09:31 – We made a quick run down to Winston yesterday to pack up a bunch of stuff and haul some of it up. Among that was the last of the food–about 30 pounds of white sugar and three-count-’em three cans of baked beans–and three telescopes–our main 10″ Dob reflector, our 4.5″ widefield Dob reflector, and our 90mm refractor, along with eyepiece cases, binoculars, charts, and other accessories.
Perhaps the pushback is beginning: Armed protestors occupying national wildlife refuge building vow long stay Hey, if the progs and SJW’s can do it, why not normal people?
Speaking of normal people pushing back, it seems that normal Europeans have finally woken up to the invasion of moslem scum and started to do something about it. Even some of their political masters have begun to realize that their actions to date are nothing short of national suicide. I expect to see this pushback become increasingly violent as more and more normal Europeans begin to understand that their politicians have sold them out to an invading force of barbarians. It’s probably far too little and far too late, but at least Europe is beginning to recognize the threat.
National governments are the real threat, in Europe, here, and elsewhere. They’ve always been the threat, and will always be the threat.
13:20 – We just got back from a quick trip up to Galax, Virginia to visit the Lowe’s Home Improvement Center and the Walmart Super Center. Barbara picked up a ceiling fan for our upstairs den. It used to be the dining room, and the ceiling fixture was a light intended to be over the dining room table. We got a low-profile fan-only unit to replace it. We looked around the Walmart. The only things we bought were a couple boxes of dog treats, some snap caps to cover open food cans, six jars of Bertolli alfredo sauce, two 28-ounce cans of Keystone chicken, and one 28-ounce can of Keystone beef. Barbara is making a chicken alfredo pasta skillet dinner tonight.
I noticed that the NY Post has an investigative piece on the tax filings of the NRA.
http://nypost.com/2016/01/03/years-of-nra-tax-filings-are-loaded-with-apparent-falsehoods/
It’s interesting with all the crooked politicians and left wing groups out there that should be investigated, they decided the NRA was the most important target. I suspect that they’re just doing the work that the Feds have asked them to do and this is the opening salvo in the IRS putting the NRA out of business. Disgusting.
“… the opening salvo in the IRS putting the NRA out of business.”
Good luck to them; the NRA has batteries of lawyers and accountants and have seen this movie before. As for who they target, it’s long been blatantly obvious with this regime that they’re going after opponents and dissidents, just like in any other totalitarian government run by a criminal junta.
“I expect to see this pushback become increasingly violent as more and more normal Europeans begin to understand that their politicians have sold them out to an invading force of barbarians.”
Me, too; it’s gonna be a European civil war coming up, but as has been said elsewhere recently, the Big Show is gonna be right here in North Murka.
the opening salvo in the IRS putting the NRA out of business.
Similar to The Church of Scientology getting non-profit status from the IRS. The NY Compost should be investigating the IRS instead.
For you non-Murkans, watch out if Cankles is elected our President. She would invade Oz and NZ “for the children.” The biggest Chicken Hawk ever. Remember, she had to duck for cover whilst snipers were raining thousands of rounds down at her. Just ask Sinbad.
Sinbad said there were no bullets being shot at them, and that the only scary part of the trip was deciding where they were going to eat.
“I think the only ‘red-phone’ moment was: ‘Do we eat here or at the next place,’” Sinbad said in 2008. “I never felt that I was in a dangerous position. I never felt being in a sense of peril, or ‘Oh, God, I hope I’m going to be OK when I get out of this helicopter or when I get out of his tank.’”
Actually I doubt if Cankles could find Oz and NZ on a map; she’s singularly focused on her own power and wealth, and the chickenhawk stuff has to do with the games she’s liked to play in the Middle East, you know, toppling mainly stable and friendly totalitarian governments in favor of radical hadji nightmare infernos.
As for what she says, like her great big lovable lug of a husband, when you see their lips moving, you know they’re lying. Yet amazingly, millions here still worship the ground she walks on; no underestimating the stupidity and laziness of the Murkan derp public.
Happy New Year to everybody, and all the best for 2016!
@RBT: some years ago, you posted a link in your journal to something entitled the “1000 best DRM-free ebooks” or somesuch. In the meantime, I have read those, and am looking for new Kindle fodder. Any thoughts or suggestions, please?
In a similar vein, I have just replaced the old CD-changer in my car with a modern Android-based Multimedia / GPS unit. I gather that MP3 files are now the way to go. Could somebody suggest a good source of a bundle of MP3s, rather than my having to rip my CD collection… I mostly like classical music, and pop/rock for driving listening…
“….I mostly like classical music, and pop/rock for driving listening…”
+1
Mainly Baroque, and 60s-70s pop/rock, old-school C&W, and Motown. I’m probably gonna try out the Sirius XM in the RAV, if we ever get it back from Princess, and also check out their Roku channel on our living room media setup.
What is the sound quality comparison, if any, between CDs and MP3s? I’m also looking to hook up my gizmos this winter and convert VHS tapes to DVDs.
What is the sound quality comparison, if any, between CDs and MP3s?
Depends primarily on the MP3’s bitrate. I can’t hear a difference beyond 128 kb/s, though others claim they can.
Wisconsin lawmaker says citizens can help clean up ‘scum bags’
http://www.wrn.com/2015/12/wisconsin-lawmaker-says-citizens-can-help-clean-up-scum-bags/
Depends on music type. Bach sounds noticeably better at 256 Kb/s than 128 to me. Louie, Louie gets better if you jump from 16 to 32 Kb/s, but it tops out there.
I rip all our CDs at 256 VBR. File size doesn’t matter nowadays.
“Are we going to survive this winter?”
http://www.gocomics.com/overthehedge/2016/01/03
Only three more weeks until Algore said that the Earth is going to cook!
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2006/01/27/algore_we_have_ten_years_left_before_earth_cooks
Thanks for the sound tips, boyz; I’ll have to experiment; I have diagnosed tinnitus in both ears for some odd reason.
““Are we going to survive this winter?”
430 pounds of body heat here, not counting animals.
That Limburger Show link took too long to load; buh-bye!
Algore has become a running gag for years now. But there he is, still talking ragtime and swanning about the planet in his fleets of vehicles and jets, between his multiple estates. It’s the little people who have to get non-flushing toilets and pay carbon taxes and recycle 99% of their rubbish. An inconvenient truth is that he’s a disgraced carny barker and snake oil sales huckster who isn’t fit to breathe the same air of the planet his cousin Vidal is buried on.
If Mr. Chuck is lurking, any update on the ripping tome?
That Limburger Show link took too long to load; buh-bye!
Somehow I screwed up the URL, try it again.
Algore has become a running gag for years now. But there he is, still talking ragtime and swanning about the planet in his fleets of vehicles and jets, between his multiple estates.
But he put solar panels on his mansions, what else do you want him to do ?
regarding cd vs mp3, very few people have the hearing or the brain tuning to hear much difference, and if you do, you probably already notice.
That said, at 128 the difference is mostly that cymbals and some other high pitched sounds don’t sound right. Often they are “harsh” and somewhat distorted.
I’ve got a thousand or more cds in all different styles ripped at 128 and I almost never notice any issues. I don’t listen in a quiet room with audiophile quality gear, or most of the time with good headphones though, and I have some significant losses in the upper ranges, as well as constant tinitus. YMMV. I found that having instant access to my collection means I actually listen to more of it and more often than before.
Storage is cheap, so pick a higher bitrate or a lossless format for archival files. You don’t want to re-rip every few years.
I like my sirius/xm radio, on a couple of different channels. I willingly pay in 3 vehicles just to avoid the dj chatter and ads.
If you are looking for satellite radio gear, ebay is full of it, and TSS Radio in Chicago (with online sales) has an astounding selection including hard to find accessories and older gear, and their staff is very knowledgeable. (I’ve got a pile-o-xm gear to list on ebay…) Get a dock or 2 so you can move your head unit around. You’re paying for the sub, so get some use out of it! Accessories are cheap.
nick
How did the WI guy ever get elected with such a clear view of reality? We could use a few more like that.
And note the lefty reliance on magic powers and symbolic gestures- hang up a ward to keep evil away, trot out the bogie man (fox news talking points!)
It’s especially rich hearing a democrat denounce media “talking points.”
I haven’t gotten my thoughts in order, but I’m working on the idea that lefties are all pagan magic users, and as such, can’t be Christian, no matter what they say. They believe in the magical powers of inanimate things, cast spells and invocations, use talismans, wards, etc. I know that Christianity incorporated a lot of the pagan magic into their worship acts, and co-opted it, so I’m having a bit of trouble separating the two for purposes of rhetoric. Hence, the un-ordered thoughts. I have started using that as an attack on anti-gun nominal Christians in real life though, challenging their use of magic (e.g. gun buster signs as ‘hex’ or ward against evil) vs their Christian beliefs…lately the YMCA.
Work in progress…
nick
Louie, Louie gets better if you jump from 16 to 32 Kb/s, but it tops out there.
Heh. Yeah, I dare say it’s more noticeable in some songs.
And agreed that storage is cheap — might as well rip at 256 kb/s or more. I stick to 256 kb/s, because I have a resilient old MP3 player that doesn’t have a huge amount of space.
By the way, thanks to everyone who chipped in a few months ago with advice about low-budget prepping in a big city. I’ve been steadily growing my food stores, and I’m looking into getting some transportation (likely a motorbike for reasons of cost and flexibility) in case I ever need to leave London in a hurry.
I also began making some plans with friends/family out in the countryside, in case I ever should need to get away from cities. I’ve been using the recent floods in Northern England to persuade my immediate family of the importance of storing food/water — nobody’s starved to death there, but I hear it’s been very unpleasant for a lot of people.
Many things, starting with “Eat shit and die.”
Ditto. Mostly I listen at work, to drown out the incessant babbling of the retards* around me, who apparently have no work to do. I much prefer silence when I need to concentrate on programming or writing, but science podcasts or music over cheap headphones is much better than the ambient noise.
* Arguably they’re much more intelligent than the few of us who attempt to work all day. The state is paying the same rate for everyone in the same category. If one other senior programmer and I work diligently most of the day and the other “senior programmers”** work about an hour a day and screw around the rest, then they’re getting paid eight times as much as we are. That one other American programmer was extremely annoyed with me for pointing this out, particularly as he and I are both regularly held accountable for work not getting done. Many of our co”work”ers make up in blameshifting skills what they lack in programming skills. The good news is, only five months left on this contract.
** A massive lie. As is usually the case for the past five years or more, the Indian contractors who “work” on this project vastly exaggerated their education, skills, and experience.
@eristicist,
Have them watch the BBC Wartime Farm series. That is within living memory. UK imported most of their food, and that was disrupted when the war started. A couple of failed crops in the US, due to, oh, I don’t know, extensive flooding in the Midwest? and our food available for export drops dramatically. World markets reacted and people in developing countries went hungry when US policy caused a shift from growing food to growing biofuels. It doesn’t take a whole lot of imagination to see how our exports could be disrupted again… or to recognize the value of stored food.
What would shutting down the Chunnel do to the London economy and cheap imports from the continent?
What would a muslim intifada in the UK do to security and mobility?
An enduro style motorbike is a great mobility tool. Take the time to look at rail lines, old canal tow paths, pipeline right of ways, and hike and bike trails as alternatives to highways….
Keep prepping.
nick
Y’all need to git yerself right and listen to some ‘Bakersfield Sound’.
“But he put solar panels on his mansions, what else do you want him to do ?”
I just want him to STFU; that’s all I want any of ’em to do. But they can’t. They just can’t. So they must go to the wall.
” I know that Christianity incorporated a lot of the pagan magic into their worship acts, and co-opted it…”
How do you know that? Not being a dick, just curious; I hear this repeated all the time and wonder from what reliable historical source it cometh. Last I knew, Christianity got a lot of stuff from that wandering tribe of Bronze Age desert nomads.
“As is usually the case for the past five years or more, the Indian contractors who “work” on this project vastly exaggerated their education, skills, and experience.”
What a shocker. Yet it’s still true that my IBM job and those of many others stay offshored/outsourced to India. And Slovakia. For laffs, check out their FaceCrack profiles; the young ones really get off on selfies and complimenting each other on how swell they look. It’s a laff riot. Pics at tourist sites there, with those four-headed elephants and snakes and chit. For more boffo laffs, check out the NUMEROUS candid shots of the Ganges taken by Chicom tourists over the last few years. If you have a strong stomach, that is.
“Y’all need to git yerself right and listen to some ‘Bakersfield Sound’.”
+100
There it is.
” I know that Christianity incorporated a lot of the pagan magic into their worship acts, and co-opted it…”
It may not be dogma, but in actual practice–
It’s pretty well established that the feasts incorporated pagan holidays, Christmas and Saturnalia spring to mind. (although I don’t have primary sources.)
Since I know a bit about Christmas,
Tying ribbons and otherwise decorating trees was a roman and germanic thing, IIRC
yule log has deeper origins, as does sprigs of holly, etc
We still put a live evergreen branch on top of a building when the frame is completed and that is Norse, IIRC (in a “Christian nation.”)
Easter is full of Ester/Hestia worship symbols (as well as the time of year)
Saints, particularly locally prominent ones are a bit of a ‘lesser god’ esp when associated with specific things, like finding lost items. There is a whole pantheon of saints to ask for specific favors, almost exactly like throwing coins on a shrine of a particular god…
There is a fair amount of well researched historical fiction, from dozens of authors that incorporate a lot of this.
It’s a way deeper dive to go to primary or even secondary sources, but it’s consistent.
nick
(Don’t even get me started on how it would look to an alien, which is as a vampire cult. “Drink my blood and eat my body and live forever” !!??)
See if http://www.beyond-black-friday.com/2016/01/01/the-110-most-useful-urls-for-kindle-owners/ helps with regards to free Kindle content
he’s a disgraced carny barker and snake oil sales huckster
I like to think that I was the cause of his failed run for president. My letter to the local paper may have thwarted his taking Anderson and Roane counties, which thwarted his attempt to take East Tennessee, which thwarted his attempt to take Tennessee, his home state. His refusal to assist in the loss of a contract and lip service promises that he never followed up, were well documented in my letter to the paper. Perhaps people took notice. May or may not be true, difficult to substantiate, but I like to think I was the cause.
I stick to 256 kb/s, because I have a resilient old MP3 player that doesn’t have a huge amount of space
I use iTunes to rip the CD’s. Seems to do OK, 256kb/s for all files. Storage is cheap. I have an iPod with 16 gig and with 3k+ music files the device is only half full. Use the device in my vehicles (I have two vehicles) to pump the music through the sound systems.
I used to have XM but it just got two expensive. XM is good if you like to listen to sports or news without the chatter and get the same program when you travel across the state. The music begins to repeat after a couple of weeks. It was just not worth the cost.
Tying ribbons and otherwise decorating trees was a roman and germanic thing, IIRC
yule log has deeper origins, as does sprigs of holly, etc
Easter is full of Ester/Hestia worship symbols (as well as the time of year)
Yes, but those items (eggs, bunnies, trees, yule logs) are secular and have no part in any liturgy that I am aware of. The Easter Rabbit is not a Christian saint, and Santa Claus is relatively recent and is so secular that they have him all over Japan and China at Christmas.
There is a fair amount of well researched historical fiction, from dozens of authors that incorporate a lot of this.
Just not by Dan Brown, though. His are of dubious scholarship.
Never read Dan Brown. Not really my thing.
Agreed that other than using saints in place of lesser gods, and the dates chosen for feast days, most of the rest is not dogma. Still a large part of actual practice for most US Christians though.
I don’t blame the church for co-opting and incorporating, they needed to convert and grow. At a minimum they turned a blind eye throughout much of history, when they weren’t burning witches…
nick
“May or may not be true, difficult to substantiate, but I like to think I was the cause.”
If so, congratulations, Mr. Ray! Good riddance. Except it ain’t good riddance, ’cause like a friggin’ bad penny, he keeps turning up. Like Michael Moore, the Klintons, and soon, Barry and Moochelle.
Thanks for that Kindle link, Mr. Peter.
“Yes, but those items (eggs, bunnies, trees, yule logs) are secular and have no part in any liturgy that I am aware of.”
Thanks also for that summary, Mr. ech. I note that a lot of this stuff that gets repeated over and over again, originates with 19th-C uber-Prod pamphlets and screeds published here in the U.S. and in modern times by wack job fanatics like Jack Chick; these seem to take precedence over time and over any genuine historical scholarship. Like, for example, the fact that the Church has assimilated whatever useful practices and traditions in a local area so as to allow its inhabitant converts to approach it a little more easily. You’ll see this acted out in modern times in Latin American and African dioceses, for example, but the basic Roman Catholic liturgy is standard throughout the world for over a billion of us. I can waltz on in to any RC parish in Swaziland or Brazil and know where I am and what I’m to do there. Vice-versa for those folks arriving here in beautiful Saint Albans, VT.
Mr Atoz wrote:
For you non-Murkans, watch out if Cankles is elected our President. She would invade NZ “for the sheep.”
There, fixed that for you… 🙂
Not even rabid sheep or goats would do her. She gives Medusa a run for her money.
Agreed that other than using saints in place of lesser gods, and the dates chosen for feast days, most of the rest is not dogma. Still a large part of actual practice for most US Christians though.
I was born and raised in the Church of Christ. Until about 20 years ago, we did not even acknowledge that there was a Christmas holiday as a church. Now we have a Christmas Eve service with a candle lighting ceremony (the theory that every time our doors are open is a good thing). But, I go to an extremely progressive Church of Christ. 90% of our brotherhood holds to the old ways, or so it seems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churches_of_Christ
Whereas, we always celebrated Easter as a church since that is a scriptural moment that occurred at the Jewish Passover festival. And, we do not have saints. Yet (we seem to adding more and more traditional items to our church).
“He is risen! He is risen indeed!”
Wow, long time since I’ve read thru something like that, and longer still since I had a real understanding of it. And clearly the curse of Babel worked on ideas as well as language.
My immediate reaction to it is the same as many of the “words of Christ in red” churches I’ve come across– based on the Bible but WHICH Bible? What books included? What translations? If it’s inerrant, then those issues are even bigger when looking at translation, historical context, and what’s included and what’s not. KJV is beautiful, and endures, but many acknowledge that word choices and emphasis might be influenced by the patron, or by the translators’ understanding of the patron’s desires.
I find any of the literal Bible churches or traditions to be suspect as we don’t have any contemporary scriptures, only after hundreds of years of oral tradition, and none in the contemporary language of the day, only translations. Early translations, but still. Where’s the primary sources?
Anyway, that’s what I remember from oh so many years ago, studying it…
Could be confused…
nick
If you’re looking for books, check out MobileRead. They have a large collection of public domain books (life +70). Most of the books are in either epub or mobi format, convert with Calibre as required.
MobilRead has almost all the Austin Freeman books in epub. Gutenberg Australia has them all as html or text.
As an aside, one of the major news organizations referred to Christmas as the most important Christian holiday. Heh.
IIRC, the RC Church, Anglican Communion, and many Protestant churches think of the Bible as “infallible”, meaning that it is free from doctrinal/spiritual error, as opposed to “inerrant”, meaning without any error. Literalism is, more or less, the strictest form of “inerrant”.
And on a completely unrelated note, but possibly important for preppers…
The LED tape lights I installed as undercabinet lighting in the kitchen completely blow away all the shortwave stations, and all the ham bands at least up thru 10m.
They are MASSIVE noise radiators in HF.
Note that these are not cheap lights. Their power supply is completely enclosed in a grounded metal box. And my SWave runs on batteries. It’s radiated RF, and it’s LOUD.
If you are planning on using LED lighting after the collapse, or in your offgrid retreat to reduce your power consumption, you may be destroying your ability to communicate (with the lights on anyway…)
Now I’m wondering if any of the other noise I’m suffering with might be locally generated. One more project on the pile, track down the noise….
nick
We, the Church of Christ, used to be exclusively KJV. Many moved to NIV in the 1970s and 80s for its easy prose. Now, I think, we have moved to the NRSV. I don’t know, I am very confused. And I do not read my Bible like I should.
The wife and I have gone to First Colony Church of Christ in Sugar Land since 1989. Somewhere around 2,400 members with 1,600+ people there every Sunday. The parking lot is a disaster. It used to be a very conservative church but is now a very liberal XXXXXXX progressive church. For instance, the main stream CoC is acapella singing but we have an acapella service and a full rock band service. Several other churches in the Houston area asked us to change our name but I think that has been rescinded. In fact, there is even a movement to merge the CoC and Christian churches back together.
I read a fiction book several years ago that made a BIG impression on me. It is called “The Shack” by Paul Young.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Shack-Wm-Paul-Young/dp/160941411X
Basically, it caused me to switch my thinking around so that before I take a stand on anything now, I ask myself the question “Is this a salvation issue?”. If yes, I take a stand. If no, I say whatever and move on. I see very few salvation issues nowadays.
IIRC, the RC Church, Anglican Communion, and many Protestant churches think of the Bible as “infallible”, meaning that it is free from doctrinal/spiritual error, as opposed to “inerrant”, meaning without any error.
Yup, we are there also. “Be silent where the Bible is silent and vocal where the Bible is vocal”.
As an aside, one of the major news organizations referred to Christmas as the most important Christian holiday. Heh.
That is sad. To me, Christmas is a secular holiday.
Christianity is all about the resurrection of the Christ. If he did not raise himself from the dead then all is worthless. Jesus would be just another old testament prophet. His teachings, his life, his disciples, all are built on the resurrection. The resurrection is everything and makes it all the good news.
I don’t see Christmas as a secular holiday, but I certainly see the trend shifting that way. A few years ago I went with my wife and inlaws to see a house in a nearby small town that had been filled with holiday decorations. It was literally stuffed with decorations related to the secular celebration of Christmas of every imaginable sort. The only thing left out of these Christmas decorations was Christ. I lost count of how many Christmas trees and Santa Clauses there were. However, the memorable part was there was not even one nativity scene. My wife and in-laws thought it was beautiful, I thought it gaudy and pointless. Yes, Easter is far and away the most important Christian holiday. But to have a Resurrection, you have to have a birth first.
My three year old called the nativity scene an “angel house.” Thought that was super cute even if wrong :=) “Oh look, they have an angel house!”
Even though we are not religious, we were raised in the church and it colors everything we do. So we celebrate the secular versions of the holidays (oxymoron alert) but also make sure the kids understand WHY there is a celebration (which is the Christian holiday.) Although my wife and I are no longer believers, we believe that it is such a big part of western culture and history that the kids should have a solid, broad, non-denominational understanding of christianity. If the faith part is something that they wish to pursue later, we won’t undermine it, nor will we inculcate it though.
From a practical standpoint, it can complicate life in the South to not be Christian, but as I’ve posted before, most people here will accept that you are different from them, and leave it at that.
nick
Lynn wrote:
Yup, we are there also. “Be silent where the Bible is silent and vocal where the Bible is vocal”.
Tell that to fundamentalist Presbyterians and the other “Reformed”. They have invented a whole tranch of stuff like Covenant Theology, The Five Points of
FatalismCalvinism and so on. They’re as bad as the Catholics, who also don’t allow female clergy.I don’t like the NIV, it doesn’t read right and doesn’t highlight the supplied words that weren’t in the original. KJV for me (or at least the NASB or ASV.)
I’m an agnostic who was raised a Baptist. Read the bible cover-to-cover when a teen just to say I did it. Wife is a Roman Catholic who still goes. Children are being raised Catholic with the understanding that they are free to question everything.
Purely practical from my point of view. They’re being raised as moral, ethical human beings. The church is no better (and no worse) than any other, and has a long track record of publicly doing charitable works. There is a moral framework on which to build. “Thou shalt not kill”. “Thou shalt not covet they neighbor’s wife”. “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you”. Regardless of what the ass-hats in the media try to tell us, these ARE the rules our society is built upon, so a good understanding of these give a good, basic understanding of how our society should work.
And when they grow up, they are free to believe whatever they like.
Methodism is the way to go: Anglican Lite. Yet another breakaway Protestant sect. Among countless others. Ex ecclesia non salus.
Couldn’t resist. My bad. Guilty of “triumphalism.”
Grew up with the KJV and BCP and that’s what’s in my head permanently, along with centuries of English, German and French organ and choral music. But now I mainly use the Douay-Rheims Bible and the Latin NT. And Latin mass is now a 30-mile commute on Sundays. Two brothers are also Roman Catholic converts from the ECUSA/Anglican sect. Mrs. OFD’s entire clans with the exception of one cousin and her husband are all Roman Catholic; the latter somehow got into some uber-weird Prod cult thing years ago and to my knowledge haven’t looked back.
Overcast here; we got several inches of powder overnight and there is snow fog and blowing powder over the lake. Temp around zero with chill factuh below that and same tonight; warming up into the tropical thirties by Wednesday and on from there.
the latter somehow got into some uber-weird Prod cult thing years ago and to my knowledge haven’t looked back.
Was it the Boston Movement? Those people are freaking, uh, should not criticize fellow believers on their path no matter weird it is.
No, I don’t think it had anything to do with Boston. I’ll ask Mrs. OFD, but I don’t think she knows, either, or forgot. IIRC, it’s an actual denomination.
I’m not criticizing “fellow believers” because A: we don’t believe the same things, not by a long shot, and B: any criticism I level is at their belief and whatever organization, not them, per se. The Roman Catholic Church will reunite with the Eastern Orthodox LONG before we do with any of the Protestant denominations. But all that stuff takes centuries; peeps nowadays think changes, innovations and novelties are swell for their own sake and should be done bottom-up and instantly.
I like the KJV, but the major problem with it is that some of the words have shifted meaning since it was written. The language is beautiful, however.
And some of the words from our parents’ and grandparents’ generations have also shifted or aren’t used anymore while new ones abound. (I bet I could use “abound” with the current gen and they wouldn’t “grok” it.)
Other Tudor/Elizabethan/Jacobean texts are equally beautiful, such as the Psalms set to sonnet form by Sir Philip Sidney and his sister, the Countess Pembroke. Or loads of material in Marlowe, de Vere and Jonson.
I’m reading the unabridged Swiss Family Robinson to my daughter and it has some challenging language.
It actually uses ‘thither’ fairly often, as well as report and capital in ways that only our british cousins would recognize.
I do just a bit of editing on the fly as I read it, trying to better keep up the flow. When there is a difficult passage we stop and ‘translate’. It’s the only way to learn…
nick
If the NRA was the evil monster that the mainstream media would have us believe they are, then why hasn’t the House dropped everything else and taken up the impeachment of the President for failing to honor the Second Amendment?
@nick:
Thanks for the numerous tips. I’ve been meaning to watch Wartime Farm myself, and I know it’ll appeal to a lot of family members/friends.
The UK (at least Southern England) doesn’t tend to have much in the way of natural gas right-of-way, but we do have a lot of canal towpaths and bike trails. That kind of flexibility is a big part of why I’m interested: if I need to get out of the city in an emergency, the roads might be jammed or dangerous. Being able to avoid roads (or manoeuvre around obstacles in the road) is worth a lot more to me than being able to carry a lot of cargo.
Good point about railways. It’s actually a half-serious crime here to trespass on them, so I won’t be able to practise the routes I might take, but I’ll certainly familiarise myself with them.
My long-term plan is to move to the US or Canada within the next five years. I’m researching my options for that at the minute, although it’s difficult to say now which industries (and visas) will be best in 2020. I’ll just try to stay sharp with my more traditional engineering skills as a hobby, secondary to my main biomedical research.
“Good point about railways. It’s actually a half-serious crime here to trespass on them…”
Here in the U.S. it’s also a crime to trespass or mess with the equipment, however a potentially greater threat exists at isolated sites along railway lines, whether urban or rural, in the form of very bad characters floating around, sometimes in organized gangs. The railway police evidently can’t put a stop to this but can and will lock up some roving hiker for trespassing, typical of law enforcement’s low-hanging fruit theory, which I’ve seen in action for decades now.
You might wanna check up on that over there in the UK and see if anything similar has been going on before just setting out for a nice stroll.
@ofd, yep there was that article linked here or somewhere else about the guy who noticed a lot of signs of illicit activity along the rail lines and it made him rethink his bug out plans.
Well, there certainly are people along the lines you wouldn’t want to meet, in this world, where you are constrained in your behaviour while they are less constrained.
But after giving it some thought, if I take that route, it will be in a 5000 pound vehicle and I’ll be armed up. If things are that bad, I’m not gonna hesitate.
Even on foot or on bike, I’m gonna be carrying heavy, and so while I’ll have concerns, they won’t be my everyday concerns about running into some drifters as I amble along the track…
Certainly post collapse, if roaming the countryside, you want to avoid the ‘game trails.’ That’s a bit worse than I expect.
I was ready to head out during hurricane Rita, as there was a clear path all the way out of town, if needed. That was not true for roads. And my plan was to use the clear path to quickly bypass the traffic jam, but rejoin a normal traffic flow at a point outside of the jam.
One advantage of railroads, there are bridges. In Houston, you can’t swing a cat without needing a bridge over a bayou or stream, or flood control ditch.
Speaking of ditches and streams……
nick
ech wrote:
“I like the KJV, but the major problem with it is that some of the words have shifted meaning since it was written. The language is beautiful, however.”
I use the New Schofield Reference Bible, in which words that have changed meaning in the last 500 years (like “prevent”) are marked and updated.
OFD wrote:
“The Roman Catholic Church will reunite with the Eastern Orthodox LONG before we do with any of the Protestant denominations.”
What about the Anglo Catholics? They’re practically in already.
Went to an Anglican church last Easter. Very “High” – more Catholic than the genuine article. Well, Adelaide’s like that… 🙁