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Our Daily Thread 7-30-15

Good Morning!

I’m hoping that by next week I’ll have things more settled and we can get back to our regular routine. Thanks for your patience and understanding. 🙂

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Anyone have a QoD?

57 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 7-30-15”

  2. And we’re getting along fine, Aj, Don’t worry about us. Somebody will stir up something.
    HI Jo. I hope your day went well.
    What time is it there? I’m figuring a 14 hour difference. Am I wrong?

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  3. I see in the paper ( I haven’t turned on TV yet.) that people are protesting the lion killing.
    I wonder if George Soros is behind this? 😉

    I’m expecting to see a sign, “Lions Lives matter”

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  6. Being a math nerd, Chas’ 40% puzzle made me crazy all night. I tend to think it’s one of those riddles where the answer sounds illogical. I ended up comparing it to Walmart having a sale of 10% off each day versus 10% off of my total purchases for a week. In the first scenario, I shop every day for a week, buy $50 worth of stuff each day, get $5 off each day, and save a total of $35. In the second scenario, I save my receipts totaling $350, go back at the end of the week for my discount, and save $35. What say you?

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  7. Also being a math nerd (and “computer person”) I love my phone number, the last four digits of which are 1024. Anyone care to speculate why?

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  9. I’ll have to ask Paul,, our local weatherman, about the probability thing. I’m certain that it doesn’t mean 100% probability over 40% of the area. I think it means a 40% probability of rain at any place in the forecast area. But I’ll find out.
    But I don’t have time to work Linda’s problem now.
    Linda was born on 24 October? Or that’s her wedding day.

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  13. Linda, rather than the 10% discount (which will always be a 10% discount), imagine that you shop at Wal-Mart on Monday and discover that all week they are randomly picking 10% of their customers for a free gift. You can only shop once per day (according to the rules), but 10% of customers win the prize. Obviously your chance is greater of winning if you go back daily during the week than if you only shop once. Likewise, if the forecast for the month ahead shows 40% chance of rain every single day, you can say, “It’s probably going to be a rainy month,” since it will probably rain several of those days, with that high a chance daily. But if only one day in the whole month has a 40% chance of rain, and the rest are 0 or 10%, you can say, “It’s probably going to be a dry month.” (I have a hunch it takes more than 10 days with 10% to get rain, on average; that is their “nah, probably not” forecast.” But I’d be interested in knowing how those actually play out.)

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  14. On our second anniversary, my husband and I went away for a few days, and we hiked at Turkey Run State Park a couple of times. Shades State Park is close, and we’d heard it was good too, so we decided that on the day we left, we’d check out from our hotel and go by Shades on our way home. My husband checked the forecast, and there was a 0% chance of precipitation, so that seemed like a good plan. Late October would be cool, and no chance of rain or snow–perfect for a short hike.

    As we finished packing the car, it started to mist a bit, and my husband said, “Well, there’s a 0% chance of rain, so I don’t know where this came from, but it won’t last.” We were 20, maybe 30, miles from the park. As we kept driving, he said repeatedly, “Well, we’ll be out of it soon; we’re still 15 miles from the park, and with a 0% chance of rain, this can’t be a very big cell.” But every time he said something like that, it seemed it was a dare to the weather, because it went from a mist to a light, steady drizzle, and finally it was actually raining. Not thunderstorm raining, but “we’re not going to hike in this” raining. At one point he finally said, “Well, we’re less than five miles from the park, and I guess if this keeps up, we’ll just have to go another time.” And just as he said that, the 0% chance of precipitation turned to light snow.

    We couldn’t help but laugh. We ended up trying a different park later in the drive, and we got to Shades last year. (It was lovely, and my husband in particular adored it.) And at the park we visited instead, we got to see several bald eagles.)

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  16. You know, Chas, I do think that lion killing is ultra tacky. The idea that a rich foreigner can just buy the chance to kill whatever they want is a bit much. Apparently there was some monkey business involved, and apparently the dentist didn’t know it was a popular lion. But I don’t think we’d be all that thrilled if with enough money, foreigners could come in and lure wolves out of Yellowstone to kill them. White-tailed deer, sure; they’re plentiful. And come to our area and bag all the turkey you want. But a male lion in his prime is an important part of his environment and of that park, and killing him just for a trophy does strike me as tacky.

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  17. Cheryl, I agree with you. It is ultra tacky to pay $50,000 for the chance to kill a lion when all you have done is kill a lion. No challenge or danger to you. You have just killed a lion.
    I do think all the commotion about it is excessive.
    As Rush points out. The repercussions for the tribe are great. The next dominant lion will kill all the cubs of the lion that was killed. Some lionesses will likely be killed protecting their offspring.
    I hop[e the guy that killed the lion is proud of himself. $50,000 well spent. 😦

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  18. Tacky and morally wrong (and, as it turns out, in violation of some laws after luring the lion out of it’s protected territory in order to shoot it with a bow and arrow — how brave).

    I think it was Phillip Ryken (in his devotional “This is My Father’s World”) who questioned taking enjoyment in even watching some of the more gruesome wild-kingdom style programs (are they still on?) that glory in the violence and fallenness of creation. I’ll have to try to find that, it was several years ago that I read it but it stuck with me.

    But, again, some of the social media backlash in this incident is just over the top. One of my FB friends was urging people to go to the dentist’s Yelp site and trash his business, although one of the comments on his thread then questioned whether this was turning into a case of “bullying.”

    Too much to think about this morning (without even broaching the math problems), I’m feeling very sleepy. Looking forward to sleeping in on Saturday already. I’m just not a morning person.

    A colleague is working on a story today about a Chick fil A (or however you spell it) wanting to open at a new location but getting opposition from the city councilman based on its “anti-gay” stance.

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  19. What one misses by being away from this blog for a few days. Praying for your wife’s healing, The Real.

    On the current topic, the dentist who killed the lion was silly. Everyone in the Western world knows that lions are a protected species. It is like buying elephant tusks – it simply isn’t done. He also helped to perpetuate the illegal hunting trade by paying his guide to get him a lion. Another ugly Western tourist on a private ego trip. It reminds me of the Middle Eastern royal family who wants to buy a large tract of land next to the Serengeti, for their private hunting run. It just so happens the land is also the home of the Masai tribe, who were told by the government they would be evicted. Ugh! Exploiting Africa’s resources and people by wielding wealth and power is disgusting. The dentist lion-killer is a symbol of a much wider and deeper problem involving not only animal, but also human lives.

    As for the inevitable comparisons to the recent PP exposes, the two stories are actually linked in a roundabout way. As Eric Metaxas mentioned on FB this morning, Wilberforce and Hannah More campaigned against both slavery and animal cruelty. “The righteous man regards the life of his beast.” (Proverbs) I mentioned the corruption and exploitation of the third world by the first world. Amidst all the understandable outrage in the Christian community over the recent PP videos, I keep thinking, “Where was the outrage when slums were bulldozed in India and millions forcibly sterilized in order to meet the demands of the U.S. policy of giving aid in return for population control? Or how about the General William Draper, political ally of President Eisenhower, who helped the Japanese government to legalize abortion during the post-war occupation?” Margret Sanger not only founded PP; she was also involved in the formation of the Population Council, of which Eisenhower was a member and whose influence helped to convince President Johnson to refuse aid to India unless they controlled their population. PP’s fetal tissue ‘donations’ are but the tip of the bloody iceberg of what has been done and funded by the West in the name of birth control.

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  20. For Linda, maybe 10 hours out of the day you spend off from work mode? A lot of people spend 8 to 10 hours at the office and then have other work duties at home such as checking email, doing training, etc. That is how it is for my brother. Husband often has fourteen hour work days. But Peter is probably right with his guess.

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  21. Roscuro, good post.

    Not sure what I think about the “watching nature videos” point. I personally don’t like the gruesome stuff, and I look away when there’s blood. But then, I once had to leave the room when a black-and-white TV was showing an open-heart surgery. I’m squeamish.

    That animals eat meat (and that we do so) is a post-Fall, post-Flood reality. At the same time, meat is legitimately eaten this side of the Flood. It would seem that our bodies actually need it, or operate better with it. I don’t think we should rejoice in its gruesomeness, but neither do we need to see it as wrong or shameful. For one thing, predators are good and necessary–rabbits and rodents reproduce quickly because most of them will get caught and eaten, but predation keeps their numbers in check and ensures that less healthy creatures don’t survive to reproduce.

    And honestly, except for the blood-soaked muzzles and all of that, predation can actually be beautiful. An osprey diving in a pond after a fish is amazing. A cheetah outrunning its prey and then tripping it is incredible agility. A fox outsmarting a mouse, even a robin catching a beakful of caterpillars in a lawn where I can’t see any, or a family of barn swallows zooming around and catching insects on the wing–it’s nature this side of the Fall, but it is beautiful nonetheless, and part of God’s grace that comes even in a fallen world.

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  22. Interesting post, a bit long, but worth the read — focusing primarily on our penchant for becoming mobs on social media.

    Cecil’s Legacy: Spawning Cruelty. Think How Many Lions Could Have Been Saved…

    No one argues that what the dentist did was “OK.” Though turning what’s become a horrific hatred, complete with death threats, on him is a curious thing … The link above includes a quote from To Kill a Mockingbird. Mobs are horrible things and in the age of the Internet they’ve taken on a dangerous power.

    Roscuro, plenty of causes out there, no argument there. Yeah, the church probably has missed a few and shame on us for that. We need to be reminded of that. We are, in many ways, in a protected bubble here in the U.S. and Canada.

    But also: Sometimes people/believers are called to pursue one issue over another. There are a lot of spiritual fights to be had in our fallen world. As individuals (or congregations, churches) we sometimes pick our battles. Wilberforce is an excellent example as I’m sure many other causes worthy of outrage abounded in his day. But for him and his wife, slavery and animal cruelty were a particular (perhaps sole) focus. Amen to them.

    Abortion has not been one of mine, to be honest, although I feel strongly about it (though from afar in many ways). Others, like michelle, have been called to pursue it with a boots-on-the-ground passion. Amen to all of them.

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  23. Cheryl, I’ll try to find the passage I was thinking about — it moved me at the time, as I’d never thought of how so many of the more gruesome animal shows had become popular “entertainment” in our culture. His point probably would have included things like dog fights that continue to draw betting (and cheering) crowds in our day.

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  24. As for me, I can’t even bear to watch Annie tease a captured mouse or lizard. 😉 You can have your predator shows. 🙂 It happens, I realize but I think the point Ryken was making was our using that as some kind of enjoyable “entertainment.”

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  25. Roscuro, are you sure that lion hunting is never allowed? That is not what I heard, but I have no way of really knowing.

    Chas–I did see someone was protesting with a sign, “lions lives matter.” Lots of disgusting protesting and threats, IMO.

    I agree that if the law was broken, whoever broke it should be prosecuted.

    However, I have no problem with lion hunting. I eat meat and do not object to hunting animals. It is prudent to make sure populations are not decimated, It is wrong to be wasteful. Keeping a proper balance is a good thing. Over-population of any species is harmful to humans and other species.

    I also have no problem with someone paying big bucks to hunt certain animals if they want to do it. The meat etc. can always be given to those who can use it. There are game parks all over the US and other countries. To make it so certain that there is no longer sport involved is another matter. However, much of the current technology that hunters and fishermen use could make that true.

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  26. Of course, I know a lot of hunters. They are not in the least cruel or mean to animals. Most love animals. They do love the challenge of the hunt and the pay-off of venison etc. I know some enjoy the hunting shows. They don’t interest me, but I am not a hunter. Cruelty to animals is one thing, hunting is another.

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  27. OK, yes, cheering on dogs or roosters to fight each other is cruelty for the sake of entertainment, no question there. I was thinking more of shows that would, for example, show a pride of lions lolling on the rocks, and playing with each other, and grooming each other, and roaring, and the mother feeding her cubs . . . and also then gathering for a hunt and capturing prey, and afterward eating it. I don’t like the close-ups of prey or the faces of the feeding animals, but if it’s part of the look at the lions, it seems completely appropriate to include the reality that they are hunters.

    And somehow we humans do tend to have a fascination with predators. I once received a pack of animal cards in the mail (miniature booklets, each of them focusing on a different animal), trying to entice me to buy further cards, and I noticed with fascination that the half-dozen cards they sent were all predators. I remember also that the cards included a shark, and that was the only animal in the set I don’t personally like, but many people do. We love the big cats, the birds of prey, the wolves, the sharks. We also love the butterflies and the bunnies and the baby birds, but there is something about the strength, skill, cunning, and even teamwork that many of the predators display that we find fascinating. (Though we may also cheer for the prey that eludes tehem.)

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  30. According to Dennis Prager, hunting for “sport” is not allowed in the Jewish religion — though it is presumably allowed for food or other necessity (culling overpopulated herds?)

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  31. I still have Ryken’s book — it made it onto my awesome, rotating antique bookcase last week 🙂 when I turned it up — so I’ll try to find it there tonight. Assuming that’s where I read it … 🙄

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  32. Donna (Guess Who), it is true that one can only do so much; however, I cannot find any evidence that anyone tried to protest those things. It was a golden age of peace in the post-war West. Did they want to know? I began research on this topic, after I had to state that I could not assist in abortions during a job interview. Remember that? The interview happened just after I returned from Mumsee’s and before Aji Suun asked me to consider going to Africa. I didn’t get the job, but I began to wonder if there was more I could do to prick the consciences of people about abortion than to falter a refusal to participate in it during a job interview. So, that summer, as I sat at the farmer’s vegetable stand, I began to research the topic.

    I started with the book Unnatural Selection. I had to keep putting the book down to weep. I could hardly believe that the prosperous and peaceful civilization that I had grown up in could have willingly and callously used that prosperity to destroy the future children of other civilizations. I then started reading The Merchants of Despair and the meticulously researched Fatal Misconception, although I had to leave for Africa before I finished them. I have resumed reading them, although I find it such painful reading. I have been thinking of what the Bible says. In Genesis chapter nine, God gave His covenant to Noah and told him he could eat animals; but man was made in the image of God, and whoever shed the blood of a man, by man his blood would be shed.

    It has become apparent, as I read, that the lives destroyed by the population control programs of the West rival the human destruction committed by Hitler and Stalin. It amounts to tens, probably hundreds, of millions. Even China’s one child policy was influenced by the work of Western eugenicists. I wonder if the millions of aborted children in the West are the shedding of blood exacted for the actions of the West in other countries. I have just finished reading the end of second Kings, where Josiah finds the law of Moses, and asks the prophetess Huldah what can they do. She replied that God would destroy Jerusalem in payment for the innocent blood with which Manasseh had filled it. Josiah’s actions of repentance only delayed the destruction until after his death. It was too late.

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  33. K, I think hunting lions who are a threat or man-killers is allowed. What I meant by my remark is that knowing that they are endangered, most people in the West would not make it their ambition to go all the way to Africa to kill one. Donna remarked on yesterday’s news thread that it seems that for all this man’s claims of ignorance, this is not the first time he has violated hunting laws. In other words, he hunts for his own egotistical reasons and doesn’t care how his actions affect others. I’m all for responsible hunting. It is another way of carefully farming the earth’s resources, which is man’s purpose on earth. I have a friend who is very much into green policies, conservation, etc., but she also likes hunting. Canada, with all our forests and vast tracts of uninhabited land, has many professional hunters who hunt for a living. It is a part of life up here, but we have no use for the rich guy with all his high-tech gear who waltzes in to shoot a prize mountain goat just for the trophy (that actually happened with some Russian millionaire a few years ago).

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  34. Peter is correct, 1024 is 2 to the 10th power and is a kilobyte. WHICH, by the way, was the origin of using K, as in “this house costs 300K.” So it is now used to represent 1000, when it is really 1024. Being a math nerd (and “computer person”) I am highly offended by that. 🙂

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  35. When son was young he had a lizard named Sandy that we kept in a terrarium. We had to catch spiders to feed Sandy. Will I be banned for saying that I enjoyed watching the lizard’s quick flick of its tongue to get the spiders? We were sad when Sandy passed and buried it with a few words and a rock for a grave marker. I think that was son’s first loss of a pet.

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  37. I once had a house listed where the guy was a big game hunter. He had all sorts of mounted heads all over the house. It was creepy. Also if they are leading the animal out in front of you and all you have to do is shoot it –where is the sport in that?
    I have been hunting. I have killed a squirrel. I would love to go walk through the woods in the fall and winter, but I have no desire to kill an animal. First off I am not going to eat the meat so it would be wrong for me to do so.
    If YOU personally eat the meat and you want to hunt it fine. I know there are some hunting groups who donate what they kill to shelters and charities. Eh…Really? I know hungry people need to eat, but pass the veggies please. My meat comes from a store.
    Not to get too vulgar, but I have always looked at men who are “big game hunters” as trying to compensate for where they are lacking in other areas.. Big Ego = Tiny ___________

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  38. Interesting Kim, Only they got it wrong on a couple. South Carolina is trying to make it with the NC Blond, but she won’t look his way.
    And Virginia is divided, He wants to pick a fight with the bartender but he can’t tear himself away from the NC blond, who happens to think he’s rich.

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  39. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/07/28/how-the-planned-parenthood-videos-set-off-a-renewed-wave-of-activism-on-abortion/

    __________________

    … Activists say there has been a reinvigorated focus on Planned Parenthood since the videos came out, said Kelly Rosati of Focus on the Family. “I think we’re seeing an intensity and scope of response, and I think we’re going to see more as more videos come out,” she said.

    The last time the issue fueled antiabortion activists to a similar degree was probably in 2011, when Kermit Gosnell, a Pennsylvania doctor who performed abortions, was charged with eight counts of murder. At the time, the issue sparked a renewed debate over abortion, but many argued that Gosnell’s was an unusual case. This time around, the antiabortion movement, which is mostly made up of policy groups, activists, pregnancy centers and religious groups, are all focusing their efforts on defunding Planned Parenthood….
    _____________________

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  40. Roscuro, who is the author of Unnatural Selection? I see a couple different books by that title on amazon. (I have Merchants of Despair, probably based on your mention of it, but haven’t read it yet.)

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  41. My point was that game hunting may be allowed. Buying elephant tusks is not. There were things about the hunt illegal and (I would agree) unsportsmanlike. That is a different issue. I see no problem hunting lions. I would also prefer more wolves be trapped or hunted, as far as that goes. Nobody should be going after the ones that are in the wolf center and watched by the public, however.

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  46. Kim, I never thought of hunting like you said. In my family it was a go out in the woods and shoot quail or dove and take them home to the women folk who would cook them up (fried) same as they would do with fish. Hunting seemed to be a way of carrying on long family traditions.

    I did date a guy in highschool who did some taxidermy. It did seem a bit weird to me. We went steady for a short time, and later he and my best friend talked of getting married. Glad that did not work out. She married her college boyfriend.

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  48. Here is a link to a song that was on one of about three or four record albums my parents owned when I was young. They were not really into music.
    Brook Benton – The Boll Weevil Song (live 1982): http://youtu.be/YffLGzIlHwY

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  55. Cheryl, the one I read was by Maria Hvistendahl.

    K, the African lion population has rapidly shrunk to half of its original size in the past couple of decades. Having rich foreigners pay large fees for the privilege of shooting one isn’t helping. Yes, lions can be dangerous to humans, but they also serve to keep wildebeest and other large herd animals in check. Several months ago, there was a video clip circulating FB showing how returning wolves to Yellowstone park stopped the erosion of the valley floors by culling the deer population and driving them into the hillsides. The return of green growth to the valleys, which had been stripped bare by the grazing deer, actually altered the river courses. Similarly, if lions disappear from the Serengeti and other areas, the grazing animals will cause more erosion. West Africa’s lion population is very depleted, and I remember hearing that over-grazing is part of the reason that the Sahara continues to expand.

    Chas, there is a terrible problem with pythons in the swamps of Louisiana. Apparently, during Hurricane Katrina, some pet pythons escaped; and now the python population, having no natural predators or viable competition, is booming. Exotic pets and exotic hunting, two unnecessary luxuries which cause more damage than good. I understand the Asian carp which are tearing up the Mississippi were introduced by private citizens. The fear is that they will get into the Great Lakes, and then into the waterways of Ontario, which stretch in a complicated network which would be very difficult to manage. There was a couple of big ones found in some ponds in Ontario just this past week, and now they are scouring the area to see if there are anymore.

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  56. Thanks, Roscuro. I ordered it. I actually thought I ordered it a couple of years ago, but when I looked for it a couple months ago I couldn’t find it, and then when I looked it up on amazon I saw the cover didn’t look familiar and I must not have . . .

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