Vagueness and the Aftermath - A sporadic diary

[doubleup]

She's not is she?

I demand to know what gives her the right to come on here pretending to be a girl.

sort of reverse http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelfth_Night

which character are you?  (Sir Toby Belch is already taken)

 

[RED-DOG]

She's not is she?

I demand to know what gives her the right to come on here pretending to be a girl.

sort of reverse http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelfth_Night

which character are you?  (Sir Toby Belch is already taken)

  

I'll be Duke Orsino

Dear lad, believe it, for they shall yet belie thy happy years, that say thou art a man: Diana's lip is not more smooth and rubious, thy small pipe is as the maiden's organ, shrill and sound, and all is semblative a woman's part.

[RED-DOG]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-16696347


According to this story, US Republican Mitt Romney earned 42 million in the last two years, from which he expects to pay about 6.2 million in taxes, which works out at 13.9%


His rival, a Mr Newt Gingrich, released his tax figures on Saturday, saying he paid nearly $1m last year, a rate of about 31%. Which, in his opinion at least, makes him a better candidate. (US elections are fought on such dirty issues).





What I want to know is, how much tax would a UK businessman be paying of 21 million per annum? Do we have anyone left who earns that much, (tikay doesn't count) or have they all buggered off to countries who understand that it's better to have 15% of everything than 90% of nothing?

[RED-DOG]

While I'm looking at the news, can someone please check out this story for me? It appears to be saying that there is a pile, a lump, a hill or whatever you want to call it, of fresh water in the middle of the Arctic ocean.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16657122

[Laxie]

While I'm looking at the news, can someone please check out this story for me? It appears to be saying that there is a pile, a lump, a hill or whatever you want to call it, of fresh water in the middle of the Arctic ocean.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16657122

Yep.  That's what it says. 

How many cups of tea/coffee have you had so far today?

[tikay]

Great post, Doobs. Have just been on Wiki, excellent find, and Saba is close to St Maarten, which was the subject of the earlier "scary landing" posts.

Am on I-pad, damn, I can't seem to post links on it.

Thankfully you haven't posted those links, so that means I can appear intelligent to Red

Another interesting thing about Saba is that it has a university medical school which adds 300 extra residents to the 1800 permanent population.

When I first read that I was thinking why on earth would anyone set up a medical school there, but I later realised that if I was going to study to be a doctor, where better than an unspoilt caribbean island with great diving a few miles off shore.  In fact if I wasn't old, married and had no kids, I'd be applying tomorrow.  I really did always want to become a doctor, but I got lazy in my teenage years.

 I think I should definitely add it to my bucket list, but would rather take the boat.

I'm liking your stuff, Joobs Doobs, more of the same please. Different same.

Incidentally, I will take this opportunity, on behalf of Red, & because he has not addressed it, to apologise for the gender confusion yesterday.

Red's interest arose, one suspects, because your alias is Doobs, & a well-known female blonde has the alias of Joobs. Identical, see? Almost. And dear Joobs is, shall we say, well designed & constructed, featuring some especially interesting cantilevered features.

Hence his salivation. Now he knows you are of a male disposition, his interest will rapidly wane.

Feel free to visit next door, where we pay a little more attention to detail.

[RED-DOG]

Just lately, I've been wrestling with the thorny issue of animal experimentation.

Not, I hasten to add, animal experimentation for the purpose of finding out more about the animal, nor for the purpose of testing cosmetics, but for the testing of drugs which might prevent human deaths or, more importantly, human suffering.

Is it OK in some situations?

Something else that clouds the issue, (for me at least). Does it make a difference if we are experimenting on fruit flies, goldfish, mice or monkeys?

[tikay]

Just lately, I've been wrestling with the thorny issue of animal experimentation.

Not, I hasten to add, animal experimentation for the purpose of finding out more about the animal, nor for the purpose of testing cosmetics, but for the testing of drugs which might prevent human deaths or, more importantly, human suffering.

Is it OK in some situations?

Something else that clouds the issue, (for me at least). Does it make a difference if we are experimenting on fruit flies, goldfish, mice or monkeys?

I would not dare to get involved in that debate, Tom, it's way too complicated & emotive for me.

However, I will add that fruit flies are really quite special, in their own little way, & in the history of discovering & understanding DNA, which is a truly fascinating & crucial tale, fruit flies figured prominently, because they are so easy to breed & "care for", & the results of experiments upon them became apparent very quickly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drosophila_melanogaster

[RED-DOG]

Great post, Doobs. Have just been on Wiki, excellent find, and Saba is close to St Maarten, which was the subject of the earlier "scary landing" posts.

Am on I-pad, damn, I can't seem to post links on it.

Thankfully you haven't posted those links, so that means I can appear intelligent to Red

Another interesting thing about Saba is that it has a university medical school which adds 300 extra residents to the 1800 permanent population.

When I first read that I was thinking why on earth would anyone set up a medical school there, but I later realised that if I was going to study to be a doctor, where better than an unspoilt caribbean island with great diving a few miles off shore.  In fact if I wasn't old, married and had no kids, I'd be applying tomorrow.  I really did always want to become a doctor, but I got lazy in my teenage years.

 I think I should definitely add it to my bucket list, but would rather take the boat.

I'm liking your stuff, Joobs Doobs, more of the same please. Different same.

Incidentally, I will take this opportunity, on behalf of Red, & because he has not addressed it, to apologise for the gender confusion yesterday.

Red's interest arose, one suspects, because your alias is Doobs, & a well-known female blonde has the alias of Joobs. Identical, see? Almost. And dear Joobs is, shall we say, well designed & constructed, featuring some especially interesting cantilevered features.

Hence his salivation. Now he knows you are of a male disposition, his interest will rapidly wane.

Feel free to visit next door, where we pay a little more attention to detail.

I will have you know that I did indeed compliment Mr Doobs on the quality of his contributions, and furthermore, I have paid great attention to the finer detail of Ms Joobs cantilevered features.

I'm not worried about my readers defecting. Not everyone wants to waste their precious minutes scrolling through seemingly endless posts about the Cheltenham Gold Cup, only to be rewarded by a picture of a gay looking old codger standing behind a stationary racing car.

[RED-DOG]

God help me when Joobs actually sees this thread.

[doubleup]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-16696347


According to this story, US Republican Mitt Romney earned 42 million in the last two years, from which he expects to pay about 6.2 million in taxes, which works out at 13.9%


His rival, a Mr Newt Gingrich, released his tax figures on Saturday, saying he paid nearly $1m last year, a rate of about 31%. Which, in his opinion at least, makes him a better candidate. (US elections are fought on such dirty issues).





What I want to know is, how much tax would a UK businessman be paying of 21 million per annum? Do we have anyone left who earns that much, (tikay doesn't count) or have they all buggered off to countries who understand that it's better to have 15% of everything than 90% of nothing?

The Republican party is the biggest lol in world politics.  They threaten to shut down the entire US government when Obama wants to cut down on tax breaks for the rich and then start moaning when a rich person doesn't pay much tax.

 

[Rod Paradise]

Following on from the guy who dies on Rannoch Moor, it's 40 years since they found this amazing survivor:

Shoichi Yokoi, the Japanese soldier who held out in Guam
By Mike Lanchin BBC World Service

It's exactly 40 years since a Japanese soldier was found in the jungles of Guam, having survived there for nearly three decades after the end of WWII. He was given a hero's welcome on his return to Japan - but never quite felt at home in modern society.

For most of the 28 years that Shoichi Yokoi, a World War II Lance Corporal in the Japanese Army, was hiding in the jungles of Guam, he firmly believed his former comrades would one day return for him.

And even when he was eventually discovered by local hunters on the Pacific island, on 24 January 1972, the 57-year-old former soldier still clung to the notion that his life was in danger.

"He really panicked," says Omi Hatashin, Yokoi's nephew.

Startled by the sight of other humans after so many years on his own, Yokoi tried to grab one of the hunter's rifles, but weakened by years of poor diet, he was no match for the local men.

"He feared they would take him as a prisoner of war - that would have been the greatest shame for a Japanese soldier and for his family back home," Hatashin says.

As they led him away through the jungle's tall foxtail grass, Yokoi cried for them to kill him there and then.

Using Yokoi's own memoirs, published in Japanese two years after his discovery, as well as the testimony of those who found him that day, Hatashin spent years piecing together his uncle's dramatic story.

His book, Private Yokoi's War and Life on Guam, 1944-1972, was published in English in 2009.

"I am very proud of him, he was a shy and quiet person, but with a great presence," he says.
Underground shelter

Yokoi's long ordeal began in July 1944 when US forces stormed Guam as part of their offensive against the Japanese in the Pacific.

The fighting was fierce, casualties were high on both sides, but once the Japanese command was disrupted, soldiers such as Yokoi and others in his platoon, were left to fend for themselves.

"From the outset they took enormous care not to be detected, erasing their footprints as they moved through the undergrowth," Hatashin said.

In the early years the Japanese soldiers, soon reduced to a few dozen in number, caught and killed local cattle to feed off.

But fearing detection from US patrols and later from local hunters, they gradually withdrew deeper into the jungle.

There they ate poisonous toads, river eels and rats.

Yokoi made a trap from wild reeds for catching the eels. He also dug himself an underground shelter, supported with strong bamboos.

"He was an extremely resourceful man," Hatashin says.

Keeping himself busy also kept him from thinking too much about his predicament, or his family back home, he said.
Return to Guam

Yokoi's own memoirs of his time in hiding reveal his desperation not to give up hope, especially in the last eight years when he was totally alone - his last surviving two companions died in flooding in 1964.

Turning his thoughts to his ageing mother back home, he at one point writes: "It was pointless to cause my heart pain by dwelling on such things."

And of another occasion, when he was desperately sick in the jungle, he writes: "No! I cannot die here. I cannot expose my corpse to the enemy. I must go back to my hole to die. I have so far managed to survive but all is coming to nothing now."

Two weeks after his discovery in the jungle, Yokoi returned home to Japan to a hero's welcome.

He was besieged by the media, interviewed on radio and television, and was regularly invited to speak at universities and in schools across the country.

Hatashin, who was six when Yokoi married his aunt, said that the former soldier never really settled back into life in modern Japan.

He was unimpressed by the country's rapid post-war economic development and once commented on seeing a new 10,000 Yen bank note that the the currency had now become "valueless".

According to Hatashin, his uncle grew increasingly nostalgic about the past as he grew older, and before his death in 1997 he went back to Guam on several occasions with his wife.

Some of his prize possessions from those years in the jungle, including his eel traps, are still on show in a small museum on the island.

Obviously he was trying to stay hidden, but what an achievement. I suppose it's natural that he would find it hard to settle in modern Japan after a life like that.

[Rod Paradise]

Just lately, I've been wrestling with the thorny issue of animal experimentation.

Not, I hasten to add, animal experimentation for the purpose of finding out more about the animal, nor for the purpose of testing cosmetics, but for the testing of drugs which might prevent human deaths or, more importantly, human suffering.

Is it OK in some situations?

Something else that clouds the issue, (for me at least). Does it make a difference if we are experimenting on fruit flies, goldfish, mice or monkeys?

I think it can be a necessary evil Red, as long as the people doing it have a conscience and care for the animals well. THere is a problem in that when you give some people power over others (animals or humans unfortunately) they end up abusive, that disgusts me.

My kid sister worked in cancer research and had to use mice to experiment on -  as an ex-veggie for conscience reasons, she struggled to come to terms with it. I know that her test mice had as good a life as she could give them - to the point of complaints her lab was more like a pet-store than a lab at times.

Some of her work  involved genetically engineered luminous tumours in hairless mice, meaning that instead of giving a huge number of mice tumours & killing so many daily to inspect the growth rates & hopefully, the tumour shrinkage after treatment, the tumour could be monitored without killing the mice, a big reduction in the amount to be tested on.

In a previous role she did discover a cure for HIV - unfortunately it killed the immune system anyway - so not really a big win....

[RED-DOG]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-16696347


According to this story, US Republican Mitt Romney earned 42 million in the last two years, from which he expects to pay about 6.2 million in taxes, which works out at 13.9%


His rival, a Mr Newt Gingrich, released his tax figures on Saturday, saying he paid nearly $1m last year, a rate of about 31%. Which, in his opinion at least, makes him a better candidate. (US elections are fought on such dirty issues).





What I want to know is, how much tax would a UK businessman be paying of 21 million per annum? Do we have anyone left who earns that much, (tikay doesn't count) or have they all buggered off to countries who understand that it's better to have 15% of everything than 90% of nothing?

The Republican party is the biggest lol in world politics.  They threaten to shut down the entire US government when Obama wants to cut down on tax breaks for the rich and then start moaning when a rich person doesn't pay much tax.

 

I know so little about politics dave, but the candidates seem to fight so dirty that they demean themselves in the process.

[RED-DOG]

Following on from the guy who dies on Rannoch Moor, it's 40 years since they found this amazing survivor:

Shoichi Yokoi, the Japanese soldier who held out in Guam
By Mike Lanchin BBC World Service

It's exactly 40 years since a Japanese soldier was found in the jungles of Guam, having survived there for nearly three decades after the end of WWII. He was given a hero's welcome on his return to Japan - but never quite felt at home in modern society.

For most of the 28 years that Shoichi Yokoi, a World War II Lance Corporal in the Japanese Army, was hiding in the jungles of Guam, he firmly believed his former comrades would one day return for him.

And even when he was eventually discovered by local hunters on the Pacific island, on 24 January 1972, the 57-year-old former soldier still clung to the notion that his life was in danger.

"He really panicked," says Omi Hatashin, Yokoi's nephew.

Startled by the sight of other humans after so many years on his own, Yokoi tried to grab one of the hunter's rifles, but weakened by years of poor diet, he was no match for the local men.

"He feared they would take him as a prisoner of war - that would have been the greatest shame for a Japanese soldier and for his family back home," Hatashin says.

As they led him away through the jungle's tall foxtail grass, Yokoi cried for them to kill him there and then.

Using Yokoi's own memoirs, published in Japanese two years after his discovery, as well as the testimony of those who found him that day, Hatashin spent years piecing together his uncle's dramatic story.

His book, Private Yokoi's War and Life on Guam, 1944-1972, was published in English in 2009.

"I am very proud of him, he was a shy and quiet person, but with a great presence," he says.
Underground shelter

Yokoi's long ordeal began in July 1944 when US forces stormed Guam as part of their offensive against the Japanese in the Pacific.

The fighting was fierce, casualties were high on both sides, but once the Japanese command was disrupted, soldiers such as Yokoi and others in his platoon, were left to fend for themselves.

"From the outset they took enormous care not to be detected, erasing their footprints as they moved through the undergrowth," Hatashin said.

In the early years the Japanese soldiers, soon reduced to a few dozen in number, caught and killed local cattle to feed off.

But fearing detection from US patrols and later from local hunters, they gradually withdrew deeper into the jungle.

There they ate poisonous toads, river eels and rats.

Yokoi made a trap from wild reeds for catching the eels. He also dug himself an underground shelter, supported with strong bamboos.

"He was an extremely resourceful man," Hatashin says.

Keeping himself busy also kept him from thinking too much about his predicament, or his family back home, he said.
Return to Guam

Yokoi's own memoirs of his time in hiding reveal his desperation not to give up hope, especially in the last eight years when he was totally alone - his last surviving two companions died in flooding in 1964.

Turning his thoughts to his ageing mother back home, he at one point writes: "It was pointless to cause my heart pain by dwelling on such things."

And of another occasion, when he was desperately sick in the jungle, he writes: "No! I cannot die here. I cannot expose my corpse to the enemy. I must go back to my hole to die. I have so far managed to survive but all is coming to nothing now."

Two weeks after his discovery in the jungle, Yokoi returned home to Japan to a hero's welcome.

He was besieged by the media, interviewed on radio and television, and was regularly invited to speak at universities and in schools across the country.

Hatashin, who was six when Yokoi married his aunt, said that the former soldier never really settled back into life in modern Japan.

He was unimpressed by the country's rapid post-war economic development and once commented on seeing a new 10,000 Yen bank note that the the currency had now become "valueless".

According to Hatashin, his uncle grew increasingly nostalgic about the past as he grew older, and before his death in 1997 he went back to Guam on several occasions with his wife.

Some of his prize possessions from those years in the jungle, including his eel traps, are still on show in a small museum on the island.

Obviously he was trying to stay hidden, but what an achievement. I suppose it's natural that he would find it hard to settle in modern Japan after a life like that.

I first read this story in the Readers Digest Rod, and I was instantly fascinated by it. Not just the story itself, but by the mindset of the Japanese people in general.

Did you ever see that footage of those Japanese islanders throwing their children and themselves from cliffs, or entire families committing suicide by standing in a circle and putting their heads on a hand grenade when the American troops landed?