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Friday, July 31, 2015

Bio-Repository Project In Planned Canal Zone Led By Molecular Biologist Jorge Huete Ph.D.

Jorge Huete Perez, vice president of the Nicaraguan Academy of Sciences (Photo by Danika Worthington)
Jorge Huete Perez, vice president of the Nicaraguan Academy of Sciences, has worked with environmentalists from around the world
to bring attention to the canal which will be "the largest earth-moving project in history."
Jorge's Video Presentation Of The Bio-Repository Project

Greetings,

Anyone who knows Alejandra (Alixe) Huete and her husband, Jorge Huete, knows they are fine people, devoted to the common good.

Jorge was Nicaragua's first Ph.D. molecular biologist.

Alongside his many scientific accomplishments, Jorge speaks Russian better than English - and his English is superb.

Jorge is a passionate researcher, eager to "take the bull by the horns." 

Almost singlehandedly, he launched Nicaragua's first DNA identification service.

I encourage you to donate to this worthy cause.

Pax tecum,

Alan

PS An amusing anecdote... that was not very amusing at the time... Alixe, Jorge and son Gabo live in a hilly, wooded barrio known as Los Alpes just outside Managua. Several years ago, while enjoying their company and hospitality, I awoke on a bright moonlit, open-window night and there in the glow slowly limned an eight inch bat reposing on my chest. So... What would you do?

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: Alejandra Huete <alixehuete@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Jul 31, 2015 at 3:44 PM
Subject: Hi family and friends, we are doing a biodiversity DNA collection project in Nicaragua along the Canal Route and......
To: Alejandra Huete



Hi Family and Friends,


The Center for Molecular Biology at the Universidad Centroamericana in Managua, Nicaragua, is doing a biodiversity DNA collection project along the Interoceanic Canal Route across Nicaragua and could use some help with the expenses. (Any donation from U.S. tax payers is tax deductible.) You can see and read about the project through the "experiment.com" crowd funding website. You'll see a nice write up of the project at this site -  https://experiment.com/projects/saving-species-along-nicaragua-s-inter-oceanic-canal-route?s=search   - and can donate safely through the same page. Let us know what you think and join the discussion. We'll be posting updates and field notes as work progresses. Any donation, from $5 or $10 or $100 (or more!) will be put to good use and greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

Alixe



G.K. Chesterton: "The French Revolution And The Irish"

G. K. Chesterton on love.

G.K. Chesterton On Charity, Hope And Universal Salvation



The French Revolution And The Irish


G. K. Chesterton 

[More Titles by Chesterton


It will be long before the poison of the Party System is worked out of the body politic. Some of its most indirect effects are the most dangerous. One that is very dangerous just now is this: that for most Englishmen the Party System falsifies history, and especially the history of revolutions. It falsifies history because it simplifies history. It paints everything either Blue or Buff in the style of its own silly circus politics: while a real revolution has as many colours as the sunrise--or the end of the world. And if we do not get rid of this error we shall make very bad blunders about the real revolution which seems to grow more and more probable, especially among the Irish. And any human familiarity with history will teach a man this first of all: that Party practically does not exist in a real revolution. It is a game for quiet times.

If you take a boy who has been to one of those big private schools which are falsely called the Public Schools, and another boy who has been to one of those large public schools which are falsely called the Board Schools, you will find some differences between the two, chiefly a difference in the management of the voice. But you will find they are both English in a special way, and that their education has been essentially the same. They are ignorant on the same subjects. They have never heard of the same plain facts. They have been taught the wrong answer to the same confusing question. There is one fundamental element in the attitude of the Eton master talking about "playing the game," and the elementary teacher training gutter-snipes to sing, "What is the Meaning of Empire Day?" And the name of that element is "unhistoric." It knows nothing really about England, still less about Ireland or France, and, least of all, of course, about anything like the French Revolution.

Revolution by Snap Division
Now what general notion does the ordinary English boy, thus taught to utter one ignorance in one of two accents, get and keep through life about the French Revolution? It is the notion of the English House of Commons with an enormous Radical majority on one side of the table and a small Tory minority on the other; the majority voting solid for a Republic, the minority voting solid for a Monarchy; two teams tramping through two lobbies with no difference between their methods and ours, except that (owing to some habit peculiar to Gaul) the brief intervals were brightened by a riot or a massacre, instead of by a whisky and soda and a Marconi tip. Novels are much more reliable than histories in such matters. For though an English novel about France does not tell the truth about France, it does tell the truth about England; and more than half the histories never tell the truth about anything. And popular fiction, I think, bears witness to the general English impression. The French Revolution is a snap division with an unusual turnover of votes. On the one side stand a king and queen who are good but weak, surrounded by nobles with rapiers drawn; some of whom are good, many of whom are wicked, all of whom are good-looking. Against these there is a formless mob of human beings, wearing red caps and seemingly insane, who all blindly follow ruffians who are also rhetoricians; some of whom die repentant and others unrepentant towards the end of the fourth act. The leaders of this boiling mass of all men melted into one are called Mirabeau, Robespierre, Danton, Marat, and so on. And it is conceded that their united frenzy may have been forced on them by the evils of the old regime.

That, I think, is the commonest English view of the French Revolution; and it will not survive the reading of two pages of any real speech or letter of the period. These human beings were human; varied, complex and inconsistent. But the rich Englishman, ignorant of revolutions, would hardly believe you if you told him some of the common human subtleties of the case. Tell him that Robespierre threw the red cap in the dirt in disgust, while the king had worn it with a broad grin, so to speak; tell him that Danton, the fierce founder of the Republic of the Terror, said quite sincerely to a noble, "I am more monarchist than you;" tell him that the Terror really seems to have been brought to an end chiefly by the efforts of people who particularly wanted to go on with it--and he will not believe these things. He will not believe them because he has no humility, and therefore no realism. He has never been inside himself; and so could never be inside another man. The truth is that in the French affair everybody occupied an individual position. Every man talked sincerely, if not because he was sincere, then because he was angry. Robespierre talked even more about God than about the Republic because he cared even more about God than about the Republic. Danton talked even more about France than about the Republic because he cared even more about France than about the Republic. Marat talked more about Humanity than either, because that physician (though himself somewhat needing a physician) really cared about it. The nobles were divided, each man from the next. The attitude of the king was quite different from the attitude of the queen; certainly much more different than any differences between our Liberals and Tories for the last twenty years. And it will sadden _some_ of my friends to remember that it was the king who was the Liberal and the queen who was the Tory. There were not two people, I think, in that most practical crisis who stood in precisely the same attitude towards the situation. And that is why, between them, they saved Europe. It is when you really perceive the unity of mankind that you really perceive its variety. It is not a flippancy, it is a very sacred truth, to say that when men really understand that they are brothers they instantly begin to fight.

The Revival of Reality
Now these things are repeating themselves with an enormous reality in the Irish Revolution. You will not be able to make a Party System out of the matter. Everybody is in revolt; therefore everybody is telling the truth. The Nationalists will go on caring most for the nation, as Danton and the defenders of the frontier went on caring most for the nation. The priests will go on caring most for religion, as Robespierre went on caring most for religion. The Socialists will go on caring most for the cure of physical suffering, as Marat went on caring most for it. It is out of these real differences that real things can be made, such as the modern French democracy. For by such tenacity everyone sees at last that there is something in the other person's position. And those drilled in party discipline see nothing either past or present. And where there is nothing there is Satan.

For a long time past in our politics there has not only been no real battle, but no real bargain. No two men have bargained as Gladstone and Parnell bargained--each knowing the other to be a power. But in real revolutions men discover that no one man can really agree with another man until he has disagreed with him.

G.K. Chesterton Quotations... And More


There is no "love affair" at The Thinking Housewife's traditionalist Catholic blog 
but an abundance of loveless theories and dry-as-dust doctrine.

Compendium Of "Pax" Posts On "The Thinking Housewife," Laura Wood




Rand Paul Calls Trump's Rise In Polls A Temporary "Loss Of Sanity." Just Who's Crazy?

Alan: This is not a temporary loss of insanity. American conservatives have been crazy since 9/11.

Moderate Republican For Trump: Only Trump Can Restore GOP Sanity... 
By A Landslide Loss
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/07/dear-fred-last-night-after-spanish.html

Rand Paul calls Trump's rise in polls a temporary 'loss of sanity:' Rand Paul in the news

by Sabrina Eaton

Today's Rand Paul news: In a Thursday interview on CNN, Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul said he believes real estate mogul Donald Trump's rise in presidential polls "is a temporary sort of loss of sanity, but we're going to come back to our senses and look for someone serious to lead the country at some point:" The Hill
Paul was hardly able to disguise his obvious contempt for Trump and the media that incessantly covers him, telling CNN's Wolf Blitzer: "Television works, Wolf. If you would give some other candidates time from eight in the morning until eight at night all day long, every day for three weeks, I'm guessing some other candidates might rise as well:" MediaIte
He also went after Trump's proposal to have Mexico pay for a wall along the border."They're hungry for someone who will tell the truth, who will say Washington is broken and that we really have to start over ... wash out the place," Paul said of the voters currently supporting Trump. "But the thing is, we also have to have a serious discussion of how we're going to do it:" Sun Times Network
Financial disclosure forms that Paul filed at the Federal Election Commission show he's got assets valued between $576,000 and $1.7 million and no liabilities, putting him on the lower end of the 2016 presidential candidates' wealth spectrum. He reported income of between $377,000 and $1.4 million in the 18-month period beginning in January 2014, including his $174,000 salary for serving as a U.S. senator. A large chunk of Mr. Paul's income came from royalties and advances from four books he has written. "Taking a Stand," published in 2014, brought in between $100,000 and $1 million, according to the disclosure: The Wall Street Journal
A super PAC founded to support the presidential candidacy of Rand Paul took in about $1.9 million in campaign contributions since its relaunch last month, according to areport filed Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission. Most of the money given to the organization, Concerned American Voters, came from one individual: PayPal board member and legal marijuana advocate Scott Banister, who gave $1.25 million: National Journal

"American Conservatives And Oppositional-Defiant Disorder"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/09/arrested-development-american.html

"Conservatives Scare More Easily Than Liberals"

"Republicans For Revolution," A Study In Anarchic Apocalypticism

Bill Maher: The Zombie Life Cycle Of Republican Lies. They Never - Ever - Die

"Bank On It: The South Is Always Wrong"

"The Reign of Morons Is Here," Charles P. Pierce, The Atlantic

"A Southerner Explains Tea Party Radicalism: The Civil War Is Not Over"

"People Who Watch Only Fox News 
Know Less Than People Who Watch No News"

The Daily Show Asks A Real Hostage Negotiator How To Handle The GOP 

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/watch-daily-show-ask-real-hostage.html

Teddy Roosevelt: "Malefactors Of Great Wealth... Are Curses To The Country"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/09/teddy-roosevelt-malefactors-of-great.html