Loosely Speaking

By Ciel - About Me - E-mail this page - Add to My Favorites - Add to Blog List - See other blogs in Everything Else

Wednesday, September 16, 2020

Where to live in this wide country

Will the devastating effects of climate warming change where in the world you plant yourself? This article offers an answer to that question on a large scale: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/15/magazine/climate-crisis-migration-america.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20200915&instance_id=22199&nl=the-morning&regi_id=59481346&section_index=1&section_name=big_story&segment_id=38090&te=1&user_id=8608bdb29cfaa859469ba5cd238706d8 In fact, I think about this now and then, and looking at... Sign in to see full entry.

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

I'm just going to leave this here...

An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars. • A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly. • A bar was walked into by the passive voice. • An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening. • Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.” • A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing,... Sign in to see full entry.

Monday, August 31, 2020

What if...? Language edition

What if we dropped the words Good and Bad, and all their variations, from regular use? What if we required ourselves to be specific, to actually communicate more than I like or I don't like? What if we had to give reasons for what we like or not? What if we found real words where we're in the habit of using those handy little four-letter ones that are, essentially, cheap short-cuts for expressing feelings. We use them and hear them expressing emphasis, too. But what if we made our brains work a... Sign in to see full entry.

Tuesday, August 25, 2020

the towers of babble

I'm done with all the talk: I hate being lied to, especially when it is so blatant and obvious. I hate watching theories, speculations and opinions presented at truths, especially when they are absurd and so totally misinformed. I hate the cheap insults and smears that actually do more for the opposition support than for whoever they mean to boost. It's like watching the black cloud of flies that swarm out of a loaded garbage can that's been kept lidded a long time. My vote was decided after... Sign in to see full entry.

Monday, August 17, 2020

Useful stuff for voters and people who talk to voters:

This is a very long read from someone who knows what he's talking about, so his opinions are worth something. ========== From Sean Freeder (PhD in Political Science from UC Berkeley), friend-of-friend. Well, now that Biden has chosen his VP, and the usual suspects have gathered the various disappointing things about Biden/Harris that they can use to maintain their voting purity, it's officially time to kick off the season of election year in which I get into arguments with everyone trying to get... Sign in to see full entry.

Wednesday, August 5, 2020

Special Privileges

I am glad to see that C 19 numbers in Colorado and specifically in El Paso County, continue to decline. The mandating of masking up in public places may have something to do with that. Such a simple and easy solution... and yet--All those whinging about their 'freedom' are really about protecting their selfishness. They feel privileged to do so. There are many different kinds of 'privilege' we need to open our eyes to, not just White, but also Male and also Female, and Educated and Uneducated,... Sign in to see full entry.

Saturday, July 18, 2020

Who we are

We are not a nation of people acclimated to doffing the hat or tugging the forelock to our "betters." We created a nation, for better and/or worse, based on the sovereignty and equality of the individual. For good or ill, that is who we are. Yes, it is a spectrum of energies that expresses itself through the worst and best of potentials; it is the force behind the open-carrier gun advocates and behind the protesters and dissenters against unlawful authorities. It is what gamers might describe as... Sign in to see full entry.

Friday, July 10, 2020

Okay, I was in a mood...

I usually don't engage with responders like 'Susan.' But I was already in a medium-high dudgeon about another thing when this happened. The initial post was an article about how the Catholic Church lobbied for, and got--through a rules loop-hole, to get $1.4 billion from the government pandemic bail-out funds meant for small businesses. Top Fan Christine Redding Simple fix: Give it back. Distribute it to the people in the community who actually need it. Be better at this that the Government. 89... Sign in to see full entry.

Tuesday, July 7, 2020

Speaking of zoos...

Let's have a conversation about zoos: Animal collections, confined to one extent or another, for the public's entertainment and education; for scientific study of animals; for preservation of species that are endangered in the wild. What can you say about zoos? Are you generally in favor of zoos or not? What are the best zoos you've seen? What are the worst? Why, in each case did you like them or not? What would the ideal zoo look like? Sign in to see full entry.

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

It comes down to a matter of personal choice.

Governors threaten holding back funding for counties or cities that make masking mandatory. Social distancing signs are removed from venues before a trump appearance. Businesses open where masks and distancing isn't gonna happen. Authorities angle to open schools as if there is no pandemic. No one so far has made masking or distancing illegal. A few businesses have posted signs requesting patrons remove masks, but that can't be enforcible. It comes down to this: personal responsibility, personal... Sign in to see full entry.

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