Categories: Animals, Censorship, Food (Yum), Health News, Philosophy, Pictures, Politics (U.S.), Politics (Virginia), Scary, Women's Issues
Amazon
This probably deserves a separate post, because it's good news: Amazon seems to have reconsidered a policy that was discriminatory.
Recap: Last year I wrote some things posted elsewhere in exchange for Amazon giftcards, which I used to buy a few books for which I posted customer reviews on Amazon. A publisher appreciated those reviews enough to send me a set of books just for customer reviews on Amazon. I've enjoyed those books...but then, the publisher mysteriously didn't send me any more books or e-mails. Didn't I rave enough? Hmm. Another publisher liked the reviews I posted here, anyway, even when we mysteriously couldn't find my reviews on Amazon. Someone said Amazon was now posting only reviews from customers who'd bought books with a credit card. I complained that this was discriminatory. I received an e-mail that I'd broken some rule and was banned forever from posting reviews on Amazon. I replied: "What rule was that?" This weekend, I received an e-mail that my reviews were back online. I checked, and found one.
This is sooo the way it should be. My goal is to sell books, and Amazon's goal is to sell books, so we should be able to work together. (Ultimately, the little-bitty brook and the huge river flow together down to the same ocean...) I was willing to go on using Amazon, for what it's worth, despite a policy that I believed was discriminatory. I'm delighted to report that that policy has been reviewed! Here's to more customers writing thoughtful reviews of their giftcard purchases...note that I receive commissions on Amazon giftcards only if you buy them using the widget at the bottom of this screen.
Animals
No more Petfinder links here until cookie issues are resolved, but how could this site have a Link Log without cute animal pictures? +Beth Ann Chiles looks at alpacas:
http://itsjustlife.me/trip-jazzy-acres-alpaca-ranch-leicester-north-carolina/
J.D. Tuccille could have dug deeper into the way the HSUS agitators cited here are functioning to promote species genocide for domestic animals, per Old Socialist goals of breaking up private home/pet ownership, but anyway s/he has written one of Reason.com's all-time best articles:
http://reason.com/archives/2017/10/03/are-we-all-gonna-die-if-animal-rescuers
Censorship
The University of Oregon's President Schill makes sense. (It's news when a university president makes sense about censorship? Should this link go under "scary"?)
http://www.theblaze.com/news/2017/10/24/students-who-squelch-free-speech-perpetuate-fascism-they-claim-to-oppose-university-president-says/
Christian
Serious Catholic alternative to Halloween...
https://hubpages.com/holidays/How-The-Filipinos-Celebrate-All-Saints-And-All-Souls-Days
Food (Yum)
This is not really a new or exotic recipe, but for me it was a new word. In the U.S. we sometimes see knackwursts or wursts; I've not seen them called Mettenden sausages before. Kale is what this recipe is all about. Here is a traditional thing to do with kale...I'm sure it has a special flavor when made with authentic German sausages, but kale tastes great (to grown-ups!) when cooked this way with almost any savory meat, or even with vegan sausages.
http://thellyscucinainternational.blogspot.com/2017/10/how-to-make-kale-with-mettenden-sausages.html
Health News
I'm not recommending that anybody out there follow this page's advice. I'm recommending it for further research. Personal experience with this site shows that it's run by some people who have that "little learning" that is such a dangerous thing. They've done enough research to know that, yes, the A.M.A. often do hesitate to endorse "unproven, untested" remedies that do actually turn out to work--when the evidence for those remedies comes from individual patients and doctors--and, too often, rush to endorse remedies that have been "proven and tested" by short-term studies that may not have paid enough attention to long-term risks, when those short-term studies have been lavishly funded by corporations that stand to make a profit from selling prescription medications. And they've not done enough research, or taken an objective enough position, to make sure that they're not endorsing things that might be dangerous. (Laetrile, they endorse. Remember Laetrile?) Reading this site, I wondered if it was actually written by Kevin Trudeau.
As regular readers know, I have a long-term relationship with someone whose actual symptoms of Lyme Disease haven't become "chronic," but the complications have. Earlier in my life, my actual symptoms of mononucleosis and its complications became "chronic." I understand. I relate. I don't consider this man old, at all--it's a symptom that he feels "old"--nor can I imagine liking a younger man as much as I've liked him for eleven years now. The last few of which years have been spent feeling widowed all over again before the dang wedding...There are good and sufficient reasons for dumping anyone to whom you've been engaged but not married for more than two years, actually. Illness is not one of them. Illness is not a valid reason for dumping anybody. And it's not as if there were another man for whom I'd leave this one. I would like very much for his now legally adult, gainfully employed, foster son to move out, and so, no doubt, would the foster son by this time, so that I could live with my Significant Other in a legitimate middle-aged marriage--which means whatever it feels like to the partner who is feeling "older" on any given day, but, a lot of the time, it means a private nursing job without formal wages. I'd do that, yes. Even after the hormones settle down, love is still a kind of minor mental illness...grumble, grumble.
I would like it if some things mentioned on this page, which are not positively harmful, turned out to be helpful to my Significant Other. I would like it, also, if more information were available about the risks and benefits of the things mentioned on this page that are positively harmful. This is a web site that recommends laetrile, so CAVEAT LECTOR , but...people who are concerned about Lyme Disease should discuss this information, misinformation, and/or disinformation with their doctor. Some of it may help everyone move forward. I hope and pray.
https://healthwyze.org/reports/593-naturally-curing-lyme-disease-and-chronic-lyme-disease
And here's JAMA and UCSD, finally officially smelling the coffee about glyphosate...
https://health.ucsd.edu/news/releases/Pages/2017-10-24-exposure-to-glyphosate-chemical-found-in-weed-killer-increased-over-23-years.aspx
There has to be some good health news out there. Well...what about ten days in California with the McDougalls? Southern California. In January. How good is that likely to sound? Help our e-friends recover from their losses in this autumn's fires:
[temporary sign-up link]
Marketing
Is it possible to generate word-of-mouth advertising? Yougov says so. (This page caused "updated" Chrome to complain of "a problem." I didn't actually notice the problem, but beware.)
[Yougov list link]
Philosophy
Recently this web site discussed Eat the Rich, a book that explains why many people have come to believe that practicing good will toward humankind means not trying to build bigger bureaucracies to keep people happy (which won't work) but leaving people free to find out what works or doesn't work for them, and find happiness in their own way (which can work). Eat the Rich
(yes, two separate links) would've made a great documentary. Are you, or do you know, a documentary movie maker? Here's your chance at fame:https://anthemfilmfestival.com/
Pictures
+Martha DeMeo captured a really unusual image of sunshine on mist. If you miss Thomas Kinkade, you'll love this post:
http://themarthareview.com/gods-beauty/
Politics (U.S.)
Here's an "expose" article that opens a trend I'd like to see continue: Democrats stop pushing the old dead Socialist religion and get back to the popular blue-collar type of issues that party's actual members actually support. This writer is an Obama fan...and the position of this web site is that it's about time somebody found something good to report about anyone using the name Obama, even if it seems to be mostly Michelle rather than Barack Obama. Actually, cutting through the red tape around local licensing is a bipartisan issue; in the long run it's good for business and the tax base, Republicans, as well as helping people get off the unemployment rolls. We could start with an overriding policy that any licensing requirements that reflect ability to pay, as distinct from actual competence, should be permanently ruled illegal, and any licensing board that has depended on them to keep membership down and prices up should be unable to issue licenses until they've set up a whole new licensing policy that reflects competence only.
http://reason.com/archives/2017/10/28/getting-veterans-back-to-work
Politics (Virginia)
Here's a useful tool for rating your Virginia legislators...on a specific set of issues. Note that VTPPF's ratings, even on "protecting our rights" and "fiscal responsibility," may not be everyone's; there are links you can click to find out which specific votes may have given your legislator a different rating than you might give him/her. (Remember that one year Senator Carrico voted against a bill a lot of people liked for, he explained, the valid reason that it was likely to be overridden by federal legislation later in the year in any case, so why bother making changes that would have to be changed again before they went into effect...)
https://vtppf.org/scorecards/
On a strictly local level, e-friend Jack Beck is running for office in Wise County. He's well to my left on "big" issues, but on the local level that's not necessarily even a concern since local officials don't set policy on those "big" issues. How well Beck can represent his townsfolk, I can't really say, but I'd guess pretty well. At least he's a decent man and a solid bookseller. Wise County could do worse...I'll just add that, on the local level, Scott County has done worse, and stop before I mention any names.
https://wendywelchbigstonegap.wordpress.com/2017/10/27/up-up-and-away/
And in Pittsylvania County, conservative local candidate Barbara Hancock is facing a "name" problem with a young, inexperienced challenger who happens to share the name of a respected local citizen...This web site wishes Candidate Hancock as much success as one of our local people has had in surmounting the confusion initially caused by his sharing the name of an older man who became infamous by getting charges reduced from murder to homicide, on the grounds that this older man had inadvertently shot someone while attempting to murder someone else. Really! But the younger man is not a close relative and has been doing a good job in office for the past ten years.
http://www.hancockforsupervisor.com/2017/10/same-name-syndrome-community-baffled-by.html#more
Scary Things
If you let your mind dwell on it, this Halloween edition of the "Garfield" strip wasn't funny at all...
http://nowiknow.com/starving-garfield/
Women's Issues
Recently I read (and reviewed, for eventual display here) a biography of Rita Hayworth. The author, a male fan, seemed to think he was writing a smooth enjoyable story; that's part of what made it so blood-boiling. In Hollywood Harvey Weinstein's behavior was not only precedented, but traditional. Male agents, directors, and producers had no respect for actresses. Women who didn't want to be exploited, cast as bimbos or worse, harassed, blackmailed, overtly treated like objects, and also ordered at best to keep it secret if they had children, did not become actresses.
We lived in California. "Did you know any movie stars?" Hah. My mother did recognize some of them, even pointed them out to me, in a discreet and respectful way. I'm not sure how many of the ones she recognized she'd ever met, apart from Tallulah Bankhead, whom many people loved but Mother loathed. She knew a lot of the women who felt that they'd failed and been ruined trying to be movie stars. And my family never went to movies or bought movie star magazines. Abstaining from movie-watching was a rule some churches had in the 1960s, but regardless of whether or not they were attending one of those churches, my parents were boycotting an industry they considered ethically unfit to survive.
I did a quick search for Hayworth on Bing just now, and what popped up as Link #2 out of 10 is so not news:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hollywood-flashback-rita-hayworth-was-sexually-harassed-by-mogul-harry-cohn-decades-1049356
It never was news. If she'd reported it, at the time, other actresses would probably have said, "So what? Who's not been through 'the casting couch' routine?"
Men, and the women who weren't being harassed, thought the ones who were being harassed were getting special benefits from what they imagined to be romantic affairs with teachers, supervisors, and customers.
http://alicewalkersgarden.com/2017/10/a-branch-sexual-abuse-in-the-present-time/
Nota bene, not a bene(fit): "A small check from my tormentor / Meant I could stay in school." And this kind of man got away with this kind of abuse of young students because there were other kids, some of whom could not stay in school, who would've said they'd have had no problem being pinched or chased around the office by Old Mr. Moneybags and taking his "small check."
Now, if this was too serious and made you want a chortlebreak...I do in fact find meaning in the inane passages Tom Woods quotes. That meaning being: "Totalitarianism is not going to be rationally defensible in the post-Soviet era, and will have to be thrust upon people by presenting information in a visual and automated form," Handmaid's Tale fashion.
[temporary link to Tom Woods' page here]
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