Rod Fleming | Rod Fleming's World

10/05/2024

Wood in Traditional Building 2: Poplar and Pine

Originally posted 2014-03-12 13:35:43.

Everyone will be familiar with the beautiful poplar trees that make valleys in Burgundy and elsewhere so charming to the eye. Poplar produces straight-grained timber of prodigious length. The wood is soft and easy to cut, and it holds nails very well. It resists splitting firmly because is has an interwoven grain, so it is tricky to plane well; better to use a power plane. But poplar is in any case best kept for rough work.

It has two big disadvantages; it can to warp severely as it dries, so great care must be taken in stacking; and insects just love it. Poplar should never be used unless it is treated or painted, or else the woodworm will have a field day. However, it is reasonably resistant to rot, and as long as it is used with care, is a useful timber. It is cheap and plentiful, light and easy to handle.

Unfortunately, poplar is usually grown individually, in long thin avenues, or as windbreaks along the edges of fields, and more rarely in plantations. Its presence in the beautiful valleys of central France is a great asset visually. However, this causes a problem when it is cut for timber.

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10/05/2024

Wood in Traditional Building 1: Oak

Originally posted 2014-02-18 12:54:42.

Wood is, along with stone and earth, one of the principal materials used in the construction of buildings, and particularly older buildings. The principal varieties used are oak, poplar and beech, known as hardwood in UK. Spruces and pines(softwood in UK) are also much used, especially in new-build. It is important to have some understanding of the nature of wood, its uses in the older house and some sympathy for its virtues as well as its limitations.

Wood is used in a wide variety of applications, and the most important of these are the support structure for floors; the roof timbers and associated work; and the interior finishing timber. Timber is also used in the construction of interior walls and in many areas in the construction of supporting walls.

There are three timbers commonly found in older buildings in France, namely oak, poplar and pine. Other timbers are often found as parts of outhouses and sheds.

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10/05/2024

Transsexual, transvestite and transtrender

Originally posted 2017-05-29 12:06:26.

Most ‘transgenders’ are not transsexual, they’re either transvestite or transtrender.

Only males can be transsexual, in the purest sense and to be so they must identify as girls from childhood and be exclusively attracted to men. They will usually take the receptive role in sex, though a small number may either desire to penetrate or be prepared to do this. Most male ‘transgenders’ are actually transvestite — wearing male clothing and affecting conforming mannerisms, but remaining heterosexual. Many have a condition called Autogynephilia.

‘Transgender’ is not a scientific term. It is a socio-political umbrella term that covers everyone from true transsexuals to fetishist transvestites to fashionista transtrenders. The purpose of this unhelpful conflation will become clear once you understand the different types.

The profiles I’ll discuss in this article apply ONLY in the West. Although the fundamentals of gender are innate, many expressions of it are cultural. So in different cultures we see differences in gender expression.

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10/05/2024

Roman sex was the right kind of sex — and it still is

Originally posted 2023-01-12 20:07:26.

Perhaps incredibly, Roman sex remains the standard model in most of the world. It is only the Benighted West that thinks it’s different.

One of many orgy scenes in the film ‘Caligula’. This was probably fairly accurate.

There was no equivalent, anywhere in the Ancient World, to modern concepts like ‘gay’. There was a class of males usually called cinaidus or catamite, and these were exactly equivalent to the modern Homosexual, highly feminised, submissive, receptive in sex and often dressing as women.

‘Same-sex’ intercourse was commonplace and indeed, enthusiastically pursued, but only according to social conventions. Breaking these would incur no criminal penalty but the culprits might be shunned or excluded from society. This, in Rome, was a severe penalty.

Roman sex was dictated by two sets of rules. The first set was known as the mos maiorum , which translates to “the way of the elders”. It was an unwritten code of honour.

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10/05/2024

Tele-series, ladyboys and love

Originally posted 2017-09-11 19:54:09.

March 2016. Jelly I are sharing a studio condo in Maybunga, in Pasig City, Metro Manila. Previously we were in a larger condo and things were much easier. Now the place is like a pressure-cooker.

As ever the television goes on after our morning sex session. This is when I usually try to work and it appears that Jelly has hearing difficulties.

The diet is monotonous. At noon, it’s Showtime, a variety revue hosted by Vice Ganda, a well-known gay performer. Needless to say, Jelly is mesmerised, smiling. There is nothing coming out of the television – even though the volume is full blast. It’s like an anaesthetic.

Curiously, I am reminded of Grampian Television’s ‘One o’Clock Gang’, hosted by Larry Marshall, that was the daily accompaniment to lunch when I was a child. It shows the depth of the penetration; that was 50 years ago and I can still see the faces of Marshall and Andy Stewart in flickering 405-line black and white.

Nothing has changed; The One o’Clock Gang has emigrated and transmogrified into ‘Eat Bulaga’ and ‘Showtime’. But Showtime has a trans anchor. It’s a killer selling point.

The real televisual clue to the lives of ladyboys, however, is in the ‘tele-series’.

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10/05/2024

Transition Desire: The Facts

Originally posted 2021-12-27 17:51:09.

Ray Blanchard’s Typology and his Theory of Autogynephilia are not separate and do explain Male-to-Feminine Transition Desire.

In fact, sex researchers since the time of Ulrichs and Hirschfeld had proposed a model of highly feminine homosexual males and masculine homosexual females. This understanding led Hirschfeld to assist in the very first transition programmes involving Genital Reconstruction Surgery.

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10/05/2024

The Church of Hedonism

Originally posted 2013-10-23 03:08:02.

I’m going to become a Hedonist. No really, I am. Seriously. I am going to join the Church of Hedonism. Yup. Before this happens to me.

Of course, no such church actually exists, and most religions seem to be mainly concerned with stopping people having fun. But anyway. If there isn’t one, I think it’s time we started one.

I am rapidly approaching that watershed in life, the dawn of my seventh decade. I don’t have that much time to waste any more. I quick demographic of my parents’ families suggests that if I remain a non-smoker, keep the drink to a moderate level and eat reasonably healthy food, I have maybe another fifteen years of active life, and another five or so of winding down, before parting the mortal coil and becoming one with the Earth again.

That is not an awful lot of time. And I am beginning to resent every moment of it that is not spent, basically, having fun.

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10/05/2024

European Culture

Originally posted 2023-01-11 20:01:19.

Multiculturalism has become prevalent in Europe over the last fifty years. In many places it has supplanted European culture itself. In part this has been a result of the end of European Empires, a consequence of the wars of the 20th century and an understandable sense of repentance for the excesses of an Imperial past. We are embarrassed by a history that painted huge areas of the globe pink, or whatever colour our particular nation applied.

At the same time, across Western Europe, we have seen the rise of a sense of cultural equivalency, which holds that all cultures are of equal worth, and should be equally respected: according to this, European culture was no great shakes, just one of many.

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15/11/201801/12/2020

Labour’s moral authority

Originally posted 2016-08-13 13:33:11.

The UK’s official Opposition is the Labour Party, though on present showing you might not guess that. On one hand it has at once been utterly and indefensibly useless at challenging the Government over the EU referendum. On the other, internecine fighting and political blood-letting over its own leadership has gone out of control. These pose serious questions about Labour’s moral authority and its fitness to govern.

First the party’s ruling body, the National Executive Committee, decided to prevent members who had joined within the last six months from voting. This was because the NEC is currently filled with Blairites. They want the elected leader, Jeremy Corbyn, out and think that all the new members are Corbyn supporters. That should speak volumes about how they regard democracy.

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15/11/201601/12/2020

The Brexit Mirror — cracked from side to side

Originally posted 2016-08-12 19:01:00.

The Brexit mirror cracked from side to side under the weight of simple, sheer reality this week.

The fissure in the Brexit mirror began to appear when Norway’s Foreign Minister told the world that no, the UK could not re-enter the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) just because it fancied the idea. The UK was a founder member of EFTA but left as a condition of joining the then EEC in 1973. Re-entry, however, would require unanimous approval from the remaining members and Norway is agin the idea. It’s not the only one to show reluctance.

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