MikeLigalig.com

                       

(that is just part of the tree roots...)

hahaha! aguy, kadaghan bang naigo.

buing. gipaningot kog kinatawa ani nga thread. now pa ko nakabasa. hahay baya mong mga tamboka mo, hahaha!

Yet to all Americans, as the leader of a proud and free people, I address this question: has there been a greater test of national commitment to the ideals you hold dear than that my people have gone through? You have spent many lives and much treasure to bring freedom to many lands that were reluctant to receive it. And here you have a people who won it by themselves and need only the help to preserve it.

Three years ago, I said thank you, America, for the haven from oppression, and the home you gave Ninoy, myself and our children, and for the three happiest years of our lives together. Today, I say, join us, America, as we build a new home for democracy, another haven for the oppressed, so it may stand as a shining testament of our two nation's commitment to freedom.

https://www.esquiremag.ph/
full text of speech from http://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/

We face a communist insurgency that feeds on economic deterioration, even as we carry a great share of the free world defenses in the Pacific. These are only two of the many burdens my people carry even as they try to build a worthy and enduring house for their new democracy, that may serve as well as a redoubt for freedom in Asia. Yet, no sooner is one stone laid than two are taken away. Half our export earnings, $2 billion out of $4 billion, which was all we could earn in the restrictive markets of the world, went to pay just the interest on a debt whose benefit the Filipino people never received.

Still, we fought for honor, and, if only for honor, we shall pay. And yet, should we have to wring the payments from the sweat of our men's faces and sink all the wealth piled up by the bondsman's two hundred fifty years of unrequited toil?

When I met with President Reagan yesterday, we began an important dialogue about cooperation and the strengthening of the friendship between our two countries. That meeting was both a confirmation and a new beginning and should lead to positive results in all areas of common concern.

Today, we face the aspirations of a people who had known so much poverty and massive unemployment for the past 14 years and yet offered their lives for the abstraction of democracy. Wherever I went in the campaign, slum area or impoverished village, they came to me with one cry: democracy! Not food, although they clearly needed it, but democracy. Not work, although they surely wanted it, but democracy. Not money, for they gave what little they had to my campaign. They didn't expect me to work a miracle that would instantly put food into their mouths, clothes on their back, education in their children, and work that will put dignity in their lives. But I feel the pressing obligation to respond quickly as the leader of a people so deserving of all these things.

Like Lincoln, I understand that force may be necessary before mercy. Like Lincoln, I don't relish it. Yet, I will do whatever it takes to defend the integrity and freedom of my country.

Finally, may I turn to that other slavery: our $26 billion foreign debt. I have said that we shall honor it. Yet must the means by which we shall be able to do so be kept from us? Many conditions imposed on the previous government that stole this debt continue to be imposed on us who never benefited from it. And no assistance or liberality commensurate with the calamity that was visited on us has been extended. Yet ours must have been the cheapest revolution ever. With little help from others, we Filipinos fulfilled the first and most difficult conditions of the debt negotiation the full restoration of democracy and responsible government. Elsewhere, and in other times of more stringent world economic conditions, Marshall plans and their like were felt to be necessary companions of returning democracy.

I don't think anybody, in or outside our country, concerned for a democratic and open Philippines, doubts what must be done. Through political initiatives and local reintegration programs, we must seek to bring the insurgents down from the hills and, by economic progress and justice, show them that for which the best intentioned among them fight.

As President, I will not betray the cause of peace by which I came to power. Yet equally, and again no friend of Filipino democracy will challenge this, I will not stand by and allow an insurgent leadership to spurn our offer of peace and kill our young soldiers, and threaten our new freedom.

Yet, I must explore the path of peace to the utmost for at its end, whatever disappointment I meet there, is the moral basis for laying down the olive branch of peace and taking up the sword of war. Still, should it come to that, I will not waver from the course laid down by your great liberator: "With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the rights as God gives us to see the rights, let us finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and for his orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

As I came to power peacefully, so shall I keep it. That is my contract with my people and my commitment to God. He had willed that the blood drawn with the lash shall not, in my country, be paid by blood drawn by the sword but by the tearful joy of reconciliation.

We have swept away absolute power by a limited revolution that respected the life and freedom of every Filipino. Now, we are restoring full constitutional government. Again, as we restored democracy by the ways of democracy, so are we completing the constitutional structures of our new democracy under a constitution that already gives full respect to the Bill of Rights. A jealously independent Constitutional Commission is completing its draft which will be submitted later this year to a popular referendum. When it is approved, there will be congressional elections. So within about a year from a peaceful but national upheaval that overturned a dictatorship, we shall have returned to full constitutional government. Given the polarization and breakdown we inherited, this is no small achievement.

My predecessor set aside democracy to save it from a communist insurgency that numbered less than 500. Unhampered by respect for human rights, he went at it hammer and tongs. By the time he fled, that insurgency had grown to more than 16,000. I think there is a lesson here to be learned about trying to stifle a thing with the means by which it grows.

The distinguished co-chairman of the United States observer team in his report to your President described that victory:

"I was witness to an extraordinary manifestation of democracy on the part of the Filipino people. The ultimate result was the election of Mrs. Corazon C. Aquino as President and Mr. Salvador Laurel as Vice-President of the Philippines."

Many of you here today played a part in changing the policy of your country towards us. We, Filipinos, thank each of you for what you did: for, balancing America's strategic interest against human concerns, illuminates the American vision of the world.

When a subservient parliament announced my opponent's victory, the people turned out in the streets and proclaimed me President. And true to their word, when a handful of military leaders declared themselves against the dictatorship, the people rallied to their protection. Surely, the people take care of their own. It is on that faith and the obligation it entails, that I assumed the presidency.

The people vindicated me in an election shamefully marked by government thuggery and fraud. The opposition swept the elections, garnering a clear majority of the votes, even if they ended up, thanks to a corrupt Commission on Elections, with barely a third of the seats in parliament. Now, I knew our power.

Last year, in an excess of arrogance, the dictatorship called for its doom in a snap election. The people obliged. With over a million signatures, they drafted me to challenge the dictatorship. And I obliged them. The rest is the history that dramatically unfolded on your television screen and across the front pages of your newspapers.

You saw a nation, armed with courage and integrity, stand fast by democracy against threats and corruption. You saw women poll watchers break out in tears as armed goons crashed the polling places to steal the ballots but, just the same, they tied themselves to the ballot boxes. You saw a people so committed to the ways of democracy that they were prepared to give their lives for its pale imitation. At the end of the day, before another wave of fraud could distort the results, I announced the people's victory.

And then, we lost him, irrevocably and more painfully than in the past. The news came to us in Boston. It had to be after the three happiest years of our lives together. But his death was my country's resurrection in the courage and faith by which alone they could be free again. The dictator had called him a nobody. Two million people threw aside their passivity and escorted him to his grave. And so began the revolution that has brought me to democracy's most famous home, the Congress of the United States.

The task had fallen on my shoulders to continue offering the democratic alternative to our people.

Archibald Macleish had said that democracy must be defended by arms when it is attacked by arms and by truth when it is attacked by lies. He failed to say how it shall be won.

I held fast to Ninoy's conviction that it must be by the ways of democracy. I held out for participation in the 1984 election the dictatorship called, even if I knew it would be rigged. I was warned by the lawyers of the opposition that I ran the grave risk of legitimizing the foregone results of elections that were clearly going to be fraudulent. But I was not fighting for lawyers but for the people in whose intelligence I had implicit faith. By the exercise of democracy, even in a dictatorship, they would be prepared for democracy when it came. And then, also, it was the only way I knew by which we could measure our power even in the terms dictated by the dictatorship.

The government sought to break him by indignities and terror. They locked him up in a tiny, nearly airless cell in a military camp in the north. They stripped him naked and held the threat of sudden midnight execution over his head. Ninoy held up manfully–all of it. I barely did as well. For 43 days, the authorities would not tell me what had happened to him. This was the first time my children and I felt we had lost him.

When that didn't work, they put him on trial for subversion, murder and a host of other crimes before a military commission. Ninoy challenged its authority and went on a fast. If he survived it, then, he felt, God intended him for another fate. We had lost him again. For nothing would hold him back from his determination to see his fast through to the end. He stopped only when it dawned on him that the government would keep his body alive after the fast had destroyed his brain. And so, with barely any life in his body, he called off the fast on the fortieth day. God meant him for other things, he felt. He did not know that an early death would still be his fate, that only the timing was wrong.

At any time during his long ordeal, Ninoy could have made a separate peace with the dictatorship, as so many of his countrymen had done. But the spirit of democracy that inheres in our race and animates this chamber could not be allowed to die. He held out, in the loneliness of his cell and the frustration of exile, the democratic alternative to the insatiable greed and mindless cruelty of the right and the purging holocaust of the left.

Three years ago, I left America in grief to bury my husband, Ninoy Aquino. I thought I had left it also to lay to rest his restless dream of Philippine freedom. Today, I have returned as the president of a free people.

In burying Ninoy, a whole nation honored him. By that brave and selfless act of giving honor, a nation in shame recovered its own. A country that had lost faith in its future found it in a faithless and brazen act of murder. So in giving, we receive, in losing we find, and out of defeat, we snatched our victory.

For the nation, Ninoy became the pleasing sacrifice that answered their prayers for freedom. For myself and our children, Ninoy was a loving husband and father. His loss, three times in our lives, was always a deep and painful one.

Fourteen years ago this month was the first time we lost him. A president-turned-dictator, and traitor to his oath, suspended the Constitution and shut down the Congress that was much like this one before which I am honored to speak. He detained my husband along with thousands of others – senators, publishers and anyone who had spoken up for the democracy as its end drew near. But for Ninoy, a long and cruel ordeal was reserved. The dictator already knew that Ninoy was not a body merely to be imprisoned but a spirit he must break. For even as the dictatorship demolished one by one the institutions of democracy – the press, the Congress, the independence of the judiciary, the protection of the Bill of Rights – Ninoy kept their spirit alive in himself.

"We fought for honor, and, if only for honor, we shall pay," she said, agreeing to pay the debt that was stolen by Marcos. "And yet, should we have to wring the payments from the sweat of our men's faces and sink all the wealth piled up by the bondsman's two hundred fifty years of unrequited toil?"

The speech was impassioned, deeply personal, and effective; interrupted 11 times by applause and bookended with standing ovations. House Speaker Tip O'Neill called it the "finest speech I've ever heard in my 34 years in Congress." Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole told her, "Cory, you hit a home run." And House Minority Whip Trent Lott said, "Let's just say the emotion of the moment saved the day." It would go down in the annals of our history as one of the former President's finest speeches.

Revisit Cory Aquino's Historic 1986 Speech Before The US Congress

11 times interrupted by applause, ending with a standing ovation.

By MIGUEL ESCOBAR   
Jan 25, 2018



When former President Corazon Aquino spoke before a joint session of the United States Congress in September of 1986, the dust was only beginning to settle. It was her first visit to America since the dictator Ferdinand Marcos had been deposed in February of the same year, and the Philippines was reckoning with everything his administration had inflicted. That included $26 billion in total foreign debt, and a communist insurgency that grew, throughout the Marcos era, from 500 armed guerillas to 16,000. We were just at the start of a long road to recovery.

So Aquino lodged an appeal for help. Addressing the House, she delivered a historic speech that managed to sway in our favor the vote for an emergency $200-million aid appropriation. In the moving speech penned by her speechwriter (and our current ambassador to the United Nations) Teddy Locsin, Jr., Aquino defended her reconciliatory stand on the communist insurgency—a sensitive issue in the U.S., given that this was 1986—and asked for financial aid towards rebuilding the Philippine economy.

The annual number of worldwide shark bites is 10 times less than the number of people bitten by other people in New York.

If you replace "W" with "T" in "What, Where and When", you get the answer to each of them.

Space has a distinct smell: a bouquet of diesel fumes, gunpowder, and barbecue. The aroma is mostly produced by dying stars.

Neil Armstrong's astronaut application arrived a week past the deadline. A friend slipped the tardy form in with the others.

During World War I, a Canadian soldier made a black bear his pet and named her Winnipeg. "Winnie" was later a resident of the London Zoological Gardens where she was an adored attraction, especially to a boy named Christopher Robin, son of author A.A. Milne. The boy even named his teddy bear after her.

In Great Britain and Japan, black cats are perceived as auspicious. In the English Midlands, new brides are given black cats to bless their marriage, and the Japanese believe that black cats are good luck—particularly for single women.

The Russians showed up 12 days late to the 1908 Olympics in London because they were using the Julian calendar instead of the Gregorian calendar.

An estimated 1 million dogs in the U.S. have been named primary beneficiary in their owners' wills.

Melbourne gave some of its trees email addresses so residents could report problems. Instead, the trees received love letters.

Ravens in captivity can learn to talk better than parrots.

Kea parrots warble together when they're in a good mood, making them the first known non-mammal species to communicate with infectious laughter.

Tsundoku is the act of acquiring books and not reading them.

Queen Elizabeth II is a trained mechanic.

Some cats are allergic to humans.

Boring, Oregon and Dull, Scotland have been sister cities since 2012. In 2017, they added Bland Shire, Australia to their "League of Extraordinary Communities."

In 1974, the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis published a paper titled "The Unsuccessful Self-Treatment of a Case of 'Writer's Block.'" It contained a total of zero words.

He finished: "It's about prevention, because prevention is better than cure. If you are taking two capsules a day you are preventing a tumour from forming.

"It's not just about money, it's about not dying from something that could have been prevented."

PS If you really do want to eat deer placenta you might want to look online first, where you can get bottles of the stuff for nearer £40.

PPS This is a good place to remind you of Penman's First Law of Health Remedies: the more ailments that something claims to cure, the less likely it is to cure any of them.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/

Really? Clip from Riway video (Image: Riway.com)

"If someone has cancer, I can't say this will help your cancer, but I can say this product has helped many people in Singapore, why don't you try it and let me know how you feel?

"I give it to my friends, I give it to my auntie in Spain, her psoriasis is getting better. I know it's having an effect."

Sekhon wrapped up the sales pitch with yet more claims: "I'm not going bald anymore."

Really? What was all that stuff about cancer and diabetes then? Or the aim of "Exceeding medical science's mission"? Who are all those people dressed like scientists in laboratories on the Riway video?

A third speaker, Rajesh Aggarwal, was introduced as a former pharmacist, and he wasn't shy about making medical claims.

"It's helped with conditions like cancer stage one, two, three and four," he declared, adding his own "personal testimony" - pain caused by a slipped disc had disappeared since taking Purtier Placenta.

Riway corporate guff (Image: Riway.com)

It's not cheap. To join you have to buy a minimum of a six month supply of Purtier Placenta "therapy", as it was called, costing around £2,000. This, he said, is why it is not available in the shops: no one would buy it at that price, whereas they might if it comes with a personal testimonial from someone they know.

Posing as a potential recruit, I said that if I was going to persuade anyone to spend that much I'd need copies of independent clinical studies backing up the health claims.

Jason seemed to do a u-turn, now insisting: "We are not marketing this as a medical product, this is marketed as a food supplement. The company does not make any scientific claims."

He went on: "We are looking for people who've got vision, strategy, execution, who can get involved in this business, who can recruit others, who can spread the word and stake a claim in this business and have financial freedom.

"Many will become millionaires".

That word "recruit" is important, because this is a pyramid scheme. You pay to join Riway, and then get commission from everyone you recruit, and in turn you get commission on their sales, and so on down the line.

"The bonus scheme that Riway has means that even someone you've never met who's 25 levels beneath you, when they make a purchase, you also benefit," Solis explained.

Riway (Image: Riway.com)`1

"IVF failed and someone introduced them to the product and these two babies are the product of taking Purtier Placenta," he said.

"You hear amazing stories, I've met people who have recovered from cancer, people who have recovered from MS, it's wonderful to be able to hear from people who have had chronic illnesses and recovered from them."

He promised that Riway was en route to becoming the largest direct-selling company in the world (Penman prediction: it won't) and there were fortunes to be made: "There are people in Singapore making $200,000 a month, that's no exaggeration."

Jason Solis


Rajesh Aggarwal

"I don't want to use the word 'cure', but they no longer had their problems".

He introduced his mother, saying the tablets had "improved" her depression, diabetes and arthritis. Then his mother spoke and added leukemia into the mix.

"Every single person that we give this product to had incredible results," Sekhon claimed.

Another speaker was Jason Solis, who'd flown in from the Far East.

He told the seminar about how two men who could not conceive became fathers.

He's a recruiter for a Singapore business called Riway International, which is said to be huge in the Far East.

This was an opportunity to get in on the ground floor in Europe, a bit like if you'd invested in Facebook when it was a start-up, as Sekhon put it.

Riway makes one product, a tablet called Purtier Placenta, which contains apparently miraculous stem cells taken from the plancenta of New Zealand deer.

Guests at the presentation at a central London hotel were treated to a Riway corporate video, which full of vacuous sound bites such as "Be the master of your perfect life", "Exceeding medical science's mission" and "Nitrogen-filled technology".

The deer placenta pyramid scheme and promoters who claim pills can help stage 4 cancer

Recruiters for Singapore firm Riway International have made some astonishing claims about their products

By Andrew Penman
29 NOV 2018


Amardeep Singh Sekhon

This seemed like too good a chance to pass up.

All I had to do was attend a free seminar and I'd get the chance to join a scheme making loads of money while having the satisfaction of helping others.

"When I say this will not only provide you with purpose and fulfilment but also true wealth and very quickly, I mean it," gushed organiser Amardeep Sekhon on Facebook.

Floccinaucinihilipilification—one of the longest words in the English language—is the act of estimating that something is worthless



https://www.quora.com/

Pentheraphobia is the intense irrational fear of your mother-in-law.



http://mentalfloss.com/

Sleep literally cleans your brain. During slumber, more cerebrospinal fluid flushes through the brain to wash away harmful proteins and toxins that build up during the day.



http://mentalfloss.com/

10. MARK TWAIN


Mark Twain with kitten in Tuxedo Park, New York, 1907. Image credit:Courtesy of the Mark Twain Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley via The History Blog

Mark Twain (1835-1910) may well out-crazy even the craziest of cat people. He had up to 19 cats at one time, all of whom he loved and respected far beyond whatever he may have felt about people. "If man could be crossed with the cat," he said, "it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat." When he was away from home, he would rent cats, paying their owners a large enough sum to see to their needs for a lifetime.

In keeping with the tradition established by Richelieu, Southey, and Gautier, Twain gave his cats most excellent names, among them Apollinaris, Beelzebub, Blatherskite, Buffalo Bill, Satan, Sin, Sour Mash, Tammany, Zoroaster, Soapy Sal, Pestilence, and Bambino. To be fair, the credit for the last of these goes to Twain's daughter Clara, who took in Bambino during a sanatorium stay. She gave the kitten to her father after one of the other patients ratted her out.

When Bambino escaped one day, Twain was frantic. He put ads in New York newspapers describing the cat as "large and intensely black" and offering a $5 reward for his return. As Calvin Coolidge would find out 20 years later, a famous person asking for aid in the return of a lost cat was subject to an enormous quantity of doppelgangers and would-be changelings from people who just wanted to make contact with the celebrity. Even after Bambino turned up on his own a few days later and Twain sent notice to all the papers, people still turned up at his Fifth Avenue home with cats for him.

This story originally ran in 2016.

http://mentalfloss.com/

9. PAUL KLEE


wikipedia

Swiss artist Paul Klee (1879-1940) was inspired by his adored cats. Cats feature in close to 30 of his artworks, and those are just the ones where cats are the subjects. Sometimes they were his assistants and he directly enlisted their aid in his work. His cats Fritzi, Bimbo I, Bimbo II, Mys, Nuggi, and Fripouille (Skunk) were by his side when he painted and traveled. American philanthropist and collector Edward Warburg once tried to shoo away Bimbo when he walked across one of Klee's still-wet watercolors. Klee stopped him. "Many years from now," Klee said, "one of your art connoisseurs will wonder how in the world I ever got that effect."

8. CALVIN COOLIDGE


Calvin Coolidge with one of his cats. Image credit: The History Blog

Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933), 30th President of the United States, had at least four cats in the White House—Tiger, Blackie, Timmy, and Smokey. Tiger was an orange tomcat Coolidge had moved into the White House from his farm in Vermont. He would come when the President called him by the nickname "Tige" and was often seen draped around his neck when Coolidge walked around the White House.

On the night of March 20, 1924, Tiger slipped out an open door and into the wilds of Washington, D.C. The next morning, Coolidge called for Tiger, but he didn't appear. Alarmed, the President dispatched the staff to search the executive mansion and grounds, but to no avail. Next he enlisted the city police, who were put on alert to look for the orange-and-black cat. Again, no Tiger.

Desperate, Coolidge turned to a medium with a wider reach. He sent Secret Service agent James Haley to WCAP radio where, on the night of March 24, he broadcast an appeal to listeners, asking them to call the White House phone if they had any information about the president's missing cat. Hundreds of people called the White House, either with tips or with offers to give Coolidge a whole new cat.

In the end, the radio appeal did the trick. One of the listeners was Captain Edward Bryant, who the next morning found a sleeping cat in the Navy Building just half a mile from the White House. Bryant tried the president's usual greeting, "Here, Tige!" and the cat ran over to him. A short cab ride later, Tiger was back in President Coolidge's everloving arms. To keep him that way, Coolidge got Tiger a new collar that declared, "My Name is Tiger. I live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."

7. CHARLES BAUDELAIRE


Charles Baudelaire 1855, photo by Félix Nadar. Image credit: Wikimedia // Public Domain

The French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) placed cats significantly above most people in his social hierarchy. One of the poems in his masterpiece Les Fleurs du Mal not only praises the feline, but identifies the cat's meow as the very source of his verse.

This voice, which seems to pearl and filter
Through my soul's inmost shady nook,
Fills me with poems, like a book,
And fortifies me, like a philtre.

Baudelaire couldn't resist cats, even the ones he'd never seen before. He would follow them on the street, pick them up, and pet them. When he was invited to someone's home for the first time, he would seek out the cat and then spend the rest of the visit snuggling it, completely focused on the cat to the detriment of all the humans. He would ignore his hosts and the other guests for the duration of his visit.

6. THÉOPHILE GAUTIER


Theophile Gautier's grave in Montmartre Cemetery in Paris. Image credit: Nico Paix, Flickr // CC BY 2.0

French author Théophile Gautier (1811-1872) adored cats and talked about them all the time. Any collection of quotes about cats can't help but feature at least a half dozen from Gautier. He literally wrote the book, Ménagerie Intime, about his domestic life with his cats.

He started off with Childebrand, a black-and-tan tabby whose name gave Gautier a much-needed rhyme for "Rembrandt." As his pets were not neutered, there were soon more cats. The white Angora Don Pierrot de Navarre and the equally white feline enchantress Marquesa Dona Séraphita had a litter of three black kittens: Enjolras, Eponine, and Gavroche. (Victor Hugo's Les Miserables was the latest literary sensation shortly before they were born.) Eponine had at least one kitten of her own, Cléopatre, who enjoyed standing on three legs. Then there was Madame Théophile, an orange-and-white cat who enjoyed eating food from Gautier's fork, and Zizi, an accomplished musician who did her best work walking across the piano at night.

His love for cats followed him to the grave, where a carved cat peers out from the top of his headstone at the Montmartre Cemetery in Paris.

5. ABRAHAM LINCOLN


rrumman.blogspot.com

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), 16th President of the United States, was a great cat aficionado. First Lady Mary Todd said cats were her husband's only hobby. He took in strays and had several cats in the White House, even though he had left his dog Fido behind in Springfield, Illinois. Secretary of State William Seward gave him two kittens, Tabby and Dixie, and the President doted on them shamelessly even at formal events. He once fed Tabby from the table at a state dinner. When his wife complained, Lincoln reassured her, "If the gold fork was good enough for [former President James] Buchanan, I think it is good enough for Tabby."

In the home stretch of the Civil War in March, 1865, Lincoln went to see General Ulysses Grant, then engaged in the siege of Petersburg in Virginia. While he was at Grant's headquarters in City Point, he saw three kittens in the telegraph hut. He scooped them up and cuddled them on his lap. According to Admiral David Porter, Lincoln talked to them, saying, "Kitties, thank God you are cats, and can't understand this terrible strife that is going on." Before he left, he charged a colonel with ensuring the kittens were fed and sheltered.

4. ROBERT SOUTHEY


Portrait of Robert Southey by John James Masquerier, 1800. Image credit: The History Blog

Poet Laureate Robert Southey (1774-1843) was an out and proud cat lover. His felines made frequent appearances in his correspondence, often relaying messages through Southey to his friends' cats "from the Cattery of Cat's Eden." He too enjoyed picking arcane names for his pets. In 1826, when he was away from home in Leyden, he wrote this in a letter to his 7-year-old son Cuthbert:

I hope Rumpelstiltzchen has recovered his health, and that Miss Cat is well; and I should like to know whether Miss Fitzrumpel has been given away, and if there is another kitten. The Dutch cats do not speak exactly the same language as the English ones. I will tell you how they talk when I come home.

Seven years later, Rumpelstiltzchen's health finally gave out. Southey shared the news with his old friend Grosvenor G. Bedford, a cat lover in his own right.

Alas! Grosvenor, this day poor old Rumpel was found dead, after as long and happy a life as cat could wish for, if cats form wishes on that subject. His full titles were : "The Most Noble the Archduke Rumpelstiltzchen, Marquis M'Bum, Earl Tomlemagne, Baron Raticide, Waowhler, and Skaratch." There should be a court mourning in Catland, and if the Dragon [i.e., Bedford's cat] wear a black ribbon round his neck, or a band of crape a la militaire round one of the fore paws, it will be but a becoming mark of respect.

3. CATHERINE THE GREAT


revuemethode.org

Catherine the Great of Russia (r.1762-1796) had two fully-fledged cat colonies in the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. Her personal pets were elegant Russian Blues, a breed she favored above all, giving them to ambassadors as gifts for other sovereigns, reputedly including the British royal family. Catherine's Blues had the run of the upper floors of the palace. The basement, on the other hand, was populated with unpedigreed working cats. Their mission, which they chose to accept with alacrity, was to keep the rodent population at bay. Catherine officially promoted the working cats to guard status, complete with salaries and additional food rations.

She loved cats so much that Prince Grigory Potemkin (military commander, statesman, and the Empress's onetime lover) gave her one to thank her for her gift of the Sévres Cameo Service. The service cost 62,324 rubles, about $70,000 then and about $40 million today. It was so expensive that Catherine spent the next 13 years attempting to renegotiate the price down. Poor Potemkin could never come close to matching this gift, so his response was to give her an Angora cat. She adored the present, calling her new cat "the cat of all cats" and "he of the velvety paws."

2. POPE PAUL II


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Pope Paul II (1417-1471) loved jewels, luxurious ecclesiastical garments, collecting antiquities, and forcing the Jews of Rome to run naked in the streets during Carnival. He also loved animals. So tenderhearted was he toward non-bipeds that if he happened upon an animal on its way to be butchered, he would rescue it. Cats were his particular favorites. He treated them as well as he treated himself. When his cats fell ill, he summoned his personal physician, Giacomo Gottifredi, to tend to them. When whatever leechcraft and wortcunning Gottifredi possessed was not sufficient to save one of the pope's beloved cats, he was grief-stricken. His emotional reaction to the loss of his cat was roundly mocked in Rome, where epigrams were written deriding the Pope's soft-hearted mourning for an animal—and one with a reputation for consorting with the Devil at that.

1. CARDINAL RICHELIEU


The Cardinal's Leisure by Charles Edouard Delort, 19th century. Image credit: Detroit Institute of Arts via The History Blog

Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu (1585-1642)—cardinal, statesman, power behind the throne, and scene-stealing villain of The Three Musketeers—was such a devotee of the cat that he contributed significantly to their adoption as companion animals in fashionable French society. Richelieu had a cattery built at his residence the Palais-Cardinal (later the Palais-Royal) to house his many cats, mostly Persians and Angoras, and was said to always have a cat on his lap as he worked.

He was also a world-class adept at naming his cats. Among the 14 cats Richelieu had at the time of his death in 1642 were Ludovic le Cruel, named for his savage dedication to killing rats; Ludoviska, who according to some sources was Ludovic's girlfriend and was Polish; Perruque (French for wig), so named because as a kitten she'd fallen out of the wig of poet Honorat de Bueil at Richelieu's feet; Rubis sur l'Ongle, the French idiom for "cash on the nail"; Gazette, because she was "indiscreet"; the cardinal's favorite Soumise (submissive); plus Pyrame and Thisbe, named after the lovers in Ovid's Metamorphoses because they slept together holding paws.

10 of History's Craziest Cat People

BY LIVIUS DRUSUS

Many illustrious historical personages had a beloved cat or two, but some of them were full-on crazy cat people, filling their homes with felines and far preferring their companionship to that of humans. Here are 10 famous historical figures who were unabashed crazy about cats.

weird. mas kusgan man god ang lalaki kay sa babaye. unta.

https://lorenberg.blog/

New images show Mars as you've never seen it before

By Ashley Strickland, CNN
September 20, 2019

(CNN)One of the latest images of Mars looks more like cookies and cream than it does the so-called Red Planet.

A photo taken this week by the European Space Agency and Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter's camera actually shows north polar dunes on Mars.



Winter at the poles causes carbon dioxide ice to cover the dunes in a thin layer. In spring, this layer immediately transforms from ice to vapor and the defrosting happens from the bottom of the dune and works its way up.

This works to trap gas in areas between the ice layer and the sand. When the ice defrosts, gas erupts from the cracks and inevitably, sand follows. That creates the dark "cookies" part of the cookies and cream-style image.

from the WHO website:

Misconceptions: To dispel some misconceptions, it is important to realize that food cooked in a microwave oven does not become "radioactive". Nor does any microwave energy remain in the cavity or the food after the microwave oven is switched off. In this respect, microwaves act just like light; when the light bulb is turned off, no light remains.

more at: https://www.who.int/peh-emf/publications/facts/info_microwaves/en/

Minimising risk

-Avoid overcooking vegetables to minimise nutrient losses

-Before microwaving, check the labelling on the package and follow the instructions

-If the package is not marked as being microwave-safe, switch to a suitable microwave container

-Rotate and stir foods during cooking to spread the temperature of heating equally and as such minimise potential for food-borne illness. Check the temperature of food before consumption

-Remember microwaving cannot magically make contaminated food safe. So if in doubt, throw it out.

https://theconversation.com/

Does it kill bad bugs?

Cooking food significantly reduces the risk of food-borne illness.

A major challenge in microwaving is the unevenness of temperature distribution due to the shape of the food. You may notice when you heat food in a microwave that there are often hot and cold spots. This poses a potential safety issue.

Microwave cooking can only kill disease-causing bugs when the correct temperature and time combination is achieved throughout the food portion. Cooking to temperatures above 60℃ will kill most bugs known to cause food-borne illness, but the toxins produced by them may be heat-tolerant.


Stir food during the microwaving process so the heat is evenly distributed. Lachlan Hardy/Flickr, CC BY

If the food is already contaminated with bugs that produce toxins, microwaving might kill the toxin-producing bug but not destroy the toxins, despite the correct temperature and time combination. This can also apply to other cooking methods. Appropriate food storage is the key to minimising such risks.

What about the packaging?

There is some evidence to suggest chemicals in plastic packaging can migrate into foods when microwaved, which has been associated with increased risk of cancer.


If your packaging has a microwave safe symbol, it is safe to use in the microwave. from shutterstock.com

But most of today's plastic containers, packages and wraps are specially designed to withstand microwave temperatures.


If packaging is marketed as microwave safe, has a microwave symbol or provides instructions for proper microwave use, it is safe for microwave cooking or heating.

Leaching of harmful toxins or "cancer-causing" compounds from appropriately packaged products during microwaving is highly unlikely in Australia, although this area could benefit from more research.

Can it give you cancer?

Some of the best studied cancer-causing compounds are the heterocyclic aromatic amines (HCA). These are formed naturally in protein-rich food such as meat and fish during cooking, and are more likely to form if the meat is cooked for a long time and at higher temperatures.

The method of cooking is a major factor affecting HCA formation. Some researchers have reported HCA are formed in chicken at higher levels when cooked in a microwave, compared to when pan-fried, barbecued or baked.


Barbecued fish has higher levels of HCA than microwaved fish. from shutterstock.com

But no research has claimed or shown an association between regular consumption of microwave-cooked poultry and cancer.

A recent study has revealed barbecued fish contains more HCA than microwave-cooked fish, while HCA could not be detected at all in microwaved beef. Also, thawing beef and re-heating previously-cooked meat or fish in a microwave just for a few minutes, does not produce any extra HCA.

Rapid cooking helps preserve beneficial chemicals in green vegetables. from shutterstock.com

Microwave cooking is unlikely to negatively affect vitamins and other compounds associated with improved health. For instance, rapid cooking actually helps preserve a group of beneficial chemicals, the polyphenols – that increase the total antioxidant activity of foods – in green vegetables.

One study compared microwaving or steaming vegetables, such as cabbage, carrots, cauliflower and spinach, to pressure cooking. It found vegetables that were pressure cooked lost more insoluble fibre, which is good for gut health, than those that were microwaved or steamed.

A key nutrient usually destroyed when cooking vegetables is vitamin C, a severe lack of which can lead to conditions like scurvy. But boiling vegetables accounts for greater nutrient losses than microwaving them. This is because water soluble nutrients are readily leached into water when they are boiled, while very little water is used in microwaving.

Short bursts of heating, such as used in microwave cooking, can retain most of a vegetable's vitamin C.