SOPPY SUNDAY
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MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 
Lovely pictures! Is the city at sunset Edinburgh? The lights and the sunset make a striking color effect.
I especially like the bear family. Bears are making their way back into areas of the west where they were threatened for some years. In Yellowstone (National Park) when traffic is stopped for bears, it’s called a “bear block”, as opposed to road block.
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Yes, that’s Edinburgh, Danny. In its best places it is stunningly beautiful. In its worst places it’s all kinds of ugly.
I’m surprised old Orange Face hasn’t banned the bears. I see he’s not half made a mess of the airports. And no one seems to know whats happening.
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Yes, we can hope that he has no new ideas for the bears in the National Parks. Everything else so far has been Keystone Cops. The chaos at airports from the ban on travel from some Muslim countries was pretty typical. Executive orders and public statements rescinded in hours or days, not least a Twitter War between the American and Mexican presidents which had to be resolved by almost identical written statements negotiated by grownups among the two staffs.
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It’s scary leaving the running of a country, particularly a large and influential country, to an idiot who needs his nappy (diaper) changed.
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Welcome to dystopia
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/big-data-cambridge-analytica-brexit-trump
This is very, very disturbing.
As I am barred from Wings perhaps you could see if Stu would do something to aid distribution. This is an indy2 nightmare scenario.
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Kangaroo,
Please, expand on the point you are making. I am unconvinced that we are as ‘plastic’ as some psychologists seem to think. Perhaps anyone that has read about the Milgram ( http://www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html) experiment would find themselves not reacting quite the way his subjects did, indeed I would hit the bastard.
Which is just about where modern psychology stands. That was unethical and any research in a similar area is frowned upon. Perhaps a psychologist that reads this blog could say a bit more?
You and I are subject to enormous pressure from the main stream media to obey them.
The interesting thing is that we don’t. Tails wagging dogs, dogs wagging tails, dunno, but it seems like soppy Sunday to me.
In other words, clarify your concerns.
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The trick with Milgram was that the subjects *didn’t know* what it was really testing for. They truly thought that they were “just following orders”. Running it again, exactly the same, will not produce the same results, because that particular setup is now widely known, and Milgram relies on the subjects not knowing that they’re being tested on something other than what they’re told they’re being tested on.
And you just need to look at all the atrocities done by people “just following orders” to know that obeying perceived-as-legitimate authority is pretty hard-coded into human behaviour. But also that there are some people who are *not* wired that way.
Examples more recent than 1945 include: drone controllers bombing civilians, Jobcenter staff with their “sanction quotas”, whoever it was that actually pulled the trigger on the only two times nukes have been used in anger, pretty much every soldier who is deployed to the middle-east, the list goes on…
You might be one of the ~3% who “fail” Milgram, but once they know what its really about, everyone likes to think that.
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On a similar vein, the so called free apps have worried me for some time. It seems they only have to offer a ‘free service’ and folk line up to download it because they think they’re getting something for nothing. Well they aint. Whatsapp and its ‘free pictures’ comes to mind . Your data becomes their property and they take over your device. Facebook didn’t pay 17 billion quid to buy it because it was providing a free service out of the goodness of its heart. They’ve still to my knowledge failed to own up to why they bought it.
People have to wise up, this is a serious threat to our liberty.
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Yes, I agree, particularly in UK where Mrs may appears to have given herself powers to look at anything she wants to.
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Possibly the best ‘Soppy Sunday’ ever! I just love the baby elephant with it’s mum. And that photograph of Edinburgh is just amazing
Thanks, you have cheered me up on a typically horrible January day.
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Good to hear. 🙂
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Wowie Zowie!
Love the swans!
I’m off to work, have a nice peaceful Sunday everybody, looks like a reasonable day ahead, get out and enjoy the outdoors in whatever country you reside.
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I know you’re fond of swans, Gerry.
Hope to get out in the garden here. My birds are looking for food and I have a nice peice of cheese for the mice.
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You know it’s true, a primate’s best friend is their dog or cuddly toy. The fawn is beautiful and so I won’t have a venison grillsteak today… The bears are funny but why does that dog on the couch have two heads 🙂 Plus a baby elephant, ahhh!
Where is the beach, it’s looks lovely?
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Ha ha. Munguin says I’m his best friend! Of course he’s not a primate and I’m not a dog.
Dog has two heads so he can lick you more!
I dunno where the beach is. I found it on Twitter sans titre and when I searched it on Google, it comes up with “beach”, which is pretty unhandy! Hope you find something else for your dinner!!
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The photo of the lady with the spinning wheel looks like it was taken in St Kilda. Nostalgic memories of Edinburgh – especially Easter Road! Any photos of Hebridean beaches?
Good morning, Niko! What time does your bar open?
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Again, John, the photo came from Twitter and was titled “woman spinning wool in Hebrides 1950s”. I knew it would catch your eye. I’ve done a Google search and they can’t find its origin.
I’m sure we could have some Hebridean beaches. Of course!
Your word is Munguin’s command.
I’m not sure Niko gets up this early, but, if I were you I’d just pop in take what you want and leave the money in the honesty box. Taz will probably be there. You’ll get some interesting chat.
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Some further research by our extensive team of hard working staff has revealed that the photo comes from
It is of Oahu, Hawaii.
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Funny you should mention ‘honesty box. When I was a sprog the local shop-keeper would leave his shop open when he went for lunch and you would pay him later. Alas, these days are gone! The local golf course – photos on the internet!! – still has an honesty box!
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It would be wonderful to live in a community where you could do that. We were at Edzell Castle the other day. It was closed for the winter but we saw a bit of it. It’s £5 to get in now, but my mate remembered going there when there was an honesty box.
It’s funny. I had no qualms about wandering around the castle (which is a ruin) not having paid the man in the ticket off (it was closed), but I’d have a horror of ignoring an honesty box.
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Funny story about Edzel Castle:
Historic Scotland took the roof off, which has caused major weather damage to the tower rooms, because it saved them on taxes.
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You’d have thought that some sort of exemption would have been made for historic building in the custodianship of the country.
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Thought you might like to know that the wheel she is using is a Haldane “Lewis” model (I have one just like it), and the lady is spinning with the “longdraw” technique.
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Thank you Sue. 🙂
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simple answer to scotguv budget impase after listening to wee wullie rennie on sunday politics get him sectioned he is obviously delusional
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But he loves himself, Ian.
Bless him. He sounded like he was drunk. I’m not entirely sure that, as the leader of the 5th party in the parliament he has a huge amount of pull.
Sectioning him would keep him off whatever he was on this morning.
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OT but this is… interesting. A petition to ban Trump from grabbing the Queen’s fanny. Or something. 305,000 and counting.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/171928
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LOL Well to be more exact, banning him from the UK. Like that’s gonna happen when Tessy needs his rotten trade deal!
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That’s one Westminster debate I’d gladly watch.
Posted the link on the Washington Times. *Lights blue touchpaper*
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jan/28/federal-judge-issues-stay-deporting-refugees/
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It had to happen. But all within 9 days… Brilliant. May way behind the curve of public opinion too. Too busy selling weapons to Erdogan.
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Illy,
“Examples more recent than 1945 include: drone controllers bombing civilians, Jobcenter staff with their “sanction quotas”, whoever it was that actually pulled the trigger on the only two times nukes have been used in anger, pretty much every soldier who is deployed to the middle-east, the list goes on…
You might be one of the ~3% who “fail” Milgram, but once they know what its really about, everyone likes to think that.”
Well, you don’t put yourself in these situations. Indeed Milgrams’ own experiments showed failure rates of 80% when some of the ‘props’ were dropped. Not quite the 3% you quote.
The point is that Milgram educated, at least those of us that are willing to learn, that authority, except in closely defined circumstances, should always be challenged. Much as I am doing to you now.
Drone controllers, Job Centre staff and indeed those on their fingers of nuclear missiles – but not perhaps Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov – should be made aware of this bullshit glitch in their make up. Perhaps they are attracted to their professions through a huge desire to conform, or cause chaos.
Obedience to authority is frankly the biggest failure of our entire progress from hunter-gatherers to now. We need to seed it out.
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Oh! My post at 00:21 has appeared. Please ignore any later ones that might come through the ether!
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