Me-Too snowflakes

It has become like a mass hysteria.And everybody is joining in especially the hypocrites that knew about it but never said a thing.Yes you Meryl Streep.
And of course the Golden (what is so Golden about it, it is all plastic?) Globes have become a platform for those who seek attention. Hollywood disgust me. After all they are only  mere actors desperately seeking attention.
So?
One individual that took full advantage of appearing on stage was Oprah Winfrey. Most definitely and without doubt to further her own ambitions.

Does anyone remember all the pseudoscience and quackery she’s promoted?

Pseudoscience and quackery? Oh, yes. In the early years of this blog, Oprah was a frequent topic of Orac’s Insolence, and for good reason. She was one of the foremost promoters of pseudoscience, quackery, and general New Age BS in the world. If you think I’m exaggerating, just think of it this way. Oprah not only gave the world America’s quack, Dr. Mehmet Oz, and the foremost promoter of pseudoscience in mental health, Dr. Phil McGraw, who also stands accused of providing alcohol and drugs to addicts featured on his show in order to ramp up the drama factor. It would be bad enough if that were all she had done, but it’s not. https://respectfulinsolence.com/2018/01/09/oprah-winfrey-president-anyone-remember-pseudoscience-quackery-shes-promoted/

As I say, she is an ecumenical promoter of fantasies. Remember the satanic panic, the mass hysteria during the 1980s and early ’90s about satanists abusing and murdering children that resulted in the wrongful convictions of dozens of people who collectively spent hundreds of years incarcerated? Multiple Oprah episodes featured the celebrity “victims” who got that fantasy going. When a Christian questioner in her audience once described her as New Age, Winfrey was pissed. “I am not ‘New Age’ anything,” she said, “and I resent being called that. I don’t see spirits in the trees, and I don’t sit in the room with crystals.” Maybe not those two things specifically; she’s the respectable promoter of New Age belief and practice and nostrums, a member of the elite and friend to presidents, five of whom have appeared on her shows. New Age, Oprah-style, shares with American Christianities their special mixtures of superstition, selfishness, and a refusal to believe in the random. “Nothing about my life is lucky,” she has said. “Nothing. A lot of grace. A lot of blessings. A lot of divine order. But I don’t believe in luck.” https://slate.com/health-and-science/2018/01/oprah-winfrey-helped-create-our-irrational-pseudoscientific-american-fantasyland.html

But do yourself a favour and read the book by kitty Kelley.
If there was one untruth Oprah would have sued Kitty to hell and back!

Things we thought were facts

In 1271, the Venetian merchant Marco Polo set off with his father and uncle on a legendary trek across Asia. Over the course of his 24-year journey, Polo would become one of the first Europeans to chronicle the cities, cultures and technology of the Far East. Discover 11 fascinating facts about the life of one of history’s greatest explorers.

http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/11-things-you-may-not-know-about-marco-polo

but

 There is no real record of the explorer Marco Polo. 

• Nowhere is he mentioned in Chinese writings and the Chinese were well known for documentation  and certainly they would have documented at least something about Marco Polo especially as he was claimed to be a mayor of some small province.
• A Man called Marco Polo did live in Venice but that was not the Marco Polo we learned about.
• What a disappointment!

In a book published in 1995, “Did Marco Polo Go to China?”, Frances Wood, the head of the Chinese section at the British Library, also argued that he probably did not make it beyond the Black Sea.

She pointed out that despite being an acute observer of daily life and rituals, there is no mention in Marco Polo’s chapters on China of the custom of binding women’s feet, chopsticks, tea drinking, or even the Great Wall.

“There’s nothing in the Venetian archives to say that the Polo family had direct contact with China at all,” Dr Wood told The Daily Telegraph. “Nothing from China has ever been found in the possessions they left behind.

“One theory is that Marco Polo copied a sort of guide book on China written by a Persian merchant. Only about 18 sentences in the entire manuscript are written in the first person – it is extremely rare for him to say ‘I saw this with my own eyes’.

“I believe that rather than being one person’s account, it’s a sort of medieval database of European knowledge of the Far East at the time.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/8691111/Explorer-Marco-Polo-never-actually-went-to-China.html

you can also read all about MP in Wikipedia of course. That is if you never read his travels.

Beware of Amber Valley…

Pietermaritzburg – The Amber Valley body corporate in Howick wants Mr Cat out, but the ageing feline’s owner is determined to keep him – even if it means going to court to stay his eviction.

The 15-year-old cat is at the centre of a legal spat, after lawyers representing the body corporate sent a letter of demand to Penny Reid giving her two weeks to “remove” her companion.

An online petition to stop the body corporate forcing Reid to remove her cat has gone viral, receiving nearly 10 000 signatures in under a week.

You can read here:- http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Claws-out-in-fight-over-retirement-village-cat-20150216

Sounds like a real witch hunt to me!

But the 5 star comment came from Don Clark who wrote

MORON OF THE MONTH
My first message is to the people at Amber Valley, Howick who complained about 88-year-old Sylvia Reid’s 15-year-old cat. Although you are elderly, it is clear that your hearts have died long before the rest of your organs. Are your lives really so small that a visit from an old cat takes on the proportions of an invasion of man-eating tigers?! When you gaze out your windows in that beautiful environment are your old souls so full of bitterness and bile that you notice only a single cat instead of the wonderful birds, plants and rolling green lawns? Have you nothing better to do than plot the murder of an old feline and the subsequent murder of an old woman’s soul? Why don’t you just clean your dentures more often or sharpen your kitchen knives? Are you not aware that there are people starving to death out there, children dying in wars, people being murdered for their possessions, and millions living with AIDS or dying from Ebola? No, probably not. The biggest problem in your tiny, useless little lives is a visiting pet cat!
Shame on you, and shame on you again. May your callous, heartless, petty actions render you sleepless at night. And should you manage to dream, may they be filled with the sobs of a heartbroken old woman and the smell of pentobarbital; the solution used by vets to euthanise animals.
My second message is to the Body Corporate of Amber Valley. You decision to evict Sylvia Reid’s cat was not based on rules per se. You have made it clear that residents are allowed pets, but that it’s a privilege, not a right. So it would seem that Sylvia Reid’s “privilege” was violated on the strength of her neighbour’s complaint. And this complaint was precipitated by the cat simply “visiting” them.
At the end of the day, what I would like to know is whether the “pain” of a cat visiting them could possibly exceed the pain of an old lady being permanently separated from what may be her only loving companion? Did you even bother to take that into account? This is a moral and ethical situation, not a legislative one. I do hope you searched your consciousnesses deeply before making such a dreadful decision. 
So, to the cruel neighbours for their pedantic, overbearing attitude towards an old cat, and the Amber Valley Body Corporate for taking the easy way out, you are quite deservedly my morons of the month.

To Read or Not to Read

 

I started writing when I was eight—out of the blue, uninspired by any example. I’d never known anyone who wrote; indeed, I knew few people who read. But the fact was, the only four things that interested me were: reading books, going to the movies, tap dancing, and drawing pictures. Then one day I started writing, not knowing that I had chained myself for life to a noble but merciless master.

When God hands you a gift, he also hands you a whip; and the whip is intended solely for self-flagellation.

But of course I didn’t know that.

Music for Chameleons

TRUMAN CAPOTE, 1979

I read somewhere that 1 out of 5 (I suppose that is an average and not a mean) of books on a bookshelf goes unread. I wonder if the same apples to Kindle? With Amazon you can read a % free to see if you like it. I suppose I read 1 out of 5 that I taste so to speak.  And those that I try must have a good cover because sure,  I judge a book by its cover.

I never read romance and science fiction so I cannot speak.

But then I have become very fussy. I thought Gone Girl was rubbish! OK so I did not even finish it and I don’t know what all the hype is about. And the movie even rubbisher. But I liked The Girl on the Train, as I said to http://poeticparfait.com  it was errrrrr… engaging. Even better and it should not even be mentioned in the same breath was A S A Harrison’s The Silent Wife. Pity that she died before she saw the results of bestseller. Nicole Kidman is supposedly going to feature in the movie.

But then there are the writers that are artist of a very high standard not to be compared….

Like Julian Barnes and others too many to name. They fall in a different category.

 

Masters of the Game

A really enjoyable film was The Imitation Game –

The Bletchley Park codebreakers depicted in the film The Imitation Game (this year’s Oscar winner for Best Adapted Screenplay) worked around the clock to crack the secret of Nazi communications during World War II. Based on the book ‘Alan Turing: The Enigma’ by Andrew Hodges

The fascinating difference between fact and fiction you can read here:- http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/imitation-game/

But it is true that the  codebreakers could crack the secret of Nazi communications was kept a secret for 50 years Amazing!

But now I read in mental_floss that these guys were not just excellent codebreakers they also were skilled at palindromes.

A palindrome is a word, phrase, number, or other sequence of characters which reads the same backward or forward. Allowances may be made for adjustments to capital letters, punctuation, and word dividers.

 

As the author says It makes sense that those with a talent for uncovering meaning from patterns in strings of symbols would have a knack for creating palindromes. (A nut for a jar of tuna).

 

As for Birdman winning the Oscar, I had to go and read up all about it on the internet.  It was either a superb version of superhero films or a big batch of self congratulatory nonsense!

 

BUT MY FAVORITE Actor must be!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hollywood superstar Joaquin Phoenix is using his voice to help more people learn about how dogs are bludgeoned and killed so their skins can be turned into leather items to be sold around the world. http://petauk.org/b393

 http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/joaquin-phoenix-stars-peta-dog-778087

Am I a racist?

Watch this if you have not seen it before,

 

That Subject!!!!!!!

 

After this it is back to my cave!

Yes the subject I was never going to talk about!

I believe there are now about 6 SIX books on the subject of Reeva Steenkamp’s murder. Everybody now on the bandwagon. Money makes the world go round? Morality, respect  and truth got off mid air.

First there was a book very objective about the court case. Fine, it was objective and if one is interested in the court case this is good to read I suppose.

Then the ex girlfriend’s mother I kid you not. No  I did not read it, I would not stoop that low but I did read one chapter published in a local newspaper. And the mother wrote that they did not receive present from Oscar, she was actually complaining about it. So  the motive is clear. MONEY. She allowed her 16 or 17 year old daughter sleep overs at Oscar’s house. What was she a pimp? Did she expect something in return? Marriage for the daughter to rich an famous and when it did not work out she writes a book? She has been called names and I think she deserves them.

Then now Mrs Steenkamp’s book / interviews. Here I really do not know what to say because I do not understand why she had to go into Reeva’s sex life. Would Reeva have liked and condoned this?

So I would like to give you a link to a very good article that I read and I rest my case.

http://ewn.co.za/2014/10/28/OPINION-Danielle-Bowler-The-commodification-of-Reeva-Steenkamps-life

Science!

 

People who take non scientific stuff as gospel make me

 

Judging People

http://time.com/3221995/character-values-judge/

 

Amusing ? article. Yes we do judge people although we like to deny it. But how and according to what?

 

The following remark  I found interesting and I can relate to (some of) this

Social media. Quote!

I learn more about people I have known my whole life long on Facebook / blogs than I have pieced together over the entire length of our relationship. When someone writes, it becomes relatively easy to see what their angle is. Are they an attention whore? Do they self promote? Do they reciprocate when people interact with them and their content? What are their photographs like? Are they all selfies? Do they hide their spouse and family from the world in order to appear ‘available’? Do they go out of their way to hide how they really look? Do they just play mindless games all day? Do they share popular content in order to get praised?

This does not work if they do not write online, or if they only use social media sparingly, but reading someone’s words is a way straight into their personality if you care to pay attention.

I have also found a vast difference – generally speaking – between my English and Afrikaans friends. Also with what type of food they eat. But I suppose this is cultural? Or what?

 

Do you believe in ghosts?

Watched a ghost story on DSTV travel last night.

Elva Zona Heaster, the murder victim, was born in Greenbrier County sometime around 1873

The story goes that 3 months after they got married the bride fell down the stairs and died. The husband was so overwhelmed with grief that he did not want to leave his departed wife alone for a single moment; the coroner could not even perform a proper autopsy. He even dressed her in her best outfit (unusual for that was the task of the women of the church) and put a beautiful scarf round her neck.

Not long after her death her ghost appeared to her mother showing her that she was strangled  by her abusive and cruel husband and had marks around her neck to prove it. This happened three times after which mother went to the police and insisted on having her daughter’s body exhumed and a proper autopsy be performed.

So indeed she was strangled, her windpipe broken and to cut a long story short husband was found guilty and sent to prison.

Fact or Fiction? Well I do not believe in ghosts and think the mother suspected the husband of murder but had to convince the public prosecutor in some way. It still makes for a nice story though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenbrier_Ghost