• Biblical Families is not a dating website. It is a forum to discuss issues relating to marriage and the Bible, and to offer guidance and support, not to find a wife. Click here for more information.

Random Comments

On a much more cheerful note - I was shifting my youngest sheep across the road today. Waited until there was a good gap in traffic, called them through the gate, stepped aside to push them across the road - and they all crowded around me instead! I've been shifting them daily for months, and they're getting so used to coming when I call, they don't know how to be chased any more. I ended up walking across the road with them all following me, which I hadn't intended to do as it felt too risky - too much risk of leaving one behind on the road without me at the back to chase it up. But they all came, none were left behind. I suppose I need to learn to trust them!

They seem to train best when they're young - although they all have learnt to come to me, these young girls are far more responsive than the older ewes. Once I've had a few years of training them to my voice from the time they're lambs I'm going to have a fantastic flock to work with.
 
FollowingHim said:
On a much more cheerful note - I was shifting my youngest sheep across the road today. Waited until there was a good gap in traffic, called them through the gate, stepped aside to push them across the road - and they all crowded around me instead! I've been shifting them daily for months, and they're getting so used to coming when I call, they don't know how to be chased any more. I ended up walking across the road with them all following me, which I hadn't intended to do as it felt too risky - too much risk of leaving one behind on the road without me at the back to chase it up. But they all came, none were left behind. I suppose I need to learn to trust them!

They seem to train best when they're young - although they all have learnt to come to me, these young girls are far more responsive than the older ewes. Once I've had a few years of training them to my voice from the time they're lambs I'm going to have a fantastic flock to work with.
Click to expand...
Do you have a guard dog, @FollowingHim?
 
FollowingHim said:
Not for the sheep, we don't have wolves / coyotes etc in New Zealand. Nobody uses livestock guard dogs in this country.
Click to expand...
I was thinking for easier control of sheep. Border coolie would be good in this role.

Hopeless against wolves, mental breakdown if one sheep runs away.
 
FollowingHim said:
BRICS is adding 6 new members - Ethiopia, Egypt, Iran, the UAE, Argentina and Saudi Arabia. The last is a very important development. A major focus of BRICS is dedollarisation - they are working on ways to trade in national currencies, discussing making a new currency, in the meantime considering using the yuan instead of the dollar, they've already got a bank established - lots of different things in this general line. While Saudi Arabia is crucial for the petrodollar. So to have Saudi Arabia join an organisation that is specifically focussed on moving away from trade in dollars is a serious geopolitical development.
www.aljazeera.com

Saudi Arabia, Iran among six nations invited to join BRICS

Talks of expansion have dominated the three-day annual summit of major emerging economies in Johannesburg.
www.aljazeera.com www.aljazeera.com
Click to expand...
Some context:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1694500243700875365
 
MemeFan said:
I was thinking for easier control of sheep. Border coolie would be good in this role.

Hopeless against wolves, mental breakdown if one sheep runs away.
Click to expand...
Oh yes, we use dogs for herding sheep. You just specifically asked about guard dogs, we don't use those.

Well, @FollowingHim2 just told me that there are people breeding and using livestock guard dogs here. I had no idea. So I should correct that - some lifestylers might use guard dogs, most likely to protect against roaming pet dogs (which is a problem particularly near towns). I have never heard of a commercial farmer using them.

But for herding sheep, yes certainly. I have two, and that's an unusually small number because I'm a bit weird and train the sheep to come to my call rather than focussing on training dogs. Most farmers would just train the dogs. :-)
 
FollowingHim said:
Oh yes, we use dogs for herding sheep. You just specifically asked about guard dogs, we don't use those.
Click to expand...
Is there any breed of guard dog unable to herd sheep? In Croatia German Sheperds is most popular for both roles, so for me both functions somehow come together.
 
MemeFan said:
Commentary on Barbie movie:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1683241349510987777
Click to expand...
For what it's worth, here's my commentary on the Barbie movie; we just got home from seeing it in the theater -- I just wanted to see it for myself -- Kristin missed Barbies because she was raised when budding feminist mothers were just starting to be embarrassed about Barbies because of the 'idealized figures' meme; we went to the flick with a friend of Kristin who's my age who dressed up as Stereotypical Barbie for the experience (she had all those Barbie characters and play set-ups as a girl and considers that the highlight of her childhood) as well as the woman's highly-coddled autistic adult male son. So, here's the commentary:

  1. Basically, the movie was Nihilism camouflaged as Girl Power.
  2. They introduced the 'inventor' of Barbie but entirely refrain from mentioning the full history or how Ruth Handler initially failed to sell her Mattel co-founder husband on the idea, which occurred to her while in Europe when she discovered a West German doll named Bild Lilli that looked almost identical to Barbie and was based on a bawdy cartoon strip about a loose woman who models clothes but manages to disrobe in sketchy circumstances. The Bild Lilly doll also had large breasts and no hips and the main cost for those who bought them involved all the interchangeable outfits. Sound familiar?
  3. From the beginning, Ruth Handler intended for the doll to discourage girls from thinking they were consigned to motherhood roles, to program them to believe they could be anything, and eventually influence the world to change to become more egalitarian -- so the apple premises of the movie really don't fall all that far from the creator tree.
  4. Our older daughter (many of you have met her) was very disturbed when she saw the movie a couple weeks ago, telling me that it gave her a very dark vision of what life was going to be like in the future. Kristin was also disturbed, and for similar reasons. She said she wasn't at all surprised by my post-analysis and found that watching it reinforced for her certain themes I regularly hit on that she usually resents:
  5. That the Weird Barbie character in the flick who provides restorative solutions to malfunctioning Barbies in Barbie Land whose Real World owners are either messed up or mistreating their dolls is played by Kate McKinnon is only coincidental to her similarly-named non-relative Catherine MacKinnon, who is best known for something she probably never said: "All sex is rape, but Postmodern second-wave feminism has always been dominated by lesbian overrepresentation straight women who predominantly focus on the relative down sides of human sexuality (Snopes' claim that MacKinnon never said anything like this is far from accurate. I saw her speak and conversed with her myself at a 1989 regional conference at the University of New Hampshire for gay, lesbian and bisexual students (I was their advisor on campus at University of Delaware). She was directly asked about this and denied the direct quote but then went on to say that vaginal intercourse was by its very nature significantly more pleasurable for men and that "most women never really ever enjoy it but have historically been willing to engage in it because the alternative has been being a lonely old maid." Significantly, though, the movie portrays women as being predominantly disinterested in having intimate relationships with men other than during the period in the third quarter of the film when the Patriarchy Promoters have hypnotized them into thinking that their purpose is to be romantic and hang on their men's every word or guitar stroke.
  6. Pretty much everything in the movie asserts or implies that, if it weren't for patriarchy, women would be in charge of everything, the Real World would more closely resemble the ideals of Barbie Land, and men would just be, at best, occasional pleasant distractions.
  7. To its credit, it did portray women as garbage collectors, but other than that the whole issue of dangerous jobs that in the Real World are almost entirely populated by men was entirely swept under the rug.
  8. In the end, the movie was frequently funny in regard to how seriously it took itself, blatant in its failure to pretend to try to be fair to men, relatively boring, and just plain ludicrous. However, our senior-citizen female friend loved it and couldn't comprehend why Kristin was disturbed, and when I told her son my assessment about Nihilism camouflaging Girl Power, he said, "Oh, I agree!" then added, "I really liked it; it kept me awake, which is always my favorite thing about a movie."
  9. And, lastly, I liked it even more than I liked La La Land, which Kristin tells me Ryan Gosling was also in.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the rundown @Keith Martin, now the rest of us have even more excuses not to bother going! I did find this a hilarious typo, which suggests that you had a rather interesting third quarter of the film... :)
Keith Martin said:
Significantly, though, the movie portrays women as being predominantly disinterested in having intimate relationships with me other than during the period in the third quarter of the film
Click to expand...
On a different note, I went to Sound of Freedom this morning. It was very, very powerful, better than and more challenging than I was anticipating. Everyone really should see it. Well, particularly sensitive people will struggle with it and can get by with a summary from someone else, but at least someone from each family should see it so the information it conveys is widely known.

It's more epic and heroic than any DC / Marvel action hero movie - because it portrays real heroism in the face of real danger. It's also more tear-jerking than any romance. So, putting those two together, simply as a movie it should appeal to both men and women - which should help to get more people to see it. And the information in it needs to be spread.

What hit me right at the end was when they put up a photo of the real Tim Ballard and his family - and he had seven children. I have seven children. I take the fact that I am a father of seven as a reason that I need to be particularly careful, because I have responsibilities - it's the major reason I don't have a road bike for instance, and why I stop any political activism I may get involved in well short of the line where jail becomes a possibility... I play it safe for the sake of my children.

Tim Ballard did not. He did the exact opposite. The fact that he had seven children was his reason to risk his life rescuing children - because it's exactly what he would do if they were his own kids.

That I find deeply challenging, as a man. Because Ballard's approach is undeniably the correct one.

It's harder to know "so what do I do then?". I understand we have serious problems with sexual abuse of children in this country also, but it is more of the parents prostituting out their kids variety, not abduction and trafficking by strangers. The only problem with the film (which isn't a failing of it, just the fact you can only cram so much into one movie) is that this side of the industry is not touched on. So it can be completely overlooked by those who view the movie, and they can think this is just a problem in the Americas rather than realising the true global nature of this form of slavery.

But if at least one person from your family hasn't seen this yet, send someone while it's still in the cinema. It's something that is well worth seeing on the big screen.
 
Keith Martin said:
For what it's worth, here's my commentary on the Barbie movie; we just got home from seeing it in the theater -- I just wanted to see it for myself -- Kristin missed Barbies because she was raised when budding feminist mothers were just starting to be embarrassed about Barbies because of the 'idealized figures' meme; we went to the flick with a friend of Kristin who's my age who dressed up as Stereotypical Barbie for the experience (she had all those Barbie characters and play set-ups as a girl and considers that the highlight of her childhood) as well as the woman's highly-coddled autistic adult male son. So, here's the commentary:

  1. Basically, the movie was Nihilism camouflaged as Girl Power.
  2. They introduced the 'inventor' of Barbie but entirely refrain from mentioning the full history or how Ruth Handler initially failed to sell her Mattel co-founder husband on the idea, which occurred to her while in Europe when she discovered a West German doll named Bild Lilli that looked almost identical to Barbie and was based on a bawdy cartoon strip about a loose woman who models clothes but manages to disrobe in sketchy circumstances. The Bild Lilly doll also had large breasts and no hips and the main cost for those who bought them involved all the interchangeable outfits. Sound familiar?
  3. From the beginning, Ruth Handler intended for the doll to discourage girls from thinking they were consigned to motherhood roles, to program them to believe they could be anything, and eventually influence the world to change to become more egalitarian -- so the apple premises of the movie really don't fall all that far from the creator tree.
  4. Our older daughter (many of you have met her) was very disturbed when she saw the movie a couple weeks ago, telling me that it gave her a very dark vision of what life was going to be like in the future. Kristin was also disturbed, and for similar reasons. She said she wasn't at all surprised by my post-analysis and found that watching it reinforced for her certain themes I regularly hit on that she usually resents:
  5. That the Weird Barbie character in the flick who provides restorative solutions to malfunctioning Barbies in Barbie Land whose Real World owners are either messed up or mistreating their dolls is played by Kate McKinnon is only coincidental to her similarly-named non-relative Catherine MacKinnon, who is best known for something she probably never said: "All sex is rape, but Postmodern second-wave feminism has always been dominated by lesbian overrepresentation straight women who predominantly focus on the relative down sides of human sexuality (Snopes' claim that MacKinnon never said anything like this is far from accurate. I saw her speak and conversed with her myself at a 1989 regional conference at the University of New Hampshire for gay, lesbian and bisexual students (I was their advisor on campus at University of Delaware). She was directly asked about this and denied the direct quote but then went on to say that vaginal intercourse was by its very nature significantly more pleasurable for men and that "most women never really ever enjoy it but have historically been willing to engage in it because the alternative has been being a lonely old maid." Significantly, though, the movie portrays women as being predominantly disinterested in having intimate relationships with me other than during the period in the third quarter of the film when the Patriarchy Promoters have hypnotized them into thinking that their purpose is to be romantic and hang on their men's every word or guitar stroke.
  6. Pretty much everything in the movie asserts or implies that, if it weren't for patriarchy, women would be in charge of everything, the Real World would more closely resemble the ideals of Barbie Land, and men would just be, at best, occasional pleasant distractions.
  7. To its credit, it did portray women as garbage collectors, but other than that the whole issue of dangerous jobs that in the Real World are almost entirely populated by men was entirely swept under the rug.
  8. In the end, the movie was frequently funny in regard to how seriously it took itself, blatant in its failure to pretend to try to be fair to men, relatively boring, and just plain ludicrous. However, our senior-citizen female friend loved it and couldn't comprehend why Kristin was disturbed, and when I told her son my assessment about Nihilism camouflaging Girl Power, he said, "Oh, I agree!" then added, "I really liked it; it kept me awake, which is always my favorite thing about a movie."
  9. And, lastly, I liked it even more than I liked La La Land, which Kristin tells me Ryan Gosling was also in.
Click to expand...
Thanx for your sacrifice 😁
 
FollowingHim said:
Thanks for the rundown @Keith Martin, now the rest of us have even more excuses not to bother going! I did find this a hilarious typo, which suggests that you had a rather interesting third quarter of the film... :)
Click to expand...
Thanks for the heads up. Who knows? Maybe it was a Freudian slip! However, the more pedestrian explanation is that I'm procrastinating on replacing my laptop keyboard, which now has one dead and several nearly-dead keys (one of them being 'n'), causing me to have to take, on average, close to 50% more time writing anything than it otherwise would.
FollowingHim said:
That I find deeply challenging, as a man. Because Ballard's approach is undeniably the correct one.
Click to expand...
I very much respect your self-reflective impulses behind coming to this conclusion. It's only natural to lean toward the comfortable when one has the seemingly-righteous motivation of doing so for the benefit of others -- so we'll all listen with respect as you describe the manners in which you proceed to take more masculine approaches to life's challenges.
 
steve said:
Thanx for your sacrifice 😁
Click to expand...
Ha ha, Zen Trucker! And I know you write this in jest, but I really didn't -- and don't -- see it as a sacrifice. Given the right mindset going in, I really had a ball watching it.

I think the best way to approach this movie is to see it as simply a widescreen version of social media. I regularly click on hour-long videos I know won't come close to representing my point of view, but in addition to helping me keep up with the Adversary's efforts I prefer to keep my mind open to the possibility that I'll encounter a perspective worth assimilating into my worldview.
 
steve said:
Thanx for your sacrifice 😁
Click to expand...
Actually, there's a pretty hilarious roundtable discussion of Barbie on Tomassi and Sartain's Access Vegas from August 17, which I just happened upon this evening (glad I didn't see it prior to going to Cinemark yesterday!); one of the male guests reads the entire soliloquy (which is almost totally bullsh**) from near the end of the movie:

 
Last edited:
Economics is far more important than is seems.

It's most important social science which is due to nature of it's inquiry is closely connected with politics. Therefore is has far more influence on life in practical senses than it seems. Don't forget, economics must strongly influence culture, influence we don't pay any attention to it.

Problem is that every fallacy enables politicians to add another layer of BS into our lifes. Another? Yes, because previous layers are practically never removed because some interest group will be harmed. But, this doesn't stop politicians from introducing new layers to "help people".

So even if some layer is cheap in costing you, sheer amount of them ends being very very expensive. I believe productivity could be easily 20X more higher than now if politicians weren't able to add so much BS.

20X? That's rather large? Actually is low. In industrial revolution cost of steel has fallen 1000X. We could had unbeliveable cheap energy if nuclear energy wasn't killed by Greens. What else revolutions were stopped or didn't started thanks to regulation and other BS?

This is why I can't stand looking at economic fallacies. Without such widespread errors life, at least in material sense, would be far more easier.
 
Last edited:
F4iXeFWXsAAyJsi
 
Keith Martin said:
Actually, there's a pretty hilarious roundtable discussion of Barbie on Tomassi and Sartain's Access Vegas from August 17, which I just happened upon this evening (glad I didn't see it prior to going to Cinemark yesterday!); one of the male guests reads the entire soliloquy (which is almost totally bullsh**) from near the end of the movie:

Click to expand...
The cacophony is hard to handle, but it was very interesting to see people argue Biblical principles without ever referencing it.
Non-religious, but anti-WOKE.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top