Society's ChildS


Candle

Earthquakes, storms, fires, nuclear confrontation and now the Las Vegas massacre - We have to ask: 'What's coming next?'

Rick Hampson
USA Today
Tue, 03 Oct 2017 10:07 UTC
Las Vegas vigil
© Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesMourners attend a candlelight vigil at the corner of Sahara Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard for the victims of Sunday night's mass shooting, October 2, 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Late Sunday night, a lone gunman killed more than 50 people and injured more than 500 people after he opened fire on a large crowd at the Route 91 Harvest Festival, a three-day country music festival. The massacre is one of the deadliest mass shooting events in U.S. history.
When the month began, a confluence of hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, wildfires and a brewing international nuclear confrontation already had some Americans thinking about End Times.

Then Las Vegas, the nation's playground, witnessed the worst mass shooting in U.S. history - the latest in this peerless series of catastrophes. Some were natural, some man-made. Together, they've shadowed a usually optimistic nation with a cloud of sorrow and anxiety.

You didn't have to be in Vegas, Seattle, Houston, Key West or San Juan, or have relatives in Mexico, or live in the Inter-mountain West with a respiratory condition, to be worried. A nation that had thought itself numbed to tragedy is realizing that no matter how bad things are, they apparently can always get worse.

"Why?'' asked country music star Blake Shelton in a tweet after the shooting. That was one question, shared many times by many others. There was another: "What's next?''

Comment: Indeed, you have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to notice the uptick or 'quickening' of intensely 'negative' events coming from all quarters and affecting many. For a broad and in depth discussion of what we're actually seeing, read Laura Knight-Jadczyk's

Riding the Wave: The Truth and Lies About 2012 and Global Transformation

and Pierre Lescaudron's Earth Changes and the Human Cosmic Connection: The Secret History of the World - Book 3

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Cow

Struggling family-owned farms continuing to disappear

Bob Montgomery
The Bristol Press
Sat, 30 Sep 2017 13:52 UTC
small family farm
© JR P/flickr
Small family farms have been slowly disappearing for decades and this will likely be the case of Minor's Farm in Bristol. Founded in 1864, the 30-acre parcel on Chippens Hill is operated by Paul C. Minor; his wife, Vicki; and father, Paul J. Minor. Mark Minor, the brother of Paul C., separately harvests the hay.

"It's kind of the end of an era," said Paul Minor. "I don't know if this would necessarily be our last year, but if not, I don't see it happening much longer. With 48 years with fall stuff, I just know I won't be physically able to continue to do this and it's not easy to run a farm or stay in business in Connecticut."

Minor, who graduated from Virginia Tech in 1970, added that the younger generation of the Minor family went to college and have moved out-of-state as have many others, those of different ages, because the cost of living is much lower and the job market is more plentiful.
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Palette

Modern "art": Louvre pulls sculpture for being sexually explicit

Robin Pogrebin
The New York Times
Mon, 02 Oct 2017 13:10 UTC
Atelier Van Lieshout’s “Domestikator”
© Atelier Van LieshoutThe collective Atelier Van Lieshout’s “Domestikator” (2015), which was to go on view on Oct. 19 in the Louvre’s Tuileries Gardens.
The Louvre has withdrawn a large installation by a Dutch art and design collective for being sexually explicit - right on the heels of the Guggenheim's decision to pull three controversial artworks from its upcoming China show.

The piece - "Domestikator" by the collective Atelier Van Lieshout, whose outline depicts copulation - was to go on view on Oct. 19 in the Louvre's Tuileries Gardens as part of Hors les Murs, a public art program organized by the Fiac contemporary art fair.

"This is something that should not happen," Joep van Lieshout, the collective's founder, said in a telephone interview. "A museum should be an open place for communication. The task of the museum and the press is to explain the work."

"The piece itself, it's not really very explicit," Mr. van Lieshout added. "It's a very abstracted shape. There are no genitals; it's pretty innocent."


Comment: The act of copulation is very clearly being depicted. There's nothing innocent about that.

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Light Sabers

First, they came for the biologists: The Postmodernist Left's attack on science and truth

Heather Heying
Wall Street Journal
Mon, 02 Oct 2017 10:46 UTC
biological samples
© ISTOCK/GETTY IMAGES
Who would have guessed that when America cleaved, the left would get the National Football League and the right would get uncontested custody of science?

The revolution on college campuses, which seeks to eradicate individuals and ideas that are considered unsavory, constitutes a hostile takeover by fringe elements on the extreme left. Last spring at the Evergreen State College, where I was a professor for 15 years, the revolution was televised - proudly and intentionally - by the radicals. Opinions not fitting with the currently accepted dogma - that all white people are racist, that questioning policy changes aimed at achieving "equity" is itself an act of white supremacy - would not be tolerated, and those who disagreed were shouted down, hunted, assaulted, even battered. Similar eruptions have happened all over the country.

What may not be obvious from outside academia is that this revolution is an attack on Enlightenment values: reason, inquiry and dissent. Extremists on the left are going after science. Why? Because science seeks truth, and truth isn't always convenient.
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Wedding Rings

What makes a happy marriage? Money and extreme political views, say researchers

Ben Steverman
Bloomberg
Mon, 02 Oct 2017 09:54 UTC
marriage ceremony
© Pexels
People are being pickier about who they marry and waiting longer to tie the knot. And with half of marriages ending in divorce, it's gotten a lot easier to exit unpleasant unions. So, the state of the American marriage should be happier than ever, right?

Instead, the quality of American marriages has dropped significantly. While most Americans say they're still "very happy" in their marriages, the number is down from the early 1970s, from 68 percent to 60 percent.
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Megaphone

Politicians and celebrities join in a deafening chorus for gun control following the Las Vegas shootings

Rachel Blevins
The Free Thought Project
Tue, 03 Oct 2017 09:21 UTC
hillary and guns
The Las Vegas massacre, which has been dubbed the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, presents a new set of challenges and questions for Americans-but many politicians and celebrities are using it to make the usual calls for gun control.

The shooting left 59 people dead and 527 injured, and the official story is that it was carried out by Stephen Paddock, a 64-year-old man whose life is missing all of the qualities that make up the profile of a typical mass shooter. Among a number of glaring inconsistencies, Paddock appears to have been a happy, rich, retired man. Along with his actions in the days leading up to the shooting, the idea that he transported 23 firearms and thousands of rounds of ammunition up to his hotel room-and it went unnoticed by the hotel's cleaning service for days-simply does not add up.

However, instead of pursuing justice for the victims by searching for answers that go beyond the official narrative of how the shooting occurred, a number of politicians and celebrities have responded by calling for gun control.

Hillary Clinton wasted no time in politicizing the tragedy, taking to Twitter just hours after the shooting occurred, to write that Americans should "stand up to the NRA" in the exact same Tweet that she wrote Americans "must put politics aside."

Comment: They're taking our guns? US gun industry executives say mass shootings lead to booming business:
Here's how it works. Following a mass shooting, there is talk of gun control, which the National Rifle Association and other gun advocates attack as an assault on the Second Amendment. Notably, gun and ammunition manufacturers often donate, either directly or as a portion of each sale, to the NRA. The fear of losing gun rights leads to panic buying, which brings greater profits to gun retailers, gun companies and their investors.


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Attention

London train passengers panic and jump onto the tracks after 'doomsday nutter' starts reciting Bible verses

Nick Pisa
The Sun
Mon, 02 Oct 2017 09:03 UTC
escaping passengers
© BPM MediaPassengers pictured leaving the train after the commuter sparked panic.
A doomsday preacher caused panic on a rush-hour train service yesterday by ranting about the end of the world.

Commuters forced open doors and jumped off when the man began quoting from the Bible about sin.

Some worried passengers forced open doors and walked close to "live" electric tracks to reach the platform at Wimbledon station in south west London forcing operators to turn off power.

Delays of more than an hour were reported as cops were called to the station to speak to the preacher who rattled travellers by talking about "Doomsday".

One travelled on Twitter wrote:"Held up on the train to Waterloo, some nutter starts reciting verses from the Bible, causes a crush and a panic as people fear for their lives.
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Beaker

Britain to limit sales of acid to minors after spate of acid attacks


Reuters
Tue, 03 Oct 2017 23:29 UTC
amber rudd
© REUTERS/Hannah McKayBritain's Home Secretary Amber Rudd speaks at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, October 3, 2017.
Britain will limit sales of sulphuric acid and outlaw the sale of such corrosive substances to children after a spate of assaults and its possible use to make bombs, interior minister Amber Rudd said on Tuesday.

Much to public alarm, the number of incidents where assailants have used acid has risen sharply, with police figures suggesting there had been more than 400 corrosive substance attacks in the six months to April this year.

Many victims were left with serious, life-changing injuries as a result.

The proposed new laws will make it illegal to sell the most harmful corrosive substances to under-18s while the carrying of acid in public without good reason will be banned.

"Acid attacks are absolutely revolting," Home Secretary Rudd told party activists at the Conservative Party Conference in the northern English city of Manchester. "You have all seen the pictures of victims that never fully recover; endless surgeries, lives ruined."
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Airplane

An "almost inconceivable" mystery: Final report on MH370 admits defeat - plane nowhere to be found


FirstPost
Tue, 03 Oct 2017 23:09 UTC
US Navy search for MH370
© East News/ Polaris
Australian investigators on Tuesday released their final report on the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, saying the inability to bring closure for victims families was a "great tragedy" and "almost inconceivable" in the modern age.

It has now been three-and-a-half years since MH370 and its 239 passengers and crew disappeared en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur on 8 March, 2014, reported The Guardian.

The report was released by the the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), the agency that coordinated the largest and most expensive underwater search in history.

"It remains a great tragedy and we wish that we could have brought complete closure to the bereaved," ATSB chief commissioner, Greg Hood, said.

"I hope, however, that they can take some solace in the fact that we did all we could do to find answers."

Comment: MH370 disappeared without a trace. After such an effort, perhaps it is worth considering that this is literally what happened to the flight.

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Attention

Penis and butt surgeries gone very wrong - and the fake doctor who'll pay dearly for it

David Ovalle
Miami Herald
Mon, 02 Oct 2017 13:32 UTC
Mark Schreiber
© David Ovalle - Miami HeraldMark Schreiber, a former doctor with a sordid history of practicing medicine, pleaded guilty to the illegal procedure that left a man with a mangled penis.
Former South Florida plastic surgeon Mark Schreiber, notorious for botched plastic surgeries over decades, is headed back to prison - this time for butt enhancement and penis enlargement procedures gone awry in Miami.

Schreiber agreed to spend 44 months behind bars on two counts of practicing medicine without a license.

When he gets out, the 62-year-old ex-doctor will also have to pay $145,000 in restitution to the victim of the butt implant, according to the plea deal struck last week in Miami-Dade Circuit Court.

South Florida has long been a hub for troubled cosmetic procedures in both legal and illegal clinics.
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