War and Frisbee Golf and Evolution/Creation confessions
War, Huh!
What is it good for?
Did we ask that during WWII? During WWI? Is all war bad?
Yes, all war is bad, but sometimes war is necessary. It is getting into a fight. It may be bad, yet if someone is continually slapping you in the face you may have to punch them in the nose to get them to quit. If someone is trying to rape your wife, you get them in a stranglehold until they pass out or cease resistance.
When someone is intent upon your destruction and war stops them from destroying you, then it is good for something.
~~~~~~~
Israel - fighting for existence since 1948.
There are very few among us who are happy that people are dying in Israel, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip right now. War has broken out in that region again. This is no surprise, since groups like Hamas and Hezbollah exist to wipe out Israel and Jews and have no other real purpose. Therefore they will always look to kidnap and kill and terrorize at every opportunity.
Therefore, this war had to happen, for Israel was bound to be pushed beyond reason and retaliate. In order for Israel to survive they must stop the ability of the enemy to freely lob rockets onto their lands and in order to ensure the end of kidnappings Israel must be steadfast and not give in to terrorist demands. The only wise course of action is to keep bombing the locations from which missles are fired and to cut off supply routes to Hezbollah in hopes of isolating them and destroying a large part of them.
I would think anyone who took Political Science and passed the course would see that Israel has no choice but to fight. The UN always fails to resolve this kind of situation, they are a useless organization in almost every way. A cease-fire simply allows the terrorists to regroup, resupply and start all over again. But the UN is hardly an neutral organization. Racism in the form of Jew-hating is apparently acceptable within the UN.
Israel was established as a nation by Britain and the United Nations almost 60 years ago. Non-Jewish Palestinians were encouraged to remain in the country and be part of the building of a new nation. But those who sought to do so were threatened by Jew-haters of their own kind and told to leave the country before the coming war to annihilate Israel would begin. The attempt to destroy Israel failed then, and every subsequent attempt has failed as well.
Excerpt from Wikipedia:
Establishment of the State
In 1947, following increasing levels of violence together with unsuccessful efforts to reconcile the Jewish and Arab populations, the British government decided to withdraw from the Palestine Mandate. The UN General Assembly approved the 1947 UN Partition Plan dividing the territory into two states, with the Jewish area consisting of roughly 55% of the land, and the Arab area roughly 45%. Jerusalem was planned to be an international region administered by the UN to avoid conflict over its status.
Immediately following the adoption of the Partition Plan by the UN General Assembly on November 29, 1947, David Ben-Gurion tentatively accepted the partition, while the Arab League rejected it. Attacks on civilians chiefly by Arabs but also by Israelis soon turned into widespread fighting between Arabs and Jews, this civil war being the first "phase" of the 1948 War of Independence.
The State of Israel was proclaimed on May 14, 1948, one day before the expiry of the Palestine Mandate.
War of Independence and migration
Following the State of Israel's establishment, the armies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq joined the fighting and began the second phase of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. From the north, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, were all but stopped relatively close to the borders. Jordanian forces, invading from the east, captured East Jerusalem and laid siege on the city's west. However, forces of the Haganah successfully stopped most invading forces, and Irgun forces halted Egyptian encroachment from the south. At the beginning of June, the UN declared a one-month cease fire during which the Israel Defense Forces were officially formed. After numerous months of war, a cease fire was declared in 1949 and temporary borders, known as the Green Line, were instituted. Israel had gained an additional 26% of the Mandate territory west of the Jordan River. Jordan, for its part, held the large mountainous areas of Judea and Samaria, which became known as the West Bank. Egypt took control of a small strip of land along the coast, which became known as the Gaza Strip.
During and after the war, then Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion set about establishing order by dismantling the Palmach and underground organizations like the Irgun and Lehi. Those two groups were classified as terror organizations after the murder of a Swedish diplomat.
Large numbers of the Arab population fled or were driven out of the newly-created Jewish State. (Estimates of the final refugee count range from 600,000 to 900,000 with the official United Nations count at 711,000.[7]) The continuing conflict between Israel and the Arab world resulted in a lasting displacement that persists to this day.
Immigration of Holocaust survivors and Jewish refugees from Arab lands doubled Israel's population within a year of independence. Over the following decade approximately 600,000 Mizrahi Jews, who fled or were expelled from surrounding Arab countries and Iran, migrated to Israel."
The nation of Israel has been far too kind in its dealings with its enemies, always ceding land back to them after conquering territories won during warfare started by those same enemies. The time may have come for them to change tactics and become more aggressive in dealing with an enemy that will not compromise. Let non-Jewish Palestinians live within Israel in peace, or move to Jordan or Syria. But the Israelis ought to just take over the Gaza strip and kill off the terrorists while booting their sympathizers out. They should occupy Southern Lebanon until Hezbollah is no longer a political force in Lebanon.
I'm not a Jew. But I do have a dog in this fight. Many of the same wingnut psychos who seek to kill Americans are part of the plot to wipe out Israel. Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Queda, etc....they are all Islamofascists of the same stripe. They are all, as organizations, the equivalent of sociopathic serial killers. You cannot reason with them, you cannot compromise with them, you can only incarcerate or kill them. Otherwise they will continue their bloody ways.
The Jewish nation was established by the world via Britain to give them a place of refuge. Russian pogroms killed and displaced them, Hitler would burn them, all throughout Europe they were being harrassed and killed. The area given over to the Jews was an arid, infertile area that they by dint of hard work and wisdom managed to convert into fertile arable land. You could probably write one hundred thousand novels about the settler's efforts to transform the barren landscape into a land of plenty while always keeping one hand upon a rifle.
"When Jews began resettling their historic homeland in the late 19th century, their first efforts were directed towards reclaiming the mostly semi-arid land, much of which was rendered untillable by deforestation, soil erosion and neglect. Rocky fields were cleared and terraces built in the hilly regions; swampland was drained, and systematic reforestation begun; soil erosion was counteracted, and salty land washed to reduce soil salinity.
Since Israel attained its independence in 1948, the total area under cultivation has increased from 165,000 ha. to some 420,000 ha., and the number of agricultural communities has grown from 400 to 900 (including 136 Arab villages). During the same period, agricultural production has grown sevenfold, keeping ahead of the population, which grew by a factor of six.
Israel's varied climatic, topographical and soil conditions (from sub-tropical to arid, from 400 meters below sea level to 1000 meters above and from sand dunes to heavy alluvial soils) made it possible to grow a wide range of agricultural produce. The success of the country's agriculture stems from the determination and ingenuity of farmers and scientists who have dedicated themselves to developing a flourishing agriculture in a country which is more than half desert, thus demonstrating that the real value of land is a function of how it is used." From Focus on Israel
Go Israel! Wimpy liberal pundits cry out for cease-fires and negotiations and compromise. Ignore them. Do what it takes to secure your borders and protect your people from barrages of unguided missiles! Trust me, if Canada was lobbing missiles into Washington and Utah, the United States wouldn't just sit there and call for negotiations. If Canada had been doing things like that for decades, the US might well just go in and take over the entire country! We are hypocrites if we criticize Israel for doing the very same thing we would do in a similar situation.
(PS - I don't expect Canada to lob any missiles at us, this was just a hypothetical situation...)
~~~~~~~
Being continually tired all the time, the first physical activity I have tried is walking. I am tired after a couple of blocks! Being a lover of sports, this means I cannot do anything........but Frisbee Golf!
Yes, I was yoinked into playing Frisbee Golf with my son and a friend. I took a break after almost every hole, sitting on whatever bench or stump was available, and made it through 16 holes. It is a start.
You use specially made discs, which are smaller and thicker than a standard throwing model. Most players throw underhanded, but some throw sidearm and some overhand, or the "tomahawk". I have found I can throw the tomahawk both far and straight, so I had learned to use that when I learned the game last year.
This time, rusty, I bogied or double-bogied each of the first five holes. The local course has "rough" that consists of uncut prairie/forest foliage including bushes with thorns. There are all sorts of trees. You have to throw over, under or between all sorts of trees to get anywhere on the course, it is pretty hard.
I can tell you that it is a thing of beauty to see a properly thrown tomahawk, beginning perpendicular to the ground, adjusting to horizontal, bending to the right, to the left, and then heading down to a landing and sometimes getting a bit of a roll when it does.
My son Dave throws underhanded, taking about a three step and a hop approach and throwing his body into the throw. I can get a lot of distance but I am inconsistent doing it that way, so if I throw underhand I often go way off into the rough. He has it grooved, though.
I was 9 over par after 5 holes. Wes was 8 over and Dave was 1 over. Trust me, to be under par on this course is a real feat!
After each hole, I would sit for a minute and the boys (20 and 21 year olds, young men, really) would look for discs that other had lost. I believe they found two lost discs during the round. On one hole, as they looked for an errant disc thrown by Wes, I sat near the beginning of the next hole, surrounded by trees. A fawn not much bigger than a dog quietly emerged from the brush and walked to within eight feet of me as I sat unmoving. Then it noticed me, ears standing at attention, and gallumped behind some brush. I could still see its outline through the brush. Then boys approached and it disappeared into the forest.
I began to get grooved on my shot and just missed a birdie on one hole by making a long approach directly over some tall trees. The disc just missed landing in the basket and sat three feet away when we finally got there after our shots.
A Frisbee Golf basket stands about five feet high or so. It is mounted on a metal post, with a basket all around the post around three feet off the ground, with chains hanging down from the top of the post that help catch and stop the disc when thrown. It can be tough to putt when the disc can clang off the basket, bounce off of the chains or just rim out. Anything longer than six feet seems hard to me but I made every putt from twelve feet on in but one after the first five holes. I realized I was having fun! After months of sickness and increasing weariness this was a very cool thing.
Dave continued to play well, but now I was matching him shot-for-shot. Yes, I saw a couple of good-looking drives bonk off a tree, but every time I made a good second shot and saved the day. Wes seemed to begin to play more like I did at the start as his drives began to fail him. We came around the turn and Wes bogied again and I was now second to Dave. I finished 11 over for the day and Dave was 3 over, which means from the 6th hole on Dave and I tied. Wes, I think, finished at 15 over. Therefore I am looking forward to playing again this afternoon, since I can be competitive even in my present state.
It turned out the boys didn't mind waiting with me at each hole. They took time to talk, look for discs and look around at nature. The course, as you may have figured out, runs through a forest. Regular golfers may play at a course that has a few wooded areas. This course is a woods that has some FG holes carved out of it. Big difference! We were checking out butterflies, herons, deer (as mentioned), cardinals, and even a falcon. The falcon swooped down over a fairway that tilted sharply downhill and then made another pass the other way. We waited for it to finish before we threw - you don't want to bonk a falcon, well, you don't want a falcon to bonk your disc and ruin your shot either. Would a falcon try to nab a Frisbee disc mid-flight? I don't want to find out.
My main disc weighs 170 grams, kind of heavy for a falcon to deal with but possible. Believe it or not, if you don't throw smoothly with your entire body you will have a very sore arm/shoulder after a day of FG. You learn to use your lower body to help power the throw.
Anybody else out there try this game????
~~~~~~~
Creation/evolution aside:
(I first want to offer my apologies to commenters like scohen/IAMB/creeper and Dan S. I became so very ill that I lost track of what we were doing in the realm of probabilities. There are still about 150 emails I have not yet read and I am sure that some of them are on that subject. I may get around to finishing them on Sunday, if not, then next weekend. Anyway......I have to have hope that I will get healthy again and back to normal, it just isn't now.)
1) I give up on doing the "Horse" probabilities on my own. The audio tape from which I first sketched the odds cannot be found. I am going to post some links from others instead, for my basic continual weariness hinders my thinking processes and I am saving myself for the possibilities of actually working. Math makes me work too hard...
2) The means I am not going to be part of schohen's probability project. I nevertheless will publish any output he comes up with.
3) I have to acknowledge that there are some who believe that this Universe is one of an infinite amount of possible Universes and that basically all possible outcomes have/will happened in one or more of them. It is a bit squirrelly, this idea, yet it destroys all probability conversations immediately.
More to come as I recover.....cheers!
What is it good for?
Did we ask that during WWII? During WWI? Is all war bad?
Yes, all war is bad, but sometimes war is necessary. It is getting into a fight. It may be bad, yet if someone is continually slapping you in the face you may have to punch them in the nose to get them to quit. If someone is trying to rape your wife, you get them in a stranglehold until they pass out or cease resistance.
When someone is intent upon your destruction and war stops them from destroying you, then it is good for something.
~~~~~~~
Israel - fighting for existence since 1948.
There are very few among us who are happy that people are dying in Israel, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip right now. War has broken out in that region again. This is no surprise, since groups like Hamas and Hezbollah exist to wipe out Israel and Jews and have no other real purpose. Therefore they will always look to kidnap and kill and terrorize at every opportunity.
Therefore, this war had to happen, for Israel was bound to be pushed beyond reason and retaliate. In order for Israel to survive they must stop the ability of the enemy to freely lob rockets onto their lands and in order to ensure the end of kidnappings Israel must be steadfast and not give in to terrorist demands. The only wise course of action is to keep bombing the locations from which missles are fired and to cut off supply routes to Hezbollah in hopes of isolating them and destroying a large part of them.
I would think anyone who took Political Science and passed the course would see that Israel has no choice but to fight. The UN always fails to resolve this kind of situation, they are a useless organization in almost every way. A cease-fire simply allows the terrorists to regroup, resupply and start all over again. But the UN is hardly an neutral organization. Racism in the form of Jew-hating is apparently acceptable within the UN.
Israel was established as a nation by Britain and the United Nations almost 60 years ago. Non-Jewish Palestinians were encouraged to remain in the country and be part of the building of a new nation. But those who sought to do so were threatened by Jew-haters of their own kind and told to leave the country before the coming war to annihilate Israel would begin. The attempt to destroy Israel failed then, and every subsequent attempt has failed as well.
Excerpt from Wikipedia:
Establishment of the State
In 1947, following increasing levels of violence together with unsuccessful efforts to reconcile the Jewish and Arab populations, the British government decided to withdraw from the Palestine Mandate. The UN General Assembly approved the 1947 UN Partition Plan dividing the territory into two states, with the Jewish area consisting of roughly 55% of the land, and the Arab area roughly 45%. Jerusalem was planned to be an international region administered by the UN to avoid conflict over its status.
Immediately following the adoption of the Partition Plan by the UN General Assembly on November 29, 1947, David Ben-Gurion tentatively accepted the partition, while the Arab League rejected it. Attacks on civilians chiefly by Arabs but also by Israelis soon turned into widespread fighting between Arabs and Jews, this civil war being the first "phase" of the 1948 War of Independence.
The State of Israel was proclaimed on May 14, 1948, one day before the expiry of the Palestine Mandate.
War of Independence and migration
Following the State of Israel's establishment, the armies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq joined the fighting and began the second phase of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. From the north, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, were all but stopped relatively close to the borders. Jordanian forces, invading from the east, captured East Jerusalem and laid siege on the city's west. However, forces of the Haganah successfully stopped most invading forces, and Irgun forces halted Egyptian encroachment from the south. At the beginning of June, the UN declared a one-month cease fire during which the Israel Defense Forces were officially formed. After numerous months of war, a cease fire was declared in 1949 and temporary borders, known as the Green Line, were instituted. Israel had gained an additional 26% of the Mandate territory west of the Jordan River. Jordan, for its part, held the large mountainous areas of Judea and Samaria, which became known as the West Bank. Egypt took control of a small strip of land along the coast, which became known as the Gaza Strip.
During and after the war, then Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion set about establishing order by dismantling the Palmach and underground organizations like the Irgun and Lehi. Those two groups were classified as terror organizations after the murder of a Swedish diplomat.
Large numbers of the Arab population fled or were driven out of the newly-created Jewish State. (Estimates of the final refugee count range from 600,000 to 900,000 with the official United Nations count at 711,000.[7]) The continuing conflict between Israel and the Arab world resulted in a lasting displacement that persists to this day.
Immigration of Holocaust survivors and Jewish refugees from Arab lands doubled Israel's population within a year of independence. Over the following decade approximately 600,000 Mizrahi Jews, who fled or were expelled from surrounding Arab countries and Iran, migrated to Israel."
The nation of Israel has been far too kind in its dealings with its enemies, always ceding land back to them after conquering territories won during warfare started by those same enemies. The time may have come for them to change tactics and become more aggressive in dealing with an enemy that will not compromise. Let non-Jewish Palestinians live within Israel in peace, or move to Jordan or Syria. But the Israelis ought to just take over the Gaza strip and kill off the terrorists while booting their sympathizers out. They should occupy Southern Lebanon until Hezbollah is no longer a political force in Lebanon.
I'm not a Jew. But I do have a dog in this fight. Many of the same wingnut psychos who seek to kill Americans are part of the plot to wipe out Israel. Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Queda, etc....they are all Islamofascists of the same stripe. They are all, as organizations, the equivalent of sociopathic serial killers. You cannot reason with them, you cannot compromise with them, you can only incarcerate or kill them. Otherwise they will continue their bloody ways.
The Jewish nation was established by the world via Britain to give them a place of refuge. Russian pogroms killed and displaced them, Hitler would burn them, all throughout Europe they were being harrassed and killed. The area given over to the Jews was an arid, infertile area that they by dint of hard work and wisdom managed to convert into fertile arable land. You could probably write one hundred thousand novels about the settler's efforts to transform the barren landscape into a land of plenty while always keeping one hand upon a rifle.
"When Jews began resettling their historic homeland in the late 19th century, their first efforts were directed towards reclaiming the mostly semi-arid land, much of which was rendered untillable by deforestation, soil erosion and neglect. Rocky fields were cleared and terraces built in the hilly regions; swampland was drained, and systematic reforestation begun; soil erosion was counteracted, and salty land washed to reduce soil salinity.
Since Israel attained its independence in 1948, the total area under cultivation has increased from 165,000 ha. to some 420,000 ha., and the number of agricultural communities has grown from 400 to 900 (including 136 Arab villages). During the same period, agricultural production has grown sevenfold, keeping ahead of the population, which grew by a factor of six.
Israel's varied climatic, topographical and soil conditions (from sub-tropical to arid, from 400 meters below sea level to 1000 meters above and from sand dunes to heavy alluvial soils) made it possible to grow a wide range of agricultural produce. The success of the country's agriculture stems from the determination and ingenuity of farmers and scientists who have dedicated themselves to developing a flourishing agriculture in a country which is more than half desert, thus demonstrating that the real value of land is a function of how it is used." From Focus on Israel
Go Israel! Wimpy liberal pundits cry out for cease-fires and negotiations and compromise. Ignore them. Do what it takes to secure your borders and protect your people from barrages of unguided missiles! Trust me, if Canada was lobbing missiles into Washington and Utah, the United States wouldn't just sit there and call for negotiations. If Canada had been doing things like that for decades, the US might well just go in and take over the entire country! We are hypocrites if we criticize Israel for doing the very same thing we would do in a similar situation.
(PS - I don't expect Canada to lob any missiles at us, this was just a hypothetical situation...)
~~~~~~~
Being continually tired all the time, the first physical activity I have tried is walking. I am tired after a couple of blocks! Being a lover of sports, this means I cannot do anything........but Frisbee Golf!
Yes, I was yoinked into playing Frisbee Golf with my son and a friend. I took a break after almost every hole, sitting on whatever bench or stump was available, and made it through 16 holes. It is a start.
You use specially made discs, which are smaller and thicker than a standard throwing model. Most players throw underhanded, but some throw sidearm and some overhand, or the "tomahawk". I have found I can throw the tomahawk both far and straight, so I had learned to use that when I learned the game last year.
This time, rusty, I bogied or double-bogied each of the first five holes. The local course has "rough" that consists of uncut prairie/forest foliage including bushes with thorns. There are all sorts of trees. You have to throw over, under or between all sorts of trees to get anywhere on the course, it is pretty hard.
I can tell you that it is a thing of beauty to see a properly thrown tomahawk, beginning perpendicular to the ground, adjusting to horizontal, bending to the right, to the left, and then heading down to a landing and sometimes getting a bit of a roll when it does.
My son Dave throws underhanded, taking about a three step and a hop approach and throwing his body into the throw. I can get a lot of distance but I am inconsistent doing it that way, so if I throw underhand I often go way off into the rough. He has it grooved, though.
I was 9 over par after 5 holes. Wes was 8 over and Dave was 1 over. Trust me, to be under par on this course is a real feat!
After each hole, I would sit for a minute and the boys (20 and 21 year olds, young men, really) would look for discs that other had lost. I believe they found two lost discs during the round. On one hole, as they looked for an errant disc thrown by Wes, I sat near the beginning of the next hole, surrounded by trees. A fawn not much bigger than a dog quietly emerged from the brush and walked to within eight feet of me as I sat unmoving. Then it noticed me, ears standing at attention, and gallumped behind some brush. I could still see its outline through the brush. Then boys approached and it disappeared into the forest.
I began to get grooved on my shot and just missed a birdie on one hole by making a long approach directly over some tall trees. The disc just missed landing in the basket and sat three feet away when we finally got there after our shots.
A Frisbee Golf basket stands about five feet high or so. It is mounted on a metal post, with a basket all around the post around three feet off the ground, with chains hanging down from the top of the post that help catch and stop the disc when thrown. It can be tough to putt when the disc can clang off the basket, bounce off of the chains or just rim out. Anything longer than six feet seems hard to me but I made every putt from twelve feet on in but one after the first five holes. I realized I was having fun! After months of sickness and increasing weariness this was a very cool thing.
Dave continued to play well, but now I was matching him shot-for-shot. Yes, I saw a couple of good-looking drives bonk off a tree, but every time I made a good second shot and saved the day. Wes seemed to begin to play more like I did at the start as his drives began to fail him. We came around the turn and Wes bogied again and I was now second to Dave. I finished 11 over for the day and Dave was 3 over, which means from the 6th hole on Dave and I tied. Wes, I think, finished at 15 over. Therefore I am looking forward to playing again this afternoon, since I can be competitive even in my present state.
It turned out the boys didn't mind waiting with me at each hole. They took time to talk, look for discs and look around at nature. The course, as you may have figured out, runs through a forest. Regular golfers may play at a course that has a few wooded areas. This course is a woods that has some FG holes carved out of it. Big difference! We were checking out butterflies, herons, deer (as mentioned), cardinals, and even a falcon. The falcon swooped down over a fairway that tilted sharply downhill and then made another pass the other way. We waited for it to finish before we threw - you don't want to bonk a falcon, well, you don't want a falcon to bonk your disc and ruin your shot either. Would a falcon try to nab a Frisbee disc mid-flight? I don't want to find out.
My main disc weighs 170 grams, kind of heavy for a falcon to deal with but possible. Believe it or not, if you don't throw smoothly with your entire body you will have a very sore arm/shoulder after a day of FG. You learn to use your lower body to help power the throw.
Anybody else out there try this game????
~~~~~~~
Creation/evolution aside:
(I first want to offer my apologies to commenters like scohen/IAMB/creeper and Dan S. I became so very ill that I lost track of what we were doing in the realm of probabilities. There are still about 150 emails I have not yet read and I am sure that some of them are on that subject. I may get around to finishing them on Sunday, if not, then next weekend. Anyway......I have to have hope that I will get healthy again and back to normal, it just isn't now.)
1) I give up on doing the "Horse" probabilities on my own. The audio tape from which I first sketched the odds cannot be found. I am going to post some links from others instead, for my basic continual weariness hinders my thinking processes and I am saving myself for the possibilities of actually working. Math makes me work too hard...
2) The means I am not going to be part of schohen's probability project. I nevertheless will publish any output he comes up with.
3) I have to acknowledge that there are some who believe that this Universe is one of an infinite amount of possible Universes and that basically all possible outcomes have/will happened in one or more of them. It is a bit squirrelly, this idea, yet it destroys all probability conversations immediately.
More to come as I recover.....cheers!