09:04 – When Barbara read yesterday that I was out of Coke she suggested making a Sam’s Club run, but I told her this morning that’s not necessary. I’ll just drink her sweet iced tea instead of Coke. Of course, that means making a lot more sweet iced tea. I go through roughly 2 liters of Coke a day, which means a gallon pitcher of iced tea is two days’ worth for me. With what she drinks, that means we’ll have to make a fresh pitcher every 36 hours or so.
I see that Norway has just repealed its long-standing blasphemy law. Good for the Norwegians. It used to be that insulting or ridiculing any religion could land you in jail. With the repeal, Norwegians are now free to say whatever they want to about islam or any other so-called religion. Good. How could any decent person not insult and ridicule islam?
“Norwegians are now free to say whatever they want to about islam or any other so-called religion.”
And will the Norwegian government provide security and coddle such speakers like the U.K. did for that wunnerful and heroic genius Salman Rushdie?
Hey OFD, the wife and I went to a mass last night for my brother’s 25th wedding anniversary. First mass that I have been to in some 7 or 8 years. The Jesuit priest had my nephews and niece come up and read scriptures. I had no idea that the Catholic church allowed women to read scripture from the Bible on the lectern. That is more progressive than my church.
It used to be that insulting or ridiculing any religion could land you in jail.
We studied Henry the VIIIth through Mary I and the creation of the Church of England in bible class today. Henry VIII had Parliament pass a law that criticism of any church was a capital offense. His daughter, Mary I, took that law, reestablished Catholicism, and killed so many Protestants and dissidents under it that she became known as “Bloody Mary”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_I_of_England
Judge: Miss West, are you trying to show contempt for this court?
Mae West: No, your honor. I’m doing my best to hide it.
” I had no idea that the Catholic church allowed women to read scripture from the Bible on the lectern.”
As long as I’ve been going to Catholic Church services. And most now allow girls to be altar servers, too; not mine up here, though. Which also still does the Latin Rite. And actual, genuine, classical music.
“… and killed so many Protestants and dissidents under it that she became known as “Bloody Mary””
Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is very old history for Mrs. OFD and me, being of very conscious Irish, English, Catholic, and Anglican backgrounds. After Bloody Mary got done, her half-sister got busy on the Catholics in the same way. I don’t know about your Bible class, but there have been many hundreds of big fat volumes and primary source records on this period in English history and it is not as simplistic as some would have it. Both Mrs. OFD and I consider Henry to be one of the most evil characters in history, along with his main henchman, Thomas Cromwell, a distant cousin of the later Oliver, another evil bastard. We also have zero love for Bloody Mary, who was a mean, psychotic wack job too easily influenced by Calvinist wack jobs.
Both Mrs. OFD and I consider Henry to be one of the most evil characters in history,
I guess Obuttwad did not make that list, yet!
Obumbles wishes he could arise above comedic ineptitude to rank amongst the evilest men of history. We give him an A for aspiration but an F for fuckheadedness. As it is, he’s barely surpassing James Earl “Didn’t Make It Through Nuke School” Carter.
What Mr. SteveF just said; I can’t say it any better.
Henry not only ruined pretty much everything he touched, English landscape, cultural treasures, history, and the six wives and assorted concubines, but he also wrought havoc on all the succeeding generations since.
Obummer, the two Bush cretins, Carter, Nixon, Ford, et. al. have been caretakers/janitors, errand boys for grocery clerks, basically. They’re all told what to do and how high to jump and what color to shit. Few peeps in this country get it yet; they still laughingly think elections and voting mean something here.
Shortwave is nice and open tonight. I’ve gotten Romania, China, Brazil is BOOMING. I’m getting a small SW station out of LA California. Funnily enough, the stations in FL, and TN are really hard to hear tonight. Cuba is booming though.
Fun night.
nick
Got a good strong signal from a little 50KW station out of New Zealand. That’s 11,800 km.
nick
Dear Leader authorized Romania, China, Brazil, California and Cuba. But not Florider and Tennessee. Buncha throwbacks in them places, clinging to their religion and guns, bitter-enders, haters….
What did I do for prep stuff this past week?
Not too much; it was, as Dr. Pournelle has often described, devoured by locusts. Eye surgery, partial recovery, crappy phone interview, more VA stuff, exhausted wife, Princess’s demands, etc., etc. And barely making a lousy dent in the five pages of to-do stuff for the house and yard here.
But I discovered an unopened pack of Marlboro ciggies in the back yard, undoubtedly dropped there by the pissant B&E junkie punks who broke into the corner gas station/store last week and tried to break into our neighbor’s house across the street while he and his wife were asleep. He chased them off (fellow bitter-ender ‘Nam vet) amazingly without blowing somebody away, which I could not guarantee I would not do. And the local huckleberry cops showed up and did a search of the ‘hood, even brought in K-9 from the Colchester PD (town about 25 miles south of here, which is kinda odd, ’cause the local state cop barracks has two K-9 units).
Punks evidently ran between the houses and partly through our back yard; our dog didn’t alert and neither did our neighbor’s yappy mutts.
So for the prep-related stuff I am keeping the ciggies as a start on barter goods on the one hand, and on the other hand I am investigating motion-detector floods and infrared webcams. Plus I’ll be fencing off the back perimeter and even considering trip flares and mines. I have the sign ready to go on the back of the studio/shed:
“Achtung: Mines”
Also trading in the golden retriever for a pair of German shepherds or sumthin.
OFD, how about you line up the dog and all available kids, put them on the couch, and express to them your severe disappointment in them for various and sundry shortcomings, real and imagined. I think that being lumped in with the dog will add that extra little something to the kids’ humiliation.
After you’re done with that, can I borrow your dog for use in the lineup of my kids?
My prepping consisted of setting up the Micro M3D printer. The wave of the future and all that. I might as well start learning about 3D printing and design. I haven’t decided on design software, but many suggest Google Sketchup as a start. I also invested in a small CNC mill and a small DIY vacuum former. I now have enough hobbies to keep me busy until I kick the bucket.
MrAtoz,
If you have any traditional CAD experience, Sketchup will be a real challenge. The drawing paradigm is completely different. The transition for me was difficult, but worth making, as Sketchup is powerful and fast. There are good tutorials online, especially the ones from one particular guy about using Sketchup for wood working. Can’t remember his name but he’s easy to find. Get a clear understanding of how the inference engine works. Finally, make liberal use of the online ‘warehouse’ of sketchup objects. It will save you a lot of time if you can just drop in someone else’s model and modify it. This is particularly true for hardware like screws or hinges.
There is another autocad program, I think called 1,2,3 design, that is free, and is built from the ground up for hobbyist solid modeling.
Filament based 3d printers are becoming mainstream hobby tools. My local homedepot carries machines and spools of material, as does the regional electronics chain, Fry’s, and MicroCenter. Suddenly they are everywhere……
nick
I’m intrigued by the CNC machine. One could make a steel receiver with that, albeit with pinning or welding.
Thanks Mr. Nick. I’ll start goofing with Sketchup. I’ve a lot to learn about 3D printing, milling, routing terms and techniques. There is a sort of makerspace in Vegas I may join in the future to get access and training to some of the larger stuff. Especially a laser cutter.
Here’s the link for the CNC mill, the Nomad 883:
http://carbide3d.com
“One could make a steel receiver with that, albeit with pinning or welding.”
My current information on that involves using a home workshop drill press and router to do the gig, with jigs and other minor tools that can be purchased online. I also have the videos for the whole process. A CNC machine or 3D printer probably speeds up the whole deal, but I’m not a mechanic and haven’t tried any of it yet; on my list of things-to-do here.
I’ve got a couple of micromills, based on the sherline mill, with motors, and in some cases the drivers as well. I haven’t had the time to actually get them running though. I’ve got a couple of CNC’d micro lathes too, with the same problem 🙂 From watching the ol’ interwebs, it is possible to complete an 80% lower on a micromill. It’s even possible to completely cut a lower from billet, but it takes a long time….
As I sell of the accumulated ‘inventory’ at my shop, I will have room to finally get some of my machine tools set up. It’s all on “the list” and the list gets longer……………….
nick
I had no idea that the Catholic church allowed women to read scripture from the Bible on the lectern.
Been doing it for a long, long time. It is, IIRC, at the option of the local bishop.
And most now allow girls to be altar servers, too; not mine up here, though. Which also still does the Latin Rite. And actual, genuine, classical music.</i.
I thought Latin Rite was only allowed by special request. Mel Gibson's dad was a part of a Roman Catholic dissident group here in Texas that rejects Vatican II. Their priests were excommunicated from what I heard.
Henry not only ruined pretty much everything he touched, English landscape, cultural treasures, history, and the six wives and assorted concubines, but he also wrought havoc on all the succeeding generations since.
But he did write “Greensleeves”.
Greensleeves, indeed. Henry was a very smart and clever bastard, knew theology cold, and had several other talents, but he was evil incarnate in most other respects, the kind of evil found in a Stalin or Mao.
“I thought Latin Rite was only allowed by special request. Mel Gibson’s dad was a part of a Roman Catholic dissident group here in Texas that rejects Vatican II. Their priests were excommunicated from what I heard.”
Latin Rite is at the option of the local bishop and parishes; most of them here in Vermont now have both liturgies, Latin, and the Novus Ordo stuff from Vatican II. There are several “dissident” and breakaway “Catholic” groups out there; Gibson’s dad belongs to one of the wackier ones, and yes, various of the former RC clergy have been excommunicated or otherwise censured; negotiations are on and off at different times with some of them in Europe and the U.K. And more hopeful negotiations are underway with the Eastern Orthodox and the Anglicans.
There are over a billion Roman Catholics in the world, so you can imagine the widest possible variety and cultural circumstances throughout; I’ve found that we can walk into any RC church, however, pretty much anywhere, and it’s gonna be the same familiar liturgy, standardized. And the hierarchy is the same one that’s been in effect for 2,000 years.
I’d also point out that large-scale ignorance and misunderstanding continue between too many Roman Catholics and the various Protestant denominations; neither side seems to know very much about the other, rather than hearsay and agitprop.
When I was a kid in the midwest, we had baptists who went door to door, like LDS and Witnesses do today. They were always surprised that RCs consider themselves “Christians”. One asked me “do you know where you are going to go when you die?” To which I replied “heaven.” How do you know that? I asked the Lord Jesus to be my personal lord and saviour. Oh, so you’re Baptist? No, Catholic. !!!!???!!!!??!
Always amusing to a 15yo smartass.
We had a large contingent of “blue army” catholics at my school. Lots of all-night Novenas, secret latin masses in people’s homes, wore a little bit of leather tied in string around their necks instead of the cross, rejected Vatican II.
I had a small collection of religious tracts, as that was popular in my area as well. Lots of crazy there….
It’s funny how far some of the christian sects have come. Many don’t consider Catholics christian at all, forgetting that for a millennia there was only ONE christian church, the Catholic Church, and a bunch of apostates, heretics, and others who might have claimed otherwise.
I can also see, looking back, that the Baptists in our area were much more focused on avoiding hell than achieving heaven.
These days, I’m about as good a Taoist as I was a Catholic. Surprisingly, it’s not that difficult, even down here in the south, to avoid organized religion. We miss out on a lot of the church based social scene (the dominant form of socializing here in TX- apart from football) but then we mostly keep to ourselves anyway. The only time it comes up is when we meet new people, and then it is more in the way of trying to find out if we have anything in common than proselytizing.
nick
“Many don’t consider Catholics christian at all, forgetting that for a millennia there was only ONE christian church, the Catholic Church, and a bunch of apostates, heretics, and others who might have claimed otherwise.”
That works both ways:
“Extra ecclesiam nulla salus.”
We consider the Reformation a monstrous tragedy and many memories are long enough to stretch back through family histories and/or what’s been passed down for the past 400-500 years in Euro-Anglo-America. The schism with the Eastern Orthodox likewise. And once that second great schism occurred, the denominations, sects and cults just kept splitting off and now it’s outta control. The logical end point is that each individual is now the interpreter and spiritual guide to himself or herself and that’s it. And many people are fine with that; as Catholics we are not.
Roman Catholics are about 25-30% of the population here in New England; in the northern portion it’s largely due to French, French-Canadian and Irish elements. In the southern states it’s a rough split between Irish and Italian, with a bunch of other immigrant groups thrown in. And even though there is a strong case that we should be doing it, you will not find us in your face and knocking on your doors.
It’s funny how far some of the christian sects have come. Many don’t consider Catholics christian at all, forgetting that for a millennia there was only ONE christian church, the Catholic Church, and a bunch of apostates, heretics, and others who might have claimed otherwise.
What? The Orthodox church has been going strong since almost AD 40.
It was one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church until the split in 1054. So the Orthodox have only been around since then. The Church remains one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church, tragically separated from its brothers and sisters remaining Orthodox and Anglican.
OFD, I believe you had to decide alone whether to become a catholic.
The Rome-based Catholic Church has their version of history. Not surprisingly, that version favors the Catholic Church, regardless of how it far it diverges from others’ versions of history. (Which, to be sure, can be assumed to favor themselves.)
“OFD, I believe you had to decide alone whether to become a catholic.”
Point taken. But many years prior to that decision, I’d been baptized in the Protestant Episcopal Church U.S.A. , the Murkan branch of the Anglican Communion. And been an acolyte, church school teacher and verger. So my parents and clergy kinda set me off down the path initially. I simply doubled down on them.
“The Rome-based Catholic Church has their version of history.”
Point take again. I like their version, however, while paying attention to anomalies and discrepancies, of course.
OFD, I just sent you some email. That is, I think I just sent you some email. I am, alas, almost as much of a friggin retard as people say I am*, and I’m not sure the email address I sent to is actually you.
* On a good day, that is. This evening is not a good day, due largely to lack of sleep, and I’m pretty sure I’ve managed to shatter everyone’s expectations about what a retard I am.
UPDATE: And I see I put this in the wrong day’s comments, which ought to solidify my position as The Biggest Retard in the County. Go me!
Mr. SteveF; I got your email OK and replied accordingly, thanks again!
Mrs. OFD gets goofy and loopy due to lack of sleep and then slurping down one glass of vino. Gets mad if I notice it and comment.
I’m just goofy and loopy without the excuse of no sleep, booze or dope.
“We consider the Reformation a monstrous tragedy and many memories are long enough to stretch back through family histories and/or what’s been passed down for the past 400-500 years in Euro-Anglo-America. The schism with the Eastern Orthodox likewise. And once that second great schism occurred, the denominations, sects and cults just kept splitting off and now it’s outta control. The logical end point is that each individual is now the interpreter and spiritual guide to himself or herself and that’s it. And many people are fine with that; as Catholics we are not. ”
What about the various anti-popes? What started the Reformation? The gross corruption of the established church. You going to make excuses for the Borgias?
Lucrezia Borgia was pretty hot; also her mom, and a couple of her dad’s mistresses. At least the Showtime/Netflix production has it thus. Also, Cesare was pretty slick.
From my point of view, Rodrigo was one of the better popes. And Lucretia never poisoned anyone. It’s the old story: the winners write the history books, and in this case the Borgia’s enemies wrote them. Same thing happened with histories of the Julio-Claudian dynasty.