Always From Now Until Then

If you do not worship these men then what difference does it make if they resign rather than stay in the job for life? I see the benefit in not having people resign helter skelter but anybody who hits 80, 90, 100 has earned the right to take a break. If you want them to stay in office longer then pick younger people. Being the pope is a job, no matter how important a job you might think it is. Everybody should have the right to retire from their job. Even the queen of England can retire. Though nobody wants her to because then her son would be king.

A Silver Model of a City on the Air

I was going to comment on Garry’s comment, but then I ended up writing a book about it, so I might as well make it a post.

Like Crimson Curtains Slowly Rising

Unless you can somehow take a story of Israel taking in refugees and turn it into a crime against humanity or racial profiling or sexism or whatever you want it to be. Israel takes in refugees and lets them become full members of society rather than houses them indefinitely in refugee camps or turns them away. I think that is a good thing. Israel is a very small country. There really is not all that much room. But we know why it is bad to turn away people who will probably be imprisoned and murdered in their homelands.

Lord, I Can’t Believe My Eyes, I Must Be Dreaming

And if all that was not enough, my boyfriend is now my fiancé. David got down on his busted knee and begged me to make him the happiest man in the world. Then he changed his mind and asked me to marry him. I thought about how this would affect the most important thing in life, my Facebook status, and said yes. Now we have to plan a wedding while planning an expedition to the highest mountain in the world.

All the Way Home I’ll Be Warm

Jerusalem’s light rail covered by 4 inches of snow

I used to live in Alaska. If you want to impress me with a large amount of snow you will have to do much better than anything Jerusalem can ever come up with. This year’s most snow in the last 20 years is nothing compared to Alaska’s most snow in the last 20 minutes.

Me covered by 4 feet of snow

You Came and You Gave Without Taking

I understand all the filler in between sets. People have to move all of those instruments on and off the stage and TV audiences cannot be expected to stay tuned for five seconds without something shiny to keep their attention. All the tributes to everybody who ever lived anywhere near New York and New Jersey were a bit much but you have to expect that sort of thing from Americans. The comedy bits could have been cut entirely. That drunk guy thing from Saturday Night Live was terrible. Is this what Saturday Night Live does now? Bad drunk impressions are not as edgy as they were back when Buster Keaton did them.

We Kissed As Though Nothing Could Fall

The soldiers we deal with are not necessarily heroes either. The current trend is to call all soldiers heroes but most just do a routine job. David’s job is anything but routine. If the day comes when he has to jump on the proverbial grenade then he will be a hero. I would rather that never happen. He would be called a hero but I would be too selfish to see it that way. If anybody told me he saved lives I would point out that he has also taken lives, so it all balances out. Some of the soldiers who actually sacrifice their own lives to save others have also killed others. There is nothing heroic about putting a bullet in your enemy’s brain.

Blame Canada

Carter: Israel not committed to two-state solution
By REUTERS
10/22/2012

Former US president says two-state approach seems to have been "abandoned," points finger at PM during "Elders" visit.

Former US president Jimmy Carter on Monday said the Israeli-Palestinian peace process had reached a crisis point and that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's government was not pursuing a two-state solution.

"That policy of promoting a two-state solution seems to be abandoned now and we are deeply concerned about this move towards this catastrophic so-called one-state choice ... this is a major concern," Carter told a news conference.

Carter helped forge Israel's peace deal with Egypt in 1979, the first between the Jewish state and an Arab country but has been a strong critic of Israeli settlement policy in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

"Every (Israeli) prime minister that I have known has been a pursuer of the two-state solution and I don't know that (US President Barack) Obama has found that Prime Minister Netanyahu has been willing to go that route," Carter added.

He spoke during a visit along with other members of "The Elders", a group of former world leaders, to Israel, the West Bank and Egypt.

"All indications to us is that this two-state solution has basically been abandoned and we've had a moving forward towards a 'greater Israel' which I think is contrary to the two-state solution concept," Carter said.

Netanyahu has voiced support for a two-state solution, but has said a future Palestinian country must be demilitarized and accept an Israeli military presence along the Jordan River, its likely eastern frontier.

Israeli Apartheid

Under apartheid, blacks were not citizens of their own country. Since they were not citizens of any country they could not get passports to go elsewhere. Not that many blacks had enough money to go anywhere. There was no legal black infrastructure and the only way to make any money was to work for whites. They could not vote in elections or hold any public office. They could not use white hospitals, schools, parks, transportation.

Every Israeli citizen has the same rights and responsibilities as every other Israeli citizen, regardless of religion, race, gender, sexuality. There are laws against discrimination just like any other advanced democracy. Israelis can leave the country any time and live somewhere else if they want.

Citizens of Palestine have limited rights, especially women, homosexuals, Christians. Palestine is not a democracy. Their president’s term ended in 2009, yet he continues to rule unelected. Most Palestinians cannot legally leave the country, except to go into Israel, and if they go somewhere else they are usually forced into refugee camps and never allowed to assimilate into that country. Palestine’s infrastructure is the responsibility of the Palestinian government, though they get a great deal of assistance from Israel. Some people used to complain that Israeli funded hospitals in Palestine were occupation. But when Israel completely pulled out of Gaza those same people complained that Israel was hindering Palestinian access to health care.

Will This Wind Be So Mighty As to Lay Low the Mountains of the Earth

We had previously discussed injuries in relation to the mountain. In the unlikely event that one or both of us make it to the summit we are on our own. We are going as a group but beyond the death zone it is every woman for herself. You can’t take somebody down with you if they are unable to move on their own. This is why people are sometimes left to die. It is not that they were with heartless bastards. It is physically impossible for any human being to carry the equipment they need to survive and another person down from the death zone. Helicopter rescue is not an option. You can’t actually land that high on the mountain and a stable hover is incredibly dangerous to everybody involved. I would never do it.

Happy New Year

The funny thing about significant others is that they have families too. During festivals where one normally spends time with family, which family does one choose? This has always been an easy choice for my older sisters. Since they cannot bear to leave my mother and grandmother alone they spend family festivals with them rather than their husband’s families. While I agree with that in principle, my boyfriend is rather close to his family. He does not want to be away from them any more than I want to be away from mine.

World Leader Pretend

I’m going to ignore how annoying it is that it takes them so long to hold elections. France held elections in April, run-offs 2 weeks later and Hollande was sworn in a week after that. Our 2009 elections were in February. About a week later Netanyahu was asked to form a coalition. A month later he was prime minister. It would have been faster had Livni been able to form a coalition. I still think she would have been a better PM.

Americans do it differently. Obama started campaigning in February 2007. He was elected in November 2008 and took office in January 2009. It takes them 2 years to get a job that lasts 4 years.

I suppose I’m not going to ignore it. Hindsight is 50/50.

Biko

For their efforts, Helen Zille and Donald Woods lost their jobs. Zille left the Rand Daily Mail when it was forced to retract everything she wrote. From there she went into antiapartheid activism full time. Donald Woods was banned and eventually went to Britain. His book was made into a decent movie with Kevin Kline doing a horrible accent and Denzel Washington doing a pretty good accent.

Unnecessary Financial Expenditures

Hong Kong Harbour from Victoria Peak in 2004


2008


2012
If there were not so much smog and weather you would be able to see the rise of the new ICC building, now Hong Kong’s tallest, on the left of each picture. In 2004 it was little more than a large patch of dirt. In 2008 it was probably half finished. By 2012 it was fully operational.


Name the tails

You Should Be Dancing

Somebody suggested I turn this into a Mt Everest expedition blog. That is not going to happen. The trivial details of making something like this happen are just not the kind of thing I would want to read about. Today we looked at flight schedules. Tomorrow we buy crampons. Not interested.

Top of the World

It is the killing part that always lead me to believe that I would never do it. I can climb hills and rocks but I have never thought of myself as good enough to climb gigantic mountains. But it turns out that people don’t die climbing Everest as much as they used to. The equipment is much more reliable than it was in Hillary’s day. They have also been nice enough to set up some bolted ropes before you get to the “death zone”.

That is not my favourite name in the world but it has nothing to do with a part of the mountain that is typically more fatal than any other part. Your body eventually gets used to less oxygen the longer you stay at high altitudes. The death zone is where you pretty much die from lack of oxygen no matter how long you stay. That is why you bring oxygen with you when you climb Mt Everest.

Yitzhak Shamir

1915-2012

He was before my time. I was in primary school when he was PM, but the older folks seem to remember him fondly.

Does Size Matter?

Work


Fancy


Rugged outdoor


Everything else

There have been quite a few studies about penis size, some more reputable than others. Kinsey had a hard-on for penises, so to speak. It’s worth noting that in every study where men measure their own erections the average sizes are higher than in studies where men are measured by researchers. The hard data suggests that most men tend to aim too high. My own anecdotal evidence and highly unscientific research confirms this.

But average is such an impotent word when discussing the penis. According to the American Journal of Medicine the average erect penis is 15cm from top to tail. I shall use centimetres instead of inches since the numbers are bigger and that makes men very happy. According to Playboy Magazine the average length is 46cm. I don’t know if either study was questionnaire-based or hands-on. I would think that anybody who cares about accuracy would have a bone to pick with the Playboy study.

How to Be Antisemantic

There is also an issue of grammar at play. “Jew” is a noun while “Jewish” is an adjective. This is different from “Christian” or “Muslim” which can be either. You can say “she is Christian” and “he is a Muslim” but you cannot say “she is a Jewish” or “he is Jew”. Unless you are Chinese and don’t use articles. There actually is no difference between “Jewish” and “Jew” in Chinese. And the word “pig” in Chinese [豬] sounds like “jew”. I don’t know whose idea that was.

Obviously if you want to use “Jewish” as an adjective to describe a noun then by all means do so. “She is the first Jewish president of Saudi Arabia” is perfectly acceptable. Maybe not so much to the Saud family.

Never Has So Much Been Made of So Little

The list of his government abuses against the women he has raped and those who investigate his corruption is long and tedious. Now we can add to that his attempt to censor a work of art that most people would have never heard about had he not tried to censor it. Since he had to go through the courts to close down the gallery where the painting was on display and since the courts took too long to bow down to his will, he had some of his thugs go into the gallery and destroy the painting.

It used to look like this:

The Spear by Brett Murray

Destroying original works of art in the internet age does nothing to keep them out of millions of computers. Now that Zuma’s henchmen have destroyed the real thing, even more people will see digital copies.


http://www.da.org.za/newsroom.htm?action=view-news-item&id=10704