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GLOBALISATION.....
Posted:Oct 10, 2017 9:15 pm
Last Updated:Jan 3, 2022 5:24 pm
2082 Views

3 Comments
WORDY BREAKFAST......
Posted:Oct 10, 2017 9:07 pm
Last Updated:Jan 3, 2022 5:25 pm
2038 Views

4 Comments
AMERICA'S MASS DELUSION
Posted:Oct 5, 2017 9:51 am
Last Updated:Jan 3, 2022 5:33 pm
3166 Views


Scott Gilmore
June 14, 2017

Is America’s national Thoughts and Prayers Strategy (TAPS) no longer working? This is a troubling possibility to consider, but it may be time to ask the question.
Politicians, members of the media, and of course the public, quickly responded to the recent horrific shooting of several people during a baseball game in Alexandria, Va., including U.S. Congressman Steve Scalise, with a flurry of “thoughts & prayers”. President Donald Trump himself immediately assisted in TAPS efforts with his own tweet indicating that he too was doing his part by thinking about the victims and mentioning them in any communications he had with God.
Unfortunately, there is growing evidence that TAPS may not be delivering the results we would expect from appealing to an omniscient and all-powerful deity. For example, in spite of the well-executed TAPS implementation following the Alexandria incident, there was almost immediately afterwards another tragic shooting in a San Francisco UPS facility, killing two. Cleary something is amiss.
In a typical year, over 13,000 Americans will be killed by guns. To put that into perspective, that is six times more than the total number of American troops killed in Afghanistan over the last 16 years. America’s gun homicide rate is 25 times the average of other developed countries. There is now, typically, one mass shooting per day in the United States. Over the course of the year, 45 of those will be school shootings.
READ: Something is broken in the United States
This data is very surprising when you consider the power of beseeching God. You would think parting the Red Sea, or smiting the Egyptians with a plague of frogs, would be far more difficult than just reducing gun violence. It is worth noting, however, that most well-known examples of successful celestial intervention in earthly affairs are over two millennia old. This marked drop-off has gone largely unnoticed in American political circles and may be worth exploring in more depth.
The problem, if indeed there is one, could be denominational. Are Jewish prayers as effective as Protestant prayers when it comes to preventing future shootings, or healing existing victims? For obvious reasons, we know that the prayers of a southern Baptist will have no prophylactic effects on a Muslim in New Jersey. But will they protect Catholics? These are questions we should possibly start asking.
Perhaps we are not praying enough. Church attendance is down considerably in the United States. This presumably has a direct impact on both the frequency and quality of prayers. If this turns out to be the issue, the government could look at improving public transit links to places of worship, or perhaps even subsidizing sermons as a means to end gun violence.
The other issue that should be considered is whether the wrong people are praying. For example, when a notoriously adulterous politician tweets out his “thoughts and prayers”, does that carry more or less weight than a nun who silently mouths the same words over her rosary? There really should be better metrics to track this.
Is it possible we are saying the wrong prayers or in the wrong way? Not enough effort has been made to determine if TAPS is equally effective when tacked on to a press release as it would be as an addendum to the Lord’s Prayer. And, have you noticed that you rarely hear a politician implement TAPS in Greek (Σκέψεις και προσευχές) or even Hebrew (מחשבות ותפילות)? Could that be the reason 93 Americans are still dying every day from gun violence?
There are so many factors that need to be taken into account if we want to get to the bottom of this. Kneeling or not? Eyes open or closed? Does incense make a difference? Out of respect for the hundreds of who are shot and killed every year in the U.S., we must answer these questions.
The White House, perhaps in co-operation with some of America’s leading research centres like MIT or Stanford, should launch an urgent nationwide investigation into why TAPS is not working. A series of randomized control trials in various states would be easy to organize and may produce invaluable data. Likewise, the government could test the TAPS methodology against other pressing issues. Does it help fix America’s crumbling infrastructure? Can it reduce the deficit? Will it fix Obamacare? Has the Pentagon considered a robust prayer response to the North Korean missile program?
With so many daily deaths, so many unnecessary tragedies, America’s leaders must do whatever is necessary to fix TAPS. If they fail at this, the United States would be forced to consider some very dire alternatives. In the United Kingdom, for example, when they decided thoughts and prayers were no longer working, they had to implement handgun laws that reduced shooting deaths by over 50 per cent. Likewise, Canada, Australia and Europe neglected TAPS and as result are forced to rely on firearm controls and background checks to keep their gun violence levels at 1/25th those in the United States. If America doesn’t address the TAPS problem soon, this might happen to them too.
15 Comments
THE ART OF LOVE......
Posted:Oct 1, 2017 1:23 pm
Last Updated:Aug 7, 2021 10:34 pm
2132 Views

3 Comments
MORNING DIAMONDS.......
Posted:Sep 27, 2017 10:21 am
Last Updated:Jan 3, 2022 5:43 pm
2060 Views
I was getting my grandaughter ready for school this morning, I love doing that,
spending that time with her, just the two of us.....brushing her lovely golden curls while we discuss what she should get for her best friend's birthday and she shares her excitement about the sleep-over pizza and movie-night party this weekend......She bubbles over with excitement and gets herself dressed and washed and brushed without any reminders.....Her nightgown, which was down to her feet when I gave it to her, is now high up above her knees.......When we go outside to wait for the school-bus, the fine mist and the rising sun has illuminated hundreds of cobwebs strewn with diamonds........




6 Comments
Another View of NFL Kneeling.........
Posted:Sep 25, 2017 2:52 pm
Last Updated:Jan 3, 2022 6:13 pm
2961 Views

Scott Gilmore in Maclean's (Canadian news magazine)

I try not to be cynical. But weeks like this make it hard.
On Friday night, President Trump traveled down to Huntsville, Ala., for a campaign rally. Standing on stage, he paused mid-ramble, and struck his “Il Duce” pose: both hands gripping the lectern, his chin lifted up and to the right, lips pursed and heavy lids. He had important things to say.
A cataclysmic hurricane has left over three million Americans in Puerto Rico without power and water. The government of North Korea just declared a nuclear attack on the U.S. is “inevitable.” A new health care bill is being pushed through Congress that would uninsure tens of millions of people. Multiple investigations are uncovering more and more evidence of Russian intervention in the U.S. election. Nazis are a thing again.
But the president wanted to talk about football. He said, “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired. He’s fired!’ ”
Judging from the cheering crowd, this was a popular opinion.
Trump was talking about football players who have been taking a knee during the Star-Spangled Banner to protest racism in America. This has turned into a controversial issue. Owners, fans, and other players have called it inappropriate, disloyal, ungrateful and unpatriotic.
Ironically, even just a few years ago these words would have applied to the entire league. Because standing for the national anthem is a new thing. Players and coaches used to stay in the locker room or sit on the sidelines.
This changed in 2009, because the Pentagon had a problem. The military had failed to meet its recruitment targets for years, largely because joining the armed forces all but guaranteed a deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan to join in wars that that had been burning since 2001 with few obvious victories to show for it. Even with high unemployment rates, finding more young men to fight these unpopular wars was a struggle. What’s worse, by the military’s own estimate, only one per cent of Americans are fit enough, educated enough, and inclined to put on a uniform. So where do you find these folks? At football games.
Therefore the Pentagon began paying the NFL to help its recruitment efforts. It brought vets on the field, added flags, F-15s flew over, military bands played in the stands, and the owners were asked to trot out the players for the anthem. It’s marketing 101—if your favourite sports star is saluting Old Glory, you’re more likely to sign on the line which is dotted. And, guess what? It worked. That year the forces met their recruitment targets for the first time in years.
Since then, according to a recent Senate report, the Department of Defense has spent $53 million for patriotic displays at sporting events, including one at a Seattle Seahawks game where 10 soldiers re-enlisted on the field during a pre-game show.
Meanwhile, social media began to expand. Twitter users increased from 30 million in 2009 to 328 million today. This brought us memes, cute cats, and cops killing unarmed black men. To be fair, this had been happening for decades. In fact, in the 1970s, by some estimates, cops were shooting 10 times as many people. But they weren’t being filmed doing it, and those clips weren’t being transmitted into our pockets.
But now we’re watching the bloodshed on a daily basis, and we’re watching one officer after another being exonerated. Like the cop who said, “I’m gonna kill this motherf–ker.” Then killed him. Then planted a gun. Then was acquitted anyway last week.
And now a man who started his career by banning blacks from his rental properties is president. And Friday night, down in Alabama, a state that only stopped lynching blacks in 1981, he held a rally with white people, angrily denouncing “ungrateful” blacks. We used to call that a Klan rally, which is probably why the KKK are such enthusiastic supporters of Trump.
So, how is it possible to not be cynical? How can you know any of this, and not give up on it all? Endless wars. Racism. Institutionalized injustice. Greed. Ignorance. And that is just from unpacking one thread of one speech by one politician.
Maybe this is what you have to do: focus on the guys kneeling. In this whole ugly, sprawling mess, the only people who are not acting out of self-interest, who are trying to make things better, to make things a little more just, are the guys on their knee. And today, the day after the president denounced them as sons of bitches, there are more of them than there were yesterday. So, maybe there’s hope. It would be nice to think so.

19 Comments
INTERESTING BAR-CODE PLACEMENT.....
Posted:Sep 23, 2017 6:06 pm
Last Updated:Aug 7, 2021 11:04 pm
2000 Views

1 comment
PUZZLE
Posted:Sep 10, 2017 10:34 am
Last Updated:Jan 3, 2022 6:16 pm
2129 Views

2 Comments
FUNNIES
Posted:Sep 9, 2017 4:11 pm
Last Updated:Jan 3, 2022 6:17 pm
2174 Views

5 Comments
AGGRESSIVE, BLACK-CLAD MILITANTS
Posted:Sep 4, 2017 2:12 pm
Last Updated:Jan 3, 2022 3:54 pm
2333 Views


PHILADELPHIA—Quickly turning what had been an orderly demonstration into a violent melee, a peaceful protest Friday was reportedly interrupted by a swarm of aggressive, black-clad militants. According to bystanders, the protesters had been marching and chanting without incident when they were suddenly set upon by the hostile militants who wielded blunt weapons and concealed their faces. Those who witnessed the event stated that the unprovoked aggressors seemed to have arrived planning to engage in some sort of violence, as evidenced by their protective padding and combative demeanour. Sources also confirmed that several of the militants surrounded an unarmed protester and severely beat him, and that some of the attackers also used slurs and threatening rhetoric while disrupting the peaceful march. At press time, outraged community members were demanding to know why none of the militants had been arrested.

from The Onion
6 Comments

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