AdventiStan

[Gregory Matthews]

It is with sorrow, as I have resisted it for some time, but circumstances have convicted me that I should post about AdventiStan.

Long time members of Club Adventist are probably aware   that a Senior member of CA is the self-pronounced King of AdventiStan.  He has not been bashful about telling us of such.

I have not been a fan of that Kingdom.  My issue, in part, has to do with the fact that the Kingdom of AdventiStan has banned all citizens form owning  the noble fruit known as Durian.   I hold durian in high favor and I cannot support any country that prohibits it.

In fact, I find it to its shame that my country, the United States, bans the importation of fresh durian into the country.  It will only allow frozen durian to be imported.  I am hoping that Presiden Trump will do away with that ban and allow fresh durian to be imported.

In fact, I look forward to the day when the commercial airlines will allow fresh durian to be taken into the passenger apartments of the aircraft by people who want to enjoy a snack of the noble fruit.

Anyway, if you want to know more about this country, its King and other items about it, go to:

http://adventistan.com/2012/03/

 

 

[aka]

I'm smiling because we are dealing with imagination unrestricted by reality. Equally along the lines of Adventist literature like in 'Barely Adventist'.

I'm smiling because of recognizing that we do not have here the writing style of Gregory in the above post. After counting 7 dyslectic grammatical errors we could pin-point where the post probably stemmed from. 

The female of my being has used decades in analyzing what makes men tick. One conclusion I came to was how very sensitively complex the needs of a male ego really are. Being top of the pile waving a flag of achievement gives a much sort after notoriety. 

 Power is the key element in kingly positions. Those men who lead in preeminent positions of various branches in business, politics, Church communities or otherwise need dignity of personal power. Personally, I do hurt for any leader getting lambasted with critic of half-truths because they need loads of energy and determination to continue trying to achieve something.

What helps the stresses of hard unmerciful human interaction is to have a cave to go in of personally made fantasy for venting off the burden of leadership. 

Well, I'm looking forward to the day when import of Durian is legalized. Then the best prank of the year is a pupil bringing one into the classroom for inspection, experience and uproar. The ensuing chaos of emotions would tickle my funny bone if I was present. 

 

 

[GayatfootofCross]

I love satire and at the same time I can be very gullible.

Though I do not want to take anything away from this and spoil the fun and apparent history of this place for those who are in the know...

I must say something about Durian fruit cause i watch cooking shows for fun( my mom didnt know how to cook) and education.

Durian stinks!

So it is reported on tv shows.

So since I am out of the loop about AdventiStan..i wonder if the fruit is symbolic.

Or it must be really goooood once you get past the smell.

 

[Gregory Matthews]

Durian:  I learned to like it when I lived in Panama.  There is even a place in Modesto, California, that serves Durian milkshakes.  They are  good.  San Francisco has durian ice cream for sale.  And, it has durian that was imported into the U.S. in a frozen state, then sold in SF as if just picked off of a tree.

Some years ago on a visit to California form Colorado, I purchased a durian and presented it for consumption at a meal served in the home of my ex-wife and   my oldest son.  It was served then.  However, on successive visits we were informed that future gifts of durian would not be   welcomed!  And, on that visit we were directed to take with us the durian that had not been eaten.

Well, so much for people who do not appreciate that noble fruit.  They are missing an experience.  The experience of human life should cause people to be willing to break out beyond the boundaries of the trite normal and expected.

By the way, who knows, perhaps durian was the fruit that Eve ate in Eden and is now a gift for us to also eat?

  Perhaps she did not actually eat an apple, or a mango?

 

 

 

 

 

[Gregory Matthews]

On a personal note, AKA has given me something to think about, as to my dyslectic errors.  Perhaps, and I just had not thought about it, that may be correct, or rather an aspect.  The following are issues that I have had to consider, some of which have been long time aspects of who I am.  Others are more recent in origin.

*  I have always been a poor speller.

*  I have not ben great in typing and I consider my ability to type to have decreased over recent time.

*  In my advanced age (76) I clearly have decreased vision.  Thankfully my vision, while decreased, is remaining stable.  But I have regular clinical evaluation to see what is happening.   In any case, my brain generally blocks the visual field from one of my eyes and I see with one eye, as one eye distorts my vision.

* I have had surgery on the inside of one of my eyes on the retina in the back.  The experience of having an electric light and surgical instruments enter the inside of one of my eyeballs and do surgery on the retina was an interesting experience which probably few of you have had.

* Anyway, the result of all of this is that I sometimes write something that can only be described as dumb and I do not catch it for a while. 

 

 

   

[Stan]

There is no biblical example or statement that Jesus ever ate Durian.

 

I support the King of Adventistan, in his stand,

It only makes sense.

[Gregory Matthews]

There is no Biblical suggestion that durian is not a gift from God as was the mango

 

[Geoarrge]

Imagine mango combined with garlic. Either you will think it is acceptable, or not.

[aka]

Please pardon me, Greg, in my wrong evaluation of who posted the opening post. My Bad.

So you all figure that our Lord didn't eat durian in His lifetime on earth?

Would you all agree He also didn't eat tripe as well? Tripe was a popular nutritious and cheap dish for the British working class from the Victorian times up till the late 20th century.

 

[aka]

Dear Gregory,

The personal report of your eyes medical condition evoked from me waves of sympathy for you.

I hurt for any who have any sort of misery with their precious eyes.

Does this condition mean you can't drive the car and you wife does all the driving now?

[Gregory Matthews]

AKA:  No with the clinical help that I have available to me, I am not legally blind in either eye.  Thankfully for that.  The goal of my clinical care is to prevent me from going legally blind in any eye.  Therefore, I am fully licensed to drive an automobile and I do so.

The human brain is much more complex than we generally understand.  In my case, it recognizes that the vision in one eye is distorted.  Therefore, it blocks that eye from being viewed and allows what my good eye sees to be what is registered by my brain.

I can shut my good eye.  If I do so, my brain will allow the visual field from my bad eye to register.  I will see, but a distorted image. 

The marvel in all of this in my thinking, Is what occurred in the surgery that took place on my one eye:

1)  The purpose of the surgery was to detach a membrane that was one cell thick from my retina.  Yes, I said one cell thick.

2)  The nature of the surgery required that I be awake and able to talk to the surgeon during the surgery.  I did so and I was able to view what was happening in that eye in a shadow form.  IOW, I could actually see, in shadow form, the surgical instruments cutting the membrane free from my retina.

3)  The surgical entry points were made into my eyeball with an 18 g. needle.  In the first entry point, a tube was placed to evacuate the inner fluid in my eyeball.  The second entry point was used to introduce an electric light so the surgeon could see what was happening inside my eyeball.  The third entry point was used for the entry of the surgical instrument that severed the membrane  from my retina.  The surgeon viewed what was happening through a microscope that rested directly on my eye.

4)  Following the surgery, my eyeball was filled with an artificial fluid.  The fragments of the severed membrane remained in my eyeball.  For a while I could see these  fragments floating around within my eyeball.  It took about a month for these to decay and be flushed out by the system built into the eye.  So they eventually went away.

5)  In addition,  for a while, air bubbles remained inside my eye.  After a month these had been removed by my natural eye process.  But, I have fun for a while.  By tilting my  head I could change the placement of these bubbles.        I would practice tilting my head in such a manner that I could attach the bubbles together so as to form a bubble snow person. 

So, how did the surgery go and was it successful?

The curvature of my retina in that eye remains distorted.  But, with the removal of the membrane, the growth was stopped and the change of the curvature of my retina was stopped.  That was good.

Surgery often has side effects.  One of the side effects of that surgery, which occurred, was a growth of a cataract.  Eleven months later I had to have a cataract removed from that eye.

As a side effect of my cataract surgery scar tissue developed and I later had to have laser surgery to remove that scar tissue.

The issues in my eyes that are currently under constant evaluation is macular degeneration in both eyes.  This remains stable.  It is not progressing.  That is good. 

 

 

 

 

[aka]

Folks please let me vent here for a bit. 

There is no advantage for completely copy/paste the whole of a longer previous posting of someone before your post. As a matter of fact it is an annoying waste of space and drains my patience capacity (as well as that of other readers). If we need a bit of remembrance of what was written we need only roll our eyes up two inches for a read of the relevant message.

[aka]

Greg, 

Your latest account of your surgery was a fascinating breath-taking read. Also scary!

If that all was to happen to me then I'd need to be strapped firmly in the chair, injected with two vials of Valium, have them playing soothing music in the background, and someone reading to me in the corner of the room out of the passages of Psalms .... all just to get me to some level of relaxed acceptance of the whole frightening procedure.

[Gregory Matthews]

AKA.  I understand where you are coming from.

1)  The surgery on my eye had to be performed while I was a wake and able to talk to the surgical team.  I could not otherwise be performed.  One of a side effects of a medication that's they gave me for the surgery hd a potential to cause me to sneeze.  Can you imagine what would happen if I sneezed while they had instruments inside my eyeball?   That would not be a good thing.   I had to be able to tell the team that I needed to sneeze.  They would then remove the instruments from inside my eyeball.  Well,  I never sneezed.  But,  several times during the surgery  I needed to ask the team to scratch my nose as it was itching.  I would then feel obviously gloved fingers rubbing my nose.

One a side comment:  My eye surgery was a day surgery in which I was sent home (My wife drove me.) immediately after the surgery was completed.  As an employee in that hospital, I had staff all over the hospital telling me that when I went home, I was clearly high.  At home, I telephoned my two sons in California and talked to them.  My oldest son to this day comments on the fact that in my telephone conversation to him, I was clearly high.  my wife tells people, to this day that for hours after I came home, I was high.  Then she says that there was an immediate crash in which I came off the high just as if I had jumped off of a cliff.  

2)  I have a great interest in biology in general.  I have recently finished reading a 1300 + page university textbook on general biology.  Included in my interest is human biology.  The hospital where I worked was a research  On occasion, I participated in its research.  In one such project  in which I participated, on two occasions, over a ten year period, cameras were introduced into  parts of my body.  That interested me greatly.  I wanted to view, along with the surgical team, body parts that had never, in my body, been seen before by human eyes.   So,  I told the surgical team that I wanted to view the same monitor that they would be looking at, and I wanted them to keep me conscious enough that I  could talk to them and ask questions about what I was seeing on the screen.  They agreed and at times I asked them to tell me what I was seeing on the screen.  When the proceedure was finished, I announced to the surgical team that I had had so much fun, that I would almost bee swilling to return the next day for a repeat!  Well, they took it in stride as it was just the drugs that I had been given that were talking.

 

[aka]

 "I have recently finished reading a 1300 + page university textbook on general biology".

I am impressed! Did you see any technical words you never knew about before?

I can read fast but it's to no avail because I need to go back and reread what I read to comprehend what I read LOL! So in end-effect I always wind up being a slow reader.  

[GayatfootofCross]

I rely on the copy n paste feature of other's posts

.. to revisit good times

and when I have the urge..

My secret is I use "Visine Eye Glaze Drops" when either I've seen it all before or don't care.

[Gregory Matthews]

I have taken several college classes in biology. This book published years later, advanced my knowledge beyond what I had learned in college and refreshed my mind  on information that I had forgotten.

Yes, it had technical words that I had either forgotten or were new to me.   But,  in an appendix it defined all such words.

I began reading the book by reading each chapter several time.  That was so time consuming that I soon quit that and I read the rest of the book once.  As it was, it took me several months to read.

 

[Gregory Matthews]

As for my next book to read:

1)  I can read a 600 + page university book on general biology that I have.

2) I can read my old college textbook     on general biology.

3) I can read a 900 _ page university textbook

on microbiology.

4) I can read a 600 + page university  textbook on physics.

5) I can change my focus and read in several of the social sciences.

6)  I can choose f rom any of the following:

     The Ascent of Man by J. Bronowskki

     The Book of Life by Stephen Jay Gould

      The Mind by Richard Restak

      Creation Reconsidered: Scientific, Biblical & Theological Perspectives Edited by James L. Hayward

      Cosmos by Carl Sagan

      Does God Exist: An Answer for Today by Hans Kung

     Vital Dust: Life as a Cosmic Imperative by Christian de Duve

     Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution by Neil de Grasse Tyson & Donald Goldsmith

    No, I will not read all of these this year.  I also may choose from other books.  I have a large library of books that I have saved to read after I retire.  But, for this moment, I am occupied by submitting my taxes.  No, I am not rich and wealthy.   I like to read.  I do read books in order to understand the positions of people with whom I have disagreed.  One of the more valuable books in my library is a 1985 book written to disprove creationism.  It has been quite helpful to me in understanding what arguments creationists should not make and why.

7)  In addition, I will choose one or more translations/versions of the Bible to read.

8)  In addition I will decide whether or not to engage in some study of Biblical Greek.

9)  There are books on SDA history and the life and times of EGW that I may decide to read.

[Outta Here]

4 hours ago, GayatfootofCross said:

I rely on the copy n paste feature of other's posts

.. to revisit good times

I just had to quote that...because THAT is hilarious!