Quote:In an interesting and favorable notice of Changing Planes (which you can find elsewhere on the site, in Spanish and English), the Argentinean reviewer asserts that since Le Guin isn’t a hard science fiction writer, “technology is carefully avoided.” I stuck a footnote onto this in my translation of the article, and here is the footnote expanded — because this business is really getting my goat.

‘Hard’ SF is all about technology, and ‘soft’ SF doesn’t have any technology, right? And my books don’t have technology in them, because I am only interested in psychology and emotions and squashy stuff like that, right?

Not right. How can genuine science fiction of any kind lack technological content? Even if its principal interest isn’t in engineering or how machines work — if like most of mine, it’s more interested in how minds, societies, and cultures work — still, how can anybody make a story about a future or an alien culture without describing, implicitly or explicitly, its technology?

Nobody can. I can’t imagine why they’d want to.

Its technology is how a society copes with physical reality: how people get and keep and cook food, how they clothe themselves, what their power sources are (animal? human? water? wind? electricity? other?) what they build with and what they build, their medicine — and so on and on. Perhaps very ethereal people aren’t interested in these mundane, bodily matters, but I’m fascinated by them, and I think most of my readers are too.

Technology is the active human interface with the material world.

But the word is consistently misused to mean only the enormously complex and specialised technologies of the past few decades, supported by massive exploitation both of natural and human resources.

This is not an acceptable use of the word. “Technology” and “hi tech” are not synonymous, and a technology that isn't “hi,” isn’t necessarily '“low” in any meaningful sense.

We have been so desensitized by a hundred and fifty years of ceaselessly expanding technical prowess that we think nothing less complex and showy than a computer or a jet bomber deserves to be called “technology” at all. As if linen were the same thing as flax — as if paper, ink, wheels, knives, clocks, chairs, aspirin pills, were natural objects, born with us like our teeth and fingers — as if steel saucepans with copper bottoms and fleece vests spun from recycled glass grew on trees, and we just picked them when they were ripe...

One way to illustrate that most technologies are, in fact, pretty “hi,” is to ask yourself of any manmade object, Do I know how to make one?

Anybody who ever lighted a fire without matches has probably gained some proper respect for “low” or “primitive” or “simple” technologies; anybody who ever lighted a fire with matches should have the wits to respect that notable hi-tech invention.

I don’t know how to build and power a refrigerator, or program a computer, but I don’t know how to make a fishhook or a pair of shoes, either. I could learn. We all can learn. That’s the neat thing about technologies. They’re what we can learn to do.

And all science fiction is, in one way or another, technological. Even when it’s written by people who don’t know what the word means.

All the same, I agree with my reviewer that I don’t write hard science fiction. Maybe I write easy science fiction. Or maybe the hard stuff’s inside, hidden — like bones, as opposed to an exoskeleton.…

— Ursula K. Le Guin, 2005

Quote:Dr. William P. Murphy Jr., a biomedical engineer who was an inventor of the vinyl blood bag that replaced breakable bottles in the Korean War and made transfusions safe and reliable on battlefields, in hospitals and at scenes of natural disasters and accidents, died on Thursday [Nov 30] at his home in Coral Gables, Fla. He was 100.

His death was confirmed on Monday by Mike Tomás, the president and chief executive of U.S. Stem Cell, a Florida company for which Dr. Murphy had long served as chairman. He became chairman emeritus last year.

Dr. Murphy, the son of a Nobel Prize-winning Boston physician, was also widely credited with early advances in the development of pacemakers to stabilize erratic heart rhythms, of artificial kidneys to cleanse the blood of impurities, and of many sterile devices, including trays, scalpel blades, syringes, catheters and other surgical and patient-care items that are used once and thrown away.

But Dr. Murphy was perhaps best known for his work on the modern blood bag: the sealed, flexible, durable and inexpensive container, made of polyvinyl chloride, that did away with fragile glass bottles and changed almost everything about the storage, portability and ease of delivering and transfusing blood supplies worldwide.

Developed with a colleague, Dr. Carl W. Walter, in 1949-50, the bags are light, wrinkle-resistant and tear proof. They are easy to handle, preserve red blood cells and proteins, and ensure that the blood is not exposed to the air for at least six weeks. Blood banks, hospitals and other medical storage facilities depend on their longevity. Drones drop them safely into remote areas.

In 1952, Dr. Murphy joined the United States Public Health Service as a consultant and, at the behest of the Army, went to Korea during the war there to demonstrate, with teams of medics, the use of the blood bags in transfusing wounded soldiers at aid stations near the front lines.

“It was the first major test of the bags under battlefield conditions, and it was an unqualified success,” Dr. Murphy said in a telephone interview from his home for this obituary in 2019. In time, he noted, the bags became a mainstay of the blood-collection and storage networks of the American Red Cross and similar organizations abroad.



(For years, researchers have said an ingredient in polyvinyl chlorides, diethylhexyl phthalate, or DEHP — used in making building materials, clothing and many health care products — poses a cancer risk to humans. Since 2008, Congress has banned DEHP in children’s products in the U.S.; the European Union has required labels; and alternative chemicals have replaced DEHP in blood bags.)

In 1957, he founded the Medical Development Corporation, a Miami company that two years later became Cordis Corporation, a developer and maker of devices for diagnosing and treating heart and vascular diseases. With Dr. Murphy as chief engineer, president, chief executive and chairman, Cordis produced what he called the first synchronous cardiac pacemaker.

...

Dr. Murphy retired from Cordis in 1985 to pursue other commercial medical interests. By then, he held 17 patents, had written some 30 articles for professional journals and had received the Distinguished Service Award of the North American Society of Pacing and Electrophysiology. He received the Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003 and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2008.

William Parry Murphy Jr. was born on Nov. 11, 1923, in Boston. His father, a hematologist, shared the 1934 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for a study that showed that a diet of raw liver could ameliorate the effects of pernicious anemia. His mother, Harriett (Adams) Murphy, was the first woman to become a licensed dentist in Massachusetts.

William Jr. and his older sister, Priscilla, grew up in Brookline, the Boston suburb. As a teenager Priscilla became the youngest qualified female pilot in the country but died shortly afterward in the crash of a small plane in a snowstorm near Syracuse, N.Y., on a nighttime medical-mercy flight from Boston.

Fascinated as a boy with mechanics, William devised a gasoline-powered snow blower, whose design he sold to a company.

...
After retiring from Cordis, Dr. Murphy and a colleague, John Sterner, in 1986 bought Hyperion Inc., which designed, manufactured and marketed medical laboratory and diagnostic devices. In 2003, he joined the board of Bioheart, which developed stem cell therapies. He became chairman of Bioheart in 2010 and later chairman of U.S. Stem Cell, a successor company.

In 2019, a federal court empowered the Food and Drug Administration to stop U.S. Stem Cell from injecting patients with an extract made from their own belly fat. The action came after three patients suffered severe, permanent eye damage resulting from fat extracts injected into their eyes to treat macular degeneration. The company had maintained that the extract contained stem cells with healing and regenerative powers, but medical experts disputed that claim.

Dr. Murphy had by then become enthusiastic about the promise of stem cell research. In 2014, he spoke to a Miami conference about the rapidly growing and controversial field of using stem cells derived from bone marrow and umbilical cord blood to treat neurodegenerative conditions, diabetes and heart disease. “That’s a whole new world of regenerative therapy that’s going to be critical to our future,” he said.

NY Times

Quote:Lear died on Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles, according to the New York Times.

Norman Milton Lear was born on July 27th, 1922 in New Haven, Connecticut. He enlisted in the Army in 1942, where he served in the Mediterranean theater as a radio operator. Lear flew 52 combat missions during World War II and was awarded the Air Medal with four oak leaf clusters before being discharged in 1945.

Following his military career, Lear moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in public relations. Along with aspiring comedy writer Ed Simmons, he began writing comedy sketches for the likes of Martin and Lewis and Rowan and Martin. In the 1950s, he worked on programs including Honestly, Celeste!, The Martha Raye Show, and The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show before creating his first television show, The Deputy, in 1959.

Lear briefly switched to film — he wrote and produced the 1967 film Divorce American Style and directed the 1971 film Cold Turkey, both starring Dick Van Dyke — in the 1960s before he really struck gold with television. He pitched several shows under various names about a working class family before CBS finally picked up All in the Family, which premiered in 1971. Through their on-screen disagreements, the politically divided Bunker family broke ground in its portrayals and discussions of racism, feminism, and war.

In 1972, Sanford and Son, another Lear project, premiered on NBC. Touted as the African American answer to All in the Family, the show was one of the first Black sitcoms and ran until 1977. Lear helmed a number of other popular sitcoms throughout the 1970s, including Maude, The Jeffersons, One Day at a Time, and Good Times. All of his projects helped shaped the structural and thematic building blocks of the genre, from its live studio audience and multi-camera taping to its storylines that dealt with modern societal issues.

Lear’s politics didn’t just show up in his writing. In the 1980s, he founded People for the American Way, a progressive advocacy group meant to counteract the work of the far-right. He produced a television special called I Love Liberty in 1982 as a response to the Moral Majority. In 2001, he purchased one of the first published copies of the United States Declaration of Independence for $8.1 million and organized a so-called “tour” of the document so that Americans could see it in real life. The Declaration visited numerous presidential libraries and museums in the early 2000s, and even appeared at the 2002 Olympics and Super Bowl. Along with Rob Reiner, Lear produced a dramatized reading of the document on July 4th, 2001 that was turned into a film.

Lear won a number of awards in his career, including the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Divorce American Style and several Emmy Awards for All in the Family. In 1991, President Bill Clinton awarded him the National Medal of Arts, and in 2017, he was awarded the fourth annual Woody Guthrie Prize and the Kennedy Center Honors. He was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1984.



CONSEQUENCE TV

Quote:Bert I. Gordon, the professed king of the monster movies whose B pictures featured giant rats, giant spiders, giant grasshoppers, giant chickens, a colossal man and 30-foot teenagers laying waste to everything in sight, died on Wednesday in Los Angeles. He was 100.

His daughter Patricia Gordon confirmed the death.

As anxieties over nuclear testing and the effects of radiation swept postwar America, Mr. Gordon embarked on a low-budget filmmaking odyssey that turned mutated monsters loose on the hapless world. Despite the fact that his movies featured stars like Ida Lupino and Orson Welles, and despite the eye-catching apocalyptic titles and lurid posters, he generated many flops, a few minor hits and largely negative reviews. He also generated a cult following.

In the 1950s and early ’60s, his monster movies were perfect for drive-in theaters, where audiences took in wildly improbable plots, silly dialogue and crude special effects: locusts overrunning a miniature city, a gigantic rat hovering over a girl in a negligee, Ms. Lupino being eaten by vast mealworms.

Filming a movie in 10 to 15 days, using rear-projection enlargements of creatures with ordinary people in the foreground, Mr. Gordon produced, directed and often wrote about 25 films over six decades starting in 1955, most of them monster movies. Among his best known were “The Cyclops” (1957), “Village of the Giants” (1965), “Necromancy” (1972), “The Food of the Gods” (1976) and “Empire of the Ants” (1977).

None came close to the quality or popularity of the classic atomic-monster films of the era: “The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms” (1953), directed by Eugène Lourié, about a dinosaur freed from Arctic hibernation by a nuclear test and slain amid crowds at Coney Island, and “Them” (1954), directed by Gordon Douglas, about huge radioactive ants that menace Los Angeles and are trapped and firebombed in the city’s water tunnels.



Elements of the beach-party genre were combined with Mr. Gordon’s usual themes in “Village of the Giants” (1965). A substance called “goo,” produced with a boy’s chemistry set, causes gigantism in a gang of rocking teenagers, who become 30-foot delinquents running amok in a California town. More chemistry-set magic produces an antidote, and all returns to normal. The Los Angeles Times’s reviewer liked the special effects and the “endless views of healthy young torsos gyrating to the rhythms.”

Orson Welles, often desperate for money to finance his own films, starred in Mr. Gordon’s “Necromancy,” about a sinister man who wields mystical powers over a small town with rituals seeking to bring back the dead.

Ms. Lupino appeared in “The Food of the Gods,” one of three Gordon films loosely based on H.G. Wells tales, which portrayed people on an island fighting overgrown rats, wasps and chickens that have lapped up radioactive stuff that looks like pancake batter oozing from the ground. Vincent Canby of The New York Times called the film “stunningly ridiculous.”

Bert Ira Gordon was born in Kenosha, Wis., on Sept. 24, 1922, the son of Charles Abraham Gordon and Sadeline (Barnett) Gordon. He became interested in film as a boy, when an aunt gave him a 16-millimeter movie camera for his birthday. He attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison but dropped out to join the Army Air Forces during World War II.

In addition to his daughter Patricia, he is survived by his wife; their daughter, Christina Gordon; another daughter, Carol Gordon; six grandchildren; and 19 great-grandchildren. He died in a hospital after collapsing at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Mr. Gordon was a production assistant on the CBS television series “Racket Squad” in the early 1950s, and in 1954 he was the producer, cinematographer and supervising editor for the adventure series “Serpent Island.”

After 25 years of mostly making monster pictures, Mr. Gordon produced “Burned at the Stake” (1982), about the Salem witch trials; two sex comedies, “Let’s Do It!” (1982) and “The Big Bet” (1985); “Satan’s Princess” (1989), about a missing woman; and “Secrets of a Psychopath” (2015), about a murderous brother and sister.

Called “Mr. B.I.G.,” both for his initials and for his techniques of creating movie monsters, Mr. Gordon wrote “The Amazing Colossal Worlds of Mr. B.I.G.: An Autobiographical Journey,” which was published in 2010.

NY Times

Quote:Frank Field, who as a meteorologist brought a groundbreaking credential to his job as a television weather forecaster in New York, and who also had a long career presenting network programs on science and medicine, died on Saturday in Florida. He was 100.

His death was announced by WNBC-TV in New York, where Dr. Field began his broadcast career in 1958.

Dr. Field, a presence on New York and network television for more than 40 years, was not the city’s first popular TV forecaster. But he was different from his predecessors in one significant way.

“Weather forecasting used to be in a class with reporting real estate transactions for the newspaper,” Dr. Field told The New Yorker for a 1966 profile. “The networks figured it had to be all jazzed up with pretty girls and other gimmicks.”

Bespectacled and “rather professorial in manner,” as he was described in the magazine profile, Dr. Field more than made up for his lack of flash.

Although he did not have a college degree in meteorology — his doctorate was in optometry, a profession he pursued for a time before embarking on a career in television — Dr. Field had been a weather forecaster in the military, a credential that earned him recognition as a meteorologist by the American Meteorological Society. He was a recipient of the society’s Seal of Approval, which recognizes on-air forecasters who provide “sound delivery of weather information to the general public.”

He drew on his technical knowledge to interpret data from weather satellites launched in the emerging space age, and to explain the details of the illustrated weather systems he displayed on television.

He also established himself as a science reporter who covered more than just the weather.

Dr. Field narrated live telecasts of cardiac surgery and organ transplants. He was an advocate for fire-safety programs, describing the best ways to escape a building fire in the book “Dr. Frank Field’s Get Out Alive” (1992) and in an educational DVD for children and their parents, “Fire Is … ” (2006). He also hosted the programs “Medical Update” and “Health Field.”

Perhaps most famously, he publicized the Heimlich maneuver, the lifesaving procedure developed by Dr. Henry J. Heimlich in the 1970s that employs a bear hug and abdominal thrusts to clear food lodged in the throat. Dr. Field brought Dr. Heimlich to his studio for a demonstration.

Franklyn Field was born on March 30, 1923, in Queens, a son of immigrants from Ukraine. His father was a factory worker.

He was studying geology at Brooklyn College and playing center on the school’s football team — the quarterback was Allie Sherman, who would later be the head coach of the New York Giants — when he enlisted in the Army Air Forces in World War II and was commissioned as a lieutenant.
After the military trained him as a meteorology specialist, he flew over German-occupied France to analyze weather patterns that would affect American bombing runs. He later lectured on meteorology at stateside air bases.

He did not return to Brooklyn College after the war, instead continuing his work in meteorology. He joined the staff of the United States Weather Bureau in Manhattan and headed companies that provided weather data to newspapers and private clients.

Dr. Field left NBC in 1984 and moved to CBS, where he worked for 11 years. He later had stints at two local television stations in New York, WNYW and WWOR. He retired in 2004.

Dr. Field was also as the senior figure of a TV weathercasting family. His son, Storm (born Elliott David Field), began delivering weather reports on WABC in New York in 1976 and went on to have a long career there and on WCBS (where father and son briefly worked together) and WWOR. Dr. Field’s daughter Allison Field was also a weather forecaster, at WCBS, in addition to pursuing an acting career.

They survive him, as does another daughter, Pamela Field; seven grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren. Dr. Field’s wife, Joan Kaplan Field, died this year. Dr. Field lived in Boca Raton, Fla.

Despite (or perhaps because of) his serious demeanor, Dr. Field became a presence on late-night television.

After Johnny Carson poked fun at him on “The Tonight Show,” Dr. Field (whom Carson jokingly called NBC’s “crack meteorologist”) became an occasional guest on the show.

One night during a rainy spell in New York, Carson and his “Tonight Show” colleagues poured buckets of water on him.

NY Times

Quote:Hazel McCallion, who as the longest-serving mayor in Canadian history transformed the sleepy Toronto suburb of Mississauga into a multicultural dynamo and the country’s sixth-largest city, died at her home there on Jan. 29, nine years after she ended her 36-year run. She was 101.

Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario and a close friend of Mrs. McCallion’s, said she died from pancreatic cancer.

And while Mississauga in the 1970s was overwhelmingly white, the city is now one of Canada’s most diverse, drawing immigrants from East and South Asia.
Mrs. McCallion did not just survive but thrive through 12 terms by blending thrifty pragmatism with open-armed populism.

Though she leaned slightly to the political left, she did not hew to a party platform or ideology. Her singular goal was to bring prosperity to Mississauga, which she did by keeping budgets trim — the city rarely carried debt or raised property taxes — and being unafraid to assert her city’s interests against its neighbors or in the Ontario provincial government

“Hazel McCallion does not caution,” the magazine Toronto Life wrote in 2003. “She berates. She harangues. She, well, bites off people’s heads.”

But if politicians and bureaucrats feared her, voters loved her.

After she decided not to run for re-election in 2014, she picked her successor, Bonnie Crombie, who won handily. No one was surprised: Mrs. McCallion left office with an 85 percent approval rating. They called her Hurricane Hazel, a tribute to her brash style more than a reference to the weather disaster that killed 80 people in Toronto in 1954.

Her reputation was cemented just months after she took office, when a train carrying tons of toxic and flammable chemicals overturned near the middle of Mississauga. She immediately ordered most of the town, some 220,000 residents, to evacuate. Over several days she was there alongside the police and firefighters, ushering people to safety, undeterred by an ankle sprained along the way.

And when it was over, she was fierce in her demand for damages.

“It will be an astronomical sum,” she told reporters, “and somebody is going to get the bill.”

Mrs. McCallion played professional hockey in the 1930s, and she remained the picture of ruddy health through her time as mayor, a fact that endeared her to voters. Even into her 80s, she carried a hockey stick in her car trunk, in case she came across a game. She fished, hiked and once, when she was 87, biked five miles to work to promote alternatives to driving.

...

Hazel Journeaux was born on Feb. 14, 1921, in Port-Daniel, a small town on the Gaspé Peninsula in southeast Quebec. Her father, Herbert, ran a fishing and processing company, and her mother, Amanda (Travers) Journeaux, was a nurse.
...
“Having time on my hands is not acceptable,” she told The Toronto Star in 2001, when she was 80. “If I quit, I’d have to find something very challenging to do. And what could be more challenging than being mayor?”

After she finally did end her run as mayor in 2014, at 93, she continued to work. She served as the first chancellor of the Hazel McCallion Campus of Sheridan College, a Toronto-area technical school; she advised Mr. Ford, the Ontario premier; and she oversaw the Greater Toronto Airport Authority, a job that in 2019 took her on a tour of the world’s busiest airports.

In a 2022 interview with the newspaper The National Post, she summed up her philosophy by recalling something her mother would ask her when she was young: “What do you want to accomplish in life? Do you want to be a follower or do you want to take advantage of opportunities to be a leader?”

NY Times

Quote:Is 100 the New 80?: Centenarians Are Becoming More Common by Katharina Buchholz, Feb 5, 2021

Living a long life is a common wish of many – and some might just get what they wish for. Life expectancies in developed and developing countries alike have been rising continuously, causing the number of people who live to 100 years to rise also.

This year, the United Nations expect the number of centenarians to rise to approximately 573,000 worldwide.

The U.S. has the highest absolute number of centenarians in the world with 97,000 living in the country. Japan comes second with 79,000 Japanese who are 100 years or older, according to World Atlas.  Japan is also where the world’s oldest person lives. Kane Tanaka from the Fukuoka prefecture is 117 years old, making her a so-called supercentenarian, which is a person living to or beyond the age of 110.

The world's oldest man, Saturnino de la Fuente of Spain, is turning 112 years old on Monday. He also hails from a country with a higher-than-average population of centenarian. In France, Spain and Italy, the share of the population who is over the age of 100 stands at around 0.03 percent - the highest in Europe.

Japan is the country with the highest rate of centenarians, at 6 for every 10,000 people or approximately 0.06 percent. Uruguay, Hong Kong and Puerto Rico are also home to some of the highest levels of centenarians compared to population with rates between 0.06 and 0.045 percent.

I took this from ATS, but this is my story and I wanted to share it here with my new family of rogues.
Enjoy 
(AOx6179)

This is my one UFO story that took place sometime around the summer of 99 in Ponte Vedra beach FL.

I'm 21 years old and dating what would turn out to be the one true love of my life, and her and I decided to hop in the car late one night and take a cruise out to the beach for some late night fun.

We get to the beach and walk up the coast a while. We climb up to the top of a really high dune, and we end up having a little romp sesh. As we're getting up and wiping the sand from everything and putting our clothes back on, and as I'm buttoning my pants, I look out at the ocean and see something odd.

Wait, what is that, I said as I pointed her to look at what I was seeing.
She sees it and same response, what is that?

What we see is at just about halfway from the shore to the horizon. It's dark, but you can see the shrimp boats out there. There were two we had seen earlier. One way to the north, the other way to the south. About 10 miles apart maybe. But in the middle of them these three ultra bright lights appear. We're high up on a dune looking down on the ocean and could see it was a few miles out. It was three bright lights that, yes, were in a triangular formation. They seemed to be about 50-100 yards apart, maybe more maybe less.
The three lights kept zipping from one position to the next, as if switching positions, but in a rotating triangular pattern. One would zip toward where one was positioned, and fast as lightning it seemed the other would flash zip to where the other one was and then stop for a moment, and then do it again.
We stood there in bewilderment as we rationed it out. It wasn't search lights. Too big and it was only single round lights. No boats or planes could ever move that fast, and especially that close to the water. Whatever it was they appeared to of come out of the ocean, and were hovering right above the water, possibly only feet off the water.
We watched this go on for about 3-5 minutes with the weird shifting triangle pattern, and then it was like it all froze, for one brief moment, and then zip away all in different directions and it looked like shooting stars coming out of the ocean and all zipping off in opposite directions in a flash, and then all three disappear simultaneously.



20 years later I reconnect with this girl. We fell right back into that old love and we got to talking and I mentioned that night, and she almost hit the floor with how she had held onto that as well, and how we had both wondered all those years of what the hell that was we saw in the sky that night on that beach.

What's next...? religious daubs on shop fronts?

Quote:Police investigating claims Jewish children prevented from getting on London buses

Exclusive: Two alleged incidents comes after Met said antisemitic attacks
in London increased by 1,353 per cent since Hamas attacks in Israel

'Police are investigating claims Jewish children have been prevented from getting on buses in London.
In one incident, several Jewish schoolboys were waiting at Egerton Road bus stop in Stamford Hill,
north London and signalled for it to stop. The driver initially slowed down but then continued without
stopping, the complaint says.

It is claimed several passengers were encouraging the driver’s alleged actions, making antisemitic
remarks and expressing their gratitude for the bus not stopping, the Met Police said. The incident
is said to have occurred at around 8.05am on the 76 bus towards Waterloo, on 26 November.


Just another day in the capital.

The alleged incident was reported to Shomrim - the Jewish Community Safety Patrol - and to the
Met by a passenger who felt “threatened, intimidated, shocked, and scared” as he was the only
Jewish person on the bus at the time. He said he was angered by the “apparent complicity of the
bus driver and other passengers”, a Shomrim spokesperson said.

A similar incident is said to have taken place three days later, on the 318 bus, on Ravensdale Road in
Hackney at around 7.40pm. A 13-year-old Jewish girl reported her bus initially slowing down for Jewish
boys putting their hands out for it to stop.

She claimed the driver then rapidly accelerated and did not allow them on. At the next stop, a non-Jewish
Londoner was permitted on board, suggesting “discriminatory behaviour by the driver”, the complaint claims.

Transport for London (TfL) said it was taking the reports “extremely seriously”, adding: “We do not tolerate
any form of discrimination on our network.” It comes after the Metropolitan Police said antisemitic attacks
in London increased by 1,353 per cent following the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas conflict on 7 October.

Chaim Hochhauser, chief executive of Shomrim, described “children terrified to go home from school or use
public transport” as he said: “We are talking about kids waiting at bus stops to go onto buses. Bus drivers
see the Jewish people waiting for buses and they say, ‘No, you are not getting on,’ and drive off.

“It’s happening all over – at supermarkets and clothes stores, they say, ‘We are not serving you Jewish people.’
We are seeing it all over London, and it’s unfair. Why should we suffer like this? Our children don’t know what
is happening in the Middle East, they don’t have TVs, it’s not their fault.

“We receive phone calls every day to our 24/7 hotline, asking, ‘If it is safe for my children to go to school, go
to the park, or even go to hospital appointments?’ We have to say, ‘It’s business as usual, just be aware of
your surroundings, and notify us if something looks suspicious etc.’”

Mr Hochhauser said the number of hate crimes reported to his organisation has rocketed in recent weeks, as
he fears an incident will “start with shouting” but spiral into far worse. He said: “We have never had so many
hate crimes in one month. Usually, on average, it's three a week. Since 7 October, Shomrim has reported 84
hate crimes. We are not talking about nationally this is happening, just around the Stamford Hill neighbourhood.

“We are Charedi Orthodox Jewish people, we are an easy target, and we are vulnerable. Our greatest fear is
that it starts with shouting, but it doesn’t end there, and someone will get hurt.” A Scotland Yard spokesman
confirmed officers are investigating the bus incidents in Hackney.

“It is alleged that the drivers slowed while approaching bus stops where children were waiting, before speeding
up without stopping,” a spokesperson said. “On both occasions it is suggested that the children were obviously
Jewish based on their appearance. “It is alleged that during [one] incident the other passengers on the bus made
antisemitic remarks in support of the driver’s actions.”

A TfL spokesperson added: "We do not tolerate any form of discrimination on our network and take any reports
of this extremely seriously. We are investigating these reports and would urge anyone who has experienced
discrimination, or has information about any incidents, to report this to us or the police so that it can be
investigated.”...'

Today is just crazy with news. So, at the COP28 New World Order Climate meeting, the President of the event pushes back on being told "what to say" and publicly states that there is "no science" behind the demands of phase-out of fossil fuels. 

UAE’s Sultan Al Jaber says phase-out of coal, oil and gas would take world ‘back into caves’. Woke climate nuts are freaking out!

You have to see this Zoom call to believe it.

Show me unless you want to take the world back into caves!

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/...ssil-fuels

So, all of that BS about conspiracy theories and misinformation.... turned out to be true. Video is full of news reports and a bombshell vanity fair story.

No, the Justice system isn't weaponized, not at all.


Rioters' $500 Fine for Burning Down a Wendy's Sparks Outrage

https://www.newsweek.com/rioters-fine-we...ge-1849295

Quote:Conservatives are outraged after two people charged with burning down a Wendy's restaurant in Atlanta in the summer of 2020 were fined just $500 each.


Prosecutors said Chisom Kingston, Natalia Hanna White and John Wesley Wade set a fire that destroyed the Wendy's in June 2020 amid protests sparked by the fatal shooting of Rayshard Brooks, a 27-year-old Black man, by a police officer during an encounter outside the restaurant.

Kingston and White accepted plea deals on Thursday, just days before they were set to go on trial, WSB-TV reported. Both pleaded guilty to charges including arson in the first degree.

They will each have to pay a $500 fine, complete 150 hours of community service and serve five years of probation, according to the local station. Wade remains in federal custody.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, took to social media to rail against their sentences, comparing it to the punishments meted out to those charged with offenses related to the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by supporters of former president Donald Trump.
"J6'ers are being locked up for years for walking in the Capitol and some never walked inside at all, but the guys who plead guilty to arson and burned down the Wendy's in Atl in 2020 BLM riots only have to pay a $500 fine!!!" Greene wrote on X, formerly Twitter.


Representative Mike Collins, a Republican of Georgia's 10th congressional district, wrote: "I'm sure a lot of J6 trespassers would love to pay $500 and go home. If only they had burned down a building, maybe."

Quote:This world is nuts, man.



January 6th protesters are being thrown in prison for years at a time; Donald Trump was indicted in August in Fulton county for attempting to overthrow the 2020 election; and now, in that same county, two BLM rioters who literally burned down a Wendy's as part of their 2020 demonstration are getting zero jail time, just probation and fines, for their crime.
Zero jail time for burning down a restaurant on purpose.
Our country is not a serious country.

Quote:Pilot had seizure that stiffened his legs & back, jamming his feet under rudder pedals on short final approach.

The captain immediately took over flying duties and there was no loss of aircraft control.

The relief pilot who was required to be on the flight deck during landing was able to remove the unconscious pilot from the seat.

This is the 4th Pilot Incapacitation in 2 weeks!!!

Recent Pilot incapacitations or deaths:

Nov.26, 2023 - Ryanair Flight FR-3472 (LTN-RZE) from London Luton, UK to Rzeszow (Poland) - one of the pilots became incapacitated, plane diverted to Krakow and landed safely. The aircraft was awaited by an ambulance. The pilot received medical assistance.

Nov.20, 2023 - Air Transat Flight TS-186 (YYZ-PUJ) from Toronto, Canada to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic - pilot became incapacitated and was replaced by a pilot passenger 

Nov.16, 2023 - Air India Pilot Death - 37 year old Air India Pilot Captain Himanil Kumar had cardiac arrest at Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport during training   

Oct.30, 2023 - Jet2 Flight LS-1711 (MAN-DLM) Manchester (UK) to Dalaman (Turkey) - First officer became incapacitated, pilot diverted aircraft to Budapest, landed safely   

Oct.18, 2023 - Austrian Airlines Pilot Death - 43 year old Christian Zimmerebner, AUA Austrian Airlines Pilot and member of Dorfgastein mountain rescue, died suddenly on Oct.18, 2023 due to "serious illness" 

Sep.24, 2023 - Austrian Airlines Flight OS-188 (STR-VIE) Stuttgart to Vienna The captain became incapacitated, first officer took control of aircraft   

Sep.23, 2023 - Alaska Airlines Pilot Death - 37 year old Captain Eric McRae died suddenly in his hotel room during layover, was to fly that morning   

Sep.22, 2023 - Delta Flight DL-291 (CDG-LAX) Paris to Los Angeles - Pilot became incapacitated, was taken to cabin for care, plane diverted to Minneapolis, pilot taken to hospital.

Pilot Incapacitation Trending or @MakisMD

One iconic artwork from every country in Europe.

1. Germany: "Wanderer above the Sea of Fog" - Caspar David Friedrich (1818)



2. Albania: "Motra Tone" - Kolë Idromeno (1883)



3. Andorra: The apse fresco at the church of Sant Miquel d'Engolasters painted by Mestre de Santa Coloma during the 12th century (c.1160)



4. Austria: "The Kiss" - Gustav Klimt (1907-1908)



5. Belarus: "And the Saved World Remembers" - Mai Dantsig (1985)



6. Belgium: "The Triumph of Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange" - Jacob Jordaens (1652)



7. Bosnia and Herzegovina: "Mountain Landscape" - Karlo Mijić (1924)



8. Bulgaria: "Rachenitsa Dance" - Ivan Mrkvička (1894)



9. Croatia: "Roman woman playing a mandolin" - Vjekoslav Karas (c.1847)




10. Cyprus: "Sleeping Adonis" - Andreas Charalambides (20th century)

Disney was recently forced to admit publicly due to an SEC filing that they had to provide to investors that their "Social & Environmental Agenda's" are at odd's with what consumers want.

How stupid do you have to be to intentionally destroy your historic brand in order to push an extreme agenda that your primary consumers see as what is described as "EVIL"?

https://boundingintocomics.com/2023/11/2...ec-report/

Quote:The SEC disclosure highlights the risks Disney faces concerning the potential misalignment with public and consumer preferences in entertainment, travel, and consumer products. 

It reads, “Generally, our revenues and profitability are adversely impacted when our entertainment offerings and products, as well as our methods to make our offerings and products available to consumers, do not achieve sufficient consumer acceptance. Further, consumers’ perceptions of our position on matters of public interest, including our efforts to achieve certain of our environmental and social goals, often differ widely and present risks to our reputation and brands.”