General Discussion, Friday, January 31, 2020

Posted on January 31, 2020 by Stella

Winter scenery near Kuhmo, Finland

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60 Responses to General Discussion, Friday, January 31, 2020

  1. stella says:
    January 31, 2020 at 12:19 am

    Good morning! More talk about biscuits. Put sugar in, or leave it out, but this method is interesting.

    Liked by 2 people

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    • JTR says:
      January 31, 2020 at 10:36 am

      That’s how my Grandpa made them! They had a huge oblong wooden flour bowl (still in the family) and no sugar. I guess if you put honey on them, you wouldn’t notice the sugar. Nanny made biscuits for every meal except beans and greens. That’s when we got cornbread. Pa always made the biscuits for breakfast. He taught me how when I was 8 yo.

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    • lovely says:
      January 31, 2020 at 10:42 am

      Good morning Stella!

      Liked by 1 person

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  3. Lucille says:
    January 31, 2020 at 4:03 am

    Stellars…

    Winston-Salem, NC (Love this property)…

    Liked by 3 people

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  4. WeeWeed says:
    January 31, 2020 at 7:34 am

    Who knew?? Mornin’ kids!

    Liked by 5 people

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  5. WeeWeed says:
    January 31, 2020 at 8:02 am

    Oh, and LOLOL!

    Liked by 5 people

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  6. lovely says:
    January 31, 2020 at 8:41 am

    Hmmm…

    If the Senate ties today it seems to me that there will be no witnesses and that there is no lawful requirement for a tie breaker.

    The Senate is required by law to get a majority of votes in order for it to call witnesses. If the vote results in a 50/50 tie the Senate has not reached its threshold number and witnesses will not be called.

    Senate is voting on a process not a law. Different rule.

    PS Lamar Alexander is voting no.

    Liked by 2 people

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  7. auscitizenmom says:
    January 31, 2020 at 9:16 am

    Mornin’ everyone. 🙂 Supposedly bad weather headed this way, at least to Miami which is a loooooong way off. From the sounds of it we should be some rain, though.

    Liked by 2 people

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  8. rheavolans says:
    January 31, 2020 at 10:24 am

    I haven’t been paying too much attention to the Coronavirus (I guess I’m fatigued after swine flu, bird flu, Zika…) which is too bad because to gauge how bad this is, I need to know how much screaming and carrying on the media is doing about it.

    I was thinking about this media malpractice last night. I don’t care how many stories come out about people in China collapsing on the streets; it’s a media myth until I see it happen myself. And I say this because I’m a cynic. Over the last few years, the MSM seems to downplay the things that really will kill you, and play up stupid things. Everyone was freaked out about Zika, which is almost the biggest nothingburger since a sinus infection. But you know what got the ‘no worse than a sinus infection’ play in the media? Ebola. The one that would make you die by liquefying your organs and causing you to bleed to death out of every orifice. They downplayed the one people should have been worried about and play up the one that doesn’t matter.

    My new scale is, “from one to Zika, how bad is it really?” If it’s Ebola bad, the media would be telling everyone there’s nothing to see here and keep walking.

    Liked by 3 people

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    • czarowniczy says:
      January 31, 2020 at 10:57 am

      Ah yes, hard to tell what’s more virulent, the novel coronavirus or the novel media. As someone who is presently treating a sinus infection my vote’s the media.

      So far we have about 10,000 coronavirus cases and about 213 deaths – worldwide. In the 2018-2019 flu season in the US alone the CDC’s showing we had about 35.5 million people getting sick from a flu strain and 34,200 flu victims dying. I don’t remember the CDC or WHO calling for a travel ban here.

      I’ve been watching the Wuhan mess before the world press picked it up, my Chinese feeds were talking about it, I believe as the Chinese media’s somewhat taking a cue from the West’s media and sensationalizing the entire issue. There’s a worry that due to the tightly packed Chinese population any disease has the potential to rip thru the country and the Spanish flu boogeyman is still haunting Europe and the US. Why the press’s fearmongering about the coronavirus yet over 34-thousand flu deaths here barely get a mention? Why the rush for a coronavirus vaccine when so many here ignore the long-available flu vaccine? Flu presents a far more existential threat then does coronavirus?

      Like scary amusement park rides there’s a lot of people in the US who lead rather uneventful lives and really appreciate like to be scared as long as there’s no perceived risk and the media’s ready to provide the entertainment.

      Liked by 4 people

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      • rheavolans says:
        January 31, 2020 at 11:34 am

        I’m such a cynic about the media anymore that if they told me an asteroid was about to impact the Earth I’d go outside and look to see if the asteroid was there. I don’t like fear mongering, It makes it impossible for me to believe if something is a real threat or not. And that’s the big issue for me. The media is always crying wolf, and as a result the only accurate barometer I can come up with is what they do and don’t cry about.

        “Ebola? Nothing to see here! You’re perfectly safe!” So obviously that one will kill you horrifically.

        “Coronavirus? The sky is falling! Run for your life!” So on that on scale of one to Zika…

        I was listening to NPR the other day, which I don’t usually do but my scanner in the car landed there, and I stayed since they were talking about Coronavirus. Apparently some media entity or organization had said Coronavirus was worse than the flu, which was too much even for the other person on the panel, who pointed out that we won’t even have an accurate count of flu mortality rates until sometime next year, so it was way too early for that to be said.

        I went to hit up Raconteur report this morning as he was the only guy I trusted when it came to Ebola, and he says to wash your hands often and don’t touch your face which sounds exactly what they say to do about the flu.

        How weird.

        Liked by 2 people

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        • czarowniczy says:
          January 31, 2020 at 11:48 am

          We were warned early on in the Ebola ‘crisis’ that while we were in Africa to use common sense and hand sanitizer. Like HIV, many of the natives were getting it from practices we take as rote. We have a whole military command dedicated to Africa and a lot of troops on ground there but you aren’t hearing about any of these those troops coming down with HIV or Ebola. Oh yeah, and it helps if you don’t eat the wildlife.

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          • rheavolans says:
            January 31, 2020 at 12:16 pm

            Language warning, but I thought it was funny:

            http://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2020/01/just-say-no.html

            One of the issues I had with the ZOMG Ebola – the Western World must save Africa!!!! was that you could literally not get these people to change. I was never able to confirm the story that the natives refused to wash their hands, but I know how well hand washing went over when it was introduced in the Western world, so I believe it. And that’s the thing: you can’t get people to change. If you went back in time to England when the Black Plague was rampant, you probably couldn’t have gotten people there to wash their hands either, so it’s not just an Africa thing. But with that said, they wouldn’t learn from our mistakes, so why were we wasting US lives and money over there rather then close our borders until Ebola went away again? But that’s a different story for another time.

            Liked by 2 people

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            • auscitizenmom says:
              January 31, 2020 at 1:27 pm

              Ever since my son told me about the Somalian man who pooped in the water, wiped his butt with the shirt he was wearing, rinsed his shirt out in the poop water and then put it back on, I believe they have a lot of learning to do. Oh, he was in Somalia at the time.

              Liked by 2 people

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          • auscitizenmom says:
            January 31, 2020 at 1:25 pm

            I thought the whole Ebola crises died down very quickly. It appeared that it was being used, although I can’t imagine how exactly.

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    • czarina33 says:
      January 31, 2020 at 12:07 pm

      Actually, Zika is not a big deal unless you are a baby in the womb. Then it is huge, since it causes, among other things, microcephaly, and interferes with brain development. I have seen several children in the past couple of years who had microcephaly, and they were severely and permanently damaged.

      Liked by 1 person

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      • rheavolans says:
        January 31, 2020 at 12:09 pm

        When Zika was Big News, someone said that a pregnant woman could give her baby microcephaly by falling down a flight of stairs, among other things., so I know it can happen, but the risk seemed over reported.

        But I didn’t save the link of where I heard that so I can’t say if it’s true or not.

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  9. lovely says:
    January 31, 2020 at 10:44 am

    Pompeo sticking a sharp stick square in the eye of Adam Schiff and Team Impeachment.

    Liked by 4 people

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  10. Lucille says:
    January 31, 2020 at 5:09 pm

    Beautiful photo…

    “Fall Sunset At Bennett Beach” by Beverly Kobee

    Liked by 1 person

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  11. stella says:
    January 31, 2020 at 5:40 pm

    Interesting.

    Undoing the Dis-Education of Millennials

    I teach in a law school. For several years now my students have been mostly Millennials. Contrary to stereotype, I have found that the vast majority of them want to learn. But true to stereotype, I increasingly find that most of them cannot think, don’t know very much, and are enslaved to their appetites and feelings. Their minds are held hostage in a prison fashioned by elite culture and their undergraduate professors.

    They cannot learn until their minds are freed from that prison. This year in my Foundations of Law course for first-year law students, I found my students especially impervious to the ancient wisdom of foundational texts, such as Plato’s Crito and the Code of Hammurabi. Many of them were quick to dismiss unfamiliar ideas as “classist” and “racist,” and thus unable to engage with those ideas on the merits. So, a couple of weeks into the semester, I decided to lay down some ground rules. I gave them these rules just before beginning our annual unit on legal reasoning.

    Here is the speech I gave them.

    ********************************
    Before I can teach you how to reason, I must first teach you how to rid yourself of unreason. For many of you have not yet been educated. You have been dis-educated. To put it bluntly, you have been indoctrinated. Before you learn how to think you must first learn how to stop unthinking.

    Reasoning requires you to understand truth claims, even truth claims that you think are false or bad or just icky. Most of you have been taught to label things with various “isms” which prevent you from understanding claims you find uncomfortable or difficult.

    Reasoning requires correct judgment. Judgment involves making distinctions, discriminating. Most of you have been taught how to avoid critical, evaluative judgments by appealing to simplistic terms such as “diversity” and “equality.”

    Reasoning requires you to understand the difference between true and false. And reasoning requires coherence and logic. Most of you have been taught to embrace incoherence and illogic. You have learned to associate truth with your subjective feelings, which are neither true nor false but only yours, and which are constantly changeful. …

    https://newbostonpost.com/2017/11/09/undoing-the-dis-education-of-millennials/

    Liked by 3 people

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    • stella says:
      January 31, 2020 at 5:43 pm

      So, here are three ground rules for the rest of the semester.

      1. The only “ism” I ever want to come out your mouth is a syllogism. If I catch you using an “ism” or its analogous “ist” — racist, classist, etc. — then you will not be permitted to continue speaking until you have first identified which “ism” you are guilty of at that very moment. You are not allowed to fault others for being biased or privileged until you have first identified and examined your own biases and privileges.

      2. If I catch you this semester using the words “fair,” “diversity,” or “equality,” or a variation on those terms, and you do not stop immediately to explain what you mean, you will lose your privilege to express any further opinions in class until you first demonstrate that you understand three things about the view that you are criticizing.

      3. If you ever begin a statement with the words “I feel,” before continuing you must cluck like a chicken or make some other suitable animal sound.

      ********************************

      To their credit, the students received the speech well. And so far this semester, only two students have been required to cluck like chickens.

      Liked by 3 people

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  12. Lucille says:
    January 31, 2020 at 7:15 pm

    What a shock it must have been to the biased sports media elite at the NFL Media Day…doubtless a whole lot of young black men are going to take note….

    “Y’all Know the Moment when Donald Trump Met Kanye – Very Historical Moment in Our History” – NFL Star Wears MAGA Gear to Super Bowl Media Day
    by Jim Hoft January 31, 2020
    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/01/yall-know-the-moment-when-donald-trump-met-kanye-very-historical-moment-in-our-history-nfl-star-wears-maga-gear-to-super-bowl-media-day/?utm_source

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