Wednesday, October 20, 2010

LIFE SO FAR

Haven't blogged in quite a while - obviously nothing much to say.

Recently I've been coming to terms with a thyroid disorder. The only good part is I've lost a big chunk of weight.

The doctor mentioned to me that when I start the medication I will probably put it all back on...and more ugh.

I just accidentally learned that thyroid disease runs through my father's side of the family. No one ever mentioned it to me before. I have had to tell my kids to be aware of it in the future because it may visit them too.

It crept up on me, I had some funny symptoms so the doctor tested me for a million things before the thyroid issue was discovered, would have been handy if someone in the family had mentioned it.

Life is only slightly marred from having lumps in my thyroid....onward and upward and smiling all the way :))

Friday, April 16, 2010

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

Actually this is the Catholic "elephant in the room" because apparently its been going on since adam was a boy (no pun intended)....and 'they' all say they didn't know.

It appears the only ones who did know were the victims, who thought they would go to that mythical place called hell if they told anyone....poor things I really feel sorry for the victims!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJ1_aQz6IuU

Sunday, October 19, 2008

MONEY=DEBT An Eye Opener!

Dear Fellow Victims

Not sure if anyone passes by this way anymore, I havent posted anything in a long time, I'm hoping you still keep an eye out.

I have something for you all to look at, its a long video (47min) but I would recommend you look and learn what the banking system really means to our everyday lives. It will eloquently explain why we have a global financial crisis/meltdown.

I hope you are as gutted as I am when you realise who really controls us all! I hope you actively pass this on to everyone you know so they can be gutted as well! Its time to buck the system! Its time to shrink our worlds back to our local area networks so we can look after our own and forget about the supposedly great globalization scheme! Its time to take our lives back! Its time to stop feeding the top feeders and allowing them take everything from the rest!



While you're at it, take a look at this letter from a guy who just closed his Hedge Fund after making shitloads of money from betting (hedging) that the sub-prime mortgage market would fall down hard!

The Big Picture!

The system is corrupt, its time to change the system, any ideas?

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

DARE DEVILS AND GODS

Bit of a mixed bag for you all today...

THE BIG WALK
The daring step of this guy blew my mind. I had vertigo just watching. The place is El Camino Del Rey in Spain. The walkway was built in 1905 and has fallen into disrepair, and although people are warned not to take the walk, many people still do and quite a few have fallen and died. That’s what makes this guy’s walk so scary, he doesn’t seem to take any precautions just keeps on going...amazing!!


PERMISSABLE IMPURITY – Managed by God!
This article is about the rules of Sharia Law for investments but its really about bending the rules with 'permissable impurity'... interesting justifications going on here!


DARA AND SARAH DONT WANT TO PLAY WITH BARBIE AND HER FRIENDS
And last but not least is the story of Barbie, Spiderman and Harry Potter all being banned from Iran for their destructive cultural and social consequences. While importing the toys is not necessarily illegal, it is discouraged by a government that seeks to protect Iranians from what it calls the negative effects of Western culture and smuggled imports pose a threat to the “identity” of the new generation.

Barbie is sold wearing swimsuits and miniskirts in a society where women must wear head scarves in public and men and women are not allowed to swim together.

In 2002, Iran introduced its own competing dolls — the twins Dara and Sara — who were designed to promote traditional values with their modest clothing and pro-family stories. But the dolls proved unable to stem the Barbie tide.

Yeah, mustn’t let things get too out of hand, throw that Barbie doll into the bin girls and get your scarf back on..... your identity is slipping!

Friday, April 25, 2008

OPPOSITES ATTRACT

Sorry to have dropped out for a while, life is going very fast at the moment. I can hardly believe its been a month since I last posted. Here's something I eventually found that made my heart go thump!

This is a story about a dying professor who is now too sick to carry on teaching, his students who are praying for a miracle and the awfully sad ending to his lifetime passion. Makes for a very unusual story on a few levels really.

Professor of Law Stephen Gey is rapidly succumbing to Lou Gehrig's disease.
"Lou Gehrig's disease is amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, a progressive, incurable disease that destroys motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord. Famed physicist Stephen Hawking has the hereditary kind, which is devastating, but not life-threatening. Gey has the nonhereditary kind, which kills by slow paralysis."

"One of the few hopeful avenues of ALS research has involved the transplanting of embryonic stem cells. Such research has been limited for seven years in the United States by religious conservatives and the Bush administration. His adversaries have erased his last chance. "The irony doesn't escape me."

"Gey uses a lawyer's words to define his situation: cognitive dissonance. He cannot pray for a miracle. "I have a disease you wouldn't give to your worst enemy," he says, as if arguing before a jury. "If you believe in a caring, all-knowing God, how can you reconcile that? I can only approach it fatalistically. Stuff happens."

Monday, March 24, 2008

RIGHT TO DIE - CHANTAL SEBIRE

I read with great sorrow that this amazing woman has died alone. Why she was alone was not revealed, but I think its a great shame that it seems, in the end, she had to kill herself secretly.

Chantal's story is an excruciatingly sad tale. Her attempt to gain the right to die by the law and her brave willingness to expose her horrifyingly fragile situation to a world obsessed by beauty and a world media always on alert for graphic pictures of non-beauty has become the latest focus of the debate on our ethical dilemma of euthanasia.

I wish that somehow she could have had a grand send off surrounded by her family and friends.....instead of alone.

Chantal suffered from an incurable esthesioneuroblastoma tumour which had been attacking her sinus cavities for eight years. She approached the Law Courts in France in the hope they would intervene in her case and permit her request for active euthanasia. This request was denied even though her face was completely disfigured, her sight was gone, she had no sense of smell or taste and she was in continual pain. In her request she cited “intense and permanent suffering” and the “incurable character of the disease” she was suffering from as reasons for “her refusal to have to support the irreversible degradation of her state”.

After the court case she said she would not fight the decision because she now knew where to get the means to do it herself. By outwitting her failing body and the cancer that was eating her up, she gets my respect. I have no idea how difficult it would have been to carry this out, and I hope I never have to find out!

Her lawyer Gilles Antonowicz called on the President to change the law on the end of life.
“Our law is inhuman. The law must be changed because we see that people are left on the side of the road”.

Active euthanasia, or the act of taking steps to facilitate a person’s death, is illegal in France. The only assistance that is allowed is for medical treatment to be withheld, or “passive euthanasia”. As my dear friend Fiery said in her blog, we wouldnt allow our faithful dog to suffer in similar circumstances, why do we allow it to happen to our fellow humans?

Prime Minister François Fillon said on radio last week "the difficulty for me in this case is that we are at the limit of what society can say, of what the law can do. I think one must have the modesty to recognize that society cannot answer all these questions."

French Health Minister Roselyne Bachelot told the same radio station that "neither the medical world nor the authorities can promote active euthanasia, whatever the gravity of the illness."

Its what is called a a moral dilemma. A moral and legal code that allows people to linger in distressing states until their inevitable demise rather than bringing about their immediate death has big issues. This is especially the case where the patient is conscious and must endure the physical pain of a debilitating illness.

The reason that we don’t take the compassionate path is because most of us cling to the belief that there is a morally relevant difference between killing and letting die. Or the belief that the sky daddy is in charge and you must literally suffer your fate to strengthen your faith...god works in mysterious ways...ugh how repugnant!

I initially felt we absolutely and irrefutably owed it to each other to not allow the other to suffer consciously in continued agony when there is in reality no chance of survival. Now, after doing some research on outcomes in countries where euthanasia is legal I find myself only just beginning to understand that the whole thing is shatteringly complicated and I'm confusedly not so sure where I stand.

Here's a link to some information on what has been happening in Holland where euthanasia is legal, there have been some reports of abuse, mostly by doctors.

"In Holland euthanasia does not remain a "right" only for the terminally-ill, competent adult who requests it, no matter how many safeguards are established. As a "right," it inevitably is applied to those who are chronically ill, disabled, elderly, mentally ill, mentally retarded, and depressed-- the rationale being that such individuals should have the same "right" to end their suffering as anyone else, even if they do not or cannot voluntarily request death."

I dont know the answers, but for this sufferer - Chantal Sebire - it was a lonely and seemingly inhumane way to die.

Thursday, February 28, 2008

BOOK-TAGGED

I've just been tagged by a couple of nice people, T&A and Fiery, and as I have a few minutes up my sleeve, even though I'm not wearing sleeves, thought it would be fun to get it done.

Here are the rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book with more than 123 pages.
2. Go to page 123 in the book.
3. Find the first 5 sentences.
4. Post the NEXT 3 sentences.
5. Tag 5 people.

Next to me are a pile of books purchased early last year when we first started looking at Atheism.

There is Richard Dawkins a plenty...."Unweaving the Rainbow"..."The Extended Phenotype"..."The Blind Watchmaker" and the one closest to me is "The Selfish Gene". Of all of the books this is the only one I actually started to read after the God Delusion....but it's heavy going and I have to admit I didnt even get to page 123....and as its the closest one, this is a bit I havent even read, and it interests me, so I may get back to this book quite soon...

"I am treating a mother as a machine programmed to do everything in its power to propagate copies of the genes which ride inside it. Since you and I are humans who know what it is like to have conscious purposes, it is convenient for me to use the language of purpose as a metaphor in explaining the behaviour of survival machines.

In practice, what would it mean to say a mother had a favourite child?"

OK thats the three sentences, but I thought it may have whet your appetite as well, so here's another little bit up to the end of the paragraph...

"It would mean she would invest her resources unequally among her children. The resources that a mother has available to invest consist of a variety of things. Food is the obvious one, together with the effort expended in gathering food, since this in itself cost the mother something. Risk undergone in protecting young from predators is another resource which the mother can 'spend' or refuse to spend. Energy and time devoted to nest or home maintenance, protection from the elements, and, in some species, time spent in teaching children, are valuable resources which a parent can allocate to children, equally or unequally as she 'chooses'."

Interesting and thought provoking, but out of context like this, perhaps a little difficult to grasp....get the book, oh and thanks to Richard Dawkins for allowing me to promote this book :-D

I'm looking at who has already been tagged, and hey its all over, all the people I want to tag have been tagged....dont worry, you know who you are and I'll get you next time ;-)

Just thought of something.....maybe Reg Golb is still lurking, now just for interests sake...whats the closest book to you Reg?