Brokeback Puritans

Installing Linux Ubuntu as a dual-boot system with Windows does work. I tried it tonight on ny Gateway laptop which has Windows Vista. I won’t do it again though. Too much faff. All the others have XP or earlier which have been abandoned by Microsoft in the hope we’ll all pay through the nose for their new one.

The latest version of Linux Mint comes with VLC media player, Firefox, a word processor and spreadsheet that does all I want to do, and Gimp photo editing included and it even fits into the little Acer Aspire. Goodbye, Windows! New computer is ordered and it will be Ubuntu from the outset. There might be a hiatus while I remember the passwords for things but that’s a few weeks away yet. It’s being custom built into a big black case called ‘Evil’.

The disk I have for Ubuntu is out of date but then it did come from Poundland inside a Linux manual, some time ago. The best option seems to be to use unetbootin to grab the latest version from the internet, then infrarecorder to burn the image file to disk. Set up the computer to boot from the disk drive (back in the day, that was the only option, and the disks were 5.25 inches across and held the equivalent of bugger all in modern terms). Reboot and you have the option to play around a while before deciding whether to install or not. It costs nothing, so give it a go.

If you decide to install and wipe out Windows forever, back up first. It’s going to wipe out everything – all files, photos, the lot. Not a problem on rarely-used small machines but the big ones really need that backup. I use external hard drives and DVD backups but then I once lost a lot of stuff so I’m a bit paranoid about it.

Well, all that has nothing to do with the title at all but the reguilar reader won’t be surprised.

No, the title is once more about the comments on an article rather than the article itself. The article in question is the nonsense that all smokers’ children get asthma, even ex-smokers’ children.

Several have pointed out that asthma is increasing as smoking decreases. There are ASH drones trying to spin it in the replies to the best rated comments but it’s not working, Numidium is incredible, he/she/it believes that typing shite makes it true. The rest are not falling for it any more. The Puritan hold is breaking.

It was bound to happen. It always has and always will and the Puritans will never learn. They will get nasty now the end is near as they always do but they will fail again – as they always do.

People just don’t want their lives run by other people. Most will accept it to an extent but the Puritans never know when to stop. They cannot stop. They are Righteous and must correct the wrong-thinkers. It has never occurred to them, and will never occur to them,  that maybe other people want to live in a different way to the way they want to live.

The sad part is, they are so busy living everyone else’s lives that they never even notice their own slipping away. We have a limited time in this world. I’m going to enjoy my little bit of it. You enjoy yours any way you like.

I am not going to tell you how to live your life. I am busy living mine.

25 thoughts on “Brokeback Puritans

  1. XX Puritans never know when to stop. They cannot stop. They are Righteous and must correct the wrong-thinkers.XX

    Or “Convert” the wrong thinkers.

    It USED to be “Bell book and candle.” Now it is “No smoking, Wind turbines, and drowning sugar addicted polar bears.”

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  2. A précis of an old post. Also posted elsewhere:
    Some folk will choose to smoke and drink. Some will die youngish, some will die very old. Some folk will choose to eat a lot of what they like, some will die youngish, some will die very old. This could relate to everything, right?
    Then there are those who will live what the state decrees to be a safe, protected and healthy lifestyle. Surprisingly, some will die youngish and some will die very old.
    However, it’s a 100% certainty we’re all eventually going to die and as the last few miles on the road of life get underway, some will be wishing they’d done just that little bit more and others will be wondering what they missed and why.
    So all you, ‘it’s bad for you – I don’t like it so you can’t do it – we have to stop it now!’ fellows, let me assure you that while you’ve possibly just passed ‘start’ on life’s highway and it looks like a long, almost never-ending road ahead with time aplenty to foist your pettiness upon others, trust me, when you get to my end of the road something will become sadly obvious to you.
    When you look over your shoulder, back down the road you’ve travelled, you’ll see just how short a highway it actually is. Then you’ll realise, too late, what a complete and total waste of your brief journey it was being so miserable, hating the enjoyment of others and trying to foist your pettiness on those who had a little zest for life and were attempting, against all the odds, to enjoy their brief moment in the sun.
    This isn’t a practise life. This is it; it’s the only one you’re going to get.

    Liked by 2 people

  3. The only problem I found with Linux was that when I downloaded the files from the old Windows machine from the back-up external drive, they were all over the place – split up in different folders – impossible to put into a coherent order. I expect there’s a simple way around it.

    Apart from that. Yes. Stop paying Microsoft for a ‘new’ operating system every time you buy a PC, especially as the Gates’s are involved with different programmes now: eugenics programmes.

    People just don’t want their lives run by other people. Most will accept it to an extent but the Puritans never know when to stop.

    As they’re being paid very handsomely by fake charities with taxpayers’ money, they’ll keep going to the bitter end and that might be very bitter. They don’t even need to believe in what they’re doing, which is bouncing the instructions the government gives them right back as if to give them validity.

    Same with the ‘health professionals’. That’s not quite an oxymoron, as there are a few.

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    • The little Acer Aspire is no problem, there is nothing on it I need long-term. Everything is duplicated elsewhere so it was a straight wipeout. The Gateway is dual-boot although I’ll probably just ignore Windows now. Ubuntu can access all the files anyway.

      I think the end is going to be very bitter indeed. Might well involve a few lynchings.

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  4. I have to say I found the general tenor of the comments on the ‘Mail’ article quite heartening. It really does seem as though people are waking up to the fact that all the anti-tobacco propaganda is just that – bullshit, fact-free propaganda. The ASHites in those comments were ploughing a lonely furrow. I came across one comment reply (concerning correlation) which made me laugh out loud, then realised that the author was one ‘Leg Iron’. 🙂

    But very interesting to see the tide starting to turn. I’m sure the minions in Tobacco Control will be keeping a close eye on comments to such articles in the MSM, and I think they may be starting to get worried about how they will pay the mortgage in a few years time. Their problem is that they really aren’t very clever. They remain convinced that if they keep ramping up the hyperbole then people will continue to be frightened, but they obviously never read the fable about the boy who cried wolf.

    Like ‘Global Warming’, which similarly has enjoyed massive funding and political and pseudo-scientific backing for its propaganda drive, the carefully knit web of lies is starting to unravel. It won’t happen overnight, but the writing is on the wall for Tobacco Control. You can get people to suspend common sense for a while, but eventually they start to notice that all the doomsday scenarios they’ve been sold just aren’t happening.

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    • It might well happen overnight. People are complaining about it or laughing about it more and more. OIne day there will be enough to actually DO something about it.

      When that tipping point is reached, the change might well be very quick indeed.

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  5. The article in question is the nonsense that all smokers’ children get asthma, even ex-smokers’ children

    Probably published in retaliation to the Horizon programme that was shown while you were away.

    ‘Allergies: Modern Life and Me’
    Are changes to our internal bacteria responsible for the rise in allergies?
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0258kh9

    9 days left to play.

    ‘Allergies: Modern Life and Me

    “Changes to the bacteria that live inside all of us are responsible for increasing the number of people with allergies, suggests new research.

    In this episode of Horizon, the show investigates this claim by conducting a unique experiment with two allergic families in order to find out just what it is in the modern world that is to blame. With a raft of mini cameras, GPS units and the very latest gene sequencing technology, the show discovers how the western lifestyle is impacting their bacteria. Why are these changes making people allergic?”

    Not only did it bolster the Hygiene Hypothesis but it discovered that the children so horribly allergic still had missing bacteria in their stomachs years later due to early use of antibiotics after difficult births and that babies born by caesarian missed out on a good dousing in certain essential bacteria on their way into the world.

    Knocks anti-tobacco’s asthma theory into a cocked hat.

    Right up your street Leggy and please come back to me with any criticisms as I value your judgement in this area, you being the expert an’ all.

    Liked by 1 person

    • With over 40,000 triggers for an asthma attack including psychological ones put into the heads of those most vulnerable to propaganda! Your worried about a lil smoke!

      Asthma: just believing an odor is harmful ‘could trigger airway inflammation’

      Wednesday 23 July 2014

      or many individuals with asthma, exposure to some odors – such as perfume – can increase inflammation of the airways. But according to a new study by researchers from the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, PA, just believing an odor will cause harm, even if it contains no irritants, can have the same effect.

      http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/280049.php#post

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    • You know, there’s some anti-tobacco research done on cigarette smoke and bacteria. Very nice of them to provide ammunition. I wonder if this why they’ve gone heavy on the chemicals in cigarettes and not the bacteria in smoking. Could it come back to bite them on the behind and I’m given to understand that underdogs bit upwards 😉

      http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cigarettes-smoking-bacteria-infection-pathogen/

      And Frank wrote a great piece about how smoking is good for you, part 1 and 2

      Smoking Is Good For You

      Are we really wise to pursue a smoke-free environment as a society?

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      • From Miss Roses Library

        Medicinal Smoke Reduces Airborne Bacteria – 2007

        “This study represents a comprehensive analysis and scientific validation of our ancient knowledge about the effect of ethnopharmacological aspects of natural products’ smoke for therapy and health care on airborne bacterial composition and dynamics, using the Biolog® microplate panelsand Microlog® database.

        In this study, we have designed an air sampler for microbiological air sampling during the treatment of the room with medicinal smoke. In addition, elimination of the aerial pathogenic bacteria due to the smoke is reported too.

        We have observed that 1 h treatment of medicinal smoke emination by burning wood and a mixture of odoriferous and medicinal herbs (havan sámagri = material used in oblation to fire all over India) on aerial bacterial population caused over 94% reduction of bacterial counts by 60 min and the ability of the smoke to purify or disinfect the air and to make the environment cleaner was maintained up to 24 h in the closed room.

        Absence of pathogenic bacteria Corynebacterium urealyticum, Curtobacterium flaccumfaciens, Enterobacter aerogenes (Klebsiella mobilis), Kocuria rosea, Pseudomonassyringae pv. persicae, Staphylococcus lentus, and Xanthomonas campestris pv. tardicrescens inthe open room even after 30 days is indicative of the bactericidal potential of the medicinal smoke treatment.

        We have demonstrated that using medicinal smoke it is possible to completely eliminate diverse plant and human pathogenic bacteria of the air within confined space.
        Work has implications to use the smoke generated by burning wood and a mixture of odoriferousand medicinal herbs, within confined spaces such as animal barns and seed/grain warehouses to disinfect the air and to make the environment cleaner.
        Work indicates that certain known medicinal constituents from the havan sámagri can thus be added to the burning farm material while disposing unwanted agriculture organic material, in order to reduce plant pathogenicorganisms.

        In particular, it highlights the fact that we must think well beyond the physical aspects of smoke on plants in natural habitats and impacts heavily on our understanding of fire as adriving force in evolution.
        We have demonstrated that using medicinal smoke it is possible to contain diverse pathogenic bacteria of the air we breathe.

        The work also highlights the fact about medicinal smoke and that a lot of natural products have potential for use as medicine in the smoke form as a form of drug delivery and as a promising source of new active natural ingredients for containing indoor airborne infections within confined spaces used for storage of agriculture comodities.

        The dynamic chemical and biological interactions occurring in the atmosphere are much more complex than has been previously realized. The findings warrant a need for further evaluation of various ingredients present in the complex mixture of odoriferous and medicinal herbs, individually and in various combinations to identify the active principlesinvolved in the bactericidal property of the medicinal smoke, applied in the above discussed fashion.”
        Formerly http: //www.agri-history.org/pdf/Medicinal%20smoke.pdf

        Abstract
        http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17913417

        Medicinal smokes

        Abstract
        “All through time, humans have used smoke of medicinal plants to cure illness.
        To the best of our knowledge, the ethnopharmacological aspects of natural products’ smoke for therapy and health care have not been studied.
        Mono- and multi-ingredient herbal and non-herbal remedies administered as smoke from 50 countries across the 5 continents are reviewed.

        Most of the 265 plant species of mono-ingredient remedies studied belong to Asteraceae (10.6%), followed by Solanaceae (10.2%), Fabaceae (9.8%) and Apiaceae (5.3%). The most frequent medical indications for medicinal smoke are pulmonary (23.5%), neurological (21.8%) and dermatological (8.1%).

        Other uses of smoke are not exactly medical but beneficial to health, and include smoke as a preservative or a repellent and the social use of smoke.

        The three main methods for administering smoke are inhalation, which accounts for 71.5% of the indications; smoke directed at a specific organ or body part, which accounts for 24.5%; ambient smoke (passive smoking), which makes up the remaining 4.0%. Whereas inhalation is typically used in the treatment of pulmonary and neurological disorders and directed smoke in localized situations, such as dermatological and genito-urinary disorders, ambient smoke is not directed at the body at all but used as an air purifier.

        The advantages of smoke-based remedies are rapid delivery to the brain, more efficient absorption by the body and lower costs of production. This review highlights the fact that not enough is known about medicinal smoke and that a lot of natural products have potential for use as medicine in the smoke form.

        Furthermore, this review argues in favor of medicinal smoke extended use in modern medicine as a form of drug delivery and as a promising source of new active natural ingredients”
        http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17030480

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      • Sorry – Is it really wise of us as a society to pursue a smoke-free environment?

        We smokers are painted as demons but really we’re the angels. And vice-versa ‘cos god knows something soul-sucking is controlling the ‘For the Good of the Children’ brigade.

        bacteria (n.) 1847, plural of Modern Latin bacterium, from Greek bakterion “small staff,” diminutive of baktron “stick, rod,” from PIE *bak- “staff used for support” (also source of Latin baculum “rod, walking stick”). So called because the first ones observed were rod-shaped. Introduced as a scientific word 1838 by German naturalist Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg (1795-1876).

        http://zapatopi.net/blog/?post=200905205540.self-defence_with_a_walking-stick

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    • Gut bacteria do a hell of a lot more than just make you fart. They can break down fibre and release extra energy that the host can absorb. Ruminants have this down to a fine art, to the point where a cow can live on newspapers and urine with a mineral/vitamin supplement. Non-ruminants (like us) get the same effect in the colon although nowhere near the same as a ruminant. We cannot live on peed-on paper.

      Those gut bacteria can also release toxins into the bloodstream or chew a hole in the gut wall, among other things.

      It’s best to stay friends with them.

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  6. ### Linux ###
    You spurred me on. Quite a while back I tried using Linux for music creation. Quite a few issues so abandoned it, I use Win7 for a lot of stuff including Komplete and Reaper.

    After reading your escapades, I tried Mint using Yumi to create a ‘try before you get’ version on a USB drive.. All seemed well so I put Mint on the 2nd Hard drive and installed software from the KX repository to use Jack and ASIO. (I discovered KXstudio after installing mint.) Low and behold I got Reaper to run. Used easyBCD for the dual boot http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/EasyBCD-Download-45820.html) and PlayOnLinux to run Reaper. A couple of issues but this was an experiment after all.

    I am still experimenting and now have KXstudio and SolydDX (debian) distros, dual boot on the USB.
    ———————————————————————————————————–
    ## Asthma etc ##
    On Asthma, I looked at this quite a while back and asked Dr Siegel why countries with declining smoking, esp UK, Australia, have higher rates than places where smoking is far higher. He didn’t know.

    I also asked about obesity, seemed to be increasing where smoking was decreasing. He didn’t have an answer.

    There was report that there is more dementia about than thought, It seems it has been ‘dramatically’ increasing in the past 20 years as smoking has declined.

    Still correlation is not causation as they say.

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  7. Gosh, I’m slow.

    Sins of the Fathers.

    How your grandmother’s smoking habit could give YOU asthma
    5 March 2013
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2288517/How-grandmothers-smoking-habit-affect-YOUR-health-Cigarettes-affect-generations-line.html

    Men who smoke could give their unborn baby asthma – even if they’ve quit several YEARS before the birth
    8 September 2014
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2747833/Men-smoke-unborn-baby-asthma-ve-quit-years-birth.html

    Exodus 20:5
    “visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth [generation]”

    King James Bible

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    • Yes, it looks like they are really pulling out all the stops now, Rose. It’s obviously not frightening enough to tell people that their kids will die horribly if you smoke around them.

      As you say, “the sins of the fathers…”

      However, judging by the comments, it rather looks as if they have overreached themselves this time.

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      • Though smoking isn’t likely to be mentioned in the Bible, James 1 did declare that smoking was a sin and came under the sin of drunkeness. (Head of the Church of England, don’t forget)

        “Thus having, as I truste, sufficiently answered the most principall arguments that are used in defence of this vile custome, it rests onely to informe you what sinnes and vanities you commit in the filthie abuse thereof.

        First, are you not guiltie of sinnefull and shamefull lust? (for lust may bee as well in any of the senses as in feeling) that although you bee troubled with no disease, but in perfect health, yet can you neither be merry at an Ordinarie, nor lascivious in the Stewes, if you lacke Tobacco to provoke your appetite to any of those sorts of recreation, lusting after it as the children of Israel did in the wildernesse after Quailes?

        Secondly it is, as you use or rather abuse it, a branche of the sinne of drunkennesse, which is the roote of all sinnes: for as the onely delight that drunkards take in Wine is in the strength of the taste, and the force of the fume thereof that mounts up to the braine: for no drunkards love any weake, or sweete drinke: so are not those (I meane the strong heate and the fume) the onely qualities that make Tobacco so delectable to all the lovers of it?”

        “I meane the strong heate and the fume” – James 1 1604
        http://www.laits.utexas.edu/poltheory/james/blaste/blaste.html

        “inhaling burning particles of organic matter and hot toxic gases deep into the lungs” – Clive Bates 2013

        Where is the humility? Where is the empathy?

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        • King James was wrong about drunkenness being a sin.

          Genesis 9; 20-29.

          Noah brewed up some wine, sampled it intemperately and passed out naked in his tent. His son Ham saw him naked and told his brothers, who covered the pissed-up Noah with a blanket without looking at him.

          Noah was 601, so he probably wasn’t the sort you’d want to see naked.

          When he sobered up, Noah responded to Ham’s seeing him starkers by cursing Ham’s son Canaan and his descendants forever. Gee, thanks, Grandad.

          So in the Noah story, drunkenness wasn’t a sin. Seeing a passed-out naked drunk was a sin.

          Noah lived another 349 years after that event. It didn’t say if he wined himself to sleep every night but if he did, that must prove it’s good for you.

          Later, Jesus turned a load of water into wine and proceeded to part-ay! If it’s good enough for the son of God, it’s good enough for me.

          So if drunkenness isn’t a sin, then by the logic of King James, neither is smoking.

          However… the things you do while drunk are still your responsibility so a drunken sin is still a sin. Being inebriated is no excuse because you’re the one who inebriated yourself. Therefore you are the one responsible for your subsequent drunken actions.

          If only the law saw it that way.

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  8. Don’t bother with burning dvds you can do it from a memory stick and save the faff of backing up by removing your windows hard drive to a external enclosure and installing Linux on a new clean drive.

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  9. Leggy is right on as usual History is his benefactor for his statement:

    Heres a time line starting in 1900,dont be surprised to see the same thing playing out today nearly 100 years later.

    1901: REGULATION: Strong anti-cigarette activity in 43 of the 45 states. “Only Wyoming and Louisiana had paid no attention to the cigarette controversy, while the other forty-three states either already had anti-cigarette laws on the books or were considering new or tougher anti-cigarette laws, or were the scenes of heavy anti- cigarette activity” (Dillow, 1981:10).

    1904: New York: A judge sends a woman is sent to jail for 30 days for smoking in front of her children.

    1904: New York City. A woman is arrested for smoking a cigarette in an automobile. “You can’t do that on Fifth Avenue,” the arresting officer says.

    1907: Business owners are refusing to hire smokers. On August 8, the New York Times writes: “Business … is doing what all the anti-cigarette specialists could not do.”

    1917: SMOKEFREE: Tobacco control laws have fallen, including smoking bans in numerous cities, and the states of Arkansas, Iowa, Idaho and Tennessee.

    By 1923 Utah was the last and both the LA TIMES and the New York Times made a laughing stock out of Utah still having a smoking ban on the books after people were being arrested for smoking in a restaurant in Salt Lake City by the new Sheriff………………The rest was history until 1996 when California started the failed movement again!

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    • So 17 years from regulation to collapse. If 1996 was the start then we are in year 18 now and about due for the Smokergeddon.

      This time around it’s the WHO and UN, so they’ll fight harder on the way down. Even so, down is their only option now.

      Like

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