Snowflake's Forum

  What are the books that you just couldn’t finish because they were boring, difficult, or stupid, or whatever? Bunny found Moby Dick too damn boring to finish.  Bought a Graham Hancock book as the title seemed to be about ancient civilizations.  Turned out to be an Erich von Däniken wannabe book, with advanced civilizations being wiped out by continents speeding around the planet. What are the books you didn’t finish? J.P. Bunny

Mental disease diagnoses and treatments are, for the most part, primitive, messy and often only mildly effective and rather toxic. Some real mental conditions appear to not even be considered mental diseases, so people just live with it as best they can. Deep depression is one of the stinkers for which drugs can be ineffective to mildly effective, often with unpleasant side-effects.  One area of treatment employs pulses of electrical and/or magnetic fields to increase or decrease the activity of specific regions and circuits in the brain. The pulses are used as a non-invasive way to stimulate neural pathways deep in the brain. Such treatments have been shown to be somewhat effective in treating some Parkinson’s symptoms, depression, OCD, migraines, etc.  A new variant of this kind of non-invasive deep wave brain stimulation has recently been described in a proof of concept research paper in Nature . It is ingenious in its simplicity. The technique was used to influence a motor...

  Yesterday, I posted this comment on  Miss Manners' column  about a woman who thought her daughter owed her thanks for the act of putting her through high school and college.  Miss Manners' response include the following: " Isn’t this the time to tell her how proud of her you are -- not how indebted to you she is?" I made a response of my own, and here it is:  " There's a problem with parents or step-parents who need all this "gratitude" from children. Not that kids don't need to know how much the effort costs or requires, but that childrearing was once done largely for the greater community, not the child (or the parents). We used to need as many healthy children around as we could come up with, so the work of bringing them up enjoyed real respect and social support. Nowadays, the land is overcrowded, and childrearing is a very expensive, time-consuming private hobby. It's a shame this line of endeavor enjoys so little support from the cul...

 As the Trial of Trumpy-Dumpty comes staggering to a close, I'm seeing the inevitable "trial of the century" labels.  Hell, I saw one "trial of the millennium" tag.  And that reminded me of how many "trials of the century" I've seen or read about.  People love to blow these things up.  (I mean that figuratively, of course.) My own favorite "trial of the century" is still the Scopes "Monkey Trial," which barely squeaks in.  It was in 1925, just under 100 years ago.   But there have been plenty more.  The O.J. Simpson Trial, still controversial even though he died of cancer decades later.  The kidnapping and murder of the Lindburgh baby.  The Scottsboro Boys.  The Clinton Impeachment.  And now: Donald the Strumpet.  (Is my bias showing?) So what's your choice for trial of the century?  Which one was silliest?  Which ones mattered for more than a few years afterward?  Which provided you with the most ent...

Memorial day By Germaine: The humorist

The Catholic church has started down the road to canonization of  a  15-year-old Italian computer whiz who died of leukemia in 2006, Carlo Acutis. Rome touts Acutis as the “patron saint of the internet.” He used his self-taught computer skills to create a website to catalog miracles and took care of websites for some local Catholic organizations. AP reports about two miracles that the church says Acutis caused: Acutis, who died of acute leukemia on Oct. 12, 2006, was put on the road to sainthood after Pope Francis approved the first miracle attributed to him: The healing of a 7-year-old Brazilian boy from a rare pancreatic disorder after coming into contact with an Acutis’ relic, a piece of one of his T-shirts. According to Vatican News, the second miracle recognized on Thursday is related to a woman from Costa Rica, who in July 2022 made a pilgrimage to Acutis’ tomb in Assisi to pray for the healing of her daughter, who had suffered severe head trauma after falling from her ...

  We’ve all probably misheard lyrics in songs.  A one horse soap and sleigh.  The girl with colitis goes by. Which ones do you enjoy? J.P. Bunny

Detectable levels of microplastics are in almost everyone. That includes pregnant women and their fetuses. A 2022 study found that 75% of 34 breast milk samples had microplastics that were less than five millimeters in diameter. Microplastics have also been found in baby poop, blood, placentas, and lung tissue. The Lancet (eBioMedicine) reports that microplastics have now been found in blood clots (thrombi) that cause ischemic stroke (IS), myocardial infarction (MI - heart attack), or deep vein thrombosis (DVT): Findings MPs [microplastics] were detected by Py-GC/MS [analysis machinery] in 80% (24/30) of the thrombi obtained from patients with IS, MI, or DVT, with median concentrations of 61.75 μg/g, 141.80 μg/g, and 69.62 μg/g, respectively. Among the 10 target types of MP [microplastic] polymers, polyamide 66 (PA66), polyvinyl chloride (PVC), and polyethylene (PE) were identified. Further analyses suggested that higher concentrations of MPs may be associated with greater d...

  Insider NJ   and the  Meidas Touch  reveal stern facts about the condition of the American news industry with a sad story about how once-reliable news outlets have spread the Trump campaign's lies about the number of participants in a campaign rally in the town of Wildwood.  The Meidas Touch is leftist; not so Insider, which is non-partisan.  Both deeply regret the quality of the reporting on the relative popularity of the campaigns; this may lead all too many voters to go with the current "frontrunner."  Thank God Insider has brought this story to people in NJ who are not deep-blue voters.  Please share this with some friends if you live in the U.S. -- or Canada!

The greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) can be converted to carbon monoxide (CO). CO is a starting material that can be used to make all kinds of things ranging from fuels to plastics to specialty chemicals, e.g., titanium dioxide (in white paint), ethanol, methanol, acetic anhydride, formic acid, methyl formate, N,N-dimethylformamide, propanoic acid, and phosgene (a lethal nerve gas, but used to make other higher value compounds). All of those are major commodities in commerce. If an energy efficient way to convert CO 2  to CO could be found, the idea of huge scale carbon capture goes from economically impossible concept to a possibly plausible (profit-generating) economic reality. Maybe. Boffins at MIT have found a method to use electricity to CO 2  to CO at a claimed 100% efficiency (that sounds impossible, but let's ignore that): CO 2  on the right is  converted to CO on the left   If scaled up for industrial use, this process could help to remo...

  No politics or philosophy this time; just some cute kitten baloney. What is it about kittens filling up boxes, anyway? 😄😄😄 Posted by Jennifer A. Nolan

  Recently on one of my favorite religious blogs, Don Jones wrote about driving along behind a car emblazoned with two bumper stickers, one of which has a  cartoon Trump using Joe Biden's name as a toilet.  He couldn't wait to get out from behind this jerk.  "If I was this person's pastor, I would be ashamed."  He goes on to complain about the covering-up of cruelty with "humor," "amusement," and the scapegoating of Muslims for all the country's woes.   We're not all believers here on this blog, but I hope some of us will enjoy linking on the this piece. Posted by Jennifer A. Nolan

  The machine has been perfected.  You can now control the weather.  Tough cookies to all the others. For Bunny, the final three weeks in August can be the hot summer.  The cool fall will start promptly in the beginning of September.  The cold winter will start with November and end sometime in March.  Mild spring until August. What are your plans now that you have the machine? J.P. Bunny

  A cute video short about too many darn pups! Lots of pups! (Just click on the link.  Sorry about the lack of a picture.

 This is just too cute. Next? A song in honor of  Laura Ingraham?

In my area right now, it's in the lower '60's -- awfully cool for the time of year in my view. Is it cooler than usual for anyone else?  

  Not all of us spend all of our time actually working.  Decorating fruit definitely not in the job description. What do you do at work that helps keep your sanity? J.P.  Bunny

  (Courtesy of Tom Nichols)   View in browser Almost 15 years ago, I was in bad shape. I was divorced, broke, drinking too much, and living in a dated walk-up next to a noisy bar. (It was only minutes from my young daughter, it had a nice view of the bay here in Newport, and I could afford it.) The local veterinary hospital was a few doors down; they always kept one or two adoptable animals in the window. One day, a gorgeous black cat, with a little white tuxedo patch and big gold-green eyes, showed up in a small cage. I stared at her for a while. She stared back patiently. I wasn’t taking very good care of myself at that moment, so I decided I couldn’t take care of a cat. I walked on. For weeks, the cat sat there. For weeks, we stared at each other. One day, as I was deep in my cups, I took a walk with a friend and co-worker who also happened to be my next-door neighbor. “You look at that damn cat every day,” he said. “Just go in and get it.” So I did. The cat was called “RC” and ...

  Posters encouraging people to “ Steal From Loblaws ” popped up last week across Toronto and have been gaining steam online, drawing mixed reactions from Canadians. The posters for the “first annual Steal From Loblaws Day” invite customers to rob retail grocery chains owned by  Loblaw , including the Real Canadian Superstore, No Frills, Fortinos and T&T, and suggests that 2024 could be just the start of this proposed illegal protest, with the inclusion of “first annual.” No organizers of the May 12 event have come forward to claim responsibility for the posters. Justifying the protest, another X user wrote that “grocers are blatantly stealing from consumers in creative new ways without government intervention.” “You brought all this on yourself,” another post reads. Others are shocked that Canadians would resort to stealing to send a point to Loblaw. https://globalnews.ca/news/10449334/steal-from-loblaws-day-posters-food-inflation/ Posters  declaring May 12 the first...

Old Favorite Kids' Books In the picture above are three books our parents read to us before we began reading on our own.  I've brought them out to share with some elderly people in a nearby rest home.  My question is: what books were your  favorites when you were little? Posted by Jennifer A. Nolan

for all your well wishes. still sore, so will keep this short, copy and paste isn't a hard task. but this one was too cute to pass up. BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — A Pennsylvania man who credits an alligator named Wally for helping relieve his depression for nearly a decade says he is searching for the reptile after it went missing during a vacation to the coast of Georgia. Joie Henney has thousands of social media users following his pages devoted to Wally, the cold-blooded companion that he calls his emotional support alligator. He has posted photos and videos online of people petting the 5 1/2-foot (1.7 meter) alligator like a dog or hugging it like a teddy bear. Wally’s popularity soared to new heights last year when the gator was  denied entry  to a Philadelphia Phillies game. Now Henney said he is distraught after Wally vanished while accompanying him on an April vacation in Brunswick, Georgia, a port city 70 miles (112 kilometers) south of Savannah. He said he suspects someone...

  A complaint about chattering concertgoers A comment I made on Dear Abby's uexpress column a couple of years ago about the increasing problem of noisy, disrespectful show-goers ( not necessarily young people!!! ) "Some advice from Schroeder to Lucy in an awesome old Peanuts strip: "Beethoven was Beethoven and YOU are YOU!!" "Music fans go to these concerts to listen to the pros, not the wannabes. And they certainly didn't come for the chatterboxes. I have never thought I had a voice to match Kathleen Battle (talking or singing) -- and now I know I don't. We don't go the nearest fine-arts museum to see the works of local Bob Ross buffs, do we?" 👋👋👋: "[F]ree outdoor concerts are usually not the 'top-level" professional performers.  Those are rare & attract huge crowds.  Most local concerts Simon & Garfunkel at Central [P]ark." Jennifer A. Nolan to 👋👋👋 : "I'm sure they're not usually the Boston P...

Hi y'all!!!  Y'all must be thinking, what the heck is going on here aren't ya 😂! I don't think I've ever done a thread here on Snowy's side of the interwebs but here I am! I'm here at the special request of our dear Snowflake, as he has injured his hands and is finding it very difficult to do much typing. He'll be lurking around to moderate and comment from time to time but doing more than a few words is hard for him for the time being since he has sprained one of his hands and may have even tore a ligament! He's of course seen the doctor, has to wear a brace and was told it could take up to 4 weeks for it all to heal. He really did a number on it! Most of you all already know that I don't do the whole political thing but if I see that there's no thread up for a day, I'll attempt to get something posted if I can think of something interesting. Being a stay home mom/house wife, I don't have much to ramble on about other than regular d...

  Smrnda on Troubler of Israel: "Church Membership Isn't Optional." Another comment on that rather long-ago post on church membership being a mandate from On High.  This time, the author goes by the name of "Smrnda," and like to read blogs by atheists and Christian progressives. "A mark of adulthood is when a person no longer needs some external authority to keep them in line. Adults don't outsource their decision making to outside parties. Sure, they might consult with people, but in the end, adults make their own decisions and live with the consequences, and take ownership of them. Perhaps in simpler times people could merely do as they were told and get by, but those days are long past. Even in employment, the value of people who 'do as they are told' is declining. People who can make autonomous decisions are more valuable. A person who needs to be told what to do is basically a failure unfit for much of anything. "So, if people aren...