"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." - Genesis 1:27

I happened to glance at the mirror this morning, before taking my shower.

All of a sudden it hit me. This is the reason Friedrich Nietzsche said "God is Dead."

Keywords:
genesis - god is dead - Thus Spake Zarathustra

A country, it is said, is a people with an army, a navy, and a flag. That's not entirely true. Scotland and Wales are considered countries, but they share their army, navy, and to some extent, their flag with the rest of the United Kingdom.

It's not clear to me why the northern counties of Ireland are part of the UK, and the rest of Ireland is a country unto itself. Religion seems to be part of it. I thought for years that the terrorism and unrest of Northern Ireland were endemic over all of Ireland, but it seems that the country of Ireland was peaceful, that it is only the northern territories that were in turmoil.

When the Iron Curtain fell in the 1980s, Germany reunified in jig time, and it had been apart for a third of a century. Vietnam was separated even longer, and had been fought over for centuries, but friends tell me that the placid, peaceful beauty of modern Vietnam is really enchanting.

The Disunited States

And then, there is the United States, which has never reunified since the 1860s, and if truth be told, probably was never unified before that, either. We needed each other to secede from European rule, but we never really were one people.

I suspect it's the shared experience that makes a people whole. After WWII, a country named "Czechoslavakia" came into being. Nero Wolfe, the corpulent homebound detective who is the centerpiece of Rex Stout's novels, was a Montenegran, and he spat on the idea that Czechoslavakia was a country or ever could become one, for the people did not share a heritage.

When I was growing up, I knew of Bagdad. It was a featured word in my piano lessons, because it's one of the few cities that can be spelled with the letters assigned to notes of the musical scale. All I ever saw of Bagdad was a cartoon showing buildings with minarets, and I wondered why the minarets existed. Still do, I guess. I'm not too sure about the gargoyle topping buildings in American cities, either.

A certain percentage of the population hears Bagdad, and the first image that comes to mind are the minarets of that cartoon. I imagine it's a pretty small population these days, an old and dying population. Kids are much less likely to learn the piano these days, and of those who do, most will associate pictures of modern war, because that's what they first associated with the word.

The South Can't Rise Again Unless It Falls First

Similarly, there are different images, concepts, and philosophies that come to mind when one hears of the American South, and that ain't gonna change soon.

Show John a picture of the General Lee car, star of the "Dukes of Hazzard" television show, and he sees the stars-and-bars as a symbol of freedom. Hell, the car was damned near free of the constraints of gravity. Show Jim that same car and his blood pressure spikes 20 points, thinking of the fact that the cast was Wonder-bread white.

The Pew Research Center released a poll Friday that said the Civil War was still relevant, and still divisive. That "flag" question, for instance, was one of the things featured. About 9% of us view the stars-and-bars positively, and about 30% view it negatively.

Part of the problem with polls like that is people like me, for I find myself in both camps. I take heart in the fact that Americans stood for what they believed in, and fought - a half-million of them dying. I cringe at the fact that, for many of them, what they believed was that they were inherently better than slaves, and inherently deserved to be in charge.

A Little Newt Off The Old Block

Newt Gingrich's daughter, Jackie Gingrich Cushman, was speaking on CSPAN this morning, and she made me cringe, too. She talked about the days before security, when as a little girl, she would wander the halls of the legislative office buildings in Washington DC, getting lost. What's the matter with your parents, little girl, that they can't be bothered to ACT like parents? Some people are inherently better than others, I guess. And then I thought about growing up on the farm, and how I did a lot of really stupid things. A farm isn't an office building, it's industrial, and it's an industry with a really high death rate.

Then she talked about how, in this country, we are always going to have people who have more and people who have less, because we have the freedom to do better, and the freedom to fail. And my thought was, yes, and we have people who get a head start on life, and those who start off dragging an anchor every step of the way. Some people are inherently better than others, I guess.

And then she talked about her kids, and how they whined that they were bored, and she said she told them it wasn't her responsibility to make anyone else happy, that they had to do that for themselves. Money can't make you happy, of course, but as someone who once was married to someone with a terminal case of lupus, and as someone who is currently married to someone with a terminal case of white matter syndrome, I can assure you that insufficient money goes a long way to assuring misery. Some people are inherently better than others, I guess.

Blondie's No Republican

My wife has not one good word to say about Republicans, but I told her that she married someone who's much closer to being a Republican than a Democrat, so they must have some redeeming qualities. And it doesn't take long to find some. Republicans are much more generous with charitable contributions, for instance. Conservatives give something like four times as much to charitable causes than do liberals of the same income levels.

And I don't mean to suggest that conservatives are the only ones who feel that they are inherently better than others. Liberals do, too, and in their opinion, they are inherently better than others in the ways that matter.

I'm not sure that any of us are exempt. As an old college buddy used to say, "we each take our turns in the barrel." We're all different, each of us with our distinct advantages, and we each feel that we're better in the way that matters. Well, almost. There are a couple of people I can think of with no redeeming characteristics whatsoever. But that's an awful small minority.

More Than Human

Mama repeatedly told me that she grew up sure that she was adopted, because surely nobody would be as cruel to their own kid as that, making her work all the time. I understood the feeling; I grew up wondering if I was even the same species as the rest of humanity. I think autistic spectrum disorders such as my Asperger's can do that to you. After all, the autistic cannot understand what others are saying and thinking, and others can't understand the autistic.

When I was in high school, they taught me that there were five races, white, black, yellow, red, and brown. Even then, though, they couldn't really define "race" very well. There were discussions as to whether the semitic peoples - jews and arabs - with their olive skin were of the same race as scandinavians, with their pasty white skin, and that led to really hurt feelings when someone with an olive skin was described as a non-white by his best friend.

I picked up a classroom map once at a library clearance sale, made of cloth and equipped with huge grommets. It showed the various tribes of the old world, where they originated, and where they moved to. It was politically incorrect, and I couldn't put it up anywhere without feelings being hurt, but I was interested in learning about the Goths, the Huns, the Saxons, the Magyar, etc., in order to understand where people came from originally.

Prima Nocta And Other Fun Marriage Games

Most migrant tribes eventually settled down and formed city-states. The head of the tribe was the old bull of the clan. He ended up becoming king. Young men would capture people from other tribes, who would become slaves and/or wives. In order to ensure these new wives would be loyal to the new city-state, rituals like the custom of prima nocta were introduced. If you share a child in common with the king, you probably would be loyal!

Legend has it that the jewish nation came about when Abraham naturalized vast numbers of people from tribes which had been devastated by war. He wanted the men, not just the women, so he established a ritual where one swore allegiance to the new nation by sacrificing the pound of flesh dearest to his heart. It wasn't truly a pound, of course, but every little fraction of an ounce is important.

We never instituted such a ritual to bring the north and the south together, though, and according to that Pew poll, 64% of all white men living in the former states of the Confederacy consider themselves to be Southerners.

Eliminating Miscegnation Bans

Integrating the black and white cultures seems to be progressing much more quickly. In 1958, the Gallop Poll found 94% opposed to interracial marriage, but in 2007, 77% had no objections at all - possibly because there are so many mixed-race babies who have grown up to be admirable adults.

But while familiarity breeds, heritage apparently doesn't. If you are so foolish as to publicly admit that you oppose interracial marriage, you would find others looking down their nose at you. Jackie Gingrich Cushing, on the other hand, can look down from her throne of superiority at the rest of us, and she thinks her opinions are being treated with respect because she's not being pelted with rotten fruit.

I guess some people are just inherently better than others.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
Asperger's Syndrome - autism spectrum disorder - Bagdad - charity - country - Czechoslavakia - Democrat - Dukes of Hazzard - General Lee - Goth - Huns - Ireland - Jackie Gingrich Cushing - Magyars - mixed-race babies - Monte Negro - Nero Wolfe - Newt Gingrich - prima nocta - Republican - Saxons - Scotland - Vietnam - Wales - white matter syndrome - Wonder bread

There was a 4.2 earthquake in Arkansas an hour ago.

A couple of hours ago, I noticed that there were a lot of earthquakes in Arkansas today, mostly in the 2.5 to 3.0 range. There had been a number of earthquakes in Arkansas for the last month, including a 4.7 quake that was the strongest since 1969.

It was nothing like this morning's quakes storm, though. Last night at 7:11 a 3.9 and a 2.9 at 8:28, a 3.2 at 11:27 and 2.9 t 12:35. 2.5s at 2:47 and 5:11, 3.0 at 6:11, 2.6s at 8:46 and 9:16, and then the 4.2 at 10:56.

I Kinda Expected

I kinda expected something in the Pacific Northwest. There were the really big quakes down in Chile, some really nasty ones in the Australia/New Zealand/Fiji area, and quite obviously Japan. To complete the Pacific Rim circle, we need something in California or Vancouver, or so.

Maybe, though, the quakes have been at the top of the circle. There is a theory about global warming that says that CO2 is the result of global warming, not the cause.

The oceans are the largest sink of CO2 in the world. When things warm up, the oceans outgas carbon dioxide, and when things cool down, the oceans soak up carbon dioxide from the air. (Rain helps a lot with the latter. CO2 is always going into the ocean, and it's a matter of how much is outgassed, whether CO2 levels in the ocean are going up or down.)

On Global Warming

One of the theories about CO2 says that it's solar flares that have been responsible for global warming, but in the past few months, I've been reading more and more about volcanism.

Think about it. If you were going to heat up something, it would take a LOT of hot air to do that. On the other hand, if you placed it in hot water, the heat transfer would be prety quick if you had a wate bath.

Earthquakes at the bottom of the ocean, resulting in undersea volcanoes, would result in massive amounts of heat going into the ocean water. Nothing would be lost. That would be a LOT more effective than warming something up by leaving it in a greenhouse.

I haven't done any back-of-the-envelope calculations to see if it's more plausible, because there isn't any comparison. It's far more effective.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
Arkansas - Chile - earthquakes - Global Warming - Japan - volcano

You may or may not be aware of this, but Keith Olbermann didn't just disappear when he was fired at MSNBC. He agreed to a contract buy-out that doesn't allow him to be on Current TV before late spring, but he can be (and is) online at FOKnewsChannel.com (That's FOK, not FOX, with FOK standing for "Friends Of Keith".)

He awarded Thursday's Bronze for "Worst Persons In The World" to the Idaho legislature. That is the latest state that's, in the words of Keith, become unsafe for Americans to live in or visit.

Famous Couch Potatoes

They've passed a measure that prohibits abortions after 20 weeks gestational age, no exceptions. Not for rate, not for incest, not for the health of the mother.

It's not clear whether the law is constitutional. The state clearly has no right to prohibit elective abortion in the first trimester, and has an absolute right to put limitations on abortion in the third trimester. The second trimester is iffy, and twenty weeks is exactly halfway through a full 40-week pregnancy. The SCOTUS made the decision in Roe v. Wade based on the medical technology of the time.

I'm not really thrilled about the Idaho legislation, but I'm not entirely thrilled with late abortion, either.

It's Not The Worst Thing

It shouldn't be a real problem with rape or incest. It doesn't take 20 weeks to find out your rapist knocked you up. Sometimes, it takes quite a while to figure out what to do about it, and I'm sympathetic with the lady involved, but stretching it out until the kid is seven years old is obviously unacceptable.

On the other hand, when the health of the mother is involved, often that doesn't become an issue until later in the pregnancy. In that case, the parents aren't really trying to terminate the pregnancy so much as to save the mother's life, or at least her health.

But It Doesn't...

This law does not prohibit expulsion of the fetus from the womb. It just prohibits deliberate killing of the fetus. In most cases, it will die despite the doctors' best efforts to keep it alive.

Em started out as a candy-striper in the maternity ward, and when she became an RN, she continued to work maternity and the intensive-care nursery for a number of years. She said that when she started, it was rare that a 2-pound baby survived, but she eventually saw a 1-pounder make it. Still, doctors were unwilling to discharge a baby until it had reached 5 pounds of weight.

A 20-week fetus weighs about five ounces, not five pounds. It's about the size of a chipmunk. This year's crop is not going to survive, and neither will next year's; someday, though, a baby that age will be able to survive.

Giving Thanks

And we should all be thankful that the citizens of Idaho are going to finance the medical science that makes it possible. What, you expect parents to pay the bills for a baby that has no meaningful chance of survival? It ain't gonna happen, not in most cases. The TEA party politicians, the ones who are so concerned about high taxes, are the ones behind this bill that puts a heavy financial burden on the state. I wonder how long it will take them to realize that.

Meanwhile, in Washington, the freshman class of TEA party politicians are "shaking things up." Funny, in the past, when someone starts a new job, doesn't understand what they are doing, and the consequences of their actions, I've always heard it referred to as fucking things up. Is this that "political correctness" they are always complaining about?

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
abortion - FOK - Idaho - Keith Olbermann - political correctness - Roe v. Wade - Supreme Court - TEA party - unintended consequences

I went back and looked at the Toledo Blade for today, 1951. Google has it online.

The more things change, they say, the more they stay the same. The front page story was that the courts had decided that Harry Truman, as Commander in Chief, had the right to station American troops anywhere he found appropriate. The GOP was pissed of at him, and said he ought to seek Congress's approval before he stationed troops in Europe for the treaty organization - presumably what was eventually known everywhere as NATO.

It Was Food Day

It was a Thursday, when all the grocery ads ran, and two different supermarkets were advertising that you should take home a case of Burger Beer, the famous beer from Cincinnati. Uh, it's about 200 miles from Toledo to Cincinnati, both of them advertising that the price was $2.59. I don't think that was a sale price, even though it was in their weekly ads; Ohio set minimum prices on beer, just as Pennsylvania currently does for milk.

I found three different ads, 1 column by 1 inch, for Betty Zane popcorn. I remember that brand, because we raised popcorn and sold it to them, but I don't think I've seen that brand since the 1950s.

I Wouldn't Sponge Off Strangers If I Could Avoid It

At the top of each section, there was a little "chuckle". A concerned woman to a begger said, oh, you poor man. Tell me, are you married? The beggar says of course not, I wouldn't dream of mooching from strangers if I had a wife.

There were 54 numbered pages, plus the peach section. I had forgotten that the peach section pages were not numbered. The peach section was four pages long, and was printed on salmon-colored newsprint, what most people would call peach colored paper. It had television listings and entertainment news, and in later years, on the front of that section was the Miss Peach cartoon, but it hadn't yet come into existance in 1951. And according to Amazon, there aren't even any Miss Peach books in print anymore, only used books.

Miss Peach Was Playing Hooky

I remember thinking, when I was growing up, that if I were going to advertise in the newspaper, I'd want my ad to run in the peach section. You'd go into homes where the whole newspaper had been thorough read, but often you'd go into homes where the rest of the paper looked untouched and only the Peach section had been pulled out; it always got pawed over by every member of the family.

There was another cartoon, though, about schooling. A cartoon had a couple meeting with a teacher. Is it really all that important, Mama is asking, that junior learn things like reading? He's going to be spending the majority of his life watching television, after all. I'm sure it was a real prawltriller in 1951, but it doesn't seem funny at all, six decades later, only prophetic.

Fillers Abounded

They used itty-bitty items, perhaps a half inch tall, to fill out columns, and as seen here, even smaller ads that were classified ads only they weren't classified. The use of column fillers practice pretty much ended in the late 1960s when newspapers switched from using setting type in hot lead with linotypes to setting type photographically with a computer.

I've done screen captures of a couple of small stories. The biscuit seller in Saginaw came over the wire, even though Saginaw was only 140 miles away. It seems a little odd, as Saginaw wasn't really a big city for immigrants. It sounds like the biscuit man came from Italy or Sicily, doesn't it? The majority of the immigrants in that era, as I remember it, were escapees from Hungary, Latvia, and other Warsaw Pact countries.

He Had A Big Pair

I think the shoe story was something that eventually ended up in an episode of the TV series M*A*S*H. I'm not sure about that. I was a fan of the movie, but the television series quickly bored me. You had surgeons doing meatball surgery, blood spurting all over everywhere, but nobody ends up covered in blood, and the patients were all docile and taciturn, as if their injuries weren't really bothering them all that much. and rarely did the surgeons struggle to save a patient only to have him die on the table.

It seemed all too unrealistic to me, as did Hogan's Heroes, and McHale's Navy, but then, I was never in battle, so what do I know. As William Tecumseh Sherman advised us, War is Slapstick.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
Betty Zane popcorn - Burger Beer - Cincinnati - cold type - column fillers - food day - Harry S Truman - Hogan's Heroes - linotypes - MASH - McHale's Navy - Miss Peach - NATO - Toledo - Warsaw Pact - William Tecumseh Sherman