More pics of the granddaughter

 

She is very strong, and likes to stand up.

New addition to family

 The following are a few pictures of my granddaughter, Madeline.

Afghanistan

 There is a lot to write about on the topic of Afghanistan.  It is an ancient part of human history, integral in the story of civilization wrapped in a mountainous, arid arid dressing.  War, strife, political and religious conflict have been a fact of life from pre-biblical times.

The number of countries in our modern times that have made the mistake of trying to impose their will on the area include Britain, the USSR, and recently the US.

No one will impose peace on this region without involving the locals.  All of the locals.

The Taliban in their brutal masses are now being given a shot.

From the outside they appear to be especially brutal in their treatment of women, and as sick as the thought of how many women are about to be subject to their rule, there is also something I want to bring up.  Something that the Taliban needs to know.

There was a prayer, an earnest plea that came from the heart of the British soldiers, who were stuck in the conflict in that area in the late 1800's. It was a prayer that was translated from the local languages and written down by Rudyard Kipling.

God save us from the knives of the women.

#tirrighsmiles

 Photos taken by me from 2012 to 2015 of the people and friends of Tir Righ.

Separating psychology and physiology

 Society is dealing with many things now, from COVID to racial tensions to on going issues in the middle east to plastic trash to energy sources to.......... well everything.

One of the things we have recently come to face is gender and its differences.   Gender is not a new topic, but the notion that gender is a construct is a very new idea.  I both agree and disagree with the idea that gender is a social construct.  I think that this is an easy idea to wrap your head around, but starts with separating the physical and the psychological.  To start from the physical, there are only two genders, with a very small slice of people being stuck with a body that has both.  There are significant differences between these two genders and trying to say there are not would lead to medical disasters and needless death.  The fact that for a long period of time medical research ignored the female sex is a major mistake and one that still carries errors in our medical data as a result.  The differences between the sexes in sports is readily apparent and  leads to dividing the two genders into different groups for competitions.  It makes sense.

But.

We now enter a time when we are trying to address the systemic problems in out social system.  The notion that we should all be equal is very much a great and valuable part of a modern society.  Any group that attains an advantage in law or practise is a group that will both tenaciously hold on to that privilege and do all it can to ensure that it continues, as can be seen in all modern societies that are now being slapped in the face with how women and minorities are treated in their society.

And now we have individuals who are struggling with sexual orientation and how that fits into society as a whole.  Especially as we as a society need to come to grips with the long standing prejudice against such people.  The language that we use has no differentiation between physical gender and mental gender, and it has no delineation when dealing the fact that although physical gender is a very real and solid thing, mental gender orientation for some is a very fluid thing.  And there are many people who refuse to understand this.

We need a way to make a division between these two things.  That they strongly influence each other is very true and I see no way to sever that relationship, but likewise, there needs to be an acknowledgement that for some of us there is a difference in that relationship.

We already see echoes of this, in people using the words 'I identify as .......', or calling it your sexual orientation.  And then trying to have the mental orientation align with our language by using either gender neutral or flipping the gendered words.  And for the mental health of that individual, using those pronouns is a way to help them fit into a world that has not yet come to full grips with the idea that mentally there is a fluidity to gender that is not matched physically.

The English language has evolved to handle many concepts, and evolving to handle a way of stating that mental or sexual gender is different from physical is not a difficult task.  And it looks like it is something that we need.  

I lack the imagination to come up with a word that fits or allows us this differentiation, but perhaps it is something that will happen soon.

I need a break.

I think we all need a break.

There is chaos everywhere and the news just keeps piling up.

Riots.  Riots with good reason, and protests that should be shut down and protests that should not be.

Any peaceful protest should be able to be dealt with without violence.

Any armed protest should be met with an armed reply.

Covid and the responses.  I mean whining about wearing a mask?  Really?

China has deployed troops near Pakistan to ensure the security of infrastructure projects financed by them.  India reacts with alarm at a division of troops deployed some 60 miles from their border.

I do not know why the amount of corruption in politics is allowed to happen.  It is a stain that soils every country on Earth, and makes every person's life worse.  Yet we as a society can do very little to halt and expose and root it out.

Corporations are soulless entities, but need to be held accountable for their actions.  The people who control the poisoning of the environment should be forced to live in that poison they order to be created.

Everyone who works deserves a living wage.  A wage that is better than ekeing a scratch living.

While a few people have done something to lessen the amount of plastic in the ocean, there are a lot of people still making that horrible situation worse.

And the news keeps piling up.

The world seemed to be getting it's act together.

Human slavery is slowly ebbing into history, and spotlights shining on the places where it still happens and forcing it to whither and die is great.

The awareness that oil is killing our environment is finally making it to the front of our brains.

And the rich somehow manage to dodge more and more taxes.

And somehow they do not see the rest of us reaching for the re-set button.

I need a break.

Weird Times

One of the weird things about the whole COVID -19 thing is how conspiracies theories can build.

There is one going around about how the pandemic cannot be all that bad because the hospitals are half empty.

But.

The hospitals are half empty because anyone with a compromised immune system, is over weight, over 60, has asthma or diabetes are doing their best to avoid all hospitals and leaving or staying away, and putting off elective surgeries.

In Canada, this does not mean much because our health system is not profit driven.

In the USA, it means that the hospitals are not showing a profit, and indeed are operating at a loss because they need to fill the beds to make as much money as possible.  There are many places that will have to lay off doctors soon because they have no work for them.

It may seem strange, but it is a direct consequence of letting your health are be driven by profit.

And to the companies that have long demanded huge profits from health care, now that there is a shortage of patients and your profit has turned negative, too bad.  This is the system you asked for, you have to take the problems along with the benefits.