal standards," said Tamar Hermann, a senior researcher with the Israel Democracy Institute. "But the people arguing for it will say that as long as the non-Jewish citizens have rights from an individual point of view, it's Kosher."

A similar bill introduced in 2011 by Avi Dichter, a former head of Shin Bet, Israel's domestic intelligence agency, was shelved amid an outcry over provisions that included recognising Hebrew as the sole official language while depriving Arabic of its equal status.

It also strictly defined the country's flags, emblems and national anthem while requiring the state to promote Jewish settlement in all areas. No such requirement applied to other groups.

Proponents argued that it was aimed at preventing Israel becoming a bi-national state. Critics countered that it prioritised Israel's Jewish identity ahead of its democratic values.

In a sobering message for President Barack Obama ahead of his arrival in Israel on Wednesday, the Likud Beiteinu-Jewish Home deal made no mention of peace talks with the Palestinians.

The Jewish Home party's leader Naftali Bennett opposes a Palestinian state and instead favours annexing large parts of the West Bank.

The new government, which will be sworn in at a ceremony on Monday in the Knesset, Israel's parliament, also includes two parties in favour of renewed talks, Yesh Atid and Hatnua, led by the former foreign minister, Tzipi Livni.

But its official guidelines do not mention the "two-state solution" advocated by the US and EU countries, including Britain. Instead, they state: "Israel will seek a peace agreement with the Palestinians with the goal of reaching a diplomatic agreement."

It was confirmed on Sunday that Moshe Ya'alon, a former army chief-of-staff who supports a hard line on the Palestinians, would become defence minister, replacing Ehud Barak.

Mr Ya'alon, 62, is a strong supporter of Jewish settlers in the West Bank but has urged caution on the possibility of attacking Iran's nuclear facilities, in contrast to the more hawkish stance taken by Mr Netanyahu.

- 30 -

new Pope begins under cloud of old accusations about his actions/inactions during Argentina's Dirty War

Argentina's Dirty War (1976-1983) is back in the headlines. 

First, there is this long-delayed criminal trial.

And now, with the election of Argentine Jesuit Jorge Mario Bergoglio as the new Pope Francis I, questions are bubbling up about the nature of the senior Catholic cleric's relationship with the brutal, murderous military dictatorship.

==================

The Associated Press
(USA-based newswire)
Friday 15 March 2013

Vatican lashes out at
"anti-clerical left-wing" campaign against pope 
over Dirty War actions

VATICAN CITY (Associated Press) -- The honeymoon that Pope Francis has enjoyed since his remarkable election hit a bump Friday, with the Vatican lashing out at what it called a defamatory and "anti-clerical left-wing" media campaign questioning his actions during Argentina's murderous military dictatorship.

On Day 2 of the Francis pontificate, the Vatican denounced news reports in Argentina and beyond resurrecting allegations that the former Jorge Mario Bergoglio failed to openly confront the junta responsible for kidnapping and killing thousands of people in a "dirty war" to eliminate leftist opponents.

Bergoglio, like most Argentines, didn't publicly confront the dictators who ruled from 1976-83, while he was the leader of the country's Jesuits. And human rights activists differ on how much blame he personally deserves.

Top church leaders had endorsed the junta and some priests even worked alongside torturers inside secret prisons. Nobody has produced any evidence suggesting Bergoglio had anything to do with such crimes. But many activists are angry that as archbishop of Buenos Aires for more than a decade, he didn't do more to support investigations into the atrocities.

On Thursday, the old ghosts resurfaced.

A group of 44 former military and police officers on trial for torture, rape and murder in a concentration camp in Cordoba province in the 1970s wore the yellow-and-white ribbons of the papal flag in Francis' honor. Many Argentine newspapers ran the photo Friday.

The Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi noted that Argentine courts had never accused Bergoglio of any crime, that he had denied all accusations against him and that on the contrary "there have been many declarations demonstrating how much Bergoglio did to protect many persons at the time."

He said the accusations against the new pope were made long ago "by anti-clerical left-wing elements to attack the church. They must be firmly rejected."

The harsh denunciation was typical of a Vatican that often reacts defensively when it feels under attack, even though its response served to give the story legs for another day.

It interrupted the generally positive reception Francis has enjoyed since his election as pope on Wednesday, when even his choice of footwear — his old black shoes rather than the typical papal red — was noted as a sign of his simplicity and humility.

There was one clearly unscripted moment Friday, when the 76-year-old Francis stumbled briefly during an audience with the cardinals, but he quickly recovered. And for the second day in a row, Francis slipped out of the Vatican walls, this time to visit an ailing Argentine cardinal, Jorge Mejia, who suffered a heart attack Wednesday and was in the hospital.

This upbeat narrative of a people's pope who named himself after the nature-loving St. Francis of Assisi has clashed with accusations stemming from Bergoglio's past.

The worst allegation is that as the military junta took over in 1976, he withdrew support for two Jesuit priests whose work in the slums of Buenos Aires had put them in direct contact with the leftist guerrilla movement advocating armed revolution. The priests were then kidnapped and tortured inside a clandestine center at the Navy Mechanics School.

Bergoglio said he had told the priests — Orlando Yorio and Francisco Jalics — to give up their slum work for their own safety, and they refused. Yorio later accused Bergoglio of effectively delivering them to the death squads by declining to publicly endorse their work. Yorio died in Uruguay in 2000.

Jalics, who had maintained silence about the events, issued a statement Friday saying he spoke with Bergoglio years later and the two celebrated Mass together and hugged "solemnly."

"I am reconciled to the events and consider the matter to be closed," he said.

Bergoglio told his official biographer, Sergio Rubin, in 2010, that he had gone to extraordinary, behind-the-scenes lengths to save the men.

The Jesuit leader persuaded the family priest of feared dictator Jorge Videla to call in sick so Bergoglio could say Mass instead and take the opportunity to successfully appeal for their release, Rubin wrote.

Lombardi said the airing of the accusations following Francis' election was "characterized by a campaign that's often slanderous and defamatory."

Earlier this week, Lombardi issued a similar denunciation of an advocacy group for victims of sexual abuse, accusing it of using the media spotlight on the conclave to try to publicize old accusations against cardinals. The accusations, Lombardi said, are baseless and the cardinals deserve everyone's "esteem."

The accusations against Bergoglio were fanned by Horacio Verbitzky, an investigative journalist who was a leftist militant in the 1970s and is now closely aligned with the government. He has written extensively about the accusations in Argentina's Pagina12 newspaper, a left-wing daily known for advocacy journalism.

Adolfo Perez Esquivel, who won the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize for documenting the junta's atrocities, said this week that "Bergoglio was no accomplice of the dictatorship."

"Perhaps he didn't have the courage of other priests, but he never collaborated with the dictatorship," Esquivel said on Buenos Aires' Radio de la Red.
Argentine political analyst Ignacio Fidanza concurred.

"What they're demanding is that during the dictatorship he should have planted himself in the Plaza de Mayo and shouted against it," he told The Associated Press. "It was probably more effective to speak in silence, since it was an extreme situation."

Human rights investigators in Argentina have been unable to document anything regarding Bergoglio's actions during the junta years, other than the allegations concerning the Jesuits and that he failed to help a family find their murdered daughter's illegally adopted baby.

But activists are also angry that as leader of the Argentine church, he has never acknowledged or apologized for what they describe as the church's active institutional support of the military government, said Gaston Chillier, who tracks the country's human rights cases as director of the Center for Legal and Social Studies.

The church was so deeply in league with the dictators that when the Inter-American Human Rights Commission came for an inspection in 1979, the Argentine navy moved many detainees to an island owned by the diocese during the visit.

"He is responsible during Argentina's period of democracy for continuing a cover-up," Chillier told the AP. "His knowledge of these cases clearly shows that he cannot deny the torture and the systematic theft of babies."

Bergoglio testified in 2010 that he didn't know anything about baby thefts until well after the dictatorship.

Since Bergoglio became archbishop in 1998, his church has issued several apologies for failing to do more to protect people from violence that came from both the right and the left. The latest, in October 2012, was the most forceful, and it also, for the first time, asked Catholics to come forward with whatever evidence they may have to support Argentina's human rights trials.

But Chillier says Bergoglio could have done more to make the church help identify children and the bodies of detainees as well as identify those responsible for atrocities.

"It's one thing to acknowledge what you failed to do, but another entirely to apologize for what you actually did," Chillier said.

Warren and Almudena Calatrava contributed from Buenos Aires. David Rising in Berlin contributed.
- 30 -

another Platonic Object / Postalö Vleeptron: Sergeant Poiuyt Action Figure

Click to enlarge.

Things whose inside and outside are ... well ... screwy, verkakte / does not compute / well, actually it DOES compute, but oddly

Click images to enlarge.


The Modern Hiawatha

by George A. Strong
 
 He killed the noble Mudjokivis.
 Of the skin he made him mittens,
 Made them with the fur side inside,
 Made them with the skin side outside.
 He, to get the warm side inside,
 Put the inside skin side outside.
 He, to get the cold side outside,
 Put the warm side fur side inside.
 That's why he put the fur side inside,
 Why he put the skin side outside,
 Why he turned them inside outside. 

* * *

There are a surprising number of Things which really and truly do Exist -- but we mere pathetic humans can never have direct touchy-feely experience with or knowledge of them. These are the Platonic Objects -- objects which can be perceived only through the mind and imagination.

I made and sent Pi Day t-shirts to my lovely, bright grand-nieces in Vermont, and Dad e-mailed me back about the Wonderful Holiday, and the Wonderful Mathematical irrational and transcendental Constant that just makes everyone so happy and makes you want to eat Pi(e).

=========

[Dear Unkie Munkie]

[The Pi Day t-shirts] have gotten here in time, and they're delightful! We'll have to see whether we have time and/or ingredients for making a pie. The school principal will love these too -- I think he was a math teacher at the high school previously, and I know he's up on math trivia. He recently corrected me when I said that 1 raised to the power of "infinity and beyond" (a favorite "number" of N***'s) = 1. He claims that when you get to infinite powers, weird stuff starts happening.

Love,
Kwak

=====
NOTE: Dad is one of 3 brothers, and because I could never get their names straight I called  them Huey, Dewey and Louie, and then, after I learned the Dutch names for them, they call themselves Kwik, Kwak en Kwek. (Oddly enough, THEY all knew which brother was which. There's an unconfirmed rumor that you can tell the duckling triplets apart by the color of their baseball caps.)
=====

EXTREMELY weird stuff starts happening. This sort of quonset hut kind of thing [see lowest illustration above] ... the height of the roof keeps diminishing as it goes to the right ... out to infinity ... so the roof gets closer and closer to the floor, but never quite gets to the floor.

If you want to fill the quonset hut with olive oil, it will store a FINITE volume of olive oil ...

But if you want to PAINT the outside of the hut, you can never buy enough gallon paint cans, because it has an INFINITE surface area. Technically it's a solid of revolution that has a finite volume but an infinite surface area.

And that's very weird. You can fill it, and then go home, but you can't ever finish painting it.

Hope A & N like the shirts! Happy Pi Day! (GAC is off at her sister's in Worcester, but she's eating a Pizza Pi(e)!)

Unkie M.

===============

That is very cool. I never learned that finite inside/infinite outside thing. Kind of the reverse of the C.S. Lewis's Wardrobe [the Narnia books], which was infinite on the inside yet finite on the outside.

One fun thing I did learn in my precalc course was of one thing that can go faster than light. Imagine that you have a wall going off into the distance, more or less infinitely. It's a straight, flat wall. No bends or curves. Now stand near the wall and point a flashlight at it. Now start to rotate at a fixed speed, so that the spot of light from the flashlight slides across the wall. Because the angle of incidence is changing more rapidly than your speed of rotation, the position of the spot of light on the wall will accelerate exponentially, eventually to beyond-light speed before you rotate enough for the light to be off the wall entirely. Or something like that.

Also, that you can always, ALWAYS, find a position that allows a four-legged table to stand in a stable position on an uneven ground. There's no guarantee it'll be level, but there is a guarantee that it'll be stable. I find that to be a very optimism-inducing idea.

==============

Don't forget the TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension In Space) -- on the outside, a sidewalk police phone box. On the inside -- amphitheaters, swimming pools, libraries, laboratories, big closets, kitchen and dining room, etc.

from some nerd chatter on a math nerd site ...

=====================

Infinite area under a curve has finite volume of revolution?

So I was thinking about the harmonic series, and how it diverges, even though every subsequent term tends toward zero. That meant that its integral from 1 to infinity should also diverge, but would the volume of revolution also diverge (for the function  y=1/x )?

I quickly realized that its volume is actually finite, because to find the volume of revolution the function being integrated has to be squared, which would give 1/x^2, and, as we all know, that converges. So, my question is, are there other functions that share this property? The only family of functions that I know that satisfy this is 1/x, 2/x, 3/x, etc.

Unfortunately, I cannot find a better link for reference than this link, but "Infinite Acres" is a rather old MAA animated short film (part of a larger series, as in the link) about a solid of revolution where the original region has infinite area, the solid has finite volume, and the solid has infinite surface area. – Isaac May 12 '11 at 4:19

===========
even worse, i once saw this crazy "Infinite Acres" cartoon, it's still available in DVD or VHS, but nobody has been thoughtful enough to stick it on YouTube. this crazy solid has a name:
===========

I wanted to mention a related topic. You might also note that the surface area of your object is also infinite, despite its finite volume. Thus, if you were to 'hold' such an object, you could fill it with paint but never cover its walls. This has a name - it's Gabriel's Horn ( or Torricelli's Trumpet), and you can read about it here.

===========
from Wikipedia
===========

Gabriel's Horn (also called Torricelli's trumpet) is a geometric figure which has infinite surface area, but finite volume. The name refers to the tradition identifying the Archangel Gabriel as the angel who blows the horn to announce Judgment Day, associating the divine, or infinite, with the finite. The properties of this figure were first studied by Italian physicist and mathematician Evangelista Torricelli.

Mathematical definition

Gabriel's horn is formed by taking the graph of

y = 1/x


with the domain x > 1 (thus avoiding the asymptote at x = 0) and rotating it in three dimensions about the x-axis. The discovery was made using Cavalieri's principle before the invention of calculus, but today calculus can be used to calculate the volume and surface area of the horn between x = 1 and x = a, 
where a > 1 . Using integration (see Solid of revolution and Surface of revolution for details), it is possible to find the volume V and the surface area A.

The Last Supper / by Stanley Spencer

Click painting to enlarge.

Easter Sunday 2013 will be 31 March.

Not coincidentally, the first night of the Jewish feast of Passover / Pesach will be Tuesday 26 March. Not coincidentally, because The Last Supper was a Passover supper. In the millennia since Jesus lived and died, there have been changes and reforms made to the Western Christian calendar, but the (incredibly complicated) algorithm for determining the date of Easter remains linked to the Passover -- they drift a few days from year to year, but Easter and Passover are always close.

As always, Stanley Spencer envisioned the events of the last days of Jesus' life using the familiar faces and feet of his neighbors in his village of Cookham, on the River Thames in England.

Jesus and the Apostles held their Passover supper in "the upper room," a private dining chamber above a tavern. Passover -- some say it's the world's oldest continuously celebrated religious festival -- celebrates the Jews' escape -- as the Greeks would say, the Exodus, the Going Out -- from Pharaoh's slavery and oppression in Egypt. Then and today, the Hebrew for Egypt is Mizrayim / מִצְרַיִם

Happy π Day! Bake a π! Eat π!

Click stamp to enlarge.

HAPPY π Day!!!

It's 3/14, which all Sentients who have ten fingers in the Universe celebrate as π Day!

(Sentients who have 16 fingers can do some real weird, goofy tricks with π that us ten-digities can't.)

(But revJJ points out that just 2 years from now, in 2015, we're gonna party like it's 3/14/15 !!! Hubba Hubba!)

Above a commemorative, with a slice of cherry or rhubarb π, from my old Army buddy who lives in the USA state shaped like the palm of a right-hand mitten, so you can point to the palm of your right hand to show where you were born or where you got busted for shoplifting or where you met this really cute waitress.

S.W.M.B.O. is off at a flower show with her sister today, but will eat a Pizza π for dinner.

I made THIS into t-shirts for my nieces in Vermont, and FedEx got them there in time to wear on the wonderful holiday!

In conclusion, let me just say  
that π = 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816406286208 089986280348253421170679821480865132823066470938446095505822317253594081284811 174502841027019385211055596446229489549303819644288109756659334461284756482337 867831652712019091456485669234603486104543266482133936072602491412737245870066 063155881748815209209628292540917153643678925903600113305305488204665213841469 519415116094330572703657595919530921861173819326117931051185480744623799627495 673518857527248912279381830119491298336733624406566430860213949463952247371907 021798609437027705392171762931767523846748184676694051320005681271452635608277 857713427577896091736371787214684409012249534301465495853710507922796892589235 420199561121290219608640344181598136297747713099605187072113499999983729780499 510597317328160963185950244594553469083026425223082533446850352619311881710100 031378387528865875332083814206171776691473035982534904287554687311595628638823 537875937519577818577805321712268066130019278766111959092164201989380952572010 654858632788659361533818279682303019520353018529689957736225994138912497217752 834791315155748572424541506959508295331168617278558890750983817546374649393192 550604009277016711390098488240128583616035637076601047101819429555961989467678 374494482553797747268471040475346462080466842590694912933136770289891521047521 620569660240580381501935112533824300355876402474964732639141992726042699227967 823547816360093417216412199245863150302861829745557067498385054945885869269956 909272107975093029553211653449872027559602364806654991198818347977535663698074 265425278625518184175746728909777727938000816470600161452491921732172147723501 414419735685481613611573525521334757418494684385233239073941433345477624168625 189835694855620992192221842725502542568876717904946016534668049886272327917860 857843838279679766814541009538837863609506800642251252051173929848960841284886 269456042419652850222106611863067442786220391949450471237137869609563643719172 874677646575739624138908658326459958133904780275900994657640789512694683983525 957098258226205224894077267194782684826014769909026401363944374553050682034962 524517493996514314298091906592509372216964615157098583874105978859597729754989 3016175392846813826868386894277415 ...

(more or less)
 

Jenny the mail artist in the skies

Click on star map to enlarge.

The constellation Jenny Hunter Groat, the mail artist.

Don Quixote on the reward awaiting the inventor of artillery

Click stamp to enlarge.

Tierra de los Sueños / TdS·Posta / 4-sheet: Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari / CAUTION: Some users of this sleep medication have reported episodes of unusual behavior

Click on stamps to enlarge.

Cesare the Somnambulist (Conrad Veidt) carries a murdered girl, under the hypnotic command of the asylum chief, Doktor Caligari.

I went to a very crowded, very disorderly Halloween party in Takoma Park, Maryland USA dressed as Cesare the Somnambulist. I wore black tights and painted my face ghastly white. I slunk around in dark corners.

ONE guest saw me and knew instantly who I was.

But the best costume was a dwarf, crazy ugly big twisted nose, wild hair, warts. He was about 42 inches = 106.7 cm tall. Best costume ever!

CLICK HERE to watch the entire 1920 movie. English titles, creepy symphonic score. Click it up in FULL SCREEN mode.

commemorative stamp of poop-whomping meteorite smash in Chelyabinsk Russia

Click stamp to enlarge.

Another stamp of the meteorite that whomped the poop out of Russia on Friday 15 February, by my old Army pal who lives in the USA state shaped like a right-hand mitten.

Боже мой is how Russians say My God! It sounds more or less like "Borzhe moi!" God gets a noun/adjective declension exclusively to Himself -- even though the Godless Atheist Commies tried to extinct God's special grammar category throughout the life of the Soviet Union.

Amazingly the Surprise Meteorite smashed all the windows in the Urals city Chelyabinsk, about 1200 people had to get first aid for flying glass injuries, but no one got killed or seems to have suffered serious injuries. Now everybody's hunting all over the place for meteorite fragments -- they fetch quite a few rubles on e-Bay.

Postalo Vleeptron / 1st Day Issue: π DAY is THURSDAY 14 MARCH 2013 / (bake a π!)

Click stamp to enlarge.

YOUSE GOT 1 WEEK to get ready for the Big Party all over the Universe ... because every year 3/14 is π DAY!

Click on the π symbol on the right of this blog to learn all about π DAY!

Where is it π Day? EVERYWHERE! Earth! Vleeptron! Galaxy Dwingeloo-2! Planet Mollyringwald! Yobbo! Hoon! Eris! Ceres! 

Most sentients bake a π on the Big Day! (Bob particularly likes Cherry π.)

barred owl / hoot owl poses for S.W.M.B.O. while scouting for lunch / Audubon's painting

Click image to enlarge.

right-click OPEN IN NEW TAB to hear barred owl (also called hoot owl) song (University of Florida).

Antique stamp from Tierra de los Sueños: Don Quixote discourses on war with artillery & gunpowder weapons / Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier / Siúil A Rún

Click on the antique stamp to enlarge.

Antique stamp from Tierra de los Sueños: Don Quixote discourses on war with artillery & gunpowder weapons.

If anyone wants Cervantes' original en español I will be happy to hunt it up.

The Chinese invented gunpowder, but its effective use in war weapons seems to have originated in northwest Saharan Africa. It was a big hit and spread like wildfire throughout Europe and Asia. You could knock down stone castles with these weapons, and you could stop the bravest, strongest, most heavily armored knight and make him dead in an instant.

I first encountered a form of this quote writ large in the hall of British cannons captured at the Battle of Saratoga (New York, then a British colony, but soon to become the USA -- in large part because of the rebel victory at Saratoga).

During the Revolutionary War -- but in many other wars involving English-speaking soldiers of the era -- THIS was the most popular song, everyone knew it, everyone sung it around camp fires, everyone, men and women, cried when they heard it, and kept crying for decades after the war ended, as some grew old, while others didn't. The song was a big hit again during the USA Civil War / War Between the States. It traces to an Irish original (British and American wars always relied heavily on Irish soldiers), and the song was first known as Siúil A Rún in Irish Gaelic.

Nothing has changed. We still have wars involving English-speaking soldiers, and wars drag lovers from one another's arms for years, or from one another's arms  forever. Please feel free to cry as you listen.

Stanley Spencer self-portrait 1914

Click painting to enlarge.

In space no one can hear you scream HOLY SHIT!! or Боже мой!!!

Click on either stamp to enlarge.

TOP: Commemorative faux stamp of meteor that whomped the poop out of Chelyabinsk, Russia, by my old Army buddy who lives in the USA state shaped like a right-hand mitten, so you can point to the palm of your hand to show where you were born or had a car accident.

BOTTOM: Postalö Vleeptron / 1st Day Issue: Earth dodges a bullet by the width of a pubic hair.

As optical and radio telescopes, ground-based and space-based, get better and better, it slowly and dimly begins to dawn on clueless & complacent us that Big Massive Fast Rocks are whizzing into or very close to Earth all the time at incredible speeds -- faster than a speeding bullet, to filch an old cliche -- and Earth has utterly no mechanisms or plans for protecting itself from a Life Extincting Collision Event.

Time to stock up on canned and freeze-dried food, bottled water, toilet paper and D flashlight batteries now. (We got an emergency multi-band radio that has a little spring crank generator, so it don't need any batteries at all.)
 

Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta / by Stanley Spencer

Click painting to enlarge.

surprise! Боже мой!!! meteor whomps Urals

click, gets bigger

Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta: Girls Listening / by Stanley Spencer

Click painting to enlarge.

Stanley Spencer (1891-1959) -- knighted the year he died -- was an English painter. He had the most strikingly original vision of any 20th century painter; his work is derivative of no earlier painter I've ever seen, and his life and career path -- well, he seemed instinctively to march opposite the direction of all his more famous contemporaries.

For one thing, he had no use for London or its great academies, or for the explosive art universe of 20th-century Paris. He was born and lived nearly all his life in the obscure village Cookham, on the Thames River, in Berkshire. Wikipedia's Cookham wiki lists Stanley Spencer in its first paragraph; in 1300 years, Stanley Spencer may well be Cookham's most notable townsman.

Most of Spencer's paintings depict events in Christ's life and death, but immediately startling is that the characters -- apostles, kings, Jews, Jesus, Temple priests, Roman soldiers -- are portrayed as his Cookham neighbors. 

On Spencer's deeply moving religious canvases, the Gospels of Christianity are transported from 1st Century Judea to Cookham, England circa 1925. Through Spencer, the familiar, universal sensation that these things happened to far different people long ago and far away becomes a vibrant sense that these things are happening now, and a few miles or a couple of streets away, and to intimately recognizeable people -- to the village neighbors. In his paintings, two millennia and half a world snap to your grandparents and their village.

Spencer described Cookham as "a village in Heaven." Many of his most remarkable achievements are on display at several locations in and around Cookham.

But not all can be found in Cookham, and not all depict the life of Christ. Soon after completing his art studies at the Slade School in London, Spencer enlisted in the British Army medical corps duringthe First World War, serving in Army hospitals in England, and then in Macedonia. Near the War's end, Spencer was asked to join other artists to portray aspects of the devastating struggle in the fine arts. One painting, "Travoys ...", hangs in the Imperial War Museum (Lambeth district of London) as does John Singer Sargent's horrific depiction of blinded soldiers in WWI France, "Gassed."

please help recover a stolen Stanley Spencer painting

 Click painting to enlarge.

 
STOLEN

From the STANLEY SPENCER GALLERY Cookham

"COOKHAM FROM ENGLEFIELD"
Sir Stanley Spencer RA
1948

THIS PAINTING WAS STOLEN FROM THE GALLERY IN COOKHAM, BERKSHIRE ON 29TH APRIL 2012

If you have any information which might lead to its recovery please contact
Det Con Watkinson of the Maidenhead Police Force 
01865 841148 (from outside Thames Valley Area)
or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111

1st Day Issue: Ron Bizer's faux stamp for Bob's Birthday

Copyright © 2013 Ron Bizer 

Click stamp, it gets bigger.

a Bob's Birthday faux postage stamp from my old -- well, I guess he has to be exactly as old, or exactly as young, as Bob -- Army buddy who lives in the USA state shaped like the palm of a right-hand mitten, so you can point to the palm of your right hand to show where you live or had a car accident.

On Bob's Birthday, Bob went to a great old seafood restaurant on the Connecticut River, Webster's Fish Hook, which began decades ago as a seafood truck filled with Boston Harbor seafood drove each day to sell it in Northampton. Eventually they built a simple, straightforward dining structure with booths and tables for about 75 happy folks at a time. You don't go to Webster's for ambience and a chi-chi froo-froo dining experience. You go to Webster's for delicious superfresh New England seafood, with few, if any, pretentions. I don't think there's a single non-English word or phrase on their menu, but there are a few local New England words for ocean things that others call by other names.

Something seasonal must be up -- or down -- with the American Atlantic Lobster (Homarus americanus) supply, because they weren't selling a whole lobster at any price. (In scarce lobster times, the menu subtly says: Market Price, Inquire.)

So I had a Lazy Person's Lobster -- already de-shelled and de-clawed, just lobster meat in a swell butter sauce. Birthday Bob can live with that -- although one of the great delights of my life is to spend 30 or 40 minutes ripping apart the exoskeleton of my broiled or boiled Homarus americanus in ferociously savage infra-hominid style -- your lobster comes with a big plastic bib to protect your torso from The Dreadful Carnage which is about to ensue. This is not dainty dining, nor dining for the faint-of-heart. Chesapeake Bay Crab (Callinectes sapidus) eating is even more savage -- shell-smashing wooden mallets are supplied with the red hot cayenne-drenched things.

It is a mystery of Natural Selection to me why these creatures taste so wonderfully delicious. That can't possibly help them stay ahead of extinction.

Another mystery is why -- according to some Biblical scholars and casual observers of religious traditions and beliefs -- God chose one particular group of people as His sort of Specially Close Folks and scribes of His Laws. And then forbade them ever to eat lobsters, or crabs, or oysters or clams, or crawfish. I have a feeling we're also forbidden conch and mussels, and cockles, whatever cockles are. Bottom-feeders like catfish are also verboten. Thanks for choosing us!

USA military suicides hit record high / 22 military vets commit suicide every day

The Associated Press (USA newswire)
Monday 14 January 2013

2012 Military Suicides
Hit Record High of 349

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Suicides in the U.S. military surged to a record 349 last year, far exceeding American combat deaths in Afghanistan, and some private experts are predicting the dark trend will grow worse this year.

The Pentagon has struggled to deal with the suicides, which Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and others have called an epidemic. The problem reflects severe strains on military personnel burdened with more than a decade of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, complicated by anxiety over the prospect of being forced out of a shrinking force.

Pentagon figures obtained Monday by The Associated Press show that the 349 suicides among active-duty troops last year were up from 301 the year before and exceeded the Pentagon's own internal projection of 325. Statistics alone do not explain why troops take their own lives, and the Pentagon's military and civilian leaders have acknowledged that more needs to be done to understand the causes.

Last year's total is the highest since the Pentagon began closely tracking suicides in 2001. It exceeds the 295 Americans who died in Afghanistan last year, by the AP's count.

Some in Congress are pressing the Pentagon to do more.

"This is an epidemic that cannot be ignored," Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said Monday. "As our newest generation of service members and veterans face unprecedented challenges, today's news shows we must be doing more to ensure they are not slipping through the cracks."

Military suicides began rising in 2006 and soared to a then-record 310 in 2009 before leveling off for two years. It came as a surprise to many that the numbers resumed an upward climb this year, given that U.S. military involvement in Iraq is over and the Obama administration is taking steps to wind down the war in Afghanistan.

"Now that we're decreasing our troops and they're coming back home, that's when they're really in the danger zone, when they're transitioning back to their families, back to their communities and really finding a sense of purpose for themselves," said Kim Ruocco, whose husband, Marine Maj. John Ruocco, killed himself between Iraq deployments in 2005. She directs a suicide prevention program for a support group, Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, or TAPS.

The Army, by far the largest of the military services, had the highest number of suicides among active-duty troops last year at 182, but the Marine Corps, whose suicide numbers had declined for two years, had the largest percentage increase -- a 50 percent jump to 48. The Marines' worst year was 2009's 52 suicides.

The Air Force recorded 59 suicides, up 16 percent from the previous year, and the Navy had 60, up 15 percent.

All of the numbers are tentative, pending the completion later this year of formal pathology reports on each case.

Suicide prevention has become a high Pentagon priority, yet the problem persists.

"If you have a perfect storm of events on the day with somebody who has high risk factors, it's very difficult to be there every moment, fill every crack, and we just have to continue to be aware of what the risk factors are," Ruocco said.

David Rudd, a military suicide researcher and dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Utah, said he sees two main categories of troops who are committing suicide at an accelerating pace: Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans suffering from depression, post-traumatic stress or substance abuse, and those who have not gone to war but face troubled personal relationships, money problems or legal woes.

He is not optimistic about a decline soon.

"Actually, we may continue to see increases," he said.

The Pentagon says that although the military suicide rate has been rising, it remains below that of the civilian population. It says the civilian suicide rate for males aged 17-60 was 25 per 100,000 in 2010, the latest year for which such statistics are available. That compares with the military's rate in 2012 of 17.5 per 100,000.

Officials say they are committed to pursuing ways of finding help for service members in trouble.

"Our most valuable resource within the department is our people. We are committed to taking care of our people, and that includes doing everything possible to prevent suicides in the military," Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia O. Smith said Monday.

Two retired Army generals, Peter W. Chiarelli and Dennis J. Reimer, have spoken out about the urgency of reversing the trend.

"One of the things we learned during our careers," they wrote in The Washington Post last month, "is that stress, guns and alcohol constitute a dangerous mixture. In the wrong proportions, they tend to blow out the lamp of the mind and cause irrational acts."

As recently as 2005 the Army's suicide total was less than half last year's.

Joe Davis, spokesman for the Washington office of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, said war veterans have faced difficulty adjusting to the less intense environment of their home bases. Others struggle with leaving the military in search of work in a tight civilian job market.

"It's difficult to come back from a war footing to garrison life," he said, where more mundane problems intrude on troops who had been focused almost entirely on their war mission.

Each year the Pentagon performs an in-depth study of the circumstances of each suicide. The most recent year for which that analysis is available is 2011, and among the findings was that those who took their own lives tended to be white men under the age of 25, in the junior enlisted ranks, with less than a college education.

The analysis of 2011's 301 military suicides also found that the suicide rate for divorced service members was 55 percent higher than for those who were married. It determined that 60 percent of military suicides were committed with the use of firearms — and in most cases the guns were personal weapons, not military-issued.

That study also found that most service members who attempted suicide — about 65 percent — had a known history of behavior problems, whereas 45 percent of those who actually completed the act and killed themselves had such a history.

One such case was Army Spc. Christopher Nguyen, 29, who killed himself last August at an off-post residence he shared with another member of the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C., according to his sister, Shawna Nguyen.

"He was practically begging for help and nothing was done," she said in an interview.

She said he had been diagnosed with an "adjustment disorder" -- a problem of coping with the uncertainties of returning home after three deployments in war zones. She believes the Army failed her brother by not doing more to ensure that he received the help he needed before he became suicidal.

"It's the responsibility of the military to help these men and women," she said. "They sent them over there (to war); they should be helping them when they come back."

___

AP Broadcast correspondent Sagar Meghani contributed to this report.
___

The Defense Department's toll-free military crisis number is 800-273-8255.

Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS)

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=================================

Forbes (USA business-oriented magazine)
Tuesday 5 February 2013
Suicide Rate Among Vets
and Active Duty Military Jumps
-- Now 22 A Day

by Melanie Haiken, Contributor

A veteran protests the veteran suicide rate,
which just jumped from 18 to 22 a day

Almost once an hour -- every 65 minutes to be precise -- a military veteran commits suicide, says a new investigation by the Department of Veterans Affairs. By far the most extensive study of veteran suicides ever conducted, the report, issued Friday, examined suicide data from 1999 to 2010.

The data was then compared with a previous investigation – primarily an estimation – that had been conducted over the same time period, and had found a suicide rate of 18 per day.

Many of these suicides involve older veterans; 69 percent of the suicides recorded were by veterans age 50 and older. But another way to look at this is that 31 percent of these suicides were by veterans 49 and younger. In other words,by men in the prime of life.

And then there are the shockingly common active duty suicides. Just two weeks ago, the military released data showing that suicides among those on active duty hit a record high in 2012. There were 349 suicides among active duty personnel – almost one a day. That means there are now more suicides among active duty soldiers than there are combat deaths.

I’m not a statistician, but the information released about how the data were gathered suggests that these numbers may still be considerably underestimated. Suicides often go unreported as cause of death due to the stigma. And the data collected were from just 21 states, because these are the only states in which military status is listed on the death certificate. They were then extrapolated to apply to all 50 states.

Veteran suicide is not a new issue -- the various branches of the military have been raising awareness and increasing proactive treatment programs for veteran suicide for the past couple of years. But that’s partly what makes the new reports so upsetting -- they appear to show that veteran suicides remain undeterred by current efforts.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has a new crisis line and website with multiple avenues, including text and online chat, for those contemplating suicide to reach out. The site also offers extensive information and resources for families and friends to help them spot the warning signs of depression and suicidal thinking and take action.

According to this week’s press release, the crisis line has already resulted in saving 26,000 veterans from suicide. That’s wonderful news – except that the fact that 26,000 vets are actively suicidal is deeply disturbing.

President Obama signed an executive order on August 31st authorizing the VA to hire additional staff and double the capacity of the crisis line. Let’s hope that helps.

It’s important to note that the suicide rate overall in the United States has been rising, and veterans actually make up fewer suicide cases proportionately than they did 25 years ago. While the suicide rate in the U.S. has risen 31 percent since 1999, the rate among veterans has risen 22 percent in the same period. So according to calculations offered in a New York Times report, the percentage of the nation’s suicides that involve veterans is now 21 percent, down from 25 percent in 1999.

But yikes -- whether the number is one in five or one in four, it’s still pretty shocking that veterans make up such a high proportion of suicides in this country. Veterans affairs experts explain this by saying that veterans fall into high-risk groups for suicide, which include being male, having access to guns, and living in a rural area, but those factors don’t seem to come close to accounting for such a high rate.

I covered this subject previously as part of a report about service dogs and how they are helping veterans cope with depression and mental illness. One statistic that veterans’ groups offered at the time: for every veteran [active-duty soldier/Marine?] killed by enemy combatants, 25 veterans kill themselves.

But note: that comparison was based on the prior suicide data, so today’s comparison would be even more extreme. Here’s hoping the new campaign of public awareness and new efforts to investigate veteran suicide will result in greater access to mental health services for all veterans.

Follow me on Twitter, @MelanieHaiken or subscribe to my posts on Facebook

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========================

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
Office of Public and Intergovernmental Affairs

VA Issues New Report on Suicide Data
February 1, 2013

WASHINGTON -- The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) today released a comprehensive report on Veterans who die by suicide. In the past, data on Veterans who died by suicide was only available for those who had sought VA health care services. Today’s report also includes state data for Veterans who had not received health care services from VA, which will help VA strengthen its aggressive suicide prevention activities. The report indicates that the percentage of Veterans who die by suicide has decreased slightly since 1999, while the estimated total number of Veterans who have died by suicide has increased.

“The mental health and well-being of our courageous men and women who have served the Nation is the highest priority for VA, and even one suicide is one too many,” said Secretary Eric K. Shinseki. “We have more work to do and we will use this data to continue to strengthen our suicide prevention efforts and ensure all Veterans receive the care they have earned and deserve.”

In accordance with the President’s Aug. 31, 2012, Executive Order, VA has completed hiring and training of additional staff to increase the capacity of the Veterans Crisis Line by 50 percent. The Veteran Crisis Line has made approximately 26,000 rescues of actively suicidal Veterans to date. Additionally, VA has initiated a year-long public awareness campaign, “Stand By Them,” to educate families and friends on how to seek help for Veterans and Service Members in crisis. VA has launched a national public service announcement “Side by Side.”

VA is currently engaged in an aggressive hiring campaign to expand access to mental health services with 1,600 new clinical staff, 300 new administrative staff, and is in the process of hiring and training 800 peer-to-peer specialists who will work as members of mental health teams.

The report issued today is the most comprehensive study of Veteran suicide rates ever undertaken by the Department. On June 16, 2010, Secretary Shinseki engaged governors of all 50 states, requesting their support in helping to collect suicide statistics. With assistance from state partners providing real-time data, VA is better able to assess the effectiveness of its suicide prevention programs and identify specific populations that need targeted interventions.

This new information will allow VA to better identify where those Veterans at risk may be located and improve the Department’s ability to target specific suicide interventions and outreach activities in order to reach Veterans early and proactively.  The data will also help VA continue to examine the effectiveness of suicide prevention programs being implemented in specific geographic locations or care settings in order to replicate them in other areas if they have been effective.

VA has implemented comprehensive, broad ranging suicide prevention initiatives, including a toll-free Veterans Crisis Line, placement of Suicide Prevention Coordinators at all VA Medical Centers and large outpatient facilities, and improvements in case management and reporting. Immediate help is available at www.VeteransCrisisLine.net or by calling the Crisis Line at 1-800-273-8255 (push 1) or texting 838255.

The full report can be found on VA’s website along with a summary response from VA Under Secretary for Health, Dr. Robert A. Petzel. 

Suicide Data Report 2012 final

http://www.va.gov/opa/docs/Suicide-Data-Report-2012-final.pdf

Veterans Health Administration Response - Suicide Data Report 2012

http://www.va.gov/opa/docs/Response-and-ExecSum-Suicide-Data-Report-2012-final.pdf

velocity of light in furlongs per fortnight

Click blackboard to enlarge.

RATS! I posted this old thing last night, and then clicked on the wrong things, and it vanished. And also my text vanished. RATS! FOOEY!

It's my birthday, I just slicked myself up for my Birthday Lobster Dinner, so maybe later when I get home I'll rewrite the text. No time, no time, I'm late, I'm late!

But to make a long story short -- the above, sometimes a joke, sometimes appearing on math or physics exams -- trust me, if you can solve this problem and Get The Right Answer, you will never again in your life have to fear or get anxiety from any problem involving screwy units of measurement and conversions from one system to another.

EXTRA CREDIT: How much do you weigh in stone?

1st Day Issue / Tierra de los Sueños: Salt and Pepper Shakers

Click stamp to enlarge.

For nutrition and health, use pepper only.

Vleeporn

Click image to enlarge. 

Three examples by the performance artist Narcissister (who goes by that name only).