Category Archives: Blog only
This is where there’s no TV here on Huliganov TV. It gathers together in one place where I’ve just used words and images without video links.
Who is a Catholic?
The roman catholic church in Uzhhorod (Ukraine) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Given the selection of a new Pope, the Roman Catholic Church is much discussed in the media and on blogs. Here is a random comment I replied to today in one place. It is a comment I can partly assent to, but rather more needed to be said:
Anglicans ARE Catholic. In fact, many of us secretly believe we are more Catholic than the Romans, though we’re usually tactful enough to mention this to them. And of course, we are ALL, Roman and English, “under Christ” in an ultimate sense – the question at issue is merely the more mundane one of how exactly one goes about delegating Christ’s authority on a day-to-day level.
My response was as follows:
Every Christian is a Catholic except those who believe that their denomination has a monopoly. If we be looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our Faith, as it says, we will all be looking at the right direction, the right leader, who needs no vicar, the Way, the Truth and the Life.
The authority of Christ is not at this time a political one – the devil has the lease on the politics of this world and its nation states for now, so Churches in all cases should be separate from states.
Related articles
- Russian Catholics Welcome Pope Francisco as New “Rudder of Faith” (02varvara.wordpress.com)
- An Overlooked Contrast Between Peter the apostle and the Roman Catholic Pope (truthseldomheard.wordpress.com)
- About the Papal Inauguration of Pope Francis (ireport.cnn.com)
Should you first master your own language before learning another?
English: Belarusian as native language among urban population in Belarus according to the 2009 census Українська: Білоруська мова, як рідна серед міського населення Білорусі за даними перепису 2009 року. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This morning on Facebook someone cleverly asked the question whether one should first master one’s native language before learning another. The person asking the question later in the thread comes out in favour of the answer no, one does not have to first master one’s native language before starting another. Quite right too, but I was negatively surprised to see a number of people siding with the proposition. Do they think that they can even measure what it is to “master” one’s native tongue?
I think it is even actually impossible to master one’s own language without learning another. It is impossible to be properly analytic about one’s own native language without stepping out of it. A common denominator among people who use their native language particularly poorly is that they have never undertaken serious study of a second one.
I had a friend from Australia once who was completely ignorant of whether he was using a word in English as a noun or an adjective or an adverb – in English words don’t necessarily change their form to show you what they are. As a result his reading comprehension was a hoot, he made incorrect inferences the whole time from what people wrote to him. You could see that his whole world view was hemmed in by the fact that he didn’t even have a proper grasp of how his tool for thought, ie language, actually worked. It was not until he started learning other languages that his eyes began to open. This is before we even get to the deepening of thought and the opening of the mind that comes ones we are able to understand word origins better, or start to think in the other language or begin experiencing the world through the linguistic apparatus of another people. Read the rest of this entry
A little joke collection
Cessna’s trademark. Amazing what you can pack into them…
This one’s been doing the rounds on emails. Hope you like it.
1. Two blondes walk into a building — you’d think at least one of them would have seen it.
2. Phone answering machine message: ‘If you want to buy marijuana, press the hash key.’
3. A guy walks into the psychiatrist wearing only clingfilm for shorts. The shrink says, ‘Well, I can clearly see you’re nuts.’
4. I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day — but I couldn’t find any.
5. My friend drowned in a bowl of muesli — a strong currant pulled him in.
6. A man recovered in hospital after a serious accident. He shouted, ‘Doctor, doctor, I can’t feel my legs!’ The doctor replied, ‘I know, I’ve cut off your hands’.
7. I went to a Seafood Disco last week, and pulled a muscle.
8. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly so they lit a fire in the craft. It sank, proving once and for all that you can’t have your kayak and heat it.
9. Our ice cream man was found lying on the floor of his van covered with hundreds and thousands. Police say that he topped himself.
10 Man goes to the doctor with a strawberry growing out of his head. Doc says, ‘I’ll give you some cream to put on that.’
11. ‘Doc, I can’t stop singing: ‘The Green, Green Grass of Home.’
Doc says, ‘That sounds like the Tom Jones Syndrome. ‘
‘Is it common, doc?’
‘Well, it’s not unusual.’
12. A man takes his Rottweiller to the vet. ‘My dog is cross-eyed, is there anything you can do for him?’
‘Well,’ says the vet, ‘let’s have a look at him.’ and he picks up the dog and examines his eyes, then he checks his teeth. Finally, he says, ‘I’m going to have to put him down.’
‘What? — because he’s cross-eyed?’
‘No, because he’s really, really, heavy’
14. What do you call a fish with no eyes? — a fsh.
15. So I was getting into my car, and this bloke says to me ‘Can you give me a lift?’ I said ‘Sure, you look great, the world’s your oyster, go for it.’
16. Apparently, 1 in 5 people in the world is Chinese. There are 5 people in my family so one of them must be Chinese. It’s either my mum or my Dad — or my older brother Colin — or my younger brother Ho-Cha-Chu — but I think it’s Colin.
17. Two fat blokes in a pub, one says to the other ‘Your round.’ The second one replies, ‘So are you, you fat bastard!’
18. Police arrested two kids yesterday, one was drinking battery acid, and the other was eating fireworks. They charged one and let the other one off.
19. ‘You know, somebody actually complimented me on my driving today. They left a little note on the windscreen. It said, ‘Parking Fine.’ So that was nice.’
20 . A man walked into the doctor’s, he said, ‘I’ve hurt my arm in several places’
The doctor said, ‘Well don’t go there any more’
21. Ireland ‘s worst air disaster occurred early this morning when a small two-seater Cessna plane crashed into a cemetery. Irish search and rescue workers have recovered 2826 bodies so far and expect that number to climb as digging continues into the night.
Related articles
- Then There Was The Dyslexic Man Who Walked Into A Bra…. (fasab.wordpress.com)
- Stuttering Cat: Repost from Mum’s Facebook (lucilx.wordpress.com)
- 11 Terrible Jokes (holytaco.com)
- Joke 697 (thelaughinghousewife.wordpress.com)
Ulotki dot. 1% dla mojej rodziny.
Punch cartoon (1907); illustrates the unpopularity amongst Punch readers of a proposed 1907 income tax by the Labour Party in the United Kingdom. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The below pdf’s are only intended for your kind attention if you are all three of the following:
1. Someone who pays income tax in Poland
2. Someone who knows and likes my internet output (on blogs, on YT, etc) and
3. Someone who hasn’t already a decision in mind as to where to allocate their 1% of tax.
The idea is that you could help us without it costing you a penny. I would also like for it to be not at the cost of any other worthy causes you may already be supporting, so please don’t take this as a request to divert to my family’s charitable funds away from anyone who is used to receiving your help.
james_george
james_elena
james_tatiana
Many thanks to those who are willing to take the trouble to include one of my family in their tax return.
Related articles
- A Visual Guide to Taxing Bonuses [Infographic] (turbotax.intuit.com)
- Dogs vs. Cats: Which One Cost You More? [Photo Infographic] (turbotax.intuit.com)
- Why is Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) promoting unencrypted web sites for netfiling? (philipramsey.blogspot.com)
Journalism, Jumbalism, Junkalism and Juntalism.
The BBC coat of arms (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Sometimes people ask me, “Uncle Davey, do you support the idea of freedom of the press?” And then I reply; “Certainly, I think the press should be free, in fact, I’ll go further; they should pay us to read that guff”.
The point at issue is that journalists, who are among the most powerful members of our society, because they create opinions, are not voted into place at all. They say that they are voted for every day, that every time one of their articles is paid for by the punter who buys a newspaper, that’s a vote, and that everyone who disagrees doesn’t have to buy them. To counter this, it seems very clear to me that people simply buy what is put in front of them, like sheep, and that there seems to be little choice in the matter of which paper to buy, as they are all a mix of what I call the three kinds of journalism, which as I mentioned in an earlier article are true journalism, jumbalism and junkalism.
True journalism investigates, reveals facts accurately and adequately and as the Dutch say “bijtijds”, which means in a timely way, and then comments on them in a thought-provoking, literate and justifiable way. Jumbalism looks like journalism but is a lazy man’s version of it, where people who don’t really know what they are talking about talk about it anyway, knowing that all but a few specialists will be taken in by what they say and getting hold of the wrong end of the stick. Or they give away the fact that they barely know the culture they are making “expert” comments on.
Recently both the BBC and the Guardian have been commenting on Polish affairs, for example, and going into villages so rural that they probably represent less than 5% of the population and this is identified as being how almost half the Poles live. On two occasions recently I have seen men referred to in their surnames as “-ska” because the jumbalist must have spoken to their wife or mother, taken her name and assumed that must be the same for the man. This shows the most extreme ignorance of any Slavic culture and ought to debar a person from commenting on it in any intelligent news framework. Anecdotes from people’s travels off the beaten track are treated as if they were news. The BBC “Whirled service” radio and television, the apex of high style journalistic reporting as they claim, can barely speak English properly and no longer seem to take any pains over proper pronunciation. (See Tristana Moore’s party piece rendition of ‘Zgorzelec’. One can hardly believe she was standing in the middle of the place and couldn’t be bothered to ask anyone how to actually say it. Was she flown in for, like, five minutes, just to stand in front of the cameras, spout some meaningless drivel, which her report certainly was, and then leave again as quickly as possible?) Read the rest of this entry
I don’t get it…
I was passed the following photo which is doing the rounds in the email channels. From the context I understand that it is supposed to be funny in some way, but for the life of me I cannot tell what it is. Can any of the subbers help?
Someone has had trouble remembering enough words with their Goldlist
Caption below picture: ‘Wallachians distilling “Slievovitz”‘ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Someone (sic) wrote to me recently suggesting that the Goldlist was not for them as they had tried to do a distillation and only remembered 2 of 25 words.
Now I am someone who has just discovered that there is more than one metabolic type, that a good 45% of people are Matebolism B types as opposed to Metabolism A types, and that’s why the traditional diets based just on calories and not concerned with the whole sugar question don’t do the job but actually made me worse. Given that fact, I’m perfectly open to the idea that just as there is more than one type of metabolism, there may be another type of memory and that really not everyone will benefit from the Goldlist method – yes it is perfectly possible. I have an open mind on that question.
However, given that the Goldlist Method has indeed helped the overwhelming majority of people who have tried it, including some who could never learn languages using other methods and now can, as well as some others who were already successful polyglots with their own tried and tested methods who nevertheless saw enough merit in the Method to add it to their armoury of tools, I would be reluctant to give up on it just after not having a great result on the first distillation. Instead I would look at the reasons why a person could find that they distil a headlist and only manage to throw out 2 of the 25 and not something like 6, 8, 10, 12 or even 14 as is the experience of most people using the method. Read the rest of this entry
We made it to 2013, but how much longer have we got?
Don’t ask me what this is but it’s got Vox Populi on it…
I thought I would kick-off the 2013 blogging on this channel with a little poll, one that I haven’t exactly seen elsewhere but which might be quite interesting as an experiment. After all, even though the Lord Jesus himself tells us that no man knows the time, there is also a saying “vox populi vox Dei” or “the voice of the people is the voice of God”. So could it be that collectively mankind knows when the end of the world is coming?
In fact, probably not. Was the voice of the people the voice of God when the crowd yelled “Crucify him!”? Hard to say – on the one hand it had to be this so that the prophesies could be fulfilled. In the case of this poll, the only prophesy to be fulfilled will probably be that nobody knows the day nor the hour, which means that our consensus, if the is one, will probably turn out to be hopelessly wrong. Read the rest of this entry
Plans for 2013
I thought I would just round off the year’s blogging personally, rather than just with the machine generated summary in the previous post which is very interesting, maybe more so for me than for the readers, just to give you all my warmest wishes for 2013 and to hope that I may continue to be part of what you look at online in the coming year. Your ratings and comments and hits, both here and on Quoracy.com blog and also on the YouTube channel, on Linked-In and Facebook and several other places are all very highly appreciated and at times of crisis I do derive a certain strength from knowing that I’ve still got my readers, at least I got my friends:
In the deliciously ironic video to this interesting recent hit, the girl’s friend is a robot, but in my case behind the robot face of the internet and it’s various interfaces are real people who have been willing to share a bit in my life by watching the videos, listening to the voice droning on, reading the posts and the comments. That means a lot to me, and some of you I’ve got to know as well as people I’ve spent time with in the same room, or better.
I didn’t manage to do as much as I wanted to in 2012, partly because I always set my plans too high anyway, but also because I had a bad round of pneumonia in the summer which wiped out July and August. Read the rest of this entry
