Wednesday, March 31, 2010

More of Helen From Margaret and Helen



This and much more can be found here.


"Honestly, Margaret, if I hear one more old, white guy with an opinion about abortion, his skinny white ass is going to meet my rather large shoe.   It’s a woman’s decision to make.  Her body.  Her choice.  Period. 
Bart Stupak is an ass.  If he is in our “big tent” then our tent is too big.  But if you ask me, the real problem is probably that the “pup tent”  that greets him each morning  is too small.
Abortion has no business being a political game… a sound bite to make the evening news.   It is a medical decision between a woman and her doctor.  If you have a moral dilemma or a religious issue, then don’t have an abortion.  It really is that simple.  Trust me.  I know.
Abortion is not a dirty word and I am sick and tired of watching holier than thou white men in Congress  pretending that they have any concept of what a woman goes through when making such an important decision. For some women it is a time of great sadness – a pregnancy gone wrong, a wanted child not to be.  For some women it is a time of great relief – a decision to delay parenthood.  It is a deeply, personal decision made for deeply, personal reasons.  And, yes,  for some women it is a decision they choose not to make – again for deeply personal reasons.
Bart, if you want to reduce abortions, vote to fully fund family planning and comprehensive sex education.   Otherwise, shut the hell up.  We don’t care what you think about our wombs.
Women in Michigan should hang a closed sign across their hoo-hoo’s until Stupak is either voted out of Congress or grows a vagina of his own.  I mean it.  Really. "

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Eco-friendly reusable bags

http://www.reusablebags.com/
The items I ordered to use when I pack my lunch for work came. They are very nice and I wanted to share the site I ordered them from. They were little pricey but I should re-coop the money I invested fairly quickly what with not buying throw away items.

Monday, March 29, 2010

A Book For This Week - 3/30/2010

The Killer Angels

by
Michael Shaara






From Library Journal

The late Shaara's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel (1974) concerns the battle of Gettysburg and was the basis for the 1993 film Gettysburg. The events immediately before and during the battle are seen through the eyes of Confederate Generals Lee, Longstreet, and Armistead and Federal General Buford, Colonel Joshua L. Chamberlain, and a host of others. The author's ability to convey the thoughts of men in war as well as their confusion-the so-called "fog of battle"-is outstanding.

(I finished listening to this audio book on my way to work this afternoon.  It is the selection for the local library's book group that meets tomorrow,  so I just got it completed in time.  The book  is a classic.  I have not seen the movie but plan to.  Enjoy the trailer that follows.  Also click on the title and the authors name to follow the links and learn more.)



Friday, March 26, 2010

What I Believe

Often I am asked by people I work with about my religious beliefs.  They want a label that I fit under.  My standard answer is that I am a deist.   Most people then ask what that is.  I explain that I believe in God but do not have a pretend friend in the sky.    Unfortunately that answer offends people.  So I then back up and say that I believe that all the worlds religions are explanations of the same thing only from the point of view of the culture from which it grew.   Often people are taken aback that as a pastor's daughter I am not in the flock so to speak.  I really do not have anything against the United Methodists.   But I do not think the same way they do.   In fact it could be said that in my journey of faith I outgrew some of the traditional imagery used in most churches.  To return to what I do believe,  the encyclopedia Britannica defines Deism as:

Belief in God based on reason rather than revelation or the teaching of any specific religion. A form of natural religion, Deism originated in England in the early 17th century as a rejection of orthodox Christianity. Deists asserted that reason could find evidence of God in nature and that God had created the world and then left it to operate under the natural laws he had devised. The philosopher Edward Herbert (1583 – 1648) developed this view in On Truth (1624). By the late 18th century Deism was the dominant religious attitude among Europe's educated classes; it was accepted by many upper-class Americans of the same era, including the first three U.S. presidents.

The following two videos explain some of the concepts of  Deism. 




Below find a list of famous people whose writings are consistant with Deism occording to this source:

Akhenaton; Heraclitus; Aristotle; Epicurus; Marcus Tullius Cicero; Titus Lucretius Carus; Lucius Annaeus Seneca [the Younger]; Epictetus; Marcus Aurelius Antoninus; Plotinus; Pelagius; John Duns Scotus; Netzahualcoyotl; Nicolaus Copernicus; Michael Servetus; Michel de Montaigne; Faustus Socinus; Giordano Bruno; Richard Hooker; Francis Bacon; Galileo Galilei; Lord [Edward] Herbert of Cherbury; Thomas Hobbes; Rene Descartes; Thomas Browne; Charles de Marguetel St. Evermond; Anthony Ashley Cooper, First Earl of Shaftesbury; Alrernon Sidney; Blaise Pascal; Robert Boyle; Baruch Spinoza; John Locke; Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux; Nicholas Malebranche; Henry Dodwell; Isaac Newton; Gottried Wilhelm Leibniz; Pierre Bayle; Charles Blount; Matthew Tindal; William Wollaston; Giovanni Battista Vico; John Toland; Bernard Mandeville; Thomas Woolston; Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury; Peter the Great, Czar of Russia; Samuel Clark; Anthony Collins; Robert Walpole, First Earl of Oxford; Henry St. John Bolingbroke; Thomas Chubb; Queen Caroline of England; Johann Sebastian Bach; George Berkeley; Alexander Pope; Charles de Secondat Montesquieu; Lady Mary Wortly Montagu; Joseph Butler; Peter Annet; George Earl Marischal Keith; Hermann Reimarus; Voltaire [Francois Marie Arouet]; Lord John Hervey; Marc Pierre de Voyer de Paulmy D' Argenson; Henry Home, Lord Kames; Gabrielle Emilie de Chatelet; Benjamin Franklin; William Pitt, Earl of Chatham; Charles de Brosses; David Hume; Francesco Aleieri; Frederick the Great, King of Prussia; Jean-Jacques Rousseau; Denis Diderot; Marquis Luc de Clapoers de Vauvenargues; Etienne Bonnet de Mably de Condillac; Horace Walpole, Second Earl of Oxford,; Pedro Pablo Abaraca Y Bolea D' Aranda; Mark Akenside; Samuel Adams; Adam Smith; Immanuel Kant; James Hutton; Anne Robert Jacques Turgot; Robert Carter, III; Gotthold Ephraim Lessing; Moses Mendelssohn; Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia; Louis Antoine de Bougainville; Charles Lee; Erasmus Darwin; George Washington; Joseph Priestley; Christoph Martin Wieland; Jean Marie Roland de La Platiere; Paul Revere; Hugh Williamson; John Adams; John Horne Tooke; James Watt; John Hancock; Edward Gibbon; Thomas Paine; Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint Pierre; Ethan Allen; Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours; James Wilson; William Paley; Thomas Jefferson; Chevalier de Lamarck; Benjamin Rush; Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi; Adam Weishaupt; Gabriel Victor Riquetti Mirabeau; Pierre Simon Laplace; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; Stephen Girard; Henry Dearborn; James Madison; Gouverneur Morris; Jean Jacques Regis de Cambaceres; Joel Barlow; Wolfgang
Mozart; Bernard Germain Etienne de La Ville Lacepede; Alexander Hamilton; Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis; Constantin Francios Chasseboeuf de Volney; Marquis de Lafayette; Robespierre; James Monroe; Mary Wollstonecraft; Albert Gallatin; Theobald Wolfe Tone; Jean Paul Friedrich Richter; Elihu Palmer; Karl Wilhelm; John Quincy Adams; Napoleon Bonaparte; George Ensor; Alexander von Humboldt; William Wordsworth; Saint-Hilaire Etienne Geoffroy; Thomas Young; Robert Emmet; William Ellery Channing; George Gordon Lord Byron; Richard Carlile; John Tyler; Gerrit Smith; Giacono Leopardi; Miliard Fillmore; Victor Hugo; Ralph Waldo Emerson; William Lloyd Garrison; Lysander Spooner; Abraham Lincoln; Alfred Lord Tennyson; Jose De Espronceda; Theodore Parker; Jean Louis Armande Quatrefages de Breau; Horace Greeley; Robert Browning; Soren Kierkegaard; Joseph Arthue Gobineau; Henry David Thoreau; Theodor Mommsen; Walt Whitman; Richard Francis Burton; Alexandre [the Younger]; Hubert Howe Bancroft; John Lubbock Avebury; Mark Twain [Samuel Clemens]; Thomas Hardy; Thomas Edison; Wilde; William Howard Taft; Arthur Conan Doyle; Joseph Wheless; Mohandas [Mahatma] Gandhi; Stephen Crane; Albert Einstein; Gibran Khalil Gibran; Joseph Campbell; Robert Heinlein; Alan Watts; Richard P. Feynman; Freeman Dyson; Antony Flew; John Shelby Spong; Carl Sagan; Vaclav Havel; Harrison Ford; Stephen Hawking; Martin Rees; Neil Young; Paul Davies; Christopher Reeve; Carl Safina; Bill Maher; D. L. Hughley; Lance Armstrong; Michael Behe; Michael Corey; Thomas Crum; John Fugelsang; Bill O'Reilly

I am not a part of a larger group or body.  Keep in mind that I live in an area that there are very few democrats let alone people who believe differently as far as religion.   In my corner of the world my surroundings are painted very conservative and very fundamentalist Christian.    But since I am asked by people what I believe I wanted to answer some of their questions.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Crock Pot Vegetarian Split Pea Soup




I made this last weekend and it was really good.

In a crock pot place a 9oz bag of rinsed green split peas, 2 teaspoons ground ginger,  1 teaspoon ground turmeric,  1 teaspoon ground cumin, I medium  chopped onion,  two cups chopped carrots,  two stalks chopped celery,   and fill crock pot with water to about one inch from top.

I prepare it and turn it on before bed and it is ready for my lunch the next day and  I served it with warmed tortillas. 

Monday, March 22, 2010

New From "The Story Of Stuff" People

Perhaps you remember that about six months ago I posted a video that is a favorite of mine called "The Story Of Stuff" and then sometime after that I posted a sequel called "The Story Of Cap and Trade".  Well she is back again with "The Story Of Bottled Water" and I am guilty.  So enjoy the video while I shop for a re-usable water bottle.



Sunday, March 14, 2010

Free Market?

I haven't read this book but the videos certainly make it look interesting.  They are from 2007 but I only just watched them.   I was searching for items related to rampant greed resulting from de-regulation and ran across Naomi Klein.   (not to be confused with Naomi Wolfe who wrote The End of America,  which was thought provoking but also very controversial)   I thought I would enjoy sharing this with our cup of coffee today.



The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism


by

Naomi Klein

click on the title and author's name to learn more








Today's Dinner Conversation With My Family

My daughter, Nicole and I enjoyed an overnight visit with Haily and Tyler, my ex step grandchildren,  this weekend.  When we took them home,  up to Michigan this afternoon,  we then met my son, Scott for dinner at Red Lobster.  Nicole mentioned to her brother that with the recent  wet spring weather she always thinks of him and remembers all the times he had her hold the flash  light for him while he caught earth worms.  Scott said that this time of year they were mating and therefore a person would catch two for each one grabbed.   I then interjected that I thought earth worms were both male and female in one and I did not think that they had sex.   Scott said he thought had always thought that was what they were doing.   So,  being the curious person that I am, I came home and looked up online how earth worms reproduce.  I have linked to the location of the reprinted article.   I was sort of right but Scott was the more correct.  





HOW DO EARTHWORMS REPRODUCE?

This matter is as complex as it is interesting, so put your mind in low gear and hold on... Here's a drawing to help you keep oriented:
earthworm bodyparts
First of all, not every earthworm segment bears sex organs. Counting from the front, the worm's male sex cells lie in segments 10 and 11. From here the sperm pass through sperm ducts to two male genital openings on the bottom of segment 15. On segments 9 and 10 there are two minuscule sacs called sperm receptacles, or pores, where, during earthworm sex, sperm are deposited. However, this is not where eggs are produced. The egg-producing ovaries reside in segment 13, from which eggs are released through the female pores into egg sacs in segment 14. Finally, there's a rubbery, arm-band-like thing covering the worm's body from segments 31 or 32 to 37, and this is called the clitellum.   Now, when two earthworms mate, they line up next to one another with their "heads" pointing in opposite directions. The clitellum of one worm lies opposite segments 9-11 of the other, which, you'll remember, contain the male parts. The worms now secrete tremendous amounts of mucus, until each is enclosed in a slime tube extending from segment 9 to the rear end of the clitellum at segment 37. Now sperm are ejaculated from segment 15 and carried backward in tubes formed by grooves in the body touching the slime tube and the sperm pass to the sperm receptacles on segments 9 and 10 of the other worm.
Then the earthworms go their different ways. Sex is done. However, that is not to say that eggs have been fertilized, because they haven't. It's just that now, in each worm's sperm receptacles, there are sperm from the other worm.
The next step in producing baby earthworms comes when the earthworm is by itself. Its clitellum secretes a second mucous ring that slides forward over the worm's body. When the ring passes the openings in segment 14, several ripe eggs leave the body and stick to the ring. The ring keeps moving forward until it passes the sperm receptacles in segments 9 and 10, and here sperm come into contact with eggs. Finally, within the mucous ring, the eggs are fertilized.
Now the ring containing the fertilized eggs slips off the worm's "head," seals at both ends, and becomes a sort of cocoon, which is left lying in the soil. Ultimately the eggs hatch and tiny worms escape from the mucous ring, into the soil.
The end.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Movie Trailer




Mark and I watched this movie after dinner tonight. It was a good one!

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Playing For Change

A friend of a friend wandered from one page to another to mine and I wandered to hers and found a link to a Playing For Change Video.   I had not heard of this before and wanted to listen and watch some of them with you this morning.