Darkoshi

This reddit shows a cool video of a landslide with trees sliding and tumbling down a mountainside: I see movement ahead

It is from 2004: Massive landslide in Japan, recorded on video!

YouTube has a more complete video of it with sound.


(It reminded me of the video of trees on the march linked to here.)

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Here's the funniest/cutest Cat video I've seen all week (says a person who doesn't regularly watch such videos, as otherwise I'd never get anything done).

And here's a funny/cute dog video: Family Tries To Convince Their Giant Alaskan Malamute To Get In The Bath

It did snow. I saw it. I went outside. I went back to bed. I slept until 2:45pm, not even counting the time change.

I'm still getting over my cold, though starting to feel better. On Friday afternoon, I took a pseudoephedrine tablet, from an old package I still had. The expiration date on the package was 2010. It actually did clear my nose up for a little while. I went to bed fairly early (for a Friday) - 1:30am, as I felt so sleepy. But I wasn't able to fall asleep until 3 hours later. Now I'm afraid to take any of those tablets again, in case that is what kept me awake so long. But the other medicine I have, with phenylephrine, didn't seem to help my congestion much if at all.

Came across this video today. The song is Shima Uta. So emotionally expressive. So fluffy hair. Something mesmerizing to me.


Video title: The BOOM - 島唄 ( Live )
Posted by: SilentFace007 さんのチャンネル
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_-OZfn1Zhk


The music reminded me of this album, also Okinawan style: Peppermint Teahouse. It is possibly the most upbeat album of music I have.


Then came across this video.


Video title: 13ºOkinawa festival 2015 -Mirukumunari- Kudaka Majushu
Posted by: 8shinji7898
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARW2oHVM5Rk


(Starting at 3:26, a cute black dog joins the performance.)

I wondered why there would be an Okinawan Festival in Sao Paolo, Brazil, of all places. Did all those many performers travel from Okinawa to Brazil for the festival? Then I read about Okinawan emigration and the many people of Japanese ancestry who live in Brazil.

The song on that last video is "Mirukumunari" by Hidekatsu.

How the inventor of the pill changed the world for women - about Carl Djerassi, one of the inventors of the Pill.

[regarding a male birth control pill] The first question a man would ask is: would it affect my potency? There have been clinical trials – it has no effect on potency. The second question is erection.

I can't figure out what the word "potency" means in that context. A male BC pill would obviously affect fertility, as that is the point of a BC pill. So potency doesn't seem to mean fertility. And it doesn't seem to mean the ability to get an erection, since that is the 2nd question, not the first. What does it mean?

"How many acts of sexual intercourse would you guess occur every 24 hours?" he asks. "I often do this with my students, and they say a billion. I say: 'No, no, no, you're dreaming. There are six billion people. Well, you need two for sexual intercourse, so there are only three billion. And some of them are five years old, so they're out.' So then they say a million. Well, now you're underestimating, because you're sitting here and you're not having sex. It's actually 100m, every 24 hours. And they produce about a million conceptions, about half of which are unexpected. Of the 500,000, half of them are unwanted. As a result, every 24 hours, 150,000 abortions occur; of these, over 50,000 are illegal."

Interview with Carl Djerassi

Some parts of this don't make sense to me. Having a male BC pill doesn't take away a woman's control over her fertility, it rather gives a man more control over his. But the comment about the female BC pill making men less willing to use condoms is intriguing.

Djerassi suggests that in the future we will freeze our sperm and eggs, get sterilised and check out our sperm and eggs from the bank when we want them later. 'Then you might as well forget about contraception'.

Interesting idea. Maybe the actual eggs and sperm won't even need to be stored in the future. Maybe their DNA sequences will be scanned and saved as data, and maybe it will be possible to re-create an egg or sperm using that data. It wouldn't even really be necessary to extract and scan actual eggs and sperm... one could take the person's DNA and have a computer randomly select half the chromosomes to make virtual gametes. It will surely be possible to check the DNA for hereditary diseases, and to make corrections to prevent those diseases.

Once all that is possible, it would theoretically be possible for people to decide that they want to have a child using someone else's DNA (a celebrity, for instance), rather than their own. Or using a combination of multiple people's DNA. I wonder how much legal control people will have over their own DNA... will it be similar to copyright, and after a certain length of time after a person dies, will other people will be able to use that person's DNA? Or will only people directly descended from that person be allowed to use it? Will you be able to sell your DNA sequence for specific uses?


Response - I never blamed the pill for the fall in family size ... I didn't know that the birth control pill wasn't legal in Japan until 1999.

Birth control in Japan - mostly via condoms.