Wednesday, November 30, 2016

A Public Health Announcement

Negativity kills:) And we now have a scientific proof that being a Debby downer will make you stupid, shrink your brain and possibly give you Alzheimer:
 
Repeated complaining rewires your brain to make future complaining more likely. Over time, you find it’s easier to be negative than to be positive, regardless of what’s happening around you. Complaining becomes your default behavior, which changes how people perceive you.

And here’s the kicker: complaining damages other areas of your brain as well. Research from Stanford University has shown that complaining shrinks the hippocampus -- an area of the brain that’s critical to problem solving and intelligent thought. Damage to the hippocampus is scary, especially when you consider that it’s one of the primary brain areas destroyed by Alzheimer’s.

That's not all damage that you'll experience. Complaining too much can lead to heart disease, stroke, obesity and diabetes:


While it’s not an exaggeration to say that complaining leads to brain damage, it doesn’t stop there. When you complain, your body releases the stress hormone cortisol...
All the extra cortisol released by frequent complaining impairs your immune system and makes you more susceptible to high cholesterol, diabetes, heart disease and obesity. It even makes the brain more vulnerable to strokes.

It ruins life and health of others, too, though I sometimes think it's probably exactly what the downer's intention is anyway (remember the post about energy vampires?):

You need to be cautious about spending time with people who complain about everything. Complainers want people to join their pity party so that they can feel better about themselves. Think of it this way: If a person were smoking, would you sit there all afternoon inhaling the second-hand smoke? You’d distance yourself, and you should do the same with complainers.

Read the whole article over here. H/t to PJ Media.

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Polishing The Brass On A Sinking Ship

Too many churches nowadays have adopted the philosophy of "why polishing the brass on a sinking ship" and instead of trying to re-Christianise society are waiting for the end of the world and are even eagerly anticipating it. And why should they worry if they expect to be raptured out of the mess they often helped create when the times get too tough. But is Rapture doctrine at all Biblical?




For the record, I don't know which church is it, but though ours teaches approximately the same, they still have bought into this end-of-world-is-imminent mindset, more or less.

Personally I think that Postmillennialism offers a much more optimistic perspective.

Monday, November 28, 2016

A New Blog Added

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present:

That Stepford Gal

In her latest post, she kindly mentions my post about feminine hobbies and connects their disappearance to women taking more prescription drugs. I'd like to add that's more true than people realise since science proves that crafting is good for your brain (as is playing a musical instrument, another traditional feminine pastime).

BTW, did you know that ladies and gentlemen isn't really about putting ladies first, since it's an abbreviation of my lords, ladies and gentlemen ?

Thursday, November 24, 2016

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to my American readers!

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Monday, November 21, 2016

Raisin Scones



To make 10 you'll need:

2c of flour (you can use a mix with spelt and whole grain flour)
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
3 tbsp cold butter
1/2 c raisins
3/4c buttermilk
milk and sugar for glazing

Combine dry ingredients, cut in butter, add raisins and buttermilk. Stir until a soft dough forms, then knead for a couple of minutes (don't overdo it otherwise scones will be hard.) Add extra buttermilk if needed. Roll out into a 7in circle, cut into 10 wedges. Brush with milk ans sprinkle with sugar. Bake at ab. 210*C - 220*C for 12-15 min. or till lightly browned.
Serve warm or cold. Enjoy.

The recipe is an adaptation of one from Home-style Cooking.

Friday, November 18, 2016

Winged Hussars

Not all Swedes are like that (in the previous post):


Thursday, November 17, 2016

Feminism Meets Reality In Sweden

Gender equality in Sweden was about to make a huge step forward by ensuring that snow in winter is removed in a politically correct, gender-equal manner (that's real news and not taken from Onion). 

However sexist and patriarchal forces of nature conspired to frustrate these ground-breaking attempts by causing the biggest snowfall in more than a hundred years. Chaos ensued:


STOCKHOLM, Sweden, November 16, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – A “feminist” snow removal plan that dictated sidewalks be cleared before streets plunged Sweden’s capital in chaos after a record snowfall.

The biggest snowfall in 111 years proved the first real test for the “feminist” or “gender-equal” snow removal policy brought in by a new municipal council controlled by a Left-Green coalition.

The city government is intent on putting as much civic energy into clearing bike paths and sidewalks used by environmentally- and fitness-minded women as into the roads frequented by male-dominated motor vehicle traffic.

But chaos reportedly was the result for both genders, according to the tabloid Aftonbladet’s headline, “Feministisk snöröjning funkar inte i Stockholm,” (“Feminist Snow Removal Flunks in Stockholm.”)

You see, feminists didn't take into account that women actually  use buses and trains, too (and sometimes even drive cars):

Buses (also, it turns out,  heavily used by women) were stuck by the hundreds on roads blocked by stalled cars. Light rail trains moved at half speed, forcing  stranded commuters to walk for hours to get home from work, slipping and falling on glasslike sidewalks and bike paths. Others stayed home with children as schools shut down.

The (male) vice mayor for traffic, however, blamed the Nature for the snow in winter in a Northern country and pointed out that the real problem is a lack of gender equal snow-clearing which affects women more than men since Swedish women apparently disdain such tools of patriarchal oppression as cars and prefer to walk instead. 

Wow, just wow. I can't even. But as my husband said, the good citizens of Stockholm voted them in, so let them enjoy their gender equality to the fullest. I wish them a long, cold, snowy winter.

(Read the whole story over here).

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Prayer Request

A friend is losing battle with cancer. Please pray for her and the family. Thanks.

Friday, November 11, 2016

The Amish And Donald Trump




(Twitter image courtesy of Google)


It appears that Mr Trump's victory is in no small way due to the enthusiasm of Amish voters about his candidacy. Here's what some of them said about the election:

The husband said he was a supporter of Second Amendment rights and did not believe Clinton would serve gun owners as president. He said Trump had failures as a businessman, shaky morals and multiple marriages but would be a good leader.

       The man’s wife echoed the same sentiment, adding that she didn’t think a woman was fit to be     president. Both said a woman wouldn’t be good under pressure...

(Quoted from a post by Thinking Housewife which can be read in its entirety over here, emphasis mine). 

Their attitude is quite different from that of some sanctimonious "conservative" religious leaders, probably because they still know something about "traditional gender roles", unlike their counterparts.

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

To My American Friends

Congratulations, guys! You did it!!!!

Sunday, November 6, 2016

One Roosh Message That I Fully Support

I've never thought I'd endorse anything put forward by this guy anymore, after all these scandals connected with his name, but incredibly enough, he's now promoting home-baking! See for yourself:




 I basically use the same recipe (I think they are all pretty similar), but I never bother to weigh anything. It's just 4c flour (I usually use a mixture of whole wheat, spelt and regular), 2tbsp of olive oil, the same amount of water he uses, 2tbsp sugar, 2tsp salt and 2tsp yeast. I may have forgotten something so I don't recommend using it the way I've written it. The order of placing ingredients recommended by my instruction manual is different, too. First, I grease it with some extra olive oil, then add the half of flour, then pour in the water (which I don't warm but just use warm water from the tap) + olive oil, then add the rest of dry ingredients.

Roosh is right when he says it tastes great and I do believe it's generally healthier than store brands, but what is more important is the fact that baking your bread is a pretty traditional thing to do. That's why on my blog I promote home baking, too!

Friday, November 4, 2016

Scandinavian Cinnamon Rolls






I guess it's the same stuff as sold by IKEA, but mine are better, of course, because homemade:)

The recipe is adapted from the same magazine as the previous one (Home-Style Cooking).

To make 24, you will need:

1 pkg (7g) dry yeast
1/4 c warm water
1c spelt+whole wheat + 3c regular flour
1/4c sugar
1tsp salt
200g butter
1c warm milk
2 eggs

For filling, use

3tbsp softened butter
1/2c sugar
cinnamon to taste

In a bowl, dissolve yeast in water. In another bowl, combine flour, sugar, salt and butter cut into small cubes. Add yeast+water, milk and eggs, mix till dough forms. It will be very soft. Cover and refrigerate several hours, I actually made it yesterday morning but only found time to get back to it this morning, after nearly 24 hours, but it turned out fine.

Use a lot of flour on your hands and surface as the dough will be very sticky. Divide it in half, roll each half into a rectangle of ab. 10x12in. Spread with butter, sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon, roll up and cut each roll into 12 slices. You then can place them in (greased) muffin cups so the result will be similar to what you see in the picture, or just place on a greased baking sheet, which I had to do with the other 12 as I only have one muffin pan. They won't look so cool but they'll taste all right. Cover and let rise for 30 min to 1 hour. I did 30 minutes because they did overtime in the fridge:) Bake at 190*C for 25 min. or until browned.

Cover with glaze. For glaze, you'll need:

3/4c powder sugar
2tbsp soft butter
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
enough milk to create a smooth paste

Cream butter and sugar, add remaining ingredients, beat until smooth. Spread on top of rolls. Enjoy!

In other news, we still have nice mild autumn weather, though it's actually winter according to the Celtic calender. Not one storm yet! How about you?


Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Let's Talk S*x

Sex is one topic not generally discussed on this blog which is probably the reason that I don't get 100+ comments on my posts:) So I decided to talk about it for a change. 

Of course, being a well-known prude I'm not going into details of my own personal life and neither expect my readers to do it, what I'd like to discuss is something else, namely, the general misconceptions about sex which one can encounter on the internet.

We all know the common feminist trope about women being constant victims of predatory men, and I believe that it did a lot to poison male-female relationships, yet the trope itself predates 1960s and goes all the way back to Victorian times which gave us the concept of a saintly female, an angel in the home, tainted by brutish male passions. The funny thing is that before, a woman was considered to be a carnal creature, created to ruin men and dangerous in her unrestrained sexuality.

Constant feminist attacks on masculinity created a backlash yet, ironically, a lot of men writing on the sexual topics from what they state is a traditional point of view, repeat the old Victorian adage about men basically being horny monsters all the time, only unlike feminists, they decry the supposed frigidity of women.

 I'm informed there is a whole-scale crisis in American families where the majority of women refuse to have sex with their husbands, for instance. Or that every man's dream is to fornicate with as many women as possible. That every time men see a woman in a short skirt they automatically want to bed her and that in general, bedding multiple women is the only thing men talk about among themselves.

How true is it? Well, I don't know. Maybe, it's true about Americans. Maybe they do have a sex crisis. Granted, I'm not a man, but when I asked my husband he told me flat out it was a lot of nonsense. He works with all men and though they do make sexually tinted jokes at times, he says they have other topics to talk about besides it. He told me lots of other things, too, but I don't care to disclose them on my blog:)

Anyway, it amounts to the fact that according to him, though men react to beautiful women and sexy clothes, a man's desire, like a woman's, has another dimension to it than just "she is so hot", at least, as men get older. That is, contrary to what some blogs state, a woman isn't just a sum of breasts+legs+other things, she has also a personality and it matters, too. Especially in a marital relationship, which normally is based on more than sexual attraction alone.

In general, I think the stereotype of any man as an eternal playboy is harmful. Yes, it's true that men have been traditionally held to a lower standard of chastity than women (which isn't all wrong in my opinion) and it's true that since men and women are different their sexuality is different, too. However, in the East, where powerful men traditionally had harems, it wasn't uncommon for them to develop real feelings for their concubines and it was more of a serial monogamy thing than having many women at the same time. Heck, men have been known to get attached to prostitutes they frequented.

We all somehow get an idea that women are a romantic sex, but is it really true? I'd say women are often quite pragmatic. And speaking of pragmatism, here is something else I'd like to mention. This whole idea that we experience a shortage of sex in our society is preposterous. The proponents of the idea like to point out to the past, and somehow draw the conclusion that men in those times had it easier. For instance, they say, women married in their prime time (which for some of these guys is apparently 14). The truth is that they did often marry young but when you look at the family history, you'll notice that the first child came 4 years later.

The reason for this is that many marriages weren't romantic at all. The family wanted to get a girl of their hands, the man needed a housekeeper. They would wait several years before they consummated their marriage. Also some families had 10 children while others had 1. Sometimes it was due to diseases and high child mortality, but it was also often because a decent man was supposed "to leave his wife alone" after a certain age and a certain amount of children. So the idea that they went at it like rabbits in the past is simply ridiculous.

Whatever problems we face nowadays, the lack of sex is not one of it. That is not to say that it's a good thing for a wife to deny her husband or vice versa. However, let's be realistic about this whole topic. I remember some time ago feminists were livid because somewhere in Afghanistan they took the law stating that the wife owes sex to her husband. When the minister was asked how often, he said something like "once in 10 days". I guess some meninists won't like Afghanistan, either:)