How Stupid Are They?

[MurphOnMillerAve]

"Christmas Blood" announcement that Isis has released warning of a direct threat by them against Pope Francis, St. Peter's and The Vatican for Christmas .

Isis published a poster showing an attack on the Vatican with a vehicle and load of deadly weapons.

Sources:
Catholic On-line News.
Google.
Yahoo.

[webenda]

And China. How significant are China's contribution(s) to the following:

Medicine.

By about 100 B.C.E., China had become a major center of medical research. It was the home of some of the world’s best doctors. These doctors wrote the Neijing, a book about medicine. The book organized and explained all of their treatments. The Neijing argues that earlier ideas about demons making you sick are wrong. According to the Neijing, you get sick when the yin and yang of your body are out of balance. Lifestyle choices like bad food, not exercising, stress, and your environment can knock you out of balance. This imbalance blocks your qi, your life-force.

This image has a strange 3D affect to my eyes.

Chinese village doctor treating a man by burning herbs on his back (Song Dynasty, ca. 950 AD., now in National Palace Museum, Taiwan)

doctor.jpg (25.96 KiB) Viewed 4760 times

In the 21st century doctors continue to write recommendations for lifestyle modification, including diet and physical activity, for the prevention and treatment of disease.

This list shows some Chinese Americans who made significant contributions to medicine.

Min Chueh Chang (張明覺) - co-inventor of the first birth control pill; made significant contributions to the development of in vitro fertilisation
Yuan-Cheng Fung (馮元楨) - founder of modern biomechanics
Yuet Wai Kan - pioneer of using DNA to diagnose human diseases, research enabled the Human Genome Project, recipient of Lasker Foundation award in 1991
Choh Hao Li (李卓皓) - biochemist, discovered growth hormone, beta-endorphin and isolated luteinizing hormone
Min Chiu Li - first scientist to use chemotherapy to cure widely metastatic, malignant cancer
Joe Hin Tjio - cytogeneticist, first person to recognize the normal number of human chromosomes
Chang Yi Wang - immunologist; NYIPLA Inventor of the Year Award in 2007 for her work on UBITh peptide immunogens
James C. Wang - discovered DNA topoisomerases
Xiaodong Wang, biochemist best known for his work with cytochrome c, won the 2000 Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry, and 2006 Shaw Prize recipient
David T. Wong - discovered drug Fluoxetine and atomoxetine, duloxetine and dapoxetine
Junying Yu - stem cell biologist; recognized as one of the 2007 "Persons of the Year" by TIME magazine

And they China makes Lionel Trains for us. Having a hobby can have significant value is reducing stress brought on by the environment we live in.

[robert.]

I have some homemade Chinese dit da jow. I made it myself. It's a bunch of steeped herbs that can cure bruises.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

All good stuff to have learned, thanks to you, Wayne. Thanks! Excellent contribution. I'm glad I asked!
Murph

[HONDO74]

Woman jailed after inmate boyfriend dies of meth-laden kiss
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/11/22/wo ... -kiss.html

I think the taxpayers came out ahead on this fine mess. The dude was serving a life term for killing his mother in law. Life term expired by his own doing.


An Oregon woman was sentenced to two years in prison on Tuesday after her boyfriend died when she passed methamphetamine-filled balloons to him during a single kiss at the end of a prison visit at the Oregon State Penitentiary.

Melissa Ann Blair, 46, was also ordered to complete three years of post-release supervision and to participate in drug treatment and mental health programs. Blair was visiting Anthony Powell, 41, who was serving a life sentence for aggravated murder in his mother-in-law’s death, when they shared a kiss. She passed seven tiny balloons filled with meth into his mouth during the June 2016 smooch.

Powell swallowed the balloons to get them into the prison, but two of them popped shortly after, killing him from meth toxicity, prosecutors said.

[HONDO74]

Could the Darwin award be far away.

Rocket launch will prove Earth is flat, California man says
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2017/11/ ... -says.html

A California man intends to launch himself 1,800 feet high on Saturday in a home-built rocket to prove that astronauts faked the shape of the Earth.

[rogruth]

Does anyone expect him to have a different opinion if the launch works and he survives?

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Does anyone expect him to have a different opinion if the launch works and he survives?

More curious about Nanolube,

[rogruth]

Does anyone expect him to have a different opinion if the launch works and he survives?

More curious about Nanolube,

So find out about it and tell us.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Why would he bother to rocket himself up there? To "prove" his case, he could simply walk or travel to the edge and before falling off, send us all his iPhone shots, bending way far over to get shots of the actual edge, eh? huh? and then set up a refreshment stand to accommodate future explorers.

Second dubious point: Did anybody ever ask Rocketman WHY astronauts would bother to conspire to have us all continue to understand the world is round?

Third point: What has he said about all that magma and lava under the surface? Does he feel it simply oozes out, every so often, like too much jelly in a sandwich, falling out from under the edge? And it would go where?

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Does anyone expect him to have a different opinion if the launch works and he survives?

More curious about Nanolube,

I did look at their web site - more perplexed as to why they would sponsor this silliness, but then again, that's advertising and marketing,

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Do animals have souls? Which ones do/might?
Did the dinosaurs?
Only mammals?
Birds?
Any of the arthropoda phylum?
Your cat?
Your dog?

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Do animals have souls?

I am unconvinced that many humans have anything that might be ascribed to as a soul. I am not entirely sure that a soul is little more than a convenient abstraction that organized religions use to control their congregations.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Do animals have souls?

I am unconvinced that many humans have anything that might be ascribed to as a soul. I am not entirely sure that a soul is little more than a convenient abstraction that organized religions use to control their congregations.

Yet, when medical personnel, including and perhaps especially, doctors and nurses, say to critically injured patients, in the ER, for example, who are struggling not to die, "Hold on. Don't go. Don't leave" (or similar remarks) , what is it they are saying?

The patient is going? Leaving? The bags are nearly packed? To where? From where? Those words do not sound like trusted nurses and doctors are merely speaking to meat and saying. "Don't turn off. Don't' stop functioning."

Nor do such expressions sound like ideas they are manufacturing to fit the moment, especially if they, likely, have no idea at that moment what the patient's religious - if any - beliefs might be.

It is that kind of real-life phenomenon that helps me believe there is a soul in us, that the soul - perhaps a person's "essence" - is being addressed, and that there is life after death.

To whom are the medical personnel speaking? Is it to a what ,, a thing, a collection of molecules, merely, or are they addressing more, with words and thoughts not out of a medical handbook's script, but from something almost automatic, or intrinsic, in themselves.

Don't go. Don't leave. Hold on.

Such words give me hope. Not facts. But hope, yes, and perhaps the core of belief.
Murph

[MurphOnMillerAve]

P.S. Whales and dolphins have brains larger than ours, and brains possessed of more - or at least as many - convolutions as ours. Don't those two factors play a part in the determination of how intelligent a being is? If so:
1. Whose planet is this anyway?
2. Is the level/extent of intelligence a determiner of a soul being present? (Were the dinosaurs smart?)
Murph