sweasel.com

More people than they officially admit? Why, if I didn’t know better, I would suspect that you think that your government may be lying to you. Perish the thought. It would be like over here in the US, where they have been estimating the number of illegals at around 10 million – for the last 15 years.

Just for fun, sometime this weekend enjoy the Kyoto Tachibana SHS Band. Tachibana is an inedible mandarine-like citrus fruit of Japan. “SHS” means “Senior High School.”
~
Anyway, high school band programs are rarely this accomplished or well-traveled. I almost don’t want to believe that all that sound comes from dancing high school girls in rank and file but some of the close-ups prove that it’s actually the players dancing and playing instruments. And now, on with the show…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVJ3Ho83Ksg

Soooo, about getting stuck in a subway carriage because the doors won’t open. The fear of that is enough to keep me out of the tube forever.

Buses are still the best way to get around London for the avg tourist, right? If it’s too far to walk, of course.

OTOH, better trapped in a London carriage than NYC!

I don’t know whether all cultures share this, or if it’s only the Christians but “we” all ascribe to the idea that we are not supposed to be comfortable or happy, and if we are too comfortable or happy we must be punished. So turn off your heater and/or air conditioner or you will destroy the earth, just as Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed; not to mention that whole flood fiasco*

It’s true that the Christian God is out of fashion these days, but Religion®️is still going strong. We just call it ‘Science’ and our Priests are Scientists. At the boil-it-to-the-bone level we still sit in awe of the guys who can forecast crop failure, and do magic**.

Science in its rising days starting in the 1800’s was very strict about following its fundamental precepts of empiricism and avoiding extrapolation. Sadly however, just as early Christianity eventually crumbled into sects after the central and most popular derivation of the early teaching became political and corrupt (Yes, I mean the Catholic Church)so has ‘modern science’. If I need explain the corruption of the Church I’ll just note that by the 16th Century there were two competing Popes at the same time, and Henry the VIII started the Pepsi version of Catholicism.*** You can observe the corruption of Science for yourself.

Now Jesus had to throw the Charlatans out of the Temple, and Martin Luther had to just build a whole new temple altogether in an attempt to get rid of the corruption. I think we are approaching that point in our ‘Science’.
To wit: Can anyone explain the difference between the Catholic Church selling indulgences and the current selling of Carbon Credits? I think there is also an argument to be made for the equivalence of erecting crosses across the countryside as symbols of the faith and Wind Turbines ….

You can push this analogy a lot farther (nuclear power as the temptation of Satan?) but I must have coffee and then go out into the sunshine where it’s less dark and hope that my opinion of humanity will improve some.

*You can bet those people in Sodom and Gomorrah were burning coal right and left. There’s nothing less fun than an orgy when the room is too cold.

**Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” (Arthur C. Clarke)

***”Now It’s Pepsi For Those Who Think Young”

⚡️NEWS FLASH!⚡️

Another Arkanscide!

Who had Jeffrey Epstein in the Deal Pool?

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jeffrey-epstein-found-dead-nyc-jail-n1041081?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark

Deborah HH wins the… uh…. um… Celebrity Dead Pool prize!

Man, was that the most prescient DP pick ever or what? (just kidding)

Congrats Deborah HH!

His cell had a power connection that came from England so the lights would be out at an auspicious time?

Boy talk about a conspiracy theory.
It is awfully good of people who might be able to implicate a certain pair of individuals in a crime committing suicide as frequently as they do though ain’t it?

However, consider it was a Royal that was recently named in unfortunate documents, so perhaps they need to look for an incarcerated Brit with a nickname like Larry the Noose for this one.

I hope they hurry up and accidentally cremate Old Jeff before a proper autopsy can be done.
“Oh, sorry squire! You missed him, he just went into the oven 10 minutes ago.”

but really really – no wonder he killed himself! He was being force to drink out of a toilet!

Assisted suicide?

Deborah! Congrats! Even though that was the most predictable pick of all, I’m still stunned.

Some Veg, that’s a question that’s haunted me for years. So much of our culture seemed permeated with Christian ideas of sin and punishment. Are Confucian societies similarly afflicted? I would have thought you would know.

Stoaty – I only know Japanese culture, and of course not very well; I’ve never studied it, but have merely interacted with Japanese. I was (still am, I guess) a member of a Buddhist sect, but again, I’m no scholar.

Having said that, I don’t believe that there is the same collective guilt drive that Christians have. No one I’ve talked to views the Fukushima disaster as any sort of punishment for behavior of mankind. As soon as Nuclear power can be promised as safe again, it’ll be back*. Yes, there’s a concern for pollution but most of the concern springs from Minamata – where a company dumped waste mercury into the ocean for 30 years to horrifying effect**. The Japanese all recycle (5 different bins), but that’s because there’s no place to dump trash. Careful use of oil, gas, and electricity are because they’re expensive. In some 40 years, I’ve never really heard a Japanese, drunk or sober, comment on man-caused climate change or saving the planet. I’m sure such a movement exists, but it hasn’t much traction. I don’t think I even need mention the indifference towards saving the whales. ***

This is not to say that guilt and shame are unimportant in the culture; they’re huge drivers of behavior. However responsibility is focused on the individual. That might bring shame on the senior members of a family who failed to prevent the conduct or in the case of a company, in the head of the company. However, the idea that the entire nation or mankind as a whole are guilty for past conduct or responsible for the future doesn’t seem common. In the past, Bad People did bad things. There have been attempts to apologize for the horrible things that Japanese Soldiers did in WWII, and reparations have been paid. However it’s viewed that the government failed to prevent them, rather than having systematically organized them as the Nazis did. In any case, the current Japanese citizen feels no responsibility for what happened in the past, although it does make them feel shame -for those who did the bad things.

There is definitely a cultural responsibility to consider the impact of one’s action on others, but I’ve never heard it expressed as “think of the impact on future generations or the future of the earth”. If you think about it, such a view is actually rather arrogant, as if the butterfly in “The Butterfly Affect” has a personal responsibility towards the planet. “Wait! If you sip nectar from that flower you may change the future!”

I’ve rambled too much, and explained too little and no doubt i’ve done so horribly incorrectly. Ideally everyone’s already read this post since it’s Sunday evening, and my comment will be buried and forgotten as soon as we get Monday’s most excellent Chicken post to comment on!

* https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-nuclear-industry-insight/treading-carefully-japans-nuclear-industry-makes-a-comeback-idUSKCN1N66A1

**https://www.verywellhealth.com/minamata-disease-2860856

***The Japanese never watched ‘Flipper’ on tv as kids. There’s no emotional attachment to whales. If pushed they’ll point out that the Minke whale that is eaten is neither endangered nor threatened (perhaps a quarter of a million) and probably not much more intelligent than a beef cow.

Some Veg – no, thank you. It’s refreshing to see what I always bitch about confirmed. The whole world wasn’t raised on the East Coast of the United States (or the Left Coast) and doesn’t see things the way we do (when ‘we’ agree what it is we’re seeing, which is not so often these days).

“Chilblanes” Maxwell is a good bet for the next Deadpool!