My motivation is skating on thin ice the last day or two, probably because I’m not sleeping well and thus not feeling at the top of my game. But a few snippets came to me yesterday that I thought to share … France’s very own Trumpian figure … Marine LePen is back. In case you’ve…
— Read on jilldennison.com/2022/04/10/a-few-grumblings-grousings/
All posts by nedhamson
Learning Languages to Greet Strangers in the Street: Empathy or Insanity?
Context, Thought, and Learning: ShiraDest Offers Project Do Better
R. Nachman of Bratslav said that “The whole world is a very narrow bridge.” If so, then maybe that explains why people tell us not to talk to strangers. I am still glad, though, that I smiled at someone I did not know -who thanked me, and made me grateful to be alive, back in 2005. And even more recently.
Less short version of the story:
When I lived in Izmir, that summer I took long walks on Saturday afternoons. I had the habit of smiling, or at least nodding, to every person I saw because frankly, I hoped someone would smile or nod back at me. At least acknowledge me as a fellow human being, as I tried to do, even passing the homeless people lining the streets as you go into the Metro (in DC).
So, I nodded at a lady in passing, never met her, just kept…
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What 9 Noteworthy Things I learned On 9th
1. You can’t make an exception from a norm and try to make it a rule. It will die a natural death.
2. What we think theoretically would work because it has worked in the past does not guarantee anything. Check it on your own.
3. What is slow is smooth, what is smooth is fast, and it’s the result orientation.
4. The disease of 100 years old is all taken care of by Vaccination. A few examples which come to my mind are smallpox, measles, polio, etc
5. Today we have more lifestyle diseases. So what started will also end it as well. Of course, one has to take medicine in short term to cure it. One has to be sure it’s helping in curing the cause, not the symptoms.
6. Speed of thought is called stress. Acceleration to thoughts is good but there has to be a brake…
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Pied Piper Of Pojhi
Great tale! Thank you for sharing…
Tracts of fertile agricultural land stretched as far as the eyes could see. With the changing seasons, the colours of the harvest varied from shades of green to brown to golden to fluorescent yellow, yielding bounties of rice, maize, potatoes, mustard, red gram, and rapeseed. A mix of some thatched huts and other unplastered brick houses of the poor and a few brightly painted and well-done rural bungalows of the affluent scantily dotted the topography.
While patches of groves amidst the vast farmlands provided shade, deep wells and shallow ponds quenched the thirsts of both man and beasts. Cows, buffalos, goats, ducks, chickens, dogs, foxes, mongooses, snakes, frogs and the occasional nilgai Indian antelope often found themselves on the asphalt Patna-Parsa-Siwan State Highway 73 that cut across the region.
Various shops and small businesses haphazardly sprouted on both sides of the highway, bringing a subtle commercial flavour to the predominantly…
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After Europe’s latest Covid surge, will the US follow suit? | Coronavirus | The Guardian
But scientists warned this week that the coronavirus will continue evolving to evade immunity, causing future surges that will be difficult to predict.
Covid-19 has evolved faster than expected, and “we should expect a lot of evolution going forward,” Trevor Bedford, a professor of biostatistics at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, told a panel of independent FDA advisers on Wednesday. “Those viruses will do better and will spread locally and perhaps regionally and perhaps globally.”
The US has generally followed surges in the UK three or four weeks later, but reported cases are holding steady at an average of about 26,000 a day. Although deaths have declined significantly from the Omicron peak, more than 500 Americans are still dying every day.
Source: After Europe’s latest Covid surge, will the US follow suit? | Coronavirus | The Guardian
Republicans are coming after same-sex marriage – and won’t stop there | Arwa Mahdawi | The Guardian
Republicans are aggressively undermining gay marriage
An adult marrying another adult of the same sex? Outrageous; the Lord will smite thee. An adult marrying a child of the opposite sex, on the other hand? Totally fine with God, apparently.
Such is the perverse logic of the always righteous Republicans, a number of whom recently sponsored legislation that would legalize common law marriage in Tennessee. While that sounds innocuous on the surface the legislation is a shameless attempt to undermine same-sex marriage, which has been legal across the US since 2015. The bill’s mastermind, the Tennessee state senator Janice Bowling, explained that the bill declares “that the marriage between a man and a woman is not a creation of the state government or its statutes, it is a common law right”. Bowling also noted that the bill provides “an alternative form of marriage for those pastors and other individuals who have a conscientious objection to the current pathway to marriage in our law”.
These conscientious objectors were so busy being homophobic that they didn’t have any time to be concerned about minor things like child marriage, it seems. The original iteration of the bill essentially eliminated minimum age limits to get married and paved the way for child marriage. As another state senator, Raumesh Akbari from Memphis, told reporters: “It’s ugly enough Republicans are advancing an unconstitutional bill to undermine marriage equality, but the fact that this bill reopens the debate on child marriage is outrageous.” The Republicans backing the bill didn’t seem too bothered by the whole child marriage thing when it was first pointed out but, after international backlash, they inserted an amendment adding a minimum age requirement of 17. Very noble of them.
Source: Republicans are coming after same-sex marriage – and won’t stop there | Arwa Mahdawi | The Guardian
Column: For two years, I’ve tried to protect myself from COVID-19. Now I’ve tested positive – Los Angeles Times
What this past week has taught me is that we are just pretending to understand this virulent, mysterious and unpredictable pandemic.
We bury ourselves in statistics, as if that gives us a sense of control. But what does the case count even mean now that so many folks are testing themselves at home and no one is tallying those results?
I appreciate all the work the researchers are doing. Rutherford said there are now tantalizing hints that blood type may be linked to COVID-19 immunity. That kind of revelation might lead to new ways to prevent or treat the disease. But even a perfect understanding of the big picture won’t mean we can predict the course of an individual infection.
“From a public health standpoint, we’re not worried about you. … You’re a good outcome,” Rutherford said. “Not as good as having no infection. But having an asymptomatic infection, we’ll chalk that up as a win.”
And right now, that sounds pretty good to me.
The Missed Poem #poetry #blogging #friends

Like a cherry blossom
you fluttered on my cheek
with a waft of fragrance
the smell of pink
you lingered for a day
perhaps it was two
tried to catch up
with the poem and you
you vanished with the sunset
you flickered out of sight
no sign of the poet
you had taken flight
Reflecting on a dear talented poet Jackie Dick who passed several years ago. We met in the blogsphere and I am glad we had a cherry blossom moment. This poem is dedicated to her and other poets who have taken flight.
#success,
Flashy
Never be jealous of anyone. A flashy lifestyle is not an indication of wealth. What we see is not always what is.
© Norma Bobb-Semple 2022
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