Posts by glenster

wouldn't it be great to see the big 8, wel the big 8 in the jw world not the national leaders big 8, ehem.. if they would all grow a beard for the next business meeting in october, where the nu-lite(r) is that beards are ok for men.. could someone photoshop one of the prevalent new smiley photos of the gb and put a few weeks of whisker growth on them?.

just wondering what it would look like.

not duck dynasty length, perhaps, but nicely trimmed full beards, or maybe goatees.. what do you think it would look like?

glenster

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesula

3

Hubble: Timelapse of V838 Monocerotis (2002-2006) [1080p]

by glenster in

time lapse photography of the explosion of a star over four years:.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1fvmss9cps.

http://www.spacetelescope.org/videos/heic0617a/.

glenster

This is not a computer simulation. It's an actual time-lapse video taken over
four years by the Hubble—and scientists don't know its origin yet.
http://sploid.gizmodo.com/star-explosion-video-is-the-most-awesome-thing-i-have-e-1589138376

First, despite appearances, the cloud itself is not changing in these images!
It’s actually fairly static, with movement far too small to notice on this time-
scale. What you’re seeing is actually a pulse of light from the outburst moving
through the cloud, illuminating it. Light moves very rapidly, but the cloud is
huge, light years across. That means it takes a long time for light to cross it,
and over the years we’re just seeing different parts of the dust cloud lit. This
type of event is common in astronomy, and it’s called a light echo.

Second, although we’re not exactly sure what caused the outburst, the most like-
ly explanation is that two normal (but massive) stars merged together. An event
like this is pretty rare, but entirely possible. When that happens they form a
single, more massive star, which is unstable. It can undergo a huge paroxysm,
brightening by a factor of thousands, and also expand and redden. This all fits
what we see here; the dust cloud would’ve been part of the nebula that formed the
stars, and existed long before they did.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/06/12/v838_mon_video_of_a_stellar_outburst.html

This behavior of ballooning to an immense size, but not losing its outer layers,
is very unusual and completely unlike an ordinary nova explosion.

The outburst may represent a transitory stage in a star's evolution that is rare-
ly seen. The star has some similarities to highly unstable aging stars called
eruptive variables, which suddenly and unpredictably increase in brightness.

V838 Monocerotis is located about 20,000 light-years away from Earth in the di-
rection of the constellation Monoceros, placing the star at the outer edge of our
Milky Way galaxy.
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_784.html

Light echo

Rapidly brightening objects like novae and supernovae are known to produce a
phenomenon known as light echo. The light that travels directly from the object
arrives first. If there are clouds of interstellar matter around the star, some
light is reflected from the clouds. Because of the longer path, the reflected
light arrives later, producing a vision of expanding rings of light around the
erupted object.

In the case of V838 Monocerotis, the light echo produced was unprecedented and
is well documented in images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. While the photos
appear to depict an expanding spherical shell of debris, they are actually formed
by the illumination of an ever-expanding ellipsoid with the progenitor star at one
focus and the observer at the other. Hence, despite appearances, the structures in
these photos are actually concave toward the viewer. In other words, the light is
reflecting dust that is mostly 'behind' the star, not in 'front' of it.

It is not yet clear if the surrounding nebulosity is associated with the star
itself. If that is the case, they may have been produced by the star in earlier
eruptions which would rule out several models that are based on single catastroph-
ic events. However, there is strong evidence that the V838 Monocerotis system is
very young and still embedded in the nebula from which it formed.

Interestingly, the eruption initially emitted at shorter wavelengths (i.e. was
bluer), which can be seen in the light echo: the outer border is bluish in the
Hubble images.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V838_Monocerotis

3

Hubble: Timelapse of V838 Monocerotis (2002-2006) [1080p]

by glenster in

time lapse photography of the explosion of a star over four years:.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1fvmss9cps.

http://www.spacetelescope.org/videos/heic0617a/.

glenster

Time lapse photography of the explosion of a star over four years:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1fvMSs9cps
http://www.spacetelescope.org/videos/heic0617a/

Hubble's Ultra Deep Field 2014 with ultraviolet light
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0Brz7Vd72c
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_eXtreme_Deep_Field

43

800 Infant Bodies Found in a Septic Tank at Roman Catholic Children's Home

by cofty in

796 infant skeletons have been found discarded in a septic tank at the former mother and baby home run by the catholic church in ireland between 1925 and 1961.. unwed mothers were sent these "magdelene asylums" to be treated like criminals.

their babies - if they survived - were taken from them.

if they did not survive their bodies were thrown into a septic tank and forgotton.

glenster

Milltown archaeologist to advise on Tuam baby burials

But Ms Maguire says there is a strong possibility there could be more
bodies in the area, some of which would be children who died before
they were baptised and therefore forbidden for many years from being
buried on consecrated ground.

These so-called cillini burials saw children, often stillborn,
secretly buried by their parents around the edge of cemeteries during
the night. That may have happened at the graveyard attached to the
workhouse that preceded the mother-and-baby home.

Many babies, she added, were buried in little more than a shroud
which will have disintegrated leaving thousands of bones all mixed
together.

She added that people should hold back on memorials until the extent
and location of burials is clear.

She told the Mirror: “People obviously are talking about a memorial
being erected here, but I would caution against that until the full
extent of burials is known. You could start digging up land for a
memorial and be bringing up remains with the soil depending on how
shallow they are.”

Ms Maguire said there will be a huge amount of work to do, cross-
referencing the nuns’s records against state records of how many
mothers and babies were sent to the home. The land will also be
studied and mapped to establish where the graveyard for the old work-
house on the site was, taking into account changes in the law that saw
graves moved outside the workhouse perimeter in the 1800s.

During the independent archaeologist’s excavation at Milltown, one mass
grave alone was found to contain at least 429 babies.

However, in an indication of the difficulties in such operations, she
added: “One grave digger we spoke to said on some days there were 50
babies brought to Milltown so they didn’t all get recorded.

"Also these graves remained open but covered for some time so parents
of stillborn babies for example would come to the grave in the middle
of the night and bury their children there, so the true extent of
burials is difficult to establish.

“I don’t think it would be the same scale at Tuam, but it’s certainly possible
given this home was runs by nuns and would have been seen as a holy place that
there could be burials close to the workhouse cemetery and that will add to the
complexity of any effort to establish how many babies are buried here.”
http://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/crime/milltown-archaeologist-advise-tuam-baby-3656059

43

800 Infant Bodies Found in a Septic Tank at Roman Catholic Children's Home

by cofty in

796 infant skeletons have been found discarded in a septic tank at the former mother and baby home run by the catholic church in ireland between 1925 and 1961.. unwed mothers were sent these "magdelene asylums" to be treated like criminals.

their babies - if they survived - were taken from them.

if they did not survive their bodies were thrown into a septic tank and forgotton.

glenster

For balance:

Tuam mother and baby home: the trouble with the septic tank story

The deaths of these 796 children are not in doubt. Their numbers are a stark
reflection of a period in Ireland when infant mortality in general was very much
higher than today, particularly in institutions, where infection spread rapidly.
At times during those 36 years the Tuam home housed more than 200 children and 100
mothers, plus those who worked there, according to records Corless has found.

What has upset, confused and dismayed her in recent days is the speculative na-
ture of much of the reporting around the story, particularly about what happened
to the children after they died. “I never used that word ‘dumped’,” she says
again, with distress. “I just wanted those children to be remembered and for their
names to go up on a plaque. That was why I did this project, and now it has taken
[on] a life of its own.”

She also discovered that there were no burial records for the children and that
they had not been interred in any of the local public cemeteries. In her article
she concludes that many of the children were buried in an unofficial graveyard at
the rear of the former home. This small grassy space has been attended for decades
by local people, who have planted roses and other flowers there, and put up a
grotto in one corner.
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/tuam-mother-and-baby-home-the-trouble-with-the-septic-tank-story-1.1823393

Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home

In early June 2014, a local historian, Catherine Corless, studied the state
death records of 796 children who had died at the home from a range of ailments,
including gastroenteritis, malnutrition, and disease. She then cross-referenced
the names with those in local graveyards and found that only one (a child who had
been interred in a family plot) had been buried in any of those cemeteries. Based
on mapping of the former home and her findings, she concluded that the only possi-
ble location for the corpses was the site uncovered by the boys nearly four de-
cades ago, which is located at the edge of the grounds of the former home. The re-
mains of the victims were mostly within the septic tank. Victims were placed in a
grave without interment records being kept. Corless is now campaigning for a grave
marker to be placed at the site.

Inquiry

Susan Lohan, co-founder of Adoption Rights Alliance, has called for an inquiry
into mother and baby homes.[16] On 4 June 2014 the Irish government announced it
was putting together a number of representatives from various government depart-
ments to investigate the deaths at the home and propose how to address the issue.
Minister for Children and Youth Affairs Charles Flanagan said that a government
inquiry would not be confined to the home in Tuam and that officials would advise
the Government on the best form of inquiry before the end of June 2014.

Qualification of the narrative

On 5 June 2014, an RTÉ Prime Time television report by Mark Coughlan called
"Home Babies" stated, "We don't know for sure, as yet anyway, if the babies who
died in the Tuam home were buried in a septic tank: no burial location is listed
on the death records." On 7 June 2014, The Irish Times quoted Catherine Corless as
saying that the story "has been widely misrepresented" in the the few days since
it broke nationally and internationally. Corless was described as thinking that it
seems impossible "that more than 200 bodies could have been put in a working
sewage tank". The newspaper report echoed the RTÉ broadcast by casting serious
doubt on whether the childrens' remains were actually interred within a septic
tank, and also quoted a man who, as a boy, discovered skeletons there in 1975, who
said that he saw only about 20 skeletons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bon_Secours_Mother_and_Baby_Home

Philomena
Accusations of Anti-Catholicism

The New York Post characterized the film as "another hateful and boring attack
on Catholics." The Post's film reviewer, Kyle Smith called it "90 minutes of or-
ganized hate". Smith further asserted: "A film that is half as harsh on Judaism or
Islam, of course, wouldn’t be made in the first place but would be universally
reviled if it were." In response to this review, filmmaker Harvey Weinstein posted
a full-page ad in the New York Times protesting this characterization. Smith has
accused Harvey Weinstein of making numerous anti-Catholic films, including The
Magdalene Sisters (2002), The Butcher Boy (1998), Priest (1995) and Philomena.

The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights issued a report which it says
debunks Philomena, taking issue with factual representations in the film. The re-
port calls it "a cruel caricature of nuns that is based on half-truths and out-and
-out lies. That it appeals to the worst appetite in anti-Catholic bigots is not
debatable." The congregation of sisters depicted in the film said that they were
denied a copy of the script, that the film was "very misleading" with the facts,
and "twisted the truth".

An article authored by Martin Sixsmith and published in the Guardian supports
much of the portrayal of a scheme carried out by Catholic organizations in Ire-
land that enriched the Church through coerced adoptions and forced labor of unwed
mothers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philomena_%29film%28#Accusations_of_Anti-Catholicism

I appreciate this and also the contribution Sixsmith has made to human rights
for Irish women but his piece here is full of errors (which don’t appreciably de-
tract from the bulk of his comments).

In today’s Irish Times, Catherine Corless has drastically revised what appears
she said initially (http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/tuam...

There is NOT a shred of evidence that 800 or so infants were tossed into a septic
tank. The two boys who saw some skulls in 1975 now say maybe there were 20 skulls
at most!

If there was a septic tank (a map from 1892 copied from a map in 1840 when it was
a Famine-era workhouse indicates so), it was not a septic tank for the Bon Secours
"Home". The misreporting has been so shockingly misleading that when the news
fabrications are disclosed, it will very unfortunately be a propoganda coup for
the RCC in Ireland.

4. The usual fact checking expected from the WaPo,the Guardian for the McCoy,
O’Toole reports were completely absent (maybe the names are Irish so they know) 

5. There were usually 200+ children in the "Home" over 40 years; from death cer-
tificates, there might have been 22 deaths/year. This would give the HOME a
"respectable" infant mortality rate of 10-15% - phenomenally better than other
"HOMES" and no different from non-institutionalized babies in impoverished third-
world Ireland with third-world sanitation and third-world rates of communicable
diseases. Sixsmith like many others neglect that Ireland was a third-world country
for the first 5 decades of the 20thC, with immense poverty even if there was not
another Famine. Even in the 1950s, an astonishing 50% of the young people were
forced to immigrate to survive and it was their savings dispatched home that kept
the island above water.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/06/06/800-dead-babies-are-probably-just-the-beginning/

Tuam deaths need further investigation, says academic expert

Prof Liam Delaney says deaths cannot be explained by social conditions
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/tuam-deaths-need-further-investigation-says-academic-expert-1.1822219

43

800 Infant Bodies Found in a Septic Tank at Roman Catholic Children's Home

by cofty in

796 infant skeletons have been found discarded in a septic tank at the former mother and baby home run by the catholic church in ireland between 1925 and 1961.. unwed mothers were sent these "magdelene asylums" to be treated like criminals.

their babies - if they survived - were taken from them.

if they did not survive their bodies were thrown into a septic tank and forgotton.

glenster

Oh, brother.

To be balanced, neither the basic definitions of God nor atheism carry character
determinants. Either may add a good or bad stipulation to their outlook from a
religious stance, society generally, or be 'centric and intolerant. There have
been problems with either made law of the land, which is institutionalized 'cen-
tric intolerance. Modern US social rules about adoption are pretty modern (see
the Wikipedia article above).

"The American model of adoption eventually proliferated globally. England and
Wales established their first formal adoption law in 1926. The Netherlands passed
its law in 1956. Sweden made adoptees full members of the family in 1959. West
Germany enacted its first laws in 1977. Additionally, the Asian powers opened
their orphanage systems to adoption, influenced as they were by Western ideas
following colonial rule and military occupation."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoption#Modern_period

43

800 Infant Bodies Found in a Septic Tank at Roman Catholic Children's Home

by cofty in

796 infant skeletons have been found discarded in a septic tank at the former mother and baby home run by the catholic church in ireland between 1925 and 1961.. unwed mothers were sent these "magdelene asylums" to be treated like criminals.

their babies - if they survived - were taken from them.

if they did not survive their bodies were thrown into a septic tank and forgotton.

glenster

General history of adoption
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoption