Serendipity

Today I have endured a second kick in the stomach from my president. I say my president since he is of course the countries president, and as a member of the country by default he is mine. I voted for him, only to find that he has no back bone.

1st he is finally tackling "Don't ask don't tell" but while the term is being removed the Armed forces are working in concert to display that the morale of the troops will be shaken. Even through our allies France, Canada and the UK all have serving homosexuals serving in mixed unites.

Why is American so terrified? Why is our President who promised change so damn afraid?

Then there is the announcement of the cutting of Nasa funding. Already a majority of Nasa's budget is produced by scientific research done by pharmaceutical companies who can work and create chemical bonds in zero gravity that increase our ability to fight many diseases.

I will be the first to admit that there is a lot of things that need money and people who need help. However looking to the future there are ways of keeping NASA working and moving it more privatized while using corporate dollars to subsidize the moves to the moon and beyond. All this bum, as Bush has done is send our best and smartest to other countries with weak ties to our economic growth and interest to those counties to give them our big brains.

The space race and specific isotopes on the moon can create cheap energy with low radioactive effects on our environment.

Our pharmacological companies will have to share their profits with other countries like China and India to create advancements in medicines that will help increase our productive years and cure many diseases by using techniques that zero gravity allow molecular bonds for complex chemicals that can move our treatments of many diseases much faster. There was a way to have our cake and eat it too and thanks to Obama we get neither.

Thanks.

Posted by Forest

Although the title might seem very much like an oxy-moron let me tell you first that it isn't. While animals are not sentient as a human might be they are capable of suffering and that suffering can cause adverse effects of the quality of the product.

Ms. Davis a friend of mine from childhood(ish) who has written for several magazines recently wrote an article in the Oregon Live Magazine. After about a 15 year absence I have been following her trials and tribulations to reacquaint myself with her life and enjoy her experiences vicariously through her eloquent words and adventurous posts. I won't go into most of my personal experiences with Ms. Davis but to say she has always struck me as a woman who knows herself and seems hell bent on experiencing every flavor of life, although several years my junior when we met in high school. It is my dearest wish that she remain the awesome woman she seems to have become.

The article is about something I have been considering a lot about before I started following her digital trail over her posts as she wonders the country side learning the ways of humane and self sufficient do it yourself butchery. I think it is a great way to become more attune with the way food is made. For my personal belief system though not a religious, but philosophical Buddhist (the difference would take many pages to explain) the act of being in the present and remember all the hands that have touched your food or other products that make an intricate part of your life is a center point of my practice. This part of the article is not about me, so on we go.

So I encourage you to read the story "Locavoe learns to slaughter and butcher his own pork." Writen by Camas Davis.

http://www.oregonlive.com/mix/index.ssf/food-trends/locavore-learns-to-slaughter-and-butcher-his-own-p.html



My own personal experience with supporting this beyond my personal belief comes from the nasty work I once did in the Creswell Chicken packaging plant. This particular stint was after an almost fatal (due to lack of insurance coverage) disease I caught at the plant working with the processed chicken.

Like many 18-19 year old boys trying to become men after hospitalization and several weeks of recovery I re-applied through the temp agency which is how they hired then. I was given the swing shift chicken hook and prep which is pre-kill room. There is no real separation between the two so for all intense and purpose it was the same.

Outside the room the chickens were taken off the carrier trucks in their massively tiny pens, and fed into the conveyor belt. They were general poultry white chickens and I have no problem eating meat or the necessity for them to be killed to feed us. Perhaps it was the set up, or perhaps some people just are not the kind of people built for it. As the chickens came through the outside chute it was our job to grab them by their legs, each hand pinching two legs to optimize the process. Then shove their legs into this chicken leg apparatus that kept them immobilized as they went the 10 feet further down the line to the slaughter room.

The chickens were never ending glowing bright white because the only light provided was a series of black lamps over our stations and along the train the slaughter room. Where a man in full wet protective gear stood with just a Dremel style tool and slit their throats to bleed them out.

The surrealistic colors of the sharp blood splatters and glowing chickens were drowned out by what I was hearing. The chickens were not clucking, they were making loud screaming sounds reminiscent of mating call of the male peacock. (Click here for a sample of the sound and why it was disturbing) For those who haven't heard it after awhile is sounds like a far off woman screaming for help. Slowly, but surely the sights and sounds began to over whelm me. The purplish white chickens where screaming to the back drop of the drill and the arterial spray against the easy to clean .8mm plastic covering the walls. I had gone into automatic putting the chickens up, faster and faster, not even watching my hands move. The blood and arterial spray under the black lights kept drawing my attention, until one of my workmates who spoke Spanish asked me if something was wrong. He looked really worried. It was then that I had noticed that I have been breaking the chicken's necks to stop the animals noise that sounded so much like cries for help.

Just then the lunch break bell broken and the crew broke to eat. I picked up my things and drove away in my truck. I never went to pick up the check for the work I did, and never cashed it when it arrived. As I have said I have no problem with killing for food, or eating what is necessary to survive. I am a realist, but that environment somehow brought out something very dark inside of me and I am not afraid to tell you I am quite glad that the lunch bell rang when it did. I have always been afraid of the nothing I felt till I was driving away in my truck.

Since that day in 1993 I have always thought and read about more humane ways to butcher animals. It makes for better meat, and better sanity.

So check out the article Ms. Davis wrote... it is well done and deserves at least a once over.

-Forest.

Posted by Forest

Sometimes it might be hard to believe but there have been medical journal entries on very odd pregnancies. In one reported case from 1988 a woman without an actual vaginal entrance became pregnant after performing oral sex, then subsequently being attacked by a knife. The subsequent attacked allowed the still active sperm (which has a known life of some 72 hours) to traverse the stomach area and enter the womb whereby she became pregnant.

It is quite an interesting case for other known non vaginal intercourse pregnancies held in high esteem. Not pointing any fingers at any group that worships such an oddity as sign of the divine, just saying that such strange things can happen. All of the following makes for a very interesting read. There is of course the ancient but oft forgotten right of passage for well to do families (such as Mary would have been) of a type of Jewish Vestal Virgin. Where a woman would be loaned to a monastery to perform a sex act for God on his chosen. Such women were chosen of the higher classes and considered virgins regardless of the vaginal penetration because it was a test for Gods chosen. It would have been very unlikely that Mary's family would have not sent their daughter for this prestigious act of devotion for God as it would have elevated the family's standing.

Of course this article isn't about that practice and the Church's (particularly the Catholics) of removing the practice from the history books. This is about the oddity of a woman who without a traditional vaginal cavity and incapable of performing traditional intercourse conceiving a child in recent times that has been well documented.

I would add that no matter the way of conception the work that Jesus did in his time was amazing, and his work should in no way be tarnished by the people who spit in the face of the work he did then.


-Note on information and posted dates for article.
Oral conception. Impregnation via the proximal gastrointestinal tract in a patient with an aplastic distal vagina. Case report.

Br J Obstet Gynaecol. 1988 Sep; 95(9):933-4.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3191066

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2010/02/01/ncbi-rofl-thats-one-miraculous-conception/

The original site that sent me on the trail is non other than my favorite Digital Zine Boing Boing.
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/02/01/a-simple-case-of-mir.html

Posted by Forest

So after working with S9y the makers of this suite and the makers of the plug in to keep you all current on my readings I have discovered that there really isn't much response to my queries. To be honest the people at S9y were helpful to the point they could which was to say they couldn't do anything, so I have had to remove the plug in for now.

I hope that it will soon move forward and we will get more information or an update that will fix the problem.

I have updated the book static pages with the current reads that I have accomplished although I am missing a few which I will add. Right now I am reading the second book from "The Looking Glass" series by John Ringo. The first one was great, and the technical information provided in the followup "Vorpal Blade" is great the characters from the first book which were so well written have been downgraded to secondary two dimensional characters and the new front runner just reads as paper thin. I hope to start all the reviews soon.

I have hundreds.... well alright about 20 or 30 posts I need to get to and will surely get on it soon. I hope to hear from you all soon.

Best wishes,
Forest
"Aufero caput capitis ex vestrum vestri natis"

Good bye January and hello nurse February!

Posted by Forest