We all have to remember that it's still winter.
******************
If we need another example of George Santayana's aphorism - “Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it” - all we need to do is look at South Africa.
It seems their parliament has decided to make the same mistake Zimbabwe did by confiscating land from white landowners without compensation.
This will lead to bloodshed, just as it did in Zimbabwe, and South Africa's agricultural production will drop off to the point where it can no longer feed itself. Despite its riches in natural resources, it will find itself in the same place as Venezuela – broke and disintegrating. All of those who know how to run the mines, the farms, and vital infrastructure will leave or be driven out.
Of course the whole “We're taking back land stolen from our ancestors” schtick is total BS as the land in what is now South Africa was uninhabited when the Boers settled it 400 years ago. Neither the Zulu or the Xhosa tribes which now inhabit South Africa lived anywhere near there when it was settled. They didn't arrive until almost 150 years after the Dutch arrived.
But they won't let historical fact stand in the way of the narrative.
******************
And speaking of Venezuela, it has now achieved economic equality. Just about everyone (except the ruling class) are destitute and the money is worth more as toilet paper than it is as currency.
Venezuela is also a good example of what happens when government leaders ignore the lessons of history. They took the richest nation in South America and turned it into an impoverished Third World s**thole.
******************
Chuck Schumer has unwittingly proven that he's a racist bastard, not much different than his colleagues. At least Chuck has admitted outright that he's a racist. His colleagues prefer to use the “soft racism of low expectations” to hold minorities to a lower standard because they do not believe they are capable of meeting the high expectations we have for everyone else.
******************
I still prefer the original gender neutral pronoun – it – to the new ones being foisted upon the unwilling populace by an extremely small but vocal minority that seem to think their grievances outweigh all others.
Some people may think I'm being insensitive. I am not. I am being offensive because these crybabies want special accommodation made society for their delusions rather than having them seek psychiatric help for their condition(s). I will not buy into or support their delusions.
******************
Stuart Schneiderman thinks it's time to take a closer look at Prozac, one of the many SSRI's used to treat depression.
It’s been in use for decades now, but mental health professionals are still debating the value of Prozac and other SSRIs. When the little capsules hit the market, the press was chockablock with stories about the new miracle cure. Patients who had spent years on the couch opining about their childhood traumas suddenly felt better. They felt a lot better. Psychotherapy had made them depressed. Prozac made them happy. Who could argue with that?There is certainly enough evidence that these drugs have some negative effects that have mostly been ignored. It wouldn't surprise me to find that for some patients things were made worse by their use. Frankly, these pharmaceuticals need some follow on research>,br>
--snip--
Prozac has not been in use for a very long time and we do not really know the long term effects. We are now beginning to see that these pills have a downside. And we owe it to psychologist and patient Lauren Slater to have analyzed the problem and shared some of her experience.
--snip--
[I]t is sobering for those who have been prescribing these pills to note that a placebo works equally well in two-thirds of the cases. This still suggests that the medicine helps a third of patients.
At the least, the new studies challenge the media-driven orthodoxy—to the effect that depression is a chemical imbalance. They also tell us that the pills have been marketed to death, overprescribed and overused.
******************
Another area where medicine needs to take a closer look at the long term effects of a medication is birth control, specifically The Pill and all of its derivatives like Norplant and some of the hormone laced IUDs. I wish I could remember where I read the following, but it appears there may be a link between use of hormonal birth control and the increases in things like homosexuality, autism, mental deficits, as well as a host of birth defects. This birth control method has been around for 50 years now and one has to wonder if we have been unwittingly affecting the health of the children we eventually have. There's also the matter of some of these hormones making their way into the food chain that may be having an effect on male fertility, seeing as sperm counts in men have fallen by almost 50%.
******************
Did any of you watch the Oscars?
Me neither.
Between the crappy movies over the past year (there were a few standouts) and the heavy political rhetoric being laid upon viewers, I had no desire to watch. It appears from the TV ratings for previous Oscars that a lot of other people have also been tuning out. After all, who wants to be preached at by a bunch of self-important, intolerant, willfully ignorant people who believe the world revolves around them?
Instead, I watched a rerun of NCIS and Bull.
******************
Call this a 'must see' video.
Apparently Virginia Delegate Nick Freitas discussed the importance of the Second Amendment, something Democrats in the legislature didn't like. They demanded a recess “so that they could calm down because they were so outraged.”
I guess we know where they stand on the Second Amendment...and it ain't on our side.
******************
And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where we're heading for yet another Nor'easter, dreams of the upcoming boating season are starting to intrude, and where we won't have to plow snow for at least another four days.